\ 
 
 OUT OF THE PAST 
 
 (CRITICAL AND LITERARY PAPERS.) 
 
 BY 
 
 PARKE GODWIN. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 G. P. PUTNAM & SONS. 
 
 1870. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by 
 O. P. PUTNAM & SONS, 
 
 In the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 
 District of New York. 
 
 ereotyped by LITTLE, KKNNIK & Co., i Ki:ss OF 
 
 645 and 647 Broadway, N. Y. THE NEW YORK VHINTIXG COMPA; 
 
 81, 83, and 85 Centre St., N. Y. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I GATHER these essays out of the anonymous and 
 desultory writing of many past years not because I 
 suppose them to possess any particular literary value, 
 but simply to show what little part I may have taken in 
 various discussions. 
 
 Written in moments snatched from the labors of an 
 exacting profession, they are more imperfect than they 
 would have been with a larger leisure at my command. 
 They are reprinted, however, substantially as they were 
 first published ; I have pruned away certain redun 
 dances with a pretty free hand ; here and there, where 
 the meaning seemed obscure, I have added a sentence 
 or a paragraph to help it out ; but no change has been 
 made in any sentiment or thought. To have rendered 
 the essays what I should now like them to be, would 
 have been to re-write them, which was impossible. 
 
 My political and social papers I hope some time or 
 other to collect into a volume like the present. 
 
 30557 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 BRYANT S POEMS 9 
 
 JEREMY BENTHAM AND LAW REFORM 22 
 
 EDWARD LIVINGSTON AND HIS CODE 56 
 
 JOURNALISM 75 
 
 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 89 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY in 
 
 THE LAST HALF-CENTURY 145 
 
 AMERICAN AUTHORSHIP 176 
 
 ALISON S HISTORIES OF EUROPE 196 
 
 THE " WORKS" OF AMERICAN STATESMEN 221 
 
 COMTE S PHILOSOPHY 251 
 
 STRAUSS S LIFE OF JESUS 288 
 
 THE LATE HORACE BINNEY WALLACE 302 
 
 THACKERAY AS NOVELIST 326 
 
 GOETHE 34 1 
 
 RUSKIN S WRITINGS 367 
 
 CAUSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 394 
 
 MOTLEY S RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC 422 
 
 EMERSON ON ENGLAND 441 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS. 
 
 BRYANT S POEMS.* 
 
 E design to express our opinion of the merit 
 of these poems. To speak what we think, 
 plainly and freely, will only be discharging a 
 debt of gratitude that has been accumulating for a long 
 while. 
 
 That they should have passed through four large edi 
 tions is some indication of the existence among us of a 
 pure taste ; at least, the author has no right to complain. 
 He has found favor enough to satisfy a vanity more in 
 ordinate than we take his to be. His verses have been 
 read extensively, and praised as often as they were read ; 
 quoted frequently, and always with admiration ; and re- 
 published time and again in every magazine and news 
 paper from the land of the Pilgrims to that of the 
 Cherokees. The more accomplished his readers, the 
 keener their relish of the repast which he has furnished. 
 Nevertheless, would not some of his warmest admirers 
 be surprised to learn his true rank as a poet ? Suppose 
 we were to compare him, not with "the ever-during 
 few," with Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, who hold the 
 
 * Poems by William Cullen Bryant. Fifth Edition. 
 Brothers, 1839. 
 
 From the Democratic Review, Oct. 1839. 
 
 Harper & 
 
i o. ..... J$Kcuitls - *Pocms. 
 
 first place, but with those just below them, with Collins, 
 Cowper, Wordsworth, and their like, would it betray any 
 want of critical sagacity? We confess it is our convic 
 tion, that, estimated according to the strictest rules of 
 art, his poetry is not inferior to their best. Without 
 running a formal parallel, we shall endeavor to state 
 why and in what respect we think so, by describing 
 what we conceive to be its chief characteristics. 
 
 Sometimes we are disposed to think exquisite grace 
 and propriety of expression his principal excellence. It 
 seems as if his whole study had been how his thoughts 
 might be most beautifully uttered. Not only are words 
 not misused, which would be small praise indeed, but 
 none occur that any process of refinement can improve. 
 Their precision is remarkable, unaccompanied as it is 
 by any loss of elegance or force. Warmth and rich 
 ness are not sacrificed to mere dry and meagre chastity. 
 Most writers, when they attempt neatness, become hard 
 and cold ; flexibility is exchanged for accuracy ; and 
 their frigid phrases, perhaps well adapted to a meta 
 physical treatise, are altogether out of place in verse. 
 By laboring too exclusively after niceness, they neglect 
 \vhat is of far more importance in the effective use of 
 words, juiciness. This is never the case with Bryant. 
 With all his exactness of expression he is ever racy, 
 \varm, suggestive. Certain of his pieces it is impossi 
 ble to read without gliding unconsciously into a thou 
 sand trains of associated thought. A single epithet 
 sometimes tells many a secret. For instance, in the 
 " Death of Schiller," how that one term, "the peering 
 Chinese," brings up all the peculiarities as well of 
 Chinese life as of Chinese features ! And, again in the 
 Greek Boy, whom he regards as 
 
 " A shoot of that old vine which made 
 
 The nations silent in its shade," 
 
Bryant s Poems. 1 1 
 
 does not old Greece, in her glory and magnificence, 
 and yet with somewhat of a mournful grandeur, move 
 before us, as in a stately funeral procession ? 
 
 Delicacy and refinement of language are of course 
 incompatible with the least mark of turgidness. There 
 is, therefore, no tumid pomp, no forced strength 
 none of the inflation of Thomson, nor of the unnatural 
 and pompous splendor of Young. Then his versifica 
 tion is no less exquisite than his choice of language, 
 and manifests no less the skilfulness of the accomplished 
 artist. It combines melody and freedom \vith correct 
 ness. An ear the most perfectly attuned detects no false 
 quantities nor discordant rhythms. Line follows line 
 in liquid harmony. A certain mellowness and smooth 
 flow beguiles the mind by a kind of fascination, as if the 
 ancient conception of the lyric had been more than 
 realized, and poetry become music. Yet the versifica 
 tion is adapted to the subject. In that grand ode " To 
 the Past," the lines move with a slow and solemn step, 
 befitting the theme, while in the "Song of the Stars," 
 they dart away with the joyousness and buoyancy of 
 youth, like "the orbs of beauty and spheres of flame" 
 that go dancing over the widening wastes of the 
 sky. 
 
 Bryant possesses, however, other and higher requi 
 sites of the genuine poet. An eminent writer, himself 
 aspiring to the highest place in the poetical literature 
 of England, has told us what those requisites are, 
 and they are just those which our poet has in a signal 
 degree.* As to sensibility, no man ever lived more 
 delicately susceptible of external influences. Not only 
 is his eye open to the forms of nature, but every fibre of 
 his being seems to be tremblingly alive to them: like 
 
 * Wordsworth. See preface to Lyrical Ballads, 
 
12 Bryant s Poems. 
 
 the strings of an Eolian harp, which the faintest breath 
 of the wind can waken. His observation of the out 
 ward world has been both varied and minute. Natural 
 objects, with their infinite diversity of name, shape, and 
 hue, are the constant companions of his thoughts. 
 From the spire of grass to the huge mountain oak ; 
 from the violet, in its silent retreats, to the bright and 
 boundless firmament ; from the shy bird, brooding in 
 the deep and quiet woods, to the stars in their eternal 
 dances. Streams, and woods, and meadows, and skies 
 mingle in all his musings form a part, indeed, of his 
 intellectual being. The seasons, with their thousand 
 alternating influences, with their smiles and tears, with 
 their sunshine and gloom ; day and night, with their 
 strange contrasts ; forests, where gush the silver foun 
 tains ; thick groves, with verdant roofs and mossy 
 floors ; trees in their stateliness and beauty ; lone 
 lakes ; the song of birds ; the soft whisper of the even 
 ing winds, and the gentle murmur of the brooks, have 
 been to him a delightful study. 
 
 This familiarity with nature gives freshness and truth 
 to his descriptions. They are not like the collections 
 of a naturalist, dry specimens of withered leaves and 
 decayed plants ; but at all times warm, picturesque, 
 faithful. They present nature in all her original life 
 and glowing beauty. Opening the book at any page 
 is like transporting one s self to the free air and broad 
 prospects of the country. Lovely sights and sweet 
 sounds are about us, and we gaze earnestly on green 
 leaves and running brooks, and listen, delighted, to the 
 lowing of herds. 
 
 Bryant s writings are also marked by instances of re 
 fined as well as vigorous imagination. How striking 
 is that passage in the " Prairies," in which, lost in the 
 musings prompted by the sublime solitude, we hear in 
 
Bryant s Poems. 13 
 
 the domestic hum of the bee, "a more adventurous 
 colonist than man, the tramp of that advancing multi 
 tude which soon shall fill the borders !" And these few 
 lines taken from the " Earth," 
 
 " From battle-fields, 
 
 Where heroes madly drove and dashed their hosts 
 Against each other, rises up a noise, 
 As if the armed multitudes of dead 
 Stirred in their heavy slumber." 
 
 Indeed, the whole of this poem, and Thanatopsis, 
 The Past, and the Hymn to Death, are magnificent em 
 bodiments of imagination. Vast as are the themes, 
 giving scope for the boldest and broadest flights, and 
 exciting the highest sense of sublimity, they are treated 
 with a corresponding grandeur of language and thought. 
 A vein of the most elevated philosophy pervades them, 
 deeply serious in its tone ; but of that seriousness which 
 is inseparable from the awful truths related to our mys 
 terious human being. While we read them, a solemn 
 and impressive awe falls upon us ; we listen as we 
 should to the utterances of a prophet, or as though we 
 heard at midnight the choral symphonies of Heaven 
 floating down from the skies. 
 
 The healthy judgment of our author has shown itself 
 in all his writings. Both in the arrangement of the 
 lesser details of verse, and the utterance of sentiments 
 and thoughts, his judgment is equally evident. The 
 force of the language, the perfection of the style, the 
 appropriateness of the imagery, the simple and just fer 
 vor of his feelings, the fidelity of his descriptions, the 
 cheerfulness of his aspirations, and the manly moral 
 tone that pervades every line, prove that he possesses, 
 along with intense poetic sensibility, the most unques 
 tionable good sense. We find nowhere indications of 
 
14 Bryant s Poems. 
 
 disease, no want of justness and harmony, no straining 
 after effect, no affected point or brilliancy, no starts 
 and fits, no agonies of passion, no mawkish sensitive 
 ness, no morbid misanthropy, no repulsive egotism, no 
 unhealthy yearning for sympathy, no childish com 
 plaints of the neglect of the world, or of the cruel se 
 verities of Providence ; but, on the contrary, all is pure 
 and wholesome, the sincere production of one that re 
 gards nature and society with the mind and heart of a 
 wise man, contented with the allotments of Heaven, 
 and laboring through the humblest duties with right 
 earnest and cheerful good-will. 
 
 The spirit of these writings is, therefore, no less to 
 be admired than their outward graces and perfections. 
 A gentleness as soft as that of woman, a tenderness 
 mild and tearful as early love, simplicity like that of 
 unconscious youth, are joined to the lofty philosophy 
 of a sage. Innumerable are the passages that touch 
 our best feelings, sinking quietly into the heart, and 
 melting it, like a strain of music, into liquid joy and 
 love. Whatever is peaceful, lovely, delicate, or kind, 
 most strongly affects the writer s imagination. He 
 walks abroad in the world, he takes in all things of 
 earth and air, he ascends the stream of history, and is 
 arrested only by the beautiful in nature, art, and the 
 actions of men. He is like one loitering in groves of 
 bloom to gather there the choicest flowers. In his 
 view the rugged and the discordant have no charms, 
 the struggles of despair, the ravages of storm ful pas 
 sion, the thousand jarring scenes of life, are seen only 
 to suggest a deep commiseration. Even when our 
 hearts, by some simple phrase, are made to burn with 
 indignation at the wrong which man inflicts on man, 
 when we are touched with the sufferings of the op 
 pressed, and are full to bursting against the oppressor, 
 
Bryant s Poems. i5 
 
 a tone of gentleness softens our wrath, though the sense 
 of justice grows keener, and purposes of tender and 
 quiet beneficence become living convictions. This is 
 the peculiar charm of his philanthropy ; it is suscep 
 tible, keen, fresh, and ever active ; it is unaccompanied 
 by bitter or revengeful passion. Nothing to detract 
 from its perfect purity is mingled with it, and nothing 
 to confound it with mere animal impulse or physical 
 sensibility. It is a love as immaculate as that of the 
 angels, at the same time full of humanity and kind 
 liness. Gentle desires, sweet affections, simple tastes, 
 patient fortitude, tranquil recollections, and cheerful 
 hope are the impulses that he moves. To these only 
 are his lofty inspirations addressed. He speaks to 
 them, not in frigid homilies or formal tones of instruc 
 tion, but by interweaving delightful moral associations 
 with all the objects and processes of the material world. 
 Twilight hues lingering after the bright sun has set, re 
 call the memory of good men gone ; the deep slumber 
 of the woodlands is an emblem of inward peace ; the 
 perishing flowers of Autumn are they who in their 
 youthful beauty died ; a golden sunlight succeeding 
 the tempest anticipates the day when the noise of war 
 shall cease, and married nations dwell in harmony ; 
 the unconscious flow of the rivulet, changeless amid 
 change, reminds us of the perpetual onward course of 
 time ; the flight of the lone bird in the illimitable air 
 tells of the Power that, in the long way that we must 
 tread alone, will guide our steps aright ; and the un 
 ceasing vicissitudes of all external things indicate the 
 hand of a kind Providence, conducting the human 
 race through successive trials to the scene of its noblest 
 triumphs. 
 
 Surely such writings are those to which we most, 
 often and fondly recur. We come to regard them as 
 
1 6 Bryant s Poems. 
 
 friends, ministering in all seasons of affliction and joy 
 to our spiritual wants, and turning us by -their silent 
 eloquence to whatever is holy and good. Unlike the 
 more dazzling productions of genius, which are read 
 this moment and forgotten that, or which, if we may so 
 express it, are perused by a flash of lightning, to be 
 closed the instant after in darkness, they make them 
 selves our closest companions, to which we look for 
 instruction and solace. We turn to them on the still 
 Sabbath-days, when we would recover our moral nature 
 from the shocks of the too engrossing world, on placid 
 summer evenings, when the remembrance of far-off 
 home and kindred is softest, in the silent watches of 
 the night, when, the world shut out, eternal things are 
 a reality, and the petty cares of life are only a dream. 
 And then if trial comes upon us in the stern struggles 
 of life, they administer a soothing strength ; if disap 
 pointment fills the heart with gall, they assuage its bit 
 terness ; when sickness prostrates energy, they recover 
 the drooping spirit ; and when death creeps slowly 
 upon the sources of existence, they hover around us 
 like gentle memories, or whisper sweet hopes of a bet 
 ter world. Would that all gifted men could learn that 
 to survive the oblivion that seems to be the destiny of 
 most human things, they should appeal only to that 
 which is imperishable in the nature of man, to his af 
 fections and his hopes. 
 
 One effect of Bryant s faithful observation, of which 
 we have spoken, is, that his poems are strictly American. 
 They are American in their subjects, imagery, and 
 spirit. Scarcely any other than one born in this coun 
 try can appreciate all their merit, so strongly marked 
 are they by the peculiarities of our natural scenery, our 
 social feelings, and our national convictions. What 
 the author has seen, or what has been wrought in his 
 
Bryants Poems. 1 7 
 
 own mind, he has written, and no more. His skies 
 are not brought from Italy, nor his singing birds from 
 the tropics, nor his forests from Germany or regions be 
 yond the pole. He is not indebted to the patient study 
 of books so much as to a calm communion with out 
 ward things. He has levied no contributions on the 
 masters of foreign literature, nor depended upon the 
 locked-up treasures of ancient genius for the materials 
 of thought and expression. He has written from the 
 movings of his own mind ; he has uttered what he has 
 felt and known ; he has described things around him in 
 fitting terms, terms suggested by familiar contemplation, 
 and thus his writings have become transcripts of exter 
 nal nature, appreciated by his countrymen with the 
 readiness and ease with which truth is ever recognized. 
 
 "Lone lakes, savannahs, where the bison roves, . 
 Rocks rich with summer garlands, solemn streams, 
 Skies where the desert eagle wheels and screams, 
 
 Spring bloom and autumn blaze of boundless groves," 
 
 are reflected from his pages as the surface of an un 
 ruffled lake reflects the surrounding banks. And where 
 could he find aught more lovely and majestic, or better 
 adapted to inspire the genius of descriptive poetry than 
 in this land, with its endless variety of grove and water, 
 with its deep forests brooding in eternal silence over the 
 slumbering inland, with vast lakes, majestic in their re 
 pose, sending back the radiant hues of the sky ; where 
 the mountain ridges rise to prop the very heavens; where 
 broad streams roll their mighty tides for thousands of 
 miles through fertile plains ; where green prairies stretch 
 like oceans arrested in their mightiest heavings, and 
 where a wildness and freshness pervades every scene, 
 that dissociating it from human agency suggests the 
 thought of a loftier indwelling power ? 
 
1 8 Bryant s Poems. 
 
 Nor is the tone of these poems less American than 
 the imagery or the themes. They breathe the spirit of 
 that new order of things in which we are cast. They 
 are fresh, like a young people unwarped by the super 
 stitions and prejudices of age ; free, like a nation scorn 
 ing the thought of bondage ; generous, like a society 
 whose only protection is mutual sympathy ; and bold 
 and vigorous, like a land pressing onward to a future of 
 glorious enlargements. The noble instincts of democ 
 racy prompt and animate every strain. An attachment 
 to liberty stronger than the desire of life, an immovable 
 regard for human rights, a confidence in humanity that 
 admits of no misgivings, and a rejoicing hope of the 
 future, full of illumination and peace, are the senti 
 ments that they everywhere inspire. They sharpen the 
 sense of right, they infuse a love of the true, they 
 expand those emotions that comprehend in their plans 
 of benevolence every form of human being. 
 
 We never have read a book without speculating more 
 or less as to the character of its author. That is some 
 thing, we admit, with which the public have nothing to 
 do, and yet it is that about which they trouble them 
 selves most. If we could gather the traits of this book 
 and combine them in some way into a living person, 
 we should fancy a man to whom the language of 
 Wordsworth to Milton might be properly addressed, 
 "Thy soul is like a star, and dwells apart," one for 
 whom the grosser world had no allurements, endowed 
 with kind and gentle virtues, modest, unassuming, mild, 
 simple in taste, elevated in sentiment, dignified in de 
 portment, pure in life, a worshipper of the beautiful 
 everywhere in nature and in art, perpetually attended 
 by noble and benevolent aspirations, familiar as a 
 friend with the best spirits of the past, but shrinking in 
 stinctively from contact with society, unless to bear re- 
 
Bryant s Poems. 19 
 
 proach in the cause of truth and duty. Whether such 
 a portrait would be true, we shall not ask those who 
 know him to say, for sure we are that the beauty and 
 purity which abound in these writings could only pro 
 ceed from a mind equally beautiful and pure ; nay, 
 more so, since that man never lived who could give ut 
 terance to his whole soul. 
 
 Yet how strange is it, say some, that a mind of this 
 sort should expend its energy in mere political discus 
 sions ! We can discover nothing in it either strange or 
 lamentable. No doubt it would be more congenial to 
 the man s feelings, could he devote himself to the pros 
 ecution of his glorious art. Indeed, we hope for his 
 own sake, for the sake of the literature of the country, 
 that he may be permitted, in his riper age, to withdraw 
 to some quiet retreat, where, amid the calm and beauti 
 ful scenes in which his imagination delights, he may 
 meditate and construct a work worthy of his genius 
 and worthy of this great nation, one that shall grow in 
 fame as his country expands in power, and that shall 
 give instruction and delight to the multitudes destined in 
 distant years to cover our vast inland deserts, and make 
 noisy with active life the still shores of the Pacific. 
 
 This we wish : but we do not regret that the author s 
 sympathy with the cause of his fellow-men has led him 
 to mingle in the stirring warfare of politics ; that with 
 all the sensibility of genius, he can yet discipline him 
 self to meet the rebuffs and shocks of civil conflict ; 
 that in being a poet he has not ceased to be a citizen. 
 If there were in political life anything incompatible 
 with the highest virtue, if his choice of it had at any 
 time been attended by degrading compliances, if low 
 motives of any sort had impelled his exertions, or left 
 a single trace in what he has done, if aught else than 
 loftv self-sacrificinGf devotion had led him to so uncon- 
 
2O Bryant s Poems. 
 
 genial a vocation, there would be cause for regret ; not 
 for regret merely but for the loud and stern rebukes 
 that should ever fall on the prostitution of noble powers, 
 which are the property of mankind, to ignoble objects. 
 But it is no descent for the best of us to be concerned 
 about the moral and social condition of our fellow- 
 men. One of the admirers of Goethe mentions it as 
 a proof of his incomparable genius, that when the 
 world was rent by the grandest dissensions, when revo 
 lutions of tremendous import were going on, when 
 there was tempest and war on all sides, and it seemed 
 as if a thunderbolt had been shot among all social ar 
 rangements, and men were yet in doubt whether it came 
 downward from heaven or upward from hell, he all the 
 while remained unaffected, penning soft madrigals or 
 singing love ditties beneath the casement of his mis 
 tress. We see nothing in this to admire. If it were 
 true, we should regard it rather as a piece of most des 
 picable cowardice, or more despicable callousness. 
 When it shall become disgraceful to feel for the mil 
 lions, degraded and downtrodden, when it shall be a 
 laudable thing to be indifferent to the moral progress of 
 the human race, when, we shall have occasion to grow 
 ashamed of our affections, or make a mockery of love, 
 it will be time enough to put forth empty lamentations 
 over men of genius who engage in political strife. But it 
 is only exposing our own moral defects to entertain and 
 utter such lamentations. No real man disdains what 
 deeply interests the happiness of his fellows. 
 
 We rejoice, therefore, that Mr. Bryant should lend 
 his high aid to what he has deemed the cause of jus 
 tice and truth. When we think of the nobleness of 
 that political creed which from earliest manhood he has 
 warmly espoused, of the energy with which he has de 
 fended individual and equal rights, of the frequency 
 
Bryant s Poems. 21 
 
 and fervor with which he has appealed in all his dis 
 cussions to the best feelings of men. of the heroic con 
 sistency with which he has asserted truth in the day of 
 its obscurity, bearing up manfully against persecutions 
 from which less sensitive spirits would have recoiled, 
 repelling with dignified and honorable scorn the at 
 tacks of malignant enemies, yet, in the midst of cal 
 umny and abuse, commiserating the moral debasement 
 from which they sprang, we not only rejoice, but we 
 thank God that he has been placed just where he has 
 been placed, and that he has been able, like Milton, 
 to overcome the soft seductions of literary indolence, 
 to battle sternly in the rude lists of truth. Long after 
 present storms shall cease to rage, many a young mind 
 made strong by his example and efforts shall rise up to 
 
 renew the 
 
 11 Friendless warfare, lingering long 
 Through weary days and weary years." 
 
 Toward the close of Schiller s noble poem, "The 
 Artist," he beautifully represents the dignity of man as 
 committed to the keeping of the Poet, and he exhorts 
 him earnestly to cherish the power of song destined to 
 dispel error and wrong from the earth. In a similar 
 spirit we should like to remind the Poet of America, 
 that the silent influence of his writings, in purifying and 
 elevating the intellectual and moral nature of his coun 
 trymen, is his strongest inducement to a continuation 
 of his labors. If he is faithful to his trust, as a quick- 
 sighted discerner of beauty, of goodness, and truth, 
 when his body shall have mouldered to nothingness in 
 the grave, his name will still be fresh and warm in the 
 memories of men. Meanwhile, let the living cherish 
 the fame of one whom posterity will undoubtedly re 
 cognize as one of the most distinguished ornaments of 
 his country and his time. 
 
JEREMY BENTHAM AND LAW 
 REFORM.* 
 
 WRITER in the Westminister Review re 
 marks, that the two men of the present age 
 who have most strongly influenced the minds 
 of their countrymen, are Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
 and Jeremy Bentham. Without questioning the ac 
 curacy of the observation, as it respects Coleridge, 
 we think there can be little doubt of the truth of 
 so much of it as applies to Bentham. Whatever 
 may have been the influence of the former, whose re 
 searches were mostly in the region of abstract thought, 
 it was of that occult and delicate nature which only a 
 few are apt to feel. But the influence of Bentham, 
 with his practical cast of mind, his rugged sense, his 
 bold onsets upon cherished modes of faith, and the 
 immediate interest attached to his inquiries, was more 
 direct and obvious. He addressed himself to questions 
 connected with the every-day business of men ; and if 
 the results of his investigations had not arrested atten 
 tion, it would have argued either a singular deficiency 
 in his powers of thought, or a no less singular repul- 
 siveness in his manner of treating his subjects. 
 
 Bentham, however, was in many respects peculiarly 
 
 * Theory of Legislation. By Jeremy Bentham. Boston : Weeks, 
 Jordan & Co., 1840. 
 
 From the Democratic Review, Sept., 1840. 
 
Law Reform. 2 3 
 
 fitted for the task he undertook ; and yet, during his life 
 time, his works, though not without reputation, were 
 hardly estimated at their real value. It was only after 
 they had founded a select school of thinkers, and many 
 accomplished and persevering disciples had forced them 
 upon the consideration of the British Parliament, that 
 he got to be acknowledged as one of the great lumina 
 ries of his era. His place as a father of law reform, as 
 a founder of legislative science, and as a distinguished 
 friend of the social advancement of the human race, is 
 now generally conceded. 
 
 We propose briefly to consider his merits in these 
 several respects, accompanying our comments with such 
 personal notices only, as may enable the reader more 
 easily to comprehend the man. 
 
 First, then, a few words of Bentham himself. He 
 was born in London, in the year 1747, and was re 
 markable in childhood for the quickness of his parts 
 and the solidity of his judgment. At three years of age 
 he read for amusement Rapin s History of England ; at 
 eight was a skilful performer on the violin ; and at 
 thirteen commenced his collegiate studies in Oxford. 
 At this early period even, his inquiring and conscientious 
 turn of mind manifested itself; for being asked to sign 
 the Thirty-Nine Articles of the established church, he 
 did so reluctantly, and the act ever afterward proved to 
 him an occasion of deep regret. He looked upon it 
 as deliberately setting his seal to what he thought to be 
 false, as a species of self-degradation which disturbed 
 the clearness of his moral convictions and broke the 
 integrity of his spirit. His father, an attorney of some 
 note, gave him the opportunity of becoming a lawyer. 
 Nor did he fail to prosecute his studies with immense 
 labor and research ; not, however, in the spirit of those 
 who ordinarily pursue that profession, but with the dis- 
 
24 Jeremy Bent ham 
 
 crimination of a philosopher and the zeal of a philan 
 thropist. He was soon disgusted with the technical 
 falsehood he found pervading every branch of the law, 
 which, in connection with the repugnance excited by its 
 indirectness, inconsistencies, unjust arrangements and 
 barbarous phraseology, inspired him with the ambition 
 of devoting his life to its reform. 
 
 The first fruits of his purpose appeared in a short essay, 
 called a Fragment on Government, published anony 
 mously in 1776, as a criticism of an episode in Black- 
 stone s Commentaries. Written with singular clearness 
 and vigor, but hypercritical in its tone, many passages 
 of it are marked by astute observation, and reasoning 
 at once logical and profound. The estimation in which 
 this work was held on its first appearance, both as a lit 
 erary and philosophical performance, may be inferred 
 from the fact that it was successively ascribed to Lord 
 Camden, Lord Mansfield, and to Mr. Dunning, all 
 among the most accomplished lawyers of the day. It 
 was followed by the publication, two years afterward, of 
 a review of the " Hard Labor Bill," with observations 
 relative to jurisprudence in general, which contained 
 the germ of several sagacious doctrines unfolded at 
 length in later works, Then came the " Defence of 
 Usury," a tract of remarkable force, and one of the 
 best specimens of the exhaustive mode of reasoning 
 ever printed. In less than two years, the "Introduction 
 to the Principles of Morals and Legislation" appeared, 
 being the first extended and methodical exposition of 
 his peculiar notions that had been given. This work gave 
 him a place at once among thinkers. The originality 
 of its arrangement, together with the boldness of its 
 views and the pertinacity with which they were pressed, 
 arrested the attention of leading minds of that period. 
 Som? few hailed the new teaching as the harbinger of 
 
and Law Reform. 25 
 
 more liberal and consistent methods of treating the great 
 questions of government and moral science, but the 
 greater number looked upon it as an extravagant re 
 production of exploded theories, better adapted to ex 
 cite merriment than to awaken inquiry, or to become 
 the occasion of a radical and comprehensive reforma 
 tion of the laws. Yet the book worked its way. One 
 after another, distinguished men were compelled to ad 
 mit, if not the soundness of its conclusions in de 
 tail, the general necessity of subjecting law to a thorough 
 revision. 
 
 Meanwhile, the author himself, apparently content 
 to allow his theories to bide the test of time, busied 
 himself in sending forth pamphlets upon the various 
 minor and collateral branches of the great subject to 
 which he had given his life. Draughts of codes, 
 essays on political tactics, on colonial emancipation, 
 on pauper management, on parliamentary reform, on 
 church abuses, on the art of instruction, on the liberty 
 of the press, on codification, and a hundred other mat 
 ters, followed each other in rapid succession. But a 
 treatise on the " Rationale of Judicial Evidence" was 
 the largest and most elaborate of the works then pub 
 lished. It was filled with profound thoughts and in 
 structive suggestions, and soon became the foundation 
 of important changes in the law of procedure. No one 
 can read it, certainly, without acquiring a deep convic 
 tion of the strength and astuteness of the intellect from 
 which it sprung. It detected the absurdity of the old 
 practice with so much keenness, exposed it with so 
 much point and vivacity, and unfolded a better scheme 
 with so much judgment and tact, that it readily obtained 
 for the author the reputation and rank of a master-mind. 
 
 Three of Bentham s treatises, and those not among 
 the least important, were published in French, and 
 
26 Jeremy Bent ham 
 
 possessed a wide continental reputation before they were 
 generally known to his countrymen. This was occa 
 sioned by a careless habit into which, in the latter 
 part of his life, he suffered himself to fall. Abandoning 
 the clear and nervous style of his earlier works, he be 
 gan to indulge himself in loose, capricious, irregular, 
 and unintelligible modes of expression. His thoughts 
 were no more written out, but dotted down, sometimes 
 in mere outline, and, at others, in an uncouth and 
 perplexing jargon. Catalogues, synoptical tables, sum 
 maries, references, brief hints, interspersed with long 
 dissertations, composed the bulk of his manuscripts. 
 Fortunately for him, they happened to fall into the 
 hands of an ardent and accomplished disciple, in the 
 person of Dumont, a citizen of Geneva, for some time 
 an eloquent preacher at St. Petersburg, but who had 
 come to London at the request of the Lansdowne 
 family. Forming the acquaintance of Bentham, there 
 he entered at once with zeal and activity into all his 
 speculations and plans. Never was a literary friend 
 ship contracted under happier auspices. To a thorough 
 appreciation of Bentham s genius, Dumont united pa 
 tience of labor, quickness of apprehension, indefatig 
 able public spirit, and a felicitous style of writing. 
 "His manners," says Lord Brougham, "were as gen 
 tle as they were polished and refined. His conversa 
 tion was a model of excellence ; it was truly delightful. 
 Abounding in the most agreeable and harmless wit, 
 fully instinct with various knowledge, diversified with 
 anecdotes of rare interest, enriched with all the stores 
 of modern literature, seasoned with an arch and racy 
 humor, and occasionally a spice of mimicry, or rather 
 of acting, but subdued, as to be palatable it must al 
 ways be, and giving rather the portraiture of classes 
 than of individuals, marked by the purest taste, en- 
 
and Law Reform. 27 
 
 livened by a gayety of disposition still unclouded, 
 sweetened by a temper that nothing could ruffle, pre 
 senting especially perhaps the single instance of one 
 distinguished for colloquial powers, never occupying 
 above a few moments at a time of any one s attention, 
 and never ceasing to speak that all his hearers did not 
 wish him to go on, it may fairly be said that his con 
 versation was the highest which the refined society of 
 London and Paris afforded." 
 
 To this man was committed the task of compiling, 
 arranging, condensing, filling out and translating several 
 of the best of Bentham s manuscripts. The services 
 which he rendered in this way were an invaluable as 
 sistance to his master, but not so great as has some 
 times been represented. Mr. Macaulay, in one of his re 
 views, says that "if Mr. Dumont had never been born, 
 Mr. Bentham would still have been a very great man. 
 But he would have been great to himself alone. The 
 fertility of his mind would have resembled the fertility 
 of those vast American wildernesses in which blossoms 
 and decays a rich but unprofitable vegetation, where 
 with the reaper filled not his hand, neither he that 
 bindeth up the sheaves his bosom. It would have 
 been with his discoveries as it had been with the 
 Century of Inventions. His speculations on law 
 would have been of no more practical use than Lord 
 Worcester s speculations on steam-engines." But this 
 is an exaggeration. Much as Bentham was indebted 
 to Dumont, it was only for a small part of his fame. 
 To say nothing of works in which the latter had no 
 hand, works that under any circumstances would have 
 raised the author to eminence, it is enough to remark 
 that Bentham was capable of the task which another 
 accomplished for him. Dumont, besides, was at all 
 times solicitous to decline the merit of having been the 
 
28 Jeremy Be nth am 
 
 author of the works published under his editorship. 
 " I declare/ said he, "I have no share, no claim of 
 association in the composition of these works. They 
 belong entirely to the author, and to him alone." Again 
 he observes: "My labor, subaltern in its kind, has 
 been limited to details. It was necessary to make a 
 choice among various observations on the same sub 
 ject ; to suppress repetitions ; to throw light upon 
 obscurities ; to bring together all that appertained to 
 the same subject ; and to fill up those gaps which in 
 the hurry of composition the author had left. I have 
 had more to retrench than to add ; more to abridge 
 than to expand. A profusion of riches left me only 
 the care of economy." This, while it explains the na 
 ture of Dumont s labors, acquits Bentham of the debt 
 with which in Mr. Macaulay s essay he is charged. 
 
 The work at the head of this paper presents, in a 
 portable form, the best summary of his doctrines that 
 has been published. It is a translation, by Richard 
 Hildreth, of Boston, from the French edition of Du- 
 mont, originally printed in Paris in 1802, with a sup 
 plementary essay upon "The influence of time and 
 place on laws," which does not appear in this edition. 
 If any person would obtain a correct general idea of 
 Bentham s system, without wading through the pon 
 derous and often repulsive tomes through which the 
 details of it are scattered, he will find all that he wishes 
 in this succinct yet comprehensive digest of Dumont. 
 
 Now, what was" this system ? As the fairest, as well 
 as completest method of stating it, we shall confine our 
 selves, as near as may be, to the expressions of his own 
 treatises. His fundamental principle is, that "general 
 utility," sometimes designated as "the greatest good of 
 the greatest number," is the only legitimate foundation 
 of legislative science. This utility is exclusive of every 
 
and Law Reform. 29 
 
 other principle, and is to be faithfully applied to all 
 cases of legislation by the most rigid processes of moral 
 arithmetic. Nature has placed man under the dominion 
 of two motives, and no more. His only object in life 
 is to seek pleasure and avoid pain, even when he ima 
 gines himself most free from the empire of those senti 
 ments. Utility, therefore, is the property or tendency of 
 a thing to procure some pleasure or prevent some pain. 
 Everything, therefore, is conformable to the utility 
 or the interest of a community, which tends to aug 
 ment the sum of the happiness of the individuals of 
 which it is composed. Virtue is to be esteemed by the 
 disciple of the principle of utility as a good, only be 
 cause of the pleasure that it produces ; and vice is to be 
 regarded as an evil, only on account of the pains which 
 result from it. If "one finds, in the ordinary lists of 
 virtue, an action from which there follows more pain 
 than pleasure, it is to be instantly classified among the 
 number of vices ; and so, on the other hand, if there is 
 found in the common lists of offences some indifferent 
 action, some innocent pleasure, you must not hesitate 
 to transport this pretended offence into the class of law 
 ful actions. 
 
 But to arrive at a correct notion of utility, in any 
 given case, it is necessary to have a full and accurate 
 knowledge of the different kinds of pleasures and pains. 
 The variety of sensations which we momentarily ex 
 perience must be minutely analyzed, dividing the sim 
 ple from the complex, and arranging the whole in 
 catalogues, which will assist the memory while it ren 
 ders the judgment more precise. Not only the num 
 ber, but the value or power of pleasures and pains, both 
 as they relate to individuals and as they relate to com 
 munities, must be learned ; and this value we shall 
 find to depend upon their intensity, their duration, 
 
30 Jeremy Bentham 
 
 their certainty, their proximity, their productiveness, 
 their purity, and their extent. Inasmuch, however, as 
 all causes of pleasure do not give the same pleasure to 
 all persons, nor all causes of pain produce the same 
 pain, that difference in human sensibility from which 
 that difference of pleasure and pain proceeds must also 
 be investigated. This difference of sensibility is either 
 in degree or kind : in degree, when the impression of 
 a given cause upon many individuals is uniform but 
 unequal ; in kind, when the same cause produces 
 opposite sensations in different individuals ; and in 
 both cases turns primarily upon temperament, health, 
 strength, corporeal imperfections, knowledge, intel 
 lectual faculties, firmness of soul, perseverance, the bent 
 of inclination, notions of honor, notions of religion, 
 sentiments of sympathy, antipathies, disorder of mind, 
 and pecuniary circumstances. 
 
 Possessed of a knowledge of the true nature of the 
 various kinds of pleasures and pains, we may then take 
 up the analysis or political good and evil, and of the 
 manner in which they are diffused through society. It 
 is with government as with medicine, that its main 
 business is a choice of evils. Law, being an infraction 
 of liberty, is an evil ; and hence the legislator, in de 
 vising any scheme, is to consider, first, whether the 
 acts which he .undertakes to prevent are really evils ; 
 and secondly, whether, if evils, they are greater evils 
 than the means he employs to suppress them would be. 
 In other language, is the evil of the disease or the evil 
 of the remedy the greater ? He is to remember that 
 evil seldom comes alone, but takes different forms, and 
 spreads on every side as from a centre. It first affects 
 the persons immediately concerned in it, and then, by 
 arousing the idea of danger and alarm, affects the whole 
 community. For the protection and welfare of society, 
 
and Law Reform. 31 
 
 therefore, certain acts are to be erected into offences, by 
 which is meant that they deserve punishment. But 
 some evil acts are not of this sort, and had better be left 
 to the punishments attached to them by the natural or 
 social sanctions, than included in the number of those 
 which are touched by the political sanctions. In 
 making the discrimination, between those which be 
 long to the domain of politics and those which belong 
 to morals exclusively, resort must be had to the same 
 great doctrine of utility, which accompanies the whole 
 inquiry. 
 
 This is the sum in brief of Bentham s theory. The 
 first thing that it occurs to us to say of it is, that Ben- 
 tham does not seem to have had a very deep pene 
 tration into the metaphysics of that part of it relating to 
 morals. He appears to have taken his moral doctrine 
 for granted, without investigating the grounds of it, and 
 without giving due weight to the researches of other 
 philosophers. More of a thinker than a reader, he fell 
 into a contemptuous mode of treating the inquiries of 
 older speculators. Indeed, he regards the results of 
 their speculations (those, we mean, which respect a 
 moral sense, and the grounds of. moral obligation) as 
 the mere expressions of their individual prejudices and 
 sentiments. They were excuses for dogmatizing, indi 
 rect modes of asserting peculiar biases, or adroit con 
 trivances to avoid the appeal to anything like an external 
 standard of right and wrong. He represented them as 
 quite unintelligible, or intelligible only so far as they in 
 clined toward his own favorite doctrine. In no instance 
 does he make a full and candid statement of what they 
 are, or assign in detail the reasons why they are re 
 jected. He simply enumerates them under one name 
 or another, and then, by a fell stroke of the pen, 
 sweeps them all from the board, as unworthy of further 
 
32 Jeremy Bentham 
 
 notice. Nor is he any more explicit in establishing the 
 theory which he sets up in their place. He asserts it 
 boldly, frequently, without compromise, but he never 
 demonstrates it, scarcely indeed makes an attempt 
 to demonstrate it, and his readers must receive it on his 
 dictum, or seek elsewhere for an exposition. 
 
 This logic, summary as it is, might be retorted upon 
 Bentham. If his own doctrine were dismissed without 
 examination, neither he nor his disciples could justly 
 complain of discourtesy. But the moral question, ly 
 ing as it does at the foundation of the whole subject, 
 is too important to be passed over so cavalierly. It 
 must be looked into with no loose nor divided attention, 
 if we would avoid the worst errors into which Bentham 
 himself fell to wit, a confusion of several palpable 
 and necessary distinctions, a disregard of some of the 
 most important facts of the human constitution, and a 
 too rigid and sometimes fantastic application of the main 
 principle. 
 
 The truth is, that Bentham was in many respects 
 qualified as we have said, but in others disqualified, for 
 the career he had chosen. He was fitted for it, by the 
 peculiar practical structure of his intellect, by his ques 
 tioning spirit, by his subtilty of scent, if we may call it 
 so, and by his independence of judgment. Law involved 
 details which only the most patient and practical mind 
 could endure to investigate : it was surrounded by so 
 many dear and venerable associations, that no one 
 who deferred to ancient wisdom would dare to attack 
 its outworks, much less the citadel ; the spirit of injus 
 tice lurking through it, and covered by innumerable 
 subtile and plausible pretexts, could only be detected- 
 by one possessing the quickest sense of wrong ; and so 
 thoroughly had it been interwoven with the habits and 
 notions of society, that to make an onslaught upon its 
 
and Law Reform. 33 
 
 weaknesses was to sever the assailant almost from all 
 the sympathies of his fellows. Bentham was adapted to 
 meet these difficulties at every point. He was inquisi 
 tive, persevering, and fearless. He had the sagacity to 
 perceive defects, the boldness to suggest remedies, and 
 the fortitude to expose the one and defend the other, in 
 spite of opposition. But, on the other hand, these very 
 excellencies led him into an opposite excess. His readi 
 ness to question degenerated into skepticism, his ability 
 to reconstruct begat a vain desire of superfluous and 
 fantastic theorizing, and his firmness and self-reliance 
 betrayed itself into a contemptuous disregard of all for 
 mer opinions. This last disposition in fact grew into a 
 besefting sin. From doubting the conclusion of others, 
 he soon came to despise their capacities. He took 
 nothing for granted : he proved by formal demonstra 
 tions the simplest truisms ; and he addressed his read 
 ers as a pedagogue would his pupils, as so many abece 
 darians. 
 
 Bentham s moral theory involves two questions, at 
 least, that aie quite distinct : first, are pleasure and pain 
 the sole governing motives of men ? and secondly, is 
 the tendency of an act to produce the greatest amount 
 of happiness the only reason why it is binding upon the 
 conscience ? 
 
 We take issue with him on each of these points. 
 His first proposition, that pleasure and pain are the sole 
 motives of men, revives the old bone of metaphysics, 
 as to the disinterestedness of human virtue. The doc 
 trine of many philosophers, and, we believe, of most 
 men of the world, is, that whatever a man does has re 
 lation to his own good : if he is virtuous, it is because it 
 is more agreeable for him to be so than otherwise ; and 
 if he is vicious, it is because he finds his greatest pleasure 
 in vice. All human conduct is only a balancing of in- 
 
34 yeremy Bentham 
 
 terest, either immediate or remote ; and benevolence it 
 self, or what is sometimes called a generous sacrifice, is 
 a mere prudential calculation as to the pleasure and 
 pain involved in the act. When a missionary, for ex 
 ample, leaves the comforts of a civilized home for the 
 miseries of a savage wilderness, he pursues his pleas 
 ure merely ; he is driven by his fear of remorse and of 
 hell on one side, to brave the perils of want and death 
 on the other, and in this way selects simply the more 
 agreeable alternative. In his view, there is a higher 
 pleasure in preaching to the savages, than in sharing the 
 luxuries of refined society. In preferring the former, 
 he acts upon the same principle of self-love as the 
 chimney-sweeper would in giving up his sooty rags for 
 the purple and fine linen of a prince. He adds to the 
 number of his agreeabte experiences, and on that ac 
 count, and on that account alone, he changes one 
 condition for another. 
 
 Now, in reply to such reasoning, we shall begin by 
 admitting that a lofty pleasure attends the exercise of 
 any form of benevolence ; but is that pleasure and 
 here is the point is that pleasure the immediate object 
 of the benevolence? Bishop Butler,* the profoun^est 
 and acutest of the English metaphysicians, set this 
 matter at rest, we think, when he first urged this dis 
 tinction, viz., that the direct object of any human 
 affection is altogether distinct from the pleasure which 
 may accompany its exercise. Though virtue is pleasant 
 and vice painful, the object of the mind in pursuing a 
 virtuous or vicious course, is not the pleasure or pain 
 that attends it, but something entirely different, such 
 as the conferring a benefit or inflicting an injury. The 
 motive, therefore, may be separated from all consider- 
 
 * See his celebrated Sermons on Human Nature, etc. 
 
and Law Reform. 35 
 
 ations of a self-regarding nature, although the result 
 of the act when performed, or the performance of it 
 in jtself, yields the highest degree of satisfaction. A 
 mother, who devotes herself during long and sleepless 
 nights to the care of a suffering child, has a certain 
 sort of pleasure in the midst of all her painful vigils : it 
 is more agreeable to discharge the anxious duty than it 
 would be to leave it undone, or to abandon the child to 
 alien cares. Her affections, in the one case, are grati 
 fied and her conscience set at rest ; while in the other 
 case her affections would be wrung and her conscience 
 made to bite. But is her own satisfaction the motive of 
 her conduct, and not the good of her offspring, con 
 sidered apart from her own satisfaction ? Is she inter 
 ested mainly in her own state of body or mind, or in 
 that of the child ? Is she seeking her. own relief, or 
 another s? Does she so much as think of her own 
 state, present or prospective ? If the former, then 
 Bentham is right ; but if the latter, then he is wrong. 
 He is wrong, because we see clearly that there may be 
 actions which are not self-regarding, which are disin 
 terested, which contemplate ends outside of ourselves, 
 and which cannot therefore be reduced to a calculation 
 of our own pleasure or pain. 
 
 Pleasure or pain, we repeat, may be the accompani 
 ment or the result of an action without being the object 
 for which that action is performed. It gives a hungry 
 man pleasure to relieve his hunger, and yet his motive 
 in eating may be, not the pleasure, but the support of 
 his animal powers. It gives a good man pleasure to 
 succor the distressed, but it is the relief he gives others, 
 not the pleasure reflected back upon himself, by which 
 he is moved. Moreover, if that pleasure were con 
 sciously or confessedly his object, the act would lose 
 its merit as a virtuous act. It is virtuous to tell the 
 
36 Jeremy Bent ham 
 
 truth, but to tell the truth, not because it is truth, but 
 because it will bring us some advantage, is not vir 
 tuous. It is virtuous not to steal, if we refrain from 
 stealing out of respect to the rights of others ; but it is 
 not virtuous to be honest from a fear of detection and 
 the consequent exposure. That would be but a piece 
 of prudent selfishness, such as any dog might exhibit 
 who had been once whipped for taking the wrong bone. 
 So a woman who is chaste, because she calculates that 
 it is more reputable to be so than to be otherwise 
 whose chastity is not -a deep inward preference for a 
 pure life, but a calculation may be irreproachable, but 
 she is certainly not admirable. Or, if John Howard 
 had avowed that his predominant aim, in his protracted 
 labors to reform the prisons of Europe, was to procure 
 himself a subtle and exquisite kind of satisfaction, 
 would he have won the fame he has as a philanthro 
 pist ? 
 
 Or, the question, raised by the selfish school may be 
 put in another shape, which is this : whether a man 
 can propose to himself any other end of action than 
 his own enjoyment? and that is, in reality, to ask 
 whether a man is a man or only an animal. Animal 
 or sentient life does depend upon the balance of pain 
 and pleasure. No sentient being could exist except on 
 the condition of an equilibration of pain and pleasure ; 
 for if either of them were in excess, it would perish. 
 If the relation between the medium in which we exist 
 and our sensitive nerves were such that pain alone re 
 sulted, life would no longer be life, but torture ; we 
 should speedily die of it, as happens often in cases of 
 excessive nervous depression. On the other hand, if 
 our sensations were pleasurable only (besides having 
 no motives for action), we should die of ecstasy or in 
 toxication, as fishes do in the air, or insects in a jar of 
 
and Law Reform. 37 
 
 oxygen, or men who inhale too much ether or nitrous 
 oxyde gas. It is, then, on the balance of pain and 
 pleasure, or on an equal liability to each, that the 
 operations of the animal functions become at all pos 
 sible. But human or moral life is different, and it is 
 conditional, not upon the balance of pain and pleasure, 
 but upon the balance of good and evil, that is, upon 
 the freedom of the human being to choose the one or 
 the other, and to impose that choice upon his Will, as a 
 principle of conduct. The animal is the subject of his 
 nature, and must act according to his inclinations or 
 aversions /. <?., according to his pleasure or pain ; but 
 man is the master of his nature, and may act according 
 to the perceptions of his Reason and the dictates of his 
 Conscience, toward an end which transcends his in 
 clinations or aversions. Not being simply animal, but 
 spiritual, he is lifted out of the animal sphere of pleasure 
 and pain into the moral sphere of good and evil i. e., 
 into a sphere in which he deliberates, or legislates for 
 himself according to general maxims, and not indi 
 vidual ends. Now, it is the "flesh" and the "spirit," 
 as the Scriptures say the "old man" and the "new 
 man," the "members," and the "law written on the 
 heart," coming into play and antagonism, while the 
 antagonism is not exclusive of either element, neither 
 of good nor of evil, which together constitute the field 
 of human morality. If man were all evil, he might be 
 tiger or fiend if he were all good, he might be dove or 
 angel ; but not man, which he is, solely because both 
 good and evil. 
 
 This again brings us to the second point in Ben- 
 tham s assumption, which is, that an act is obligatory, 
 morally, on the sole ground of its tendency to produce 
 the happiness either of the agent himself or of other 
 similar agents. Is that true ? and if so, how do we 
 
33 Jeremy Bent ham 
 
 know it ? Firstly, is there such a stated antecedence 
 and sequence in human actions, that the idea of pro 
 ducing happiness is invariably followed by the sense of 
 obligation ? We venture to answer that not a soul in 
 the world is conscious of this alleged connection. 
 When the production of happiness is proposed to us, it 
 strikes us always as something desirable, but it does not 
 always strike us as something obligatory. Parents, 
 teachers, orators, writers, when they want to awaken 
 moral conviction, appeal directly to the mind without 
 a preliminary descant upon the production of happiness. 
 And the great practical moralists, the Confutses, the 
 Moseses, the Christs, speak invariably in an imperative, 
 not a calculating mood, " Do as you would be done 
 by," " Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not bear false 
 witness," " Do not commit adultery," " Love the Lord 
 thy God with all thy heart, and thy fellow as thyself, "- 
 all which commands imply in man a capacity to 
 conceive duty immediately, without going through 
 a process of arithmetic : like this for instance, so much 
 pleasure on one side, so much pain on the other ; ergo, 
 so much obligation on one side, and none on the other. 
 Or, secondly, Bentham s assumption may mean that 
 the idea of right and wrong, and the idea of producing 
 happiness, are coextensive with each other i. e., inter 
 changeable ; in which case, he is bound to tell us which 
 is the cause and which the effect. Does virtue pro 
 duce happiness, or happiness virtue ? He has nowhere 
 vouchsafed the answer. The general impression, the 
 instinctive judgment, is, that they are not identical ; we 
 have a distinct idea of each, and, in all practical 
 cases, assume a difference. It is agreeable and useful 
 to me to wash my body daily in cold water, but it is not 
 obligatory on me to do so ; I teach my children to 
 ride, skate, and swim, because these are pleasant and 
 
and Law Reform. 39 
 
 healthful exercises ; but I teach them to be honest and 
 truthful for quite other reasons. I throw open my 
 orchards certain days in summer to all the neighboring 
 poor to eat their fill of fruit, because I take delight in 
 their delight ; but I urge them to be upright, and 
 sober, and chaste on other grounds than either my 
 pleasure or theirs. As therefore actions, in fact, 
 produce happiness, which have no moral character, 
 any more than the relief administered by a bootjack 
 or the gambols of a kitten. 
 
 Or, again, thirdly, Bentham s assumption means 
 that utility, or the production of happiness is the test, 
 measure, criterion, standard, of right and wrong 
 (which we have no doubt is his real understanding of 
 the subject). But here again we cannot go with him, 
 for a threefold reason. First, that all the consequences 
 of an act cannot be reached, i. e., adequately known, 
 unless we suppose ourselves capable of following 
 them out, as they go sounding on through all the 
 realms of being, through infinite spaces and infinite 
 times, to the last syllable of recorded experience. Sec 
 ondly, that if we limit our view to the mere tendency 
 of acts to produce consequences, the standard becomes 
 too fluctuating. Men s opinions differ in nothing more 
 than in their estimates of what is expedient, as they 
 happen to study immediate or remoter tendencies, such 
 as affect this or that interest, this or that intellectual 
 taste, this or that moral affection, this or that social in 
 stitution or convention, this or that religious doctrine, 
 natural or revealed. What, indeed, are all the debates 
 of Parliaments, the wranglings of newspapers, the con 
 flicts of private opinion, but efforts to determine the 
 very " utility" which is offered us as a standard of recti 
 tude and judgment ? But, thirdly, we say that this 
 alleged standard confounds mere error or mistake with 
 
40 Jeremy BcntJiam 
 
 crime. Consequences of the most deleterious kind 
 are produced by momentary infirmities of temper, or 
 hastiness of decision, as well as by deliberate wicked 
 ness. A general may sacrifice his army at a critical 
 moment, when the very liberties of his country depend 
 upon a battle about to be fought, through impetuosity 
 or procrastination, or the miscarriage of a despatch, or 
 the lie of a scout ; or, he may sacrifice it through over 
 indulgence in wine, through secret complicity with the 
 enemy ; and in both cases the consequences will be the 
 same : but how different our estimate of his guilt ! We 
 should denounce him as an imbecile in one case, but 
 as a criminal in the other ; we should degrade him in 
 one, but shoot him in the other: but why the distinction 
 estimated by the results ? A mother of a family, by a 
 constant peevishness and irritability will produce more 
 unhappiness to herself, her children, and her friends, 
 than she would by an occasional secret infidelity ; and 
 yet the one fault we merely regret, while the other we 
 brand as infamous. Why so, on the calculation of con 
 sequences ? Because something more than "conse 
 quences " enters into our judgment of the act, which is 
 what the utilitarians precisely leave out, the moral dis 
 position, or the state of the Will. 
 
 This fatal defect of the utilitarian standard the relig- 
 ous moralists have seen : they have seen that there could 
 be, for a moral being responsible for his acts, no standard 
 outside of the human consciousness ; and they have 
 erected intention into a measure of merit and demerit. 
 But intention can relate only to the individual s estimate 
 of his own end, and it fails of the universality which is 
 implied in any common standard of action. A crite 
 rion ought to be valid for all judgments. Besides, this 
 doctrine of intention is apt to degenerate into a mere 
 casuistry, such as prevailed in the Jesuitical schools, 
 
and Law Reform. 41 
 
 that Pascal castigated with -immortal wit and severity. 
 The end is soon lugged in to justify the means, and 
 then no abomination so gross or so subtle that it may 
 not walk abroad in a shining panoply of good pur 
 poses. What is wanted is, some principle of universal 
 application, which the Reason may at once discern and 
 impose as an imperative law upon the Will. 
 
 The following circumstances, we think, will be ad 
 mitted to be facts : ist. That all rational beings stand 
 in various relations to each other, such as the relation 
 of parent to child, of man to woman, of brother to 
 brother, of man to man, etc. 2d. That as soon as 
 these relations are apprehended by the mind, there 
 springs up in it spontaneously a conviction that certain 
 dispositions are proper, i. e., ought to be manifested to 
 ward the beings to whom we are thus related. A man, 
 for instance, who is a free rational Person, recognizing 
 in another being the same freedom and rationality, per 
 ceives intuitively that he too is a Person, who is to be 
 treated as a person, * . e. y always as an end, and never as 
 a means. Reciprocally, they owe to each other respect ; 
 and that respect generalized, forms the sentiment of uni 
 versal human justice, which is the basis of all morals. 
 
 This conviction, then, having a real existence, is ca 
 pable of becoming a motive, and a motive acting inde 
 pendently of all notions of pain or pleasure. Whoever 
 has experienced how often it sets itself in opposition to his 
 most cherished notions of pleasure, will testify to the 
 power of its workings. It acts as the great antagonist of 
 the inferior forces of the soul. An intense and anxious 
 struggle is incessantly waged between it and the swarms 
 of our selfish appetites. If it be allowed to be over 
 come, it is turned into an avenging monitor, shooting 
 arrows of keen remorse ; but when it conquers, it is 
 the angel of peace, shedding its soft influences over and 
 
4 2 Jeremy Bent ham 
 
 irradiating by its genial smiles the depths of the inmost 
 soul. There are now, and there have been in all ages of 
 the world, men in whom the sentiment of benevolence, 
 the love of friends, devotion to country, in other words, 
 of fidelity to humanity, have been never-failing springs 
 of action, invincible by all the motives of self-interest 
 which could be brought to bear against them ; men 
 who in the accomplishment of a lofty purpose would 
 pass days and nights of pain and labor, who would sac 
 rifice without regret the most cherished gratifications, to 
 bring aid to the needy, or balm to the distressed ; men 
 who would recoil from the thought of meanness or 
 wrong with as much quickness as the instinct of a pure 
 woman shrinks from the approach of contamination ; 
 men who in a contest for principle would spurn the 
 suggestions of policy with an instant scorn, and who 
 would relinquish property, comforts, rank, children, 
 and friends with joyful alacrity, before they would sur 
 render one jot of their faith or compromise in a single 
 point the integrity of their aims. There are now, and 
 there have been in all ages of the world and in every 
 nation, men who have kept loyal to their sense of duty 
 in the midst of the frightfulest tortures which human 
 ingenuity, whetted by malice, could inflict ; men who, 
 when nailed to the stake, when the fagots have crackled 
 in the flames, when the devouring jaws of wild 
 beasts have been opened for their destruction, when 
 their limbs, by a cruel variety of infernal mechanism, 
 have been torn piecemeal one from the other, have 
 preferred the serenity of rectitude to an escape from these 
 most terrible sufferings, crowned with the plaudits of a 
 surrounding world. They have willingly confronted 
 death rather than lose honor, or tarnish their innocent 
 consciousness by the indelible stains of injustice or un 
 truth. 
 
and Law Reform. 43 
 
 Here, then, is a radical defect of Bentham s moral 
 teachings. He takes no account of this deep-seated sense 
 of right, so wide and irresistible in its influences over the 
 volitions of human will. That all good acts have a benef 
 icent tendency that temperance, fortitude, generosity, 
 justice, truth, produce the happiest consequences both 
 to the agent and to society that whatever we feel to be 
 virtuous would be beneficial if performed by all men 
 under the same conditions that the disposition to con 
 fer happiness is accompanied by a feeling of moral 
 complacency in short, that the production of the great 
 est amount of good is an inseparable consequence of 
 virtue we admit to be among the established facts of 
 moral science. But that this ulterior happiness is to be 
 the motive with which virtuous acts are to be performed, 
 and not the virtues in themselves, or because they are 
 virtues, we cannot admit. It strips virtue of its very 
 character as virtue, and sinks it from an end into a 
 means. No man who is bold because it is more dan 
 gerous to be cowardly, is a brave man. No man is be 
 nevolent who distributes pleasure, not because it is gen 
 erous, but because it is reputable. No man is just who 
 acts impartially, not because it is right, but because it is 
 safe or commanded by the laws. Virtue is an imperi 
 ous goddess exacting a willing service, a service for her 
 own sake, and not permitting it when performed for any 
 extrinsic objects. The moment the motive is divided, 
 the worship is no longer acceptable, and, innocent as it 
 may apparently be, is in her sight impure. 
 
 We object, then, to the theory of utility on the very 
 ground of utility. Whenever any other motive of virtue 
 than virtue s self is substituted for it, the moral character 
 loses something of its tension as well as of its dignity. 
 We diminish by it that intrinsic pleasure which always 
 attends the performance of a virtuous act. It weakens 
 
44 Jeremy Bentham 
 
 the force of those habitual feelings which are the best 
 promoters of rectitude and probity. It supplants a 
 strong present motive by a more distant, and conse 
 quently weaker, inducement. It renders moral judg 
 ments uncertain, fluctuating, and difficult. It opens 
 the heart to the more easy approaches of self- 
 delusion. It shifts the attention from the interior im 
 pulse to the bare outward act. It enables the selfish 
 and unamiable passions to mingle themselves with less 
 probability of detection among nobler impulses tends 
 to justify wrong actions under the disguise of expedi 
 ency allows too broad a discretion in the application 
 of moral rules and admits too readily of the passage 
 from the consideration of general, to that of particular 
 and specific, consequences. No man who makes 
 pleasure his chief aim can give a full development to 
 his character, or form an adequate notion of the great 
 purposes of human existence, or of the destinies of so 
 ciety. 
 
 But these objections do not apply in all their force to 
 the principle of utility as it operates in the province of 
 the legislator. It is true, the legislator, like the mor 
 alist, must place himself under the guidance of the im 
 mutable principles of Justice. He must obey the in 
 stinctive dictates of that moral conviction in which is 
 laid the foundation of all righteous law. Justice, eternal 
 and unchangeable Justice, is to be his supreme aim in 
 establishing the fundamental or constitutional relations 
 of the State. But within this primary limit he legislates, 
 not for himself, but for a community, and a commu 
 nity which presupposes, in the very meaning of the 
 term, a collection of conflicting interests and of equal 
 claims. He adjudicates between a host of widely-vari 
 ous pretensions ; is to neglect none, and favor none ; 
 yet is to distribute the advantages of law over a wide 
 
and Law Reform. 45 
 
 space, and among a multitude of competitors. How 
 can he discharge his duties impartially ? How is he to 
 ascertain what is best in all circumstances? Here the 
 necessity for some general rule of legislation inter 
 venes, some guide to direct him in his perplexities, 
 and to preserve him from shifting, uncertain, and con 
 fused decisions. Now we know of no better rule in 
 such cases than that which insists upon producing the 
 highest good to the greatest number of people. 
 
 While we do not subscribe, therefore, to Bentham s 
 moral theories, we confess to a high degree of admira 
 tion for his labors in the reformation of jurisprudence. 
 All his services it would be impossible, in this brief re 
 view, to enumerate, but the more essential parts may be 
 recapitulated in a few sentences. 
 
 i. The attempt at a thorough reform of legal science 
 was in itself no small service. He found the English 
 law what blind usage, occasionally altered by hasty 
 legislation, and from time to time corrected by fettered 
 judicial decisions, with such improvements as pro 
 fessional writers added, had made it. It had come to 
 be what it was piecemeal, irregularly, without order or 
 system. Founded originally on the feudal relation, it 
 retained the feudal spirit long after society had out 
 grown its barbarisms. One stage of civilization had 
 succeeded another, but the law had not kept pace with 
 the change. A warlike people had become an in 
 dustrious and commercial people, but there was no 
 introduction of laws fitted to their new modes of ex 
 istence. Whatever alterations took place, were made 
 by forced applications of old rules, or by new rules 
 brought to square with the old, through a process of 
 violent adjustment. As opinion and social customs 
 advanced, its structure became constantly more hetero 
 geneous and confused. Here a part would fall into 
 
46 Jeremy Bent ham 
 
 disuse, and make a huge hiatus in its theory. There a 
 portion would be knocked off, in the struggles of so 
 ciety to enlarge itself, and the place supplied by some 
 strange and uncongenial substitute. The courts would 
 strain a point one day, to adapt themselves to the grow 
 ing wants of a more active and refined state of human 
 intercourse, and the legislature would strain another 
 point another day, either to rebuke or justify the courts. 
 Thus, construction was heaped upon construction, eva 
 sion followed evasion, one fantastic fiction became the 
 excuse of a fiction still more fantastic, until the whole 
 mass seemed like a vast pile of rubbish, or rather like 
 some of those ancient structures which are seen in 
 Italy, with here a broken column, there a shattered 
 portico, in the third place a crumbling roof, but the 
 whole grotesquely stuck together with plaster and wood, 
 to make a modern habitation. 
 
 In the entire course of its existence, there had been 
 no attempt to remodel it, or bring its parts into more 
 perfect symmetry and shape. Of the thousands that in 
 every age devoted their lives to the study of it, no one 
 cared to investigate its corruptions or undertake the la 
 bor of improvement.* Those who read it, read it to 
 learn what it was, and not to inquire what it ought to 
 be. Those who wrote about it, wrote as expositors 
 and not as critics. All the publications put forth con 
 cerning it aspired to no higher character than that of 
 digests, abridgments, commentaries, synopses, or di 
 dactic essays. Not that its defects were unperceived, 
 nor that its cumbrous and illogical reasonings had not 
 forced themselves into notice, nor that its injustice had 
 not often been felt ; for there had been many and 
 various complaints uttered from time to time on all 
 
 * The attempts of Bacon and Hale are no exceptions. 
 
and Law Reform. 47 
 
 these points. Sometimes a judge in the course of a 
 decision would diffidently suggest an improvement, and 
 sometimes a general writer would speak in harsh terms 
 of certain of its details. But generally the system was 
 revered in proportion as it was absurd. Elegant dis 
 sertations, like those of Blackstone, had persuaded men 
 that it was "the perfection of reason;" and as few 
 were disposed to question with any earnestness the dicta 
 of profound and skilful lawyers, there was an almost 
 unbroken acquiescence where there should have been 
 as unbroken an opposition. 
 
 It was in this state that Bentham found it, when he 
 ventured upon the opinion that it was all wrong. It 
 was in this state he found it, when he began to ridi 
 cule its pretensions, and lash its absurdities. It was 
 in this state he found it, when he began an investiga 
 tion, with a view to root up its very foundations, and 
 build the entire structure anew. He was not satisfied 
 with the examination of a single title, nor an isolated 
 branch, but he applied an unsparing analysis to each 
 and every part, picking to pieces, demolishing, tearing 
 down, and building up, until scarcely a particle of the 
 original fabric was left, and a fairer proportioned edi 
 fice rose on its ruins. Even if his efforts had been 
 less successful, the attempt would not have been with 
 out its uses. It would have broken, at least, the charm 
 which had been thrown around the subject, it would 
 have attracted attention from thinking minds, and it 
 would have prepared the way for subsequent exertions 
 more pertinent and beneficial than his own. 
 
 2. A more essential service rendered by Bentham 
 was the manner in which he discharged his task. He 
 began, not in a hap-hazard way, destroying wantonly 
 whatever seemed to him unworthy, but in obedience to 
 a regular and consistent design. His method was not 
 
48 Jeremy Bent ham 
 
 novel in itself, although it was original in its applica 
 tion. It was essentially the same method which for 
 more than a century had been the glory of physical 
 science. It was in another form the observation and 
 induction of Bacon, the method which rejected au 
 thority, which dissected sophism, which labored for 
 precision, which investigated facts, which put ques 
 tions, in Bacon s own expressive phrase, to the object. 
 He settled in the outset his guiding principle, and then 
 made use of it unflinchingly in the treatment of the 
 minutest parts of his inquiry. One of his profoundest 
 chapters was that in which he expounds the false methods 
 of reasoning used in legislation. He showed that there 
 could be but one right reason, and that the various 
 and conflicting principles on which jurists commonly 
 relied could not be that reason. He showed that an 
 tiquity, though it might create a prejudice in favor of a 
 law, was not a reason for it ; that the sanctions of re 
 ligion, such as those cited from the Old Testament in 
 the famous work of Algernon Sidney, were not reasons ; 
 that an arbitrary definition, such, for instance, as that 
 with which Montesquieu opened his great treatise, was 
 not a reason ; that metaphors, like that of the English 
 jurists as to a man s house being his castle that a fic 
 tion, such as that certain offences work a corruption of 
 blood that a fancy, such as Cocceiji s, as to the right 
 of a father over his children, because they were a part 
 of his body that antipathies and sympathies arising in 
 the breast of the legislator and that imaginary laws, 
 such as the thousand-and-one laws of nature that were 
 spoken of were not reasons, but mere pretences put 
 forth to escape the obligation of deciding upon solid, 
 consistent, and tenable principles. In rejecting the 
 pretexts by which the law, as well the good portions of 
 it as the bad, were defended, and vigorously enforcing 
 
and Law Reform. 49 
 
 the strict rules he had prescribed, it became necessary 
 for him to take the whole body of the law apart, to 
 dissect its vessels, articulations, and muscles ; to pene 
 trate the mysticism which had all along enveloped its 
 logic ; to examine its generalities in detail ; to inspect 
 the maxims which had grown gray in its service; to 
 probe the fictions interwoven through its entire texture ; 
 to compare piece with piece ; and to prove the whole 
 by reducing it without mercy to the test of his impartial 
 standard. He found it encumbered with useless forms, 
 fettered by arbitrary precedents, abounding in flagrant 
 absurdities, and pervaded by an unwise and pernicious 
 spirit. 
 
 3. But not content with pulling down so conglom- 
 erous a mass, he set to work with no less indomitable 
 energy on the task of putting up something in its stead. 
 In this process, too, he taught mankind several inval 
 uable truths. He demonstrated that the framing of 
 laws was a matter of practical business, to be conducted 
 with the same good sense which plain men use in 
 their ordinary affairs. He took the law from the num 
 ber of those objects of human study which have their 
 roots and defences in authority, and attempted to give 
 it a place among real sciences by the side of mathe 
 matics, chemistry, and general physics. He did more ; 
 he brought discredit upon all mere technical systems, 
 by setting before us, in great beauty of arrangement 
 and considerable completeness of detail, a system 
 founded upon a natural characteristic of those actions 
 which are the subjects of law. He practically exhibited 
 the advantages of that system, showing how it was 
 equally applicable in all nations and at all times ; how 
 it detected bad laws by the mere force of its arrange 
 ment, giving them no place in its nomenclature ; how 
 it effectually excluded all barely technical offences ; 
 3 
 
5o Jeremy Bent ham 
 
 how it closed the door upon technical reasonings, 
 which only the lawyer can understand ; and how it 
 simplified and illustrated the institutions and combina 
 tions of institutions that compose the matter of legal 
 science. 
 
 4. Had he done no more than demonstrate the 
 possibility of LEGAL CODES, Bentham would have accom 
 plished a great good. His views in this respect are 
 peculiarly original and just. He has shown how it was 
 practicable to make a code which should reduce all the 
 laws of a country into a body of written enactments, 
 coming directly from the legislator, and adapted to the 
 immediate guidance of the judge in the decision of all 
 the various cases falling under his cognizance. This, 
 of course, embraced much more than had been included 
 in the codes suggested by the eminent jurists of either 
 ancient or modern times. The code of Justinian, ad 
 mirable as it proved as a digest, was nothing more than 
 an attempt to bring into a more manageable shape the 
 existing laws of the empire. Tribonian, and those who 
 were engaged with him, merely undertook to make a 
 more compendious arrangement of what was found in 
 the Rescripta Principium, the Edicta Prastorum, the 
 Leges et Plebiscita, which they regarded as the estab 
 lished rules of the State. Nor did the code of Frederic, 
 designed for the Prussian monarchy, nor even that of 
 Napoleon, aspire to a much higher character. The 
 latter, which is the most perfect of all, and a vast im 
 provement upon the old French law, fails, in leaving 
 its meaning in too many instances to be determined by 
 the decisions of the judges, which in time accumulate 
 precedents, and make the study of the science a matter 
 of as immense labor as that of the common law of 
 England. It did not contain within itself a definition 
 of its own terms, nor an accurate and appropriate classi- 
 
and Law Reform. 5i 
 
 fication of its parts. Bentham s idea went farther than 
 this. A code in the true sense, he thought, should be 
 one comprehending whatever was necessary to enable 
 the judge to put in force, without extraneous or adven 
 titious aid, the will of the legislator ; which should 
 possess, if we may so term it, the power of self-inter 
 pretation ; and which should make provision for its own 
 improvement and correction. In his plans for the 
 codes of Russia and the United States, he endeavored 
 to realize this general theory, by showing of what parts 
 a code should consist, and the relation of the parts. 
 But the nearest actual approach to his own notion is 
 effected in the Penal Code, prepared by the Law Com 
 missioners of Great Britain for the government of India, 
 published in 1837. Whoever will consult it, will dis 
 cover, if not a thoroughly unexceptionable code, one 
 that proves the practicability of codification, and the 
 beauty of an orderly and systematic arrangement. How 
 it has operated practically we are not informed, but we 
 have no doubt of its success, from the fact that it com 
 bines, as the framers of it state, the advantages of a 
 statute book and of a collection of decided cases. It is, 
 at any rate, an approximation to something better than 
 the miserable jumble of rules called law, to be found in 
 most nations of the civilized world. 
 
 5. Be the opinion, however, what it may in respect 
 to the practicability of codification and we know that 
 many, even among law reformers, are dubious it must 
 be conceded that Bentham, by the enthusiasm with 
 which he prosecuted his task, if not by any actual suc 
 cess, kindled a spirit of active inquiry on this subject, 
 which is working in the bosom of society with more 
 and more power to this day. Beginning with the private 
 student and the philosopher, it has gradually stolen its 
 way into houses of legislation. At first Dumont, then 
 
52 Jeremy Bentham 
 
 Mill, then Romilly, then Brougham, and then less con 
 spicuous men, caught the impulse, and by a series of 
 persevering exertions, in the midst of strong opposition, 
 directed public attention to the serious evils which he 
 had unveiled. The progress of opinion, it is true, 
 has been slow, but when we contemplate the obstacles 
 it has met, in the general worship of authority, in the 
 pride and indifference of the legal profession, and in the 
 stubborn habits of society, we are surprised that so 
 much has been already accomplished. We were struck, 
 in reading a late English work,* at the number of 
 changes that had been already imperceptibly effected. 
 Of these may be enumerated alterations materially im 
 proving the relation of debtor and creditor, diminishing 
 the number of oaths, softening the penalties and ame 
 liorating the spirit of criminal law, simplifying the 
 proceedings and forms of pleading at common law, 
 denning more distinctly the rights, duties, and revenues 
 of ecclesiastical persons, consolidating statutes, and 
 harmonizing and modernizing the barbarous provisions 
 of the law of real property. All these we attribute in 
 directly to Bentham, because his was the seminal mind 
 from which the movement sprang. 
 
 6. Nor should it be forgotten, in an enumeration of 
 the services of the same great mind, what ought to have 
 been insisted on before, that wrong as he was in his 
 general theory of politics, yet he has done much theo 
 retically toward establishing the true functions of gov 
 ernment. He has stated with more clearness than any 
 preceding writer the real objects of civil law, and the 
 best methods of attaining them. If he has not carried 
 his ideas to the extent to which American statesmen 
 aie disposed to push their theories of government, he 
 
 * Miller on the Unsettled Condition of the Law. 
 
and Law Reform. 63 
 
 has made a near approximation to it. Indeed, the 
 most radical of American statesmen can find much in 
 struction in what he has uttered on this head. Law of 
 any kind he regards as a retrenchment of liberty, and is 
 never to be imposed without a sufficient and specific rea 
 son. For there is always a reason against every coercive 
 law in the fact that it is a restraint upon the liberty of the 
 citizen. Unless, therefore, he who proposes a law can 
 prove that there is not only a specific reason in favor of 
 it, but a reason stronger than the general reason against 
 it, he transcends his province and invades the rights of 
 the individual. Again, assuming that the single aim 
 of the legislator should be to promote the greatest pos 
 sible happiness of the community, and that as the care 
 of his enjoyments ought to be left entirely to the indi 
 vidual, he argues that it becomes the principal duty of 
 the government to guard against pains. If it protects 
 the rights of personal security, if it defends property, if 
 it watches over the general safety, it accomplishes its 
 main purposes. Government approaches perfection in 
 proportion as the sacrifice of liberty on the part of the 
 subject is diminished, and his acquisition of rights is 
 increased. Can the most rigid democrat carry his own 
 theory much farther ? Is it not, indeed, precisely the 
 thing for which we. who are the advocates of equal jus 
 tice, contend ? Adopt these principles in legislation, 
 and would they not simplify government until it became 
 what it ought to be, a mere instrument for the protec 
 tion of person and property ? Would they not abolish 
 all partial legislation, root out exclusive privileges, de 
 stroy monopolies, prevent the granting of acts of special 
 incorporation, do away with unequal laws, and leave 
 society to its own energies and resources, in the 
 conduct of its business and the prosecution of its 
 enterprises ? And this is all for which the great demo- 
 
54 Jeremy Be nth am 
 
 cratic party, the party of impartial Justice, is striving. 
 It seeks to direct government to its true ends, to restore 
 its action from the partial direction that has been given 
 it, and urge it on to the accomplishment of those general 
 objects, for which alone it was instituted, and which alone 
 are compatible with the rights, the interests, and the im 
 provement of man. Bentham himself, it must be ad 
 mitted, has sometimes departed from these objects, but 
 only when he violated unconsciously his own logic. 
 
 We have dwelt longer upon these topics than it was 
 our intention when we began, and longer, we fear, than 
 the patience of the reader will excuse. We have done 
 so, because, enamored of the theme, we have endeav 
 ored to kindle the interest of others. If we have quick 
 ened the purposes of any to engage in the great study 
 of law reform, the time has not been lost. It is a great 
 subject, connected with the best interests of society, 
 and worthy of the patient labor of the noblest minds. 
 We know of no way in which the intellect could be 
 more profitably tasked, or the purest sympathies more 
 suitably indulged, or the firmest moral purpose more 
 honorably tried, or greater good conferred on men, or 
 a richer harvest of reputation reaped, than in prosecu 
 ting the inquiries which Bentham so auspiciously com 
 menced. The law is yet a fallow field, covered with 
 stubble, thorns, and weeds. There are many briers to 
 be rooted out, and many vigorous and wholesome 
 shoots to be planted in their place. What obscurities 
 perplex its theory, what inconsistencies confuse its de 
 tails, what vexations attend its practice ! How num 
 berless the absurdities that disfigure the statute-books ! 
 How expensive, wearisome, and ambiguous the greater 
 part of its proceedings ! Would any one confer a 
 blessing on the poor, let him shorten its delays and 
 diminish its costs. Would any one spread peace among 
 
and Law Reform. 
 
 55 
 
 men, let him simplify its rules and make certain its de 
 cisions. A worthier name could not be achieved than 
 by taking- part in the effort to correct its abuses, and to 
 conform it to the image of immutable Justice. There 
 may be more lucrative, but there are certainly no more 
 honorable or useful spheres of exertion, than in the de 
 partment Of LAW REFORM. 
 
EDWARD LIVINGSTON AND HIS 
 CODE.* 
 
 |E endeavored in a late number of this Review 
 to make our readers better acquainted with one 
 of the great intellects of England, and we now 
 turn to a kindred genius of our own country, who in 
 many respects reduced to practice what Bentham had 
 only suggested ; who, taking up the subject of law re 
 form where the master had left it, pursued it to a com 
 plete consummation. Edward Livingston, in the code 
 known as the Code of Louisiana, raised himself to the 
 first rank among jurists as well as among public bene- 
 fectors ; and he conferred a distinction upon his chosen 
 State more glorious and lasting than ever warrior gave 
 to the land his blood had defended. 
 
 Livingston was born in the colony of New York, in 
 the year 1764. His family, descended from one of the 
 most powerful and illustrious clans in Scotland, driven 
 
 * Eloge Historique de M. Livingston, par M. Mignet, Secretaire 
 Perpetuel de T Academic des Sciences, Morales, et Politiques. Lu a la 
 Seance Publique, du 30 juin, 1838. Paris, 1838. 
 
 A System of Penal Law for the State of Louisiana, prepared under 
 the authority of a law of said State. By Edward Livingston. To 
 which are prefixed a Preliminary Report on the plan of a Penal 
 Code, and introductory reports to the several codes embraced in the 
 system of Penal Law. Philadelphia, 1833. 
 
 From the Democratic Review, July and Sept., 1841. 
 
Edward Livingston 5 7 
 
 away by religious persecution, had been among the 
 earliest settlers of America. Its members brought with 
 them to the place of their exile, along with lofty tastes 
 and generous manners, an indestructible love of liberty. 
 When the infant colonies, oppressed by the mother 
 country, began to stir with the aspirations of independ 
 ence, their sentiments and principles had already pre 
 pared them to take part with those who struck for free 
 dom. Edward Livingston, the youngest of eleven 
 children, was a witness of many of the exciting scenes 
 of the revolutionary war. His brother Robert, a mem 
 ber of that magnanimous Congress which, for seven 
 years during the vicissitudes of a bloody contest did not 
 despair of its country, shared with Jefferson, Franklin, 
 Adams, and Sherman the honor of drawing up that 
 Declaration of Independence which became the " birth- 
 act" of a nation. His brother-in-law, the chivalrous 
 Montgomery, in the young vigor of his hopes and fac 
 ulties, perished gloriously in the assault upon Quebec. 
 And his hearth was ever the hospitable home of La Fay- 
 ette, and those other noble auxiliaries who so gallantly 
 battled for the rights of humanity, in sustaining the fee 
 ble but spirited arms of the small band of American 
 patriots. 
 
 Under the influence of such associations the basis of 
 his character was laid ; and when he afterward came to 
 act for himself, a long life of public usefulness and un 
 spotted purity testified that early impressions had been 
 durable. He never forgot the love of justice, nor the 
 disinterested patriotism that had always marked the 
 characters of his ancestors and friends. 
 
 He devoted himself to the profession of the law. In 
 his preparatory studies, which were alike thorough and 
 discursive, he made himself familiar with the doctrines 
 of the common law, adopted from the mother-country, 
 
58 Edward Livingston 
 
 and with the principles of the civil law, as they were 
 found in the old writers, and illustrated on the continent 
 of Europe. His practice in the courts was followed by 
 all the success that a distinguished and wealthy connec 
 tion could give a. young man of extraordinary industry 
 and talent. He rose rapidly into fame; and in 1794 
 was chosen a representative of New York in Congress. 
 
 It was an important epoch. The American people, 
 just emerged from a fierce and protracted struggle for 
 independence, had formed a government before then 
 unknown to the legislation of the world. Washington 
 had been selected as the first to administer it ; and 
 around him were gathered those who, either in the 
 council or the field, had assisted him in the mighty 
 work of revolution. A new constitution, binding free 
 and sovereign States in an indissoluble league, was 
 about to be tried. Its strength and its weaknesses, its 
 tendencies, whether for good or for evil, were soon to 
 develop themselves in practical operation. Parties, 
 taking their color from their proclivities toward a stronger 
 government or a stronger people, were already formed. 
 At the head of one division stood Thomas Jefferson, 
 the ardent friend of liberty sanguine, far-sighted, saga 
 cious and from his youth a champion of the French 
 humanitarian philosophy. At the head of the other 
 was Alexander Hamilton accomplished, ambitious, 
 and eloquent a friend of liberty, but distrustful of the 
 people, and inclined to the politics of England. Liv 
 ingston lost no time in ranging himself among the 
 former. He entered with enthusiasm into the defence 
 of the popular measures of his day. He opposed the 
 British treaty of 1794 : he fought resolutely against the 
 sedition law ; and to this day, in many of the log huts 
 of the western frontiers, his able speech against the 
 alien acts hangs upon the walls. Then, too, he formed 
 
and his Code. 59 
 
 the acquaintance of a delegate from the distant and 
 obscure territory of Tennessee, with whom he was after 
 ward destined to perform so conspicuous a part, both 
 in war and peace Andrew Jackson. 
 
 Livingston continued in Congress till the end of 
 Adams s term. Selected by his fellow-citizens then to 
 discharge the duties of chief municipal magistrate of 
 New York, he had occasion to manifest other traits of 
 character than those which had given him political 
 prominence. Soon after his election the yellow fever 
 broke out with unusual violence. Livingston gave him 
 self up entirely to the care of the sick ; and, by personal 
 visitation, the gratuitous distribution of his fortune, and 
 a wise direction of the city charities, contributed greatly 
 to the restoration of health. When seized himself with 
 the disease, just as it began to abate, the spontaneous 
 gratitude of the whole population, shown by anxious 
 inquiries, by expressions of sympathy, and by gifts, told 
 how deeply his noble generosity had fastened him to 
 the affections of all classes. 
 
 But that freedom from selfish feeling which had saved 
 others, sacrificed himself; and, in the fortieth year of 
 his age, when he had fondly thought that leisure would 
 be afforded him to resume those elevated studies that 
 were the charm of his life, he found himself stripped of 
 wealth, and compelled a second time to begin his pro 
 fessional career.* To a man of less energy this would 
 have been no ordinary trial ; to Livingston it was only 
 an occasion for the display of his lofty virtues. He 
 speedily arranged his affairs, and a few months saw him 
 
 * We should dwell more minutely upon these incidents of Mr. 
 Livingston s life, had not the elegant pen of an admiring friend, 
 Mr. August Davezac, already anticipated us. See Democratic Review, 
 First Series, Vol. viii., No. xxxiv. 
 
6o Edward Livingston 
 
 an emigrant to the new territory of Louisiana, recently 
 purchased by the United States from the French. It 
 was then a new and uncultivated country, but beautifully 
 placed by Providence in one of the largest and richest 
 valleys of the world, watered by the grandest of rivers, 
 and at the head of a magnificent gulf, communicating 
 with the main ocean. The great stream of population, 
 so long hemmed in by the ranges of the Alleghanies, had 
 burst its barriers, and was already spreading over the 
 almost boundless prairies of the West. In a few years 
 the forests had disappeared, and fertile plantations and 
 growing towns covered their sites ; a fine city at the 
 mouth of the Mississippi served as an outlet to its pro 
 ductions ; and wealth, order, and civilization rewarded 
 the toils of the enterprising settlers. 
 
 Livingston engaged once more in the practice of the 
 law, and fortune followed his exertions. Not satisfied, 
 however, with the mere accumulation of property, he 
 suggested, and accomplished in connection with others, 
 important reforms of his favorite science. The various 
 fortunes of Louisiana, as a dependency, first of Spain 
 and then of France, next under a territorial government, 
 and, finally, as an independent State, had introduced a 
 world of confusion into its law. It was a vast hodge 
 podge of Spanish customs, French decrees, English 
 precedents, and conflicting legislative enactments. In 
 its forms of procedure, particularly, it was as defective 
 as it was inconsistent. Livingston set about correcting 
 its evils. Rejecting alike the interminable proceedings 
 of French, and the absurd fictions of English practice, 
 he formed a short and simple code which combined the 
 advantages of the various .systems that prevailed, while 
 it was free from their defects. He digested and meth 
 odized also the more ancient civil laws that were still 
 recognized as authoritative. Nor was it the least of the 
 
and his Code. 61 
 
 benefits flowing from these preparatory labors, that his 
 mind was directed to that grand and comprehensive 
 scheme of law-reform which he subsequently carried 
 into effect, with such honor to himself and to the 
 legislature that had had the wisdom to engage his 
 talents. 
 
 The war of 1812 interrupted his plans. Ready as he 
 was to do good to his country with his pen, he was no 
 less ready to take up the sword in her defence. During 
 the siege of New Orleans, he seconded the efforts of the 
 patriotic Jackson ; he shared in the danger and glory 
 of the battle ; and when the strife had ceased, he was 
 employed in the benevolent task of negotiating an ex 
 change of prisoners. 
 
 With the return of peace, the great purpose of his life 
 was renewed. Legal studies again absorbed his thoughts ; 
 he completed a plan of penal reform ; and getting him 
 self elected to the Legislature of the State, he there 
 unfolded his enterprise. In February, 1820, he was 
 appointed to prepare a report, at length, of all that he 
 proposed to accomplish. Livingston undertook the 
 task with avidity, making himself acquainted with what 
 ever had been done in his own country and abroad in 
 relation to the subject, corresponding with distinguished 
 jurisconsults of all nations, comparing the principles 
 of every theory and before the end of four years had 
 the satisfaction to see his plan approved. 
 
 It is of that plan we design to give some account, but 
 we shall advert beforehand to what had been done for 
 a reformation of penal law at the time Livingston 
 began his labors. 
 
 In the earlier stages of modern civilization, those 
 who made the laws for the trial and punishment of 
 criminals seem to have been moved solely by a spirit of 
 blind and unmitigated ferocity. Society, in departing 
 
62 Edward Livingston 
 
 from many of the barbarous usages of the feudal age, 
 retained much of its savageness of manners and dispo 
 sition. The discipline^ of force under which it had 
 been educated, continued long after to exert an influ 
 ence upon the habits and opinions of the people. The 
 increasing intercourse among States and men, a conse 
 quence of the growth of commerce, while it liberalized 
 the pursuits and refined the courtesies of life, did not 
 efface the traces of former selfishness and brutality, or 
 remove from existing institutions those fierce and vindic 
 tive provisions which a ruder condition had originated. 
 Mistaking severity for justice, supposing vengeance to 
 be the single object of public, as it had been of private 
 punishment, criminals (unless protected by rank or 
 interest), were treated by the law as outcasts ; they 
 were arrested without cause, condemned without trial, 
 and punished with the most excruciating tortures and 
 the most infamous deaths. Denied the right of being 
 heard in their own defence, they were subjected to insult 
 and caprice, and often compelled, by the rack or flame, 
 to confess crimes of which they had never been guilty, 
 or to purchase immunity by the grossest and most 
 degrading falsehoods. Secret tribunals, inquisitions, 
 lettres-de-cachet, mutilations, and indiscriminate butch 
 ery were the instruments with which it often executed 
 its purposes, alike upon offenders of every age and sex 
 and of every degree of guilt. 
 
 Even in England, distinguished from other nations 
 by the institution of the trial by jury, by the habeas- 
 corpus act, and by the sturdy and independent spirit of 
 the people, these harsher features of criminal jurispru 
 dence were relieved, but not obliterated. "Prisoners 
 were deprived the assistance of counsel ; men were 
 executed because they could not read ; those who re 
 fused to answer were compelled to die under the most 
 
and his Code. 63 
 
 cruel torture. Executions for some crimes were attended 
 with butchery that would have disgusted a savage. The 
 life and honor of the accused were made to depend on 
 the uncertain issue of a judicial combat. A wretched 
 sophistry introduced the doctrine of corrupted blood. 
 Heretics and witches were committed to the flames. No 
 proportion was preserved between crimes and punish 
 ments. The cutting of a twig and the assassination of 
 a parent ; breaking a fish-pond and poisoning a whole 
 family or murdering them in their sleep, all incurred 
 the same penalties ; and between two and three hundred 
 different actions, many not deserving the name of 
 offences, were punishable by death." 
 
 Society was particularly inert in emancipating itself 
 from this capricious despotism. Nothing is changed 
 with more difficulty than practices that have received 
 the sanction of antiquity and habit. Even political 
 evils, falling upon large classes of the community, and 
 thus arraying against them a combined opposition, are 
 long permitted to develop their effects before the masses 
 are aroused to demand a change. How much greater 
 the delay in regard to laws which inflict their curses 
 only at intervals and upon single and friendless per 
 sons ! Criminal legislation, more than all other kinds of 
 legislation, was thus marked by the slowness of its prog 
 ress. Now and then, when the public sense of jus 
 tice was offended by some extraordinary instance of 
 severity, slight modifications were made in the existing 
 arrangements ; but the great body of them were suffered 
 to remain in all their original deformity. The bench 
 and the bar, apparently infatuated by a system which 
 had neither beauty nor truth, nor any charms save the 
 equivocal charms of age to recommend it, applied 
 themselves diligently to its study, but did not give a 
 thought to its improvement. The meliorating influ- 
 
64 Edward Livingston 
 
 ences of a growing civilization, that seem to have touched 
 with a quicker life every other sort of human activity, 
 did not reach the secluded precincts of the courts. 
 Had it not been for the liberal spirit of popular writers, 
 penal law would have continued what barbarism had 
 made it. But Montesquieu, by the spirit of justice that 
 pervaded his great work, Beccaria, by his solemn pro 
 tests against the punishment of death, Filangieri, by 
 his wise and noble sentiments, prepared the way for the 
 great English luminary, Bentham, who shed such a 
 flood of light upon every department of legal reform. 
 It would be hard to put together a more heterogene 
 ous and, but for the importance of the subject, a more 
 amusing mass than was formed by the criminal laws of 
 Louisiana, when Mr. Livingston began his task. The 
 province having been successively under the govern 
 ment of Spain, France, and the United States, had re 
 ceived from each its peculiar traditions, customs, and 
 statutes. These had been variously modified in the 
 several stages of transformation, by local enactments 
 which the changes rendered necessary. But the most 
 glaring defects arose from a combined recognition of 
 the authority of the English common law and of the 
 equally old institutions of Spain. The common law 
 of England, much as it has been extolled, is, at the 
 best, a rude, uncertain, inconsistent, and dangerous 
 jumble of precedents and usages. It is confessedly 
 founded upon general and local customs, the origin of 
 many of which is lost in antiquity. It is unwritten, 
 and liable to be determined by the variable and arbi 
 trary decisions of the Courts. Twenty years of labori 
 ous study are insufficient to acquire a knowledge of 
 what it declares ; and, when it is once learned, it 
 abounds in the absurdest fictions, and the most capri 
 cious technicalities. It is an unseemly piece of patch- 
 
and his Code. 65 
 
 work, a residuum of the conceit and insolence of 
 .uncultivated centuries, a depository of all the debris of 
 society, crumbled off under the influence of advancing 
 intelligence and refinement. It was, however, outdone 
 in absurdities by the relics of the ancient Spanish laws, 
 in which the most ludicrous and the most horrid pro 
 visions were conjoined. The legislation of the fifteenth 
 century was considered law for the people of the nine 
 teenth ; and offences that only could be committed in 
 the days of witchcraft and judicial astrology, were 
 ranged side by side with invasions of property or at 
 tacks on the person. Infamous punishments could be 
 inflicted at the option of any choleric magistrate. Polit 
 ical disabilities were attached to the most innocent acts ; 
 gamblers, buffoons, usurers, recreant knights, promise- 
 breakers, comedians, and procurers, were classed to 
 gether as persons equally dishonorable ; a child born 
 out of wedlock could never serve as a witness ; a law 
 yer who should cite the law falsely was indictable ; 
 and the use of incantations, love-powders, and wax im 
 ages, was specially punished. Divination was a capi 
 tal offence, except when done by astronomy, " one of 
 the seven- liberal arts, taken from the books of Ptolemy 
 and the other sages." Sorcerers, fortune-tellers of 
 every description, and enchanters who raised the spirits 
 of the dead, "except it was done to exorcise the devil, 
 or to preserve the crops from hail, lightning, and insects," 
 were threatened with death. Blaspheming the Virgin 
 Mary, heresy against the Catholic church; crucifying 
 young children at Jewish festivals, were all enumerated 
 misdemeanors ; and for a thousand frivolous things, 
 as well as for more important matters, a man was 
 liable to lose his head or his limbs. It was doubtful, 
 indeed, whether the torture, in its most excruciating 
 application, could not be legitimately used at the 
 
66 Edward Livingston 
 
 discretion of the judges. Surely, vagaries of this kind 
 were as disgraceful as they were dangerous to the. 
 people by whom they were endured. Laws so absurd, 
 so conflicting, so pernicious, called for a reform ; and 
 yet the task of accomplishing it was no easy labor. 
 
 Mr. Livingston, aware of the high responsibility he 
 assumed, gave to the discharge of his duty his best 
 faculties and most profound study. While he deter 
 mined that no dread of mere innovation should restrain 
 him from proposing the most radical changes, he was 
 yet fully conscious of the importance of consulting the 
 habits and feelings of the people. A simple repeal of 
 laws that had become offensive would not be enough ; 
 the modification and arrangement of existing statutes 
 would in a short time have led to the same evils that 
 were then deplored ; and the introduction of a body of 
 laws before unknown, might be viewed with prejudice 
 and alarm. He resolved, therefore, upon the construc 
 tion of a code, at once simple and congruous, which 
 should retain whatever of the old laws might be pertinent, 
 but conform at the same time to principles deduced 
 from just and enlightened reason. In this, he evinces 
 his sagacity and wisdom. A code is the best -form in 
 which the supreme rules of the State can be presented, 
 particularly in relation to criminal matters. It em 
 bodies, in a brief compass, accurately denned, methodi 
 cally classified, complete as a whole and in its parts, all 
 that it concerns the public to know of their legal rights 
 and duties. " The judge it enables, in a moment, to as 
 certain his own powers, to detect what is an offence, to 
 discover how it is to be proved, to administer the pun 
 ishment ; the citizen is informed, with no less ease, 
 when his rights have been infringed or how his interests 
 are to be protected ; and the legislature, without legal 
 acquirement or experience, is made competent to re- 
 
and his Code. 67 
 
 peal, supply, or amend any incongruity or defect de 
 veloped in the course of its practical working. By its 
 brevity, its order, its accuracy, and its comprehensive 
 ness, a code must ever be superior to every other form 
 of instituting and publishing the supreme will of the 
 Slate. Let it contain within itself a provision for self- 
 rectification, and the acts of subsequent legislatures, 
 which have now the effect of multiplying and confusing 
 laws, would bring them at each step nearer to perfection. 
 
 Four codes (comprised in one general code) were 
 matured by Mr. Livingston s sole and unassisted la 
 bors. They were : (i) the code of Crimes and Punish 
 ments ; (2) the code of Procedure; (3) the code of 
 Evidence ; and (4) the code of Reform and Prison 
 Discipline : to each of which was prefixed a preliminary 
 title, declaring its fundamental principles, followed by 
 a book of definitions. 
 
 [Here followed a long analysis of these several codes, 
 which is now omitted. J 
 
 This analysis will enable the reader to form an idea 
 of the extent of Mr. Livingston s labors, and of the 
 wisdom shown in their execution. No man could have 
 been better qualified than he for the work he under 
 took. A combination of dissimilar and almost con 
 flicting qualities conferred upon him a peculiar fitness 
 for the task. He was a lawyer equally skilled in the 
 technicalities of practice and in the subtleties of prin 
 ciple. Yet he had not become so enamored of the 
 profession as to close his eyes to its defects. He saw 
 at once its excellence and its weakness, and was as 
 willing to acknowledge the one as he was to extol the 
 other. A profound and patient thinker, he still saved 
 himself from the abstraction and impracticableness of 
 the mere student by practical habits of business which 
 had trained him to bold and decided action. Daily 
 
68 Edward Livingston 
 
 intercourse with men had had the double effect of 
 creating tact and sympathy tact to discover the laws 
 best adapted to the actual relations of society, and 
 sympathy to infuse into them the sentiment of a 
 broad benevolence. If he investigated as a philoso 
 pher, he recommended as a man of the world ; if 
 he felt as a philanthropist, he acted as the practician. 
 Thus he was prepared for every kind of opposition, 
 as well from the criticisms of the learned as from the 
 assaults of the ignorant and interested. Superior 
 knowledge availed him in answering the first, and 
 logic, eloquence, and enthusiasm, in discomfiting the 
 second. Fearless but prudent, theoretical and yet 
 practical, indefatigable in vindication as well as in pur 
 suit, there was no hostility he did not encounter, none, 
 we believe, that he did not overcome. 
 
 We are aware that many competent people object to 
 the principle of codification, but we do not estimate 
 their objections verv highly. They proceed either from a 
 misunderstanding of the subject or a groundless fear. All 
 new things are received with caution and prejudice, and 
 often the only objection to that which is new, is the simple 
 fact that it is new, independently of its merit, and with 
 out regard to the necessity that may exist for its adop 
 tion. But such as these objections are, we propose to 
 answer them briefly before closing this discussion. 
 
 i. First, then, of the objection, that a code of laws is 
 new. If it be meant by this, that everything which is new 
 is mischievous, it applies equally to every change in the 
 existing order of things. It takes for granted that the 
 human intellect has exhausted its own stores of thought, 
 and that nothing that may hereafter be struck out is worthy 
 of a wise man s consideration. It supposes that society 
 has already reached a state of ultimate perfection, and 
 that no modification of it for the better is possible. It 
 
and his Code. 69 
 
 proceeds upon the ground that the human race came 
 into the world in the maturity of its vigor and beauty, 
 so that nothing in its condition is susceptible of im 
 provement. For, if we admit the progress made by the 
 human mind to be imperfect ; if we admit the existence 
 of social evils at all ; if we do not impute to our fore 
 runners the possession of the highest wisdom and the 
 most consummate power, we must also admit that many 
 things are capable of being reformed. Now, the truth 
 is, in regard to all new measures, that the only real 
 question is, not how long they may have been known, 
 but what they promise to accomplish, and the means 
 they possess of effecting the end. If they be found 
 reasonable, let them be adopted ; but if they be found 
 unreasonable, attack them on the ground of that de 
 fect. That an untried plan is an innovation is often, 
 indeed, the best reason why it should be regarded with 
 favor. Christianity was once an innovation, and be 
 cause the moral state of mankind was such as to en 
 title it to that name, the more imperative the necessity 
 for its advent. The history of democracy is the his 
 tory of a series of innovations. All the beneficent 
 changes that we know of were at first esteemed by the 
 timid and time-serving as so many innovations. All 
 the loftiest hopes and aspirations of man are, in fact, 
 connected with the success of these "innovations." 
 They are the pioneers of all that is great and grand in 
 human action, and the pledges of a glorious advance 
 ment for the future. 
 
 2. But written codes, it is said, may be very well in 
 theory and very bad in practice. Another of those 
 commonplace utterances which rest upon a confusion 
 of terms as well as a confusion of ideas. What is meant 
 by saying that a thing may be very good in theory ? If 
 it means anything, it is that the measure is both rational 
 
70 Edward Livingston 
 
 in its objects and in its means ; otherwise it is not good 
 in theory, and the question of its practicability may be 
 left out of the discussion. Now, in this matter of law 
 reform, it is evident that if it be good in theory it must 
 be good in practice. If it be adapted to the end pro 
 posed that is, if the principles it asserts are wise, just, 
 and pertinent, suited to the people and the times for 
 which they are intended, then it cannot fail to be good 
 in practice. But if it does not possess these charac 
 teristics, then it is bad in theory, and is to be con 
 demned on that ground. The fact of being bad in 
 
 practice, is sufficient of itself to prove it bad in theory, 
 
 is indeed the very quality which makes it bad in theory. 
 If, however, the objectors mean, that written codes 
 invariably are found to work badly, the question be 
 comes one of fact. Viewing it as such, then, we as 
 sert, that whenever written codes have been used, and 
 to the extent they have been used, their practical work 
 ing has shown their superiority to every other form of 
 law. It is true, our instances are few, but yet suffi 
 ciently numerous to furnish a basis for argument. The 
 Louisiana Code of Procedure were alone adequate to 
 establish the point. "An experiment in the occult 
 sciences," says Livingston, "is said to be most success 
 fully made, when the desired effects have been pro 
 duced under the most unfavorable circumstances. It 
 is the same in legislation, and we may consider the 
 favorable result as completely ascertained; for an ex 
 periment has been thus made. It has succeeded in the 
 most difficult branch ; succeeded under every disad 
 vantage of imperfect execution, and in opposition to 
 professional and national prejudices ; succeeded, too, 
 so completely as to silence every objection to the meas 
 ure itself, and leaving none but to some of the details 
 which more mature revision may remove." Or will 
 
and his Code. 71 
 
 any one be hardy enough to allege, that the Code of Na 
 poleon, the code to which more than thirty millions of 
 people have not looked for justice altogether in vain 
 for nearly half a century, is impracticable or inefficient? 
 That code is badly constructed in several respects ; yet 
 in spite of its defects, it fulfils the functions of a su 
 preme law much more simply, and quite as effectually, 
 as the vaunted Common Law of England. Suitors ac 
 quire and maintain their rights, and the demands of 
 public justice are satisfied ; and whatever vexations and 
 delays grow up under it are to be ascribed to those fea 
 tures in which it has departed from the strict idea of a 
 code and introduced the practices of the more ancient 
 law. 
 
 But not to multiply citations, there is one fact we hold 
 to be a complete answer to the charge we are combating. 
 It is this that all modern attempts to improve the exist 
 ing laws are only so many approaches to the formation of 
 a code. The revised statutes, the abridgments, the di 
 gests, and the indices that constitute so respectable a 
 part of a legal library, are endeavors to give scattered 
 and conflicting statutes, rules, and decisions the pre 
 cision, the conciseness, and the method of a written 
 code. They are efforts to appropriate its form, if not 
 its spirit, and need merely to be carried a little further 
 to realize all that is contained in the great idea of codi 
 fication. Thus, those who are loudest in their objec 
 tion to written and organized bodies of law, are among 
 the first to avail themselves, in a partial and inadequate 
 degree, of their advantages. In practice, they meas 
 urably confess a principle, which, in argument, they 
 repugn. 
 
 3. If it be rejoined, that these are attempts to methodize 
 laws that are already known and interwoven with the 
 habits of society, while the introduction of a new sys- 
 
72 Edward Livingston 
 
 tern would be attended by great inconvenience and ex 
 pense, we are ready to meet the argument on that issue. 
 The inconvenience alluded to, we suppose, means the 
 inconvenience of learning what the new laws are, and 
 the expense of reducing them to practice. We ac 
 knowledge both the trouble and the cost ; but we re 
 ply that the trouble and cost will be much less than is 
 now involved in the labor, time, and money expended 
 under the present system. We ask, in the first place, 
 are the present laws known known to the people, 
 known even to the judges ? From the multiplicity of re 
 corded decisions, can the most skilful jurisconsult al 
 ways extract the truth ? Does one man in a thousand 
 know what are his legal rights, the means of ascertain 
 ing them, or the modes of prosecuting their violation? 
 Are the millions who are perpetually rising up to assume 
 the responsibility of social life, informed as to their du 
 ties, and can they be informed without mature study, 
 or without feeing counsel ? "It may safely be asserted, " 
 says an eminent authority, "that less time will be re 
 quired to obtain a perfect knowledge of any law that is 
 reduced to writing, and framed with a tolerable atten 
 tion to clearness and method, than would be necessary 
 to learn that part of those which now govern us, which 
 is unknown even to its professors. But should it be 
 conceded that this supposition is unfounded, and that 
 greater trouble would be required than is supposed to 
 master the differences between an old and new system, 
 for those who have studied the former, yet. this can ap 
 ply only to ourselves, to those who are now on the stage 
 of public life. But those who are just about to take 
 their places there the countless succession of legisla 
 tors, judges, advocates, magistrates, and officers, who 
 are to replace them! the multitude even in the present 
 day, who have not yet studied the present laws, but 
 
and his Code. 73 
 
 who are bound to obey them ! the millions who are 
 to follow them in the lapse of those ages which every 
 good citizen must wish his country and its institutions 
 to endure ! is the curse of bad laws, and the odious 
 and painful task of learning them, to be entailed on 
 these forever, to save ourselves the task of a few days 
 or weeks mental application ?" 
 
 4. A more considerable objection to the code, how 
 ever, is urged by those who represent, that if a new system 
 were established, judicial decisions would still be re 
 quired to settle the meaning of terms, and to declare 
 the application of principles, which in a few years 
 would accumulate a vast mass of legal learning. Ref 
 erence is made, in proof of the assertion, to the codes 
 of Justinian and Napoleon, under each of which the 
 commentaries, glosses, and decrees have grown to an 
 immeasurable magnitude. 
 
 True : but it is to be observed that the various bodies 
 of law prepared by Justinian were the merest approxi 
 mation to what is now comprehended in the idea of a 
 code. His Code was only a collection of the imperial 
 statutes from Hadrian to his own time, that were thought 
 worth preserving ; the Institutes were compends ad 
 mirable, it is true, but still compends, of the more 
 ancient laws ; the Pandects were voluminous abridg 
 ments of the decisions of praetors and the opinions of 
 legal sages, without precision and logical arrangement, 
 abounding in contradictory doctrines, and full of the 
 very uncertainty which was their object to avoid ; while 
 all were vitiated by the fatal defect of admitting a 
 recourse to an authority out of themselves the author 
 ity of the Emperor. An analogous fault is to be 
 remarked in the Code of Napoleon. Explicit as it is 
 in many of its definitions, and felicitous as it is in 
 arrangement, it recognizes the doctrine of usage, and 
 4 
 
74 fdward Livingston. 
 
 thus opens an avenue for the advent of the whole juris 
 prudence of precedent and decrees. 
 
 Now a true code would altogether avoid sources of 
 error like these. The great, evil we have found in the 
 English law is, that it tolerates this reference to the 
 decrees of judges. Nearly all the uncertainty with 
 which it is chargeable, has its origin in this single defect. 
 In recognizing the determination of its ministers as an 
 authority equal to itself, its worst features originate. 
 Law loses the character given it by the definition of 
 Blackstone, as "a rule of action prescribed by the 
 supreme power of the State," and becomes an unknown 
 and variable jumble of dicta. It is no longer " a rule 
 of action," since it sleeps in silence in the heart of the 
 judge, until some case shall arise to call it into existence ; 
 it is not "prescribed," inasmuch as it is not known 
 before it is applied, thus, in many instances assuming 
 an ex post facto operation; and "the supreme power 
 of the State" has nothing to do with this jurisprudence 
 of construction and decrees, which is confined exclu 
 sively to the courts, that in theory are supposed to be 
 the mere interpreters of the law. A true code would 
 find a remedy for this, in that it is a something entire in 
 itself; in its parts, and as a whole, it is complete; or 
 should the experience of its practical working discover 
 points in which it could be improved, it provides regu 
 larly for its own systematic amendment till it shall reach 
 the highest possible perfection. Not the wanton caprice 
 or prejudices of che judge not his sinister motives or 
 base subjection to prevailing influences no prevari 
 cating and self-constiiuted tribunal but the legitimate 
 agents of the community, the only proper law-devising 
 and law-establishing power, are made the arbiters of 
 rules in which the properties, happiness, and lives of 
 the people are involved. 
 
JOURNALISM.* 
 
 IREAT is Journalism," exclaims Mr. Carlyle, 
 in his rhapsodical but striking way, " Great is 
 Journalism. Is not every able editor a ruler 
 of the world, being a persuader of it : though self- 
 elected, yet sanctioned by the sale of his numbers ? 
 whom indeed the world has the readiest method of de 
 posing, should need be that of merely doing nothing to 
 him ; which ends in starvation." Again, says the same 
 original writer: "There is no church, sayest thou ? 
 The voice of prophecy has gone dumb ! This is even 
 what I dispute ; but in any case, hast thou not still 
 preaching enough ? A preaching friar settles himself in 
 every village ; and builds a pulpit, which he calls news 
 paper. Therefrom he preaches what most momentous 
 doctrine is in him, for man s salvation ; and dost not 
 thou listen and believe ?" 
 
 We cite these passages, because they recognize the 
 fact that Journalism is a distinct profession, exerting an 
 influence over society like that of the king over his sub 
 jects, or of the preacher over his hearers. Much as 
 has been said of the power of the press, it is a power 
 that has never yet been measured. Let us, then, de 
 tain the reader with a remark or two upon the functions 
 of editorship, and the place it holds among the moral 
 agencies of the world. 
 
 * From the Democratic Review, Jan., 
 
/ 6 Journalism. 
 
 No man requires a larger range of intellect, more va 
 ried acquirements, or greater strength of character, than 
 the conductor of a public journal. Of course, we al 
 lude to one who acts with a full sense of the dignity and 
 worth of his calling, and a conscientious desire to dis 
 charge its duties. Neither statesman, lawyer, nor di 
 vine moves in a broader sphere, or has more occasion 
 for the use of the noblest faculties both of mind and 
 heart. The journalist stands in immediate contact with 
 the public mind ; he gives a tone to public sentiment ; 
 he is the guardian and guide of public morals. Thou 
 sands of men, each morning and evening, listen to his 
 voice, are moved by his persuasions, are chastised by 
 his rebukes, or corrupted by his license. He may ele 
 vate the bad, or degrade the good he can stimulate the 
 worst or the best passions. 
 
 His influence again differs from that of others not 
 only in its directness but its persistency. While theirs 
 is confined to particular and distant occasions, his acts 
 incessantly. The orator agitates only while he is speak 
 ing ; the preacher is hemmed in by the walls of his 
 church and the limits of a Sabbath-day ; the statesman 
 seldom steps out of his bureau ; the man of science is 
 fixed among his retorts and crucibles ; and the teacher s 
 sway is confined to his school-room. But the editor is 
 universally as well as perpetually at work. As the 
 mails carry his speculations from one city to another, 
 his action spreads like the waves of a pool, and before 
 the last ripple has subsided, the waters at the centre 
 are again disturbed. Even while he sleeps, his thoughts 
 are awake, entering other minds, and moulding them 
 to good or evil. 
 
 " They rest not stay not, on, still on they wing 
 Their flight," 
 
Journalism. 77 
 
 and whether benign or pestiferous, produce their inevit 
 able impressions. Says the adage, " Give me the 
 making of the songs of a people, and I will make their 
 characters ;" with greater propriety one might say, 
 "Give me the making of the newspapers of a nation, 
 and I will make its minds." The newspaper is every 
 where, in the counting-house and in the parlor, in the 
 bar-room and in the bedroom, on board the steamboat 
 and in the student s chamber. All subjects are discussed 
 in it ; all classes of men read it ; and all men, to an 
 extent, are affected by what it contains. " He," says 
 one of the class,* " should have a head cool, clear, and 
 sagacious ; a heart warm and benevolent ; a nice sense 
 of justice ; honesty that no temptation could corrupt ; 
 intrepidity that no danger could intimidate ; and inde 
 pendence superior to every consideration of mere in 
 terest, enmity, or friendship. He should possess the 
 power of diligent application, and be capable of en 
 during great fatigue. He should have a temperament 
 so happily mingled, that while he easily kindled at pub 
 lic error or injustice his indignation should never trans 
 gress the bounds of judgment, but, in its strongest ex 
 pression^ show that smoothness and amenity which the 
 language of choler always lacks. He should, in short, 
 be such a man as a contemporary writer described 
 that sturdy democrat, old Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun 
 a gentleman, steady in his principles ; of nice honor ; 
 abundance of learning ; brave as the sword he wears, 
 and bold as a lion ; a sure friend and irreconcilable 
 enemy ; who would lose his life readily to serve his 
 country, and would not do a base thing to save it. 
 This is the beau ideal of a conductor of a public news 
 paper." 
 
 * William Leggett. 
 
78 Journalism. 
 
 But it is an ideal that, like most of the ideals of men 
 of ardent temperament, has been seldom if ever real 
 ized. In casting our eyes over the history of newspa 
 per literature, we scarcely recall a man who has fulfilled 
 the high character that pertains to the profession. There 
 have been divines to whom Cowper s beautiful descrip 
 tion of St. Paul might well be applied Fletchers, 
 Halls, Brainards, and Channings ; there have been 
 Mansfields, Romillys, and Marshalls, in law ; Garricks, 
 Siddonses, Kembles, and Talmas, as actors ; there have 
 been Boerhaaves, Jenners, Goods, and Bells, in physics ; 
 there have been Boyles, Newtons, and Bacons, in 
 science ; and Caesars, Bonapartes, and Washingtons, in 
 war ; in short, in all departments of intellectual exer 
 tion there have been crowds of notable men ; but no 
 where on the lists of great or distinguished persons do 
 we find the name of one whose celebrity has been ac 
 quired in the walk of the Journalist. Carrel has pro 
 duced an impression in France, Fonblanque in Eng 
 land, and Leggett in the United States, but it has been 
 an impression as fleeting as that of fallen leaves ; neither 
 of them can be said to have made a permanent reputa 
 tion. 
 
 How are we to account for this extraordinary fact ? 
 Why is it that a means so intimately connected with hu 
 man happiness as the press, so powerful over social is 
 sues and human destinies, has so seldom been used by 
 men of the loftiest endowments ? 
 
 It is not because the sphere of the Journalist is too 
 contracted for a noble ambition ; for it is a sphere as 
 wide as the universe of intelligence, and as durable as 
 language. As a means of swaying the minds of men, 
 which is the essence of power, as an instrument for ele 
 vating society, which is the object of goodness, as a 
 vehicle for the expression and enforcement of thought, 
 
Journalism. 79 
 
 the press is without an equal among all the constituted 
 agencies of human utterance. No voice reaches so far 
 as the voice of the press ; no book arrests a wider atten 
 tion or penetrates a deeper retirement. 
 
 It is not because the subjects with which newspaper 
 writing is mostly occupied, are temporary and incidental. 
 That species of composition is not confined to chron 
 icling events, or to fighting the battles of transient parties. 
 Higher objects often engage it. The instruction of so 
 ciety in the nature of government, the inculcation of 
 great principles, the application of judicious criticism, 
 the development and control of social tendencies, the 
 direction of public opinion, the exposition of public 
 characters, the prosecution of grand moral reforms, and 
 the correction of prevailing iniquities and frauds, are 
 among its principal functions. The editor is stationed, 
 as a sentinel upon the watch-towers of society, to warn 
 it of the approach of dangers ; to summon it to battle, 
 and to cheer it on to success. 
 
 Nor is it because there is anything in the condition 
 of the press to cripple its activity and arrest its influence. 
 No better condition could be required for it than ob 
 tains in this country. It is founded on a basis of per 
 fect freedom. Liberty of action, which it is the aim of 
 the democratic doctrine to introduce into all kinds of 
 business, it has enjoyed from the beginning, Govern 
 ment has never dared to impose a restraint upon it; it 
 has been exposed to the stimulus of competition ; it 
 has received favor from all political parties. Whoever 
 may have fancied that he possessed talent enough to un 
 dertake a public journal, has been at liberty to do so, 
 and he has had the opportunity of displaying all the 
 enthusiasm and talent that he could bring to the task. 
 
 We must look elsewhere, then, for the causes of the 
 singular fact to which we refer. We must look, not so 
 
8o Journalism. 
 
 much to journalists themselves, as to the community in 
 which they live. It is because so low a standard has 
 been established in regard to journalism, that so few 
 men of the strongest intellect and character have taken 
 it up ; they have sought distinction in other spheres less 
 influential, but supposed to be more honorable. Be 
 cause society has not required more, more has not been 
 done. Journalists are what society has made them ; 
 if they fall short of the lofty dignity of their vo 
 cation, it is because society falls short in its demands. 
 Johnson, in his prologue, says that "they who live to 
 please, must please to live," which is especially true of 
 the press. It has been regarded as a mere agent for 
 pleasing society, and therefore it has aspired to no 
 higher function. It has failed to perceive its real value ; 
 it has failed in asserting its claims ; it has failed in dis 
 charging its duties as an instructor ; it has failed in as 
 serting the moral power of which it is capable. 
 
 But its conductors, we repeat, are not so much to 
 blame for this result, as its patrons, as they are called 
 the public. True, it has been courted by some, and 
 feared by others courted by the ambitious and feared 
 by the timid : yet, while courted and feared, it has been 
 neglected and despised. Very little discrimination has 
 marked the public judgment of its character. So long 
 as it could be made to minister to prevailing prejudices, 
 so long as it could be turned to the purposes of party, 
 so long as it lent itself to the cause of demagogues, so 
 long and no longer has it met with favor. Discerning, 
 genuine, and hearty approbation for independence, in 
 tegrity, and talent, it has seldom or never received. 
 
 A sort of double and inconsistent conduct has been 
 expected of editors. While they have been solicited to 
 furnish aid to all kinds of partial schemes, they have 
 yet been blamed for a want of fidelity to principle ; 
 
Journalism. 8 1 
 
 while the whole strength of great parties is brought to 
 bear upon them to secure their aid or crush their oppo 
 sition, they have yet been derided for suppleness of 
 purpose and pliancy of doctrine ; while every man who 
 has an object to accomplish, besets them with seductions 
 and promises of reward, they have yet been scorned for 
 venality and time-serving. A high unvarying moral 
 test has never been applied to them. When a man of 
 lofty faith and stern virtue has arisen among them, 
 when he has shown a disposition to discuss questions 
 in the light of great principles, when he has refused to 
 listen to the whispers or move at the beck of cliques 
 and factions, when he has regarded politics as the most 
 important branch of morals, and sought to acquit him 
 self of the duties of his calling, with a nice regard to 
 truth and conscience, how has he been received by the 
 community ? As a worthy, noble, fearless man ? As a 
 patriot who deserved well of his fellows ? As a Christian 
 filled with a strong sense of the responsibilities of hu 
 man existence ? Far otherwise. Hostility and con 
 tempt, rather, have been his rewards. His professed 
 friends have dropped away from him ; his enemies have 
 redoubled and sharpened their abuse, until a strong 
 public opinion was aroused against him, and he was 
 compelled in the end, from sheer want of support, to 
 relinquish his pursuit, and seek in some other employ 
 ment the means of subsistence. 
 
 Can we forget the career of the lamented Leggett ? 
 There was a man who, during one of the most exciting 
 and critical periods of our political experience, pursued 
 a line of determined and intrepid honesty. A course 
 of corrupt legislation, openly defended by one party, 
 and connived at by a large portion of the other, had 
 fastened upon the people a system of finance and bank 
 ing which was fast undermining their liberties and 
 
82 Jo u rnalism . 
 
 morals. The firm old soldier-statesman, who was then 
 President, more sagacious than many of his supporters, 
 more honest than any of his opponents, had given the 
 first blow to the insidious evil. After a long and des 
 perate contest, he succeeded ; and yet it was only by a 
 partial success. Mr. Leggett, who had stood side by 
 side with him in the most trying positions of the fight, 
 saw, even in the moment of victory, that the triumph 
 was not completely achieved. The enemy, overcome 
 by the energies of the General Government, was still 
 acting in full strength under the protection of the in 
 dividual States. That enemy, he conceived, was to be 
 attacked in his strongholds there ; instant to his con 
 victions of duty, he began a vigorous assault ; neither 
 persuasion on one hand, nor persecution on the other, 
 could induce him to soften his ponderous blows ; and 
 day after day he aroused the public mind with dis 
 cussions full of strong thought and eloquent invective. 
 What was the result? Desertion and poverty for the 
 time to be followed, but not till he was cold in his 
 grave, with monumental honors and eulogy. 
 
 The fault, we cannot too often repeat, is with the 
 community. What they ask for, they receive. If their 
 praise and money are showered upon those who pander 
 to a depraved taste, they must expect depraved and 
 worthless writers. But if they will recognize the claims 
 of a better order of men, such an order will imme 
 diately arise. There cannot be a demand in this branch 
 of political economy without a supply. 
 
 i. The community should require its editors to be 
 intellectual men. By this we mean, men who should 
 possess both power of thought and facility of ex 
 pression. The first is needed because it is incumbent 
 upon them to grapple with difficult questions ; the sec 
 ond, because they are to make those questions plain to 
 
Jo u rnalism . 8 3 
 
 minds of every cast. All that interests men as mem 
 bers of a social and political body the measures of 
 parties, the relations of States, the merits of laws, the 
 pretensions of artists, the schemes of projectors, the 
 movements of reformers, the characters of politicians 
 all are, in turn, themes of newspaper controversy and 
 remark. Politics, international and municipal law, 
 political economy, moral and social science, and the 
 art of reading individual character, must be understood 
 by the editor and not only understood, but explained. 
 He must have that clear insight into general principles, 
 and that familiarity with details, which will enable him 
 to speak with clearness, originality, and decision. 
 
 Topics, moreover, are often sprung upon him with 
 the suddenness of surprise topics in which are in 
 volved the happiness of immense numbers of people, 
 who look to him for information and guidance. His 
 faculties, fully prepared and rightly disciplined, must be 
 at his command. He must stand ready, with argument, 
 with illustration, with eloquence, to awaken the dull, to 
 convince the doubting, to move the inert, and to instruct 
 and interest the more enlightened. But, to do this ef 
 fectually, he must be at once a patient thinker, a pro 
 found scholar, and a practised writer. He must have 
 accomplished his mind by the observation of mankind, 
 by the reading of books, and by habits of quick and 
 appropriate expression. He must, above all, be pene 
 trated by that deep Christian philosophy which estimates 
 all questions in their bearing upon the most exalted 
 and permanent interests of human nature. 
 
 2. The community should require of its editors that 
 they be firm and independent men. Force of will is 
 no less necessary to them than greatness of thought. 
 Few men have more temptations to an expedient and 
 vacillating course. Regarded by many, and often re- 
 
84 Journalism. 
 
 garding themselves, as the mere hacks of party, or 
 mere instruments of gratification to prevailing passions, 
 they are not expected to exhibit a fervent zeal in the 
 prosecution of great ends. Like advocates paid by a 
 client to carry a particular point, they are supposed to 
 have fulfilled their obligations when they have made the 
 worse appear the better reason. In many instances, if 
 they have succeeded in embarrassing an adversary, if 
 they have covered an opponent with ridicule, if they 
 have given a plausible aspect to falsehood, if they have 
 assisted a schemer in imposing upon credulous or igno 
 rant people, if they have been faithful to the interests of 
 their employers, they are clapped upon the shoulders as 
 serviceable fellows, and rewarded with a double allow 
 ance of governmental or mercantile patronage. The 
 notion that the press has a worthier destiny, seems 
 hardly to cross their minds. That it should become a 
 fountain of truth and moral influerice ; that it should 
 take its stand upon some high and good principle, to 
 assert it boldly, in the face of all opposition ; that it 
 should strive to carry it out with the earnestness of a 
 missionary, with the self-denial of a martyr, despising 
 as well the bribes of those who would seduce it, as the 
 threats of those who would terrify it, acknowledging no 
 allegia nce to any power but justice in a word, be 
 willing to face danger and death in the discharge of 
 duty is an intrepidity which, we fear, to most of the 
 managers of public journals would seem to the last de 
 gree chimerical. Yet it is an end for which they should 
 strive. No less than this should society require of them ; 
 nothing less than this can render them worthy of the 
 trust which is committed to their keeping. 
 
 3. Journalists, again, must be required to imbue 
 themselves with a just and Christian spirit. Few things 
 are more to be deplored than the low tone, the unkind 
 
Journalism. 85 
 
 feeling which characterizes their intercourse with each 
 other. We do not speak merely of those flagrant viola 
 tions of decency which degrade the lower class of 
 journals. We speak of the puerility, the violence, and 
 the want of justice, which even the most respectable 
 journals exhibit ; we speak of their proneness to distort 
 and to exaggerate, of their recklessness of fair-dealing, 
 of their want of candor, and of their base subservience 
 to particular classes. Indeed, so frequent have been 
 their offences, in these respects, that their dishonesty 
 has almost passed into a proverb. "I only," said Jef 
 ferson, believe the advertisements of a newspaper;" 
 to which another distinguished man added, "and he 
 ought not to have believed them." "He lies like a 
 newspaper," would not be a far-fetched comparison. 
 We are aware that it is urged in extenuation of these 
 faults, that they are to be ascribed to the circumstances 
 of haste and confusion in which daily editors write ; 
 we know it is alleged that in other pursuits, law and 
 commerce, for instance, the average honesty, of those 
 who follow them is not greater than that of journalists : 
 but, with all these palliations, with every wish to deal 
 charitably, we must say that a large amount of moral 
 aberration remains against them which admits of no ex 
 cuse. What ! shall we be told, because a man writes in 
 haste, that he must therefore write falsely ? that because 
 lawyers and merchants fall below the standard of virtue, 
 therefore editors should be allowed to do the same, 
 editors, whose influence is so much more extensive, 
 whose duties are so much more important ? It is a 
 shallow defence. Better relinquish their profession for 
 ever, than sacrifice to it their integrity. Better drop the 
 pen, and take up the axe or the hammer, than wield the 
 former only to sap and extinguish public morals ! No ! 
 we demand a more exalted morality at their hands. 
 
86 Jo u rnalism . 
 
 When a man assumes to direct the opinions and form 
 the characters of his contemporaries, when he volunta 
 rily places himself in the attitude of a leader of the 
 general mind, he should be compelled, by the force of 
 public sentiment, to cherish habits of the strictest ac 
 curacy and honor. We require of the preacher of the 
 pulpit, that he should not degrade his office by incon 
 sistencies of conduct ; can we require less of the preacher 
 of the press ? Should a Channing, or a Hawkes, or a 
 Dewey, or a Hughes, act in a manner derogatory to 
 their sacred calling, would society overlook it? If a 
 magistrate on the bench pollutes the ermine he wears, 
 do we admit of any apology for his venality or corrup 
 tion? Should a Taney, or a Story, or a Baldwin, or the 
 meanest functionary of a county court, accept bribes 
 from the parties to a suit, or be intimidated by popular 
 clamor, or swayed in his decisions by personal feeling, 
 could he avert disgrace ? Could any circumstance of 
 his position press of business, want of time, haste 
 be pleaded in defence of his crime ? Why, then, should 
 we excuse similar defections in those who occupy higher 
 places, and whose truth, consistency, and justice are 
 even more necessary than theirs to the good order, virtue, 
 and happiness of society ? 
 
 We have spoken freely of the present condition of 
 the press : we have spoken with equal freedom of what 
 it might become. It is in no censorious spirit that we 
 have pointed to its failings : it is with a spirit of benev 
 olence and hope that we have indicated its duty. We 
 are sorry that our strictures are deserved, but we are 
 glad to know that instances exist in which they are in 
 applicable. It gives us pleasure to acknowledge that 
 within the last few years the character of the American 
 press has greatly improved. Were it not invidious, we 
 could point to editors who, to the best of their ability, 
 
Jou rnalism . 8 7 
 
 have striven to realize the ideal which we have depicted. 
 We could refer to a Bryant, foregoing the applause that 
 the world would willingly render to his great poetic 
 talent and individual character, to become an example 
 of the true, accomplished, unyielding editor ; to a 
 Brownson, who prefers the fame of a candid, fearless 
 writer, to the seductions of clerical supremacy ; and 
 to several others, still young and obscure, to whom the 
 emoluments and honors of professional and political 
 distinction have no blandishments, in comparison with 
 those of becoming, as journalists, upright advocates of 
 all that is good. But our object is not personal. We 
 wish only to rescue Journalism from its infidelity to 
 itself, and from the indifference and contempt of the 
 public. We wish only to assert its claims, to vindicate 
 its dignity, to exhort it to do its duty. 
 
 It is among the cheering signs of the times that 
 young men of education and talent, who have been 
 accustomed to crowd the professions of law, medicine, 
 and theology, are many of them now directing their 
 energies to the business of editorship and popular in 
 struction. The growing demand for newspapers, for 
 cheap books, for literary and scientific lectures, is a 
 proof that the love of knowledge is spreading through 
 all classes ; that the treasures of philosophy and poetry 
 are no longer to be shut up in rare caskets, as the pos 
 session of the few ; that the general mind, too long 
 satisfied with low and sensual delights, is seeking 
 for higher aliment. The mass of men are availing 
 themselves of the means of improvement which a con 
 dition of freedom furnishes, and call for an increased 
 number of instructors and guides. Many who are 
 competent to the task are answering the call. Already 
 they constitute a considerable body. They are march 
 ing forward to scatter the seeds of good or evil. It is 
 
88 Journalism, 
 
 important that their movement should take a right di 
 rection, for, if they are animated by the right spirit, no 
 one is able to calculate the good that will be accom 
 plished. Let them be true to the cause of liberty, 
 justice, refinement, and progress, and they will give an 
 incalculable impulse to the upward and onward march 
 of society. But let them fail in this, let them be false 
 to their high trusts, and we know of no class of men 
 whose guilt would be more deservedly deep and dam 
 ning. 
 
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.* 
 
 "That cheerful one, who knoweth all 
 The songs of all the winged choristers, 
 And in one sequence of melodious sound 
 Pours all their music." Southey s Madoc in Aztlan. 
 
 FEW years ago, there arrived at the hotel, 
 erected near Niagara Falls, an odd-looking 
 man, whose appearance and deportment were 
 quite in contrast to those of the crowds of well-dressed 
 and polished figures which adorned that celebrated re 
 sort. He seemed just to have come out of the woods. 
 His dress of leather stood dreadfully in need of repair, 
 apparently not having felt the touch of laundress or 
 needlewoman for many a long month. A worn-out 
 blanket, that might have served for a bed, was buckled 
 to his shoulders ; a large knife hung on one side, 
 balanced by a long rusty tin box on the other ; and his 
 beard, uncropped, tangled, and coarse, fell down upon 
 his bosom, as if to counterpoise the weight of thick, 
 black hair that curled about his shoulders. This strange 
 being, to the spectators seemingly half-civilized, half- 
 savage, had a quick glancing eye, an elastic firm step, 
 and a sharp face that promised to cut its way through 
 the cane-brakes, both of society and the wilderness. 
 He pushed into the sitting-room, unstrapped his little 
 
 * From the Democratic Re-view, May, 1842. 
 
90 John James Audubon. 
 
 burden, looked round for the landlord, and then 
 modestly asked for breakfast. The host at first drew 
 back with an evident repugnance from the apparition 
 which thus proposed to intrude its uncouth form among 
 the genteeler visitors ; but a word whispered in his ear 
 speedily removed his doubts. The stranger took his 
 place among the company, some staring, some shrug 
 ging, and some even laughing outright. Yet, there was 
 more in that single man than in all the rest of the throng. 
 An American Woodsman, as he called himself a true, 
 genuine son of nature, he had been entertained with 
 distinction at the tables of princes ; learned societies, to 
 which Cuvier and his like belonged, had bowed to wel 
 come his entrance ; kings had been complimented when 
 he spoke to them ; in short, he was one whose fame 
 will be growing brighter, when the fashionables who 
 laughed at him, and many even much greater than they, 
 shall have perished. From every hill-top, and every 
 deep shady grove, the birds will sing his name. The 
 little wren will pipe it with her matin hymn about our 
 houses ; the oriole carol it from the slender grasses of 
 the meadows ; the turtle-dove roll it through the secret 
 forests ; the many-voiced mocking-bird pour it along 
 the evening air ; and the imperial eagle, as he sits in his 
 craggy home, far up the blue mountains, will scream it 
 to the tempests and the stars. He was John James 
 Audubon, the Ornithologist. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle, in his book about Heroes, has given us 
 the heroic manifestation of human nature in a variety 
 of aspects. He has told us of the Hero as divinity ; 
 of the Hero as prophet ; of the Hero as poet ; of the 
 Hero as priest ; of the Hero as man of letters ; and of 
 the Hero as king. But one species of hero was en 
 tirely omitted? He did not recognize the Hero of 
 science ; he did not know that, at the time he was 
 
John James Audubori. 91 
 
 writing, there travelled alone, somewhere in the vast 
 primeval forests of America, a simple naturalist, and 
 yet a character full of manhood and heroic nobleness 
 possessed of every quality of energy and endurance to 
 be found in the most illustrious of his Great Men ? If 
 he did not know it, let us inform him. Let us show 
 him not after any manner of our own, but from those 
 indubitable evidences, the works of the man himself 
 that there are heroes of the best sort, even in these dull 
 days. " Heroism," says Mr. Carlyle s fast friend, Em 
 erson, "is contempt for safety and ease/ "it is a 
 self-t^ust which slights the restraints of prudence in the 
 plenitude of its energy and power," " a mind of such 
 a balance that no disturbance can shake its will, but 
 pleasantly, and as it were, merrily advances to its own 
 music," "the extreme of individual nature," "obe 
 dience to the secret impulses of an individual charac 
 ter," "is of an undaunted boldness, and of a fortitude 
 not to be wearied out." If this be a good definition, 
 then our hero is one of the truest of the world s heroes, 
 worthy to be ranked and recorded on the same page 
 with the greatest. 
 
 We do not propose to write the biography of Mr. 
 Audubon. There will be time enough for that when 
 his work here shall have been finished.* We wish 
 only to present some phases of his singular and esti 
 mable character, as nearly as we can in his own words. 
 Fortunately, he is of a communicative disposition, and 
 we shall not be compelled to wander far for our mate 
 rials. Those delightful interludes of description and 
 
 * He has prepared an autobiography, which will be published after 
 his death. What a treat for the readers of that day that distant 
 day, we hope it may be! [This has been published by Putnam & 
 Co. within the past year.] 
 
92 John James Audubon. 
 
 adventure, that are woven into the woof of his equally 
 delightful sketches of birds, are full of suggestions for 
 us. Would only that our space were equal to the 
 abundance of our means of interest ! Would that the 
 dimensions of this publication were consistent with a 
 full display of the simplicity, single-heartedness, en 
 thusiasm, and perseverance of the subject of our brief 
 talk; of that genius, as Wilson has it, "self-nursed, 
 self-refined, and self-tutored, among the inexhaustible 
 treasures of the forest, on which, in one soul-engross 
 ing pursuit, it had lavished its dearest and divinest 
 passion." 
 
 Mr. Audubon was born about 1782, in the State of 
 Louisiana, not Pennsylvania, as has been many times 
 stated. His parents, who were French, were of that 
 happy nature which disposed them to encourage the 
 first indications of talent in the minds of their chil 
 dren. They early perceived in the subject of these re 
 marks that love of the woods and fields which has 
 since made him so conspicuous as a naturalist. " When 
 I had hardly learned to walk," says he, in the preface 
 to the first volume of his Ornithology, " and to articu 
 late those first words always so endearing to parents, 
 the productions of nature that lay spread all around 
 were constantly pointed out to me. They soon became 
 my playmates ; and before my ideas were sufficiently 
 formed to enable me to estimate the difference between 
 the azure tints of the sky and the emerald hue of the 
 bright foliage, I felt that an intimacy with them, not 
 consisting of friendship merely, but bordering on 
 frenzy, must accompany my steps through life ; and 
 now, more than ever, am I persuaded of the power of 
 those early impressions. They laid such a hold of me, 
 that when removed from the woods, the prairies, and 
 
John James Audubon. 93 
 
 the brooks, or shut up from the view of the wide At 
 lantic, I experienced none of those pleasures most con 
 genial to my mind. None but aerial companions 
 suited my fancy. No roof seemed so secure to me as 
 that formed of the dense foliage under which the 
 feathered tribe were seen to resort, or the caves and 
 fissures of the massy rocks to which the dark-winged 
 cormorant and the curlew retired to rest, or to protect 
 themselves from the fury of the tempest. My father 
 generally accompanied my steps ; procured birds, and 
 flowers for me with great eagerness ; pointed out the 
 elegant movements of the former the beauty and soft 
 ness of their plumage the manifestations of their pleas 
 ure or their sense of danger and the always perfect 
 forms and splendid attire of the latter. My valued 
 preceptor would then speak of the departure and re 
 turn of birds with the seasons ; would describe their 
 haunts, and, more wonderful than all, their change of 
 livery ; thus exciting me to study them, and to raise 
 my mind toward their great Creator. A vivid pleas 
 ure shone upon those days of my early youth, attended 
 with a calmness of feeling that seldom failed to rivet 
 my attention for hours, while I gazed in ecstasy upon 
 the pearly and shining eggs, as they lay embedded in 
 the softest down, or among dried leaves and twigs, or 
 were exposed upon the burning sand or weather-beaten 
 rock of our Atlantic shore. I was taught to look upon 
 them as flowers yet in the bud. I watched their open 
 ing, to see how nature had provided each different spe 
 cies with eyes, either opened at birth or closed for 
 some time after ; to trace the slow progress of the 
 young birds toward perfection, or admire the celerity 
 with which some of them, while yet unfledged, removed 
 themselves from danger to security." 
 
94 John James Audubon. 
 
 Nor did the tastes thus early implanted in the mind 
 of the young enthusiast desert him in maturer years. 
 As Wordsworth chants, 
 
 "The sounding cataract 
 
 Haunted him, like a passion ; the tall rock, 
 The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 
 Their colors and their forms, were then to him 
 An appetite ; a feeling and a love 
 That had no need of a remoter charm, 
 By thought supplied, or any interest 
 Un borrowed from the eye." 
 
 "I grew up," he continues, "and my wishes grew 
 with my form. These wishes were for the entire pos 
 session of all that I saw. I was fervently desirous of 
 becoming acquainted with nature. For many years, 
 however, I was sadly disappointed, and forever, doubt 
 less, must I have desires that cannot be gratified. The 
 moment a bird was dead, no matter how beautiful it 
 had been when in life, the pleasure arising from the 
 possession of it became blunted; and although the 
 greatest care was bestowed in endeavors to preserve the 
 appearance of nature, I looked upon its vesture as more 
 than sullied, as requiring constant attentions and re 
 peated mendings, while, after all, it could no longer be 
 said to be fresh from the hands of its Maker. I wished 
 to possess all the productions of nature, but I wished 
 life with them. This was impossible. Then, what 
 was to be done ? I turned to my father, and made 
 known to him my disappointment and anxiety. He 
 produced a book of Illustrations. A new life ran in my 
 veins. I turned over the leaves with avidity, and al 
 though what I saw was not what I longed for, it gave 
 me a desire to copy nature. To nature I went, and 
 tried to imitate her, as in the days of my childhood I 
 
John James Audubon. 9 5 
 
 had tried to raise myself from the ground and stand 
 erect, before time had imparted the vigor necessary for 
 the success of such an undertaking. How sorely dis 
 appointed did I feel for many years, when I saw that 
 my productions were worse than those which I ventured 
 (perhaps in silence) to regard as bad in the book given 
 me by my father ! My pencil gave birth to a family of 
 cripples. So maimed were most of them, that they 
 resembled the mangled corpses on a field of battle, 
 compared with the integrity of living men. These dif 
 ficulties and disappointments irritated me, but never 
 for a moment destroyed the desire of obtaining perfect 
 representations of nature. The worse my drawings 
 were, the more beautiful did I see the originals. To 
 have been torn from the study, would have been as 
 death to me. My time w r as entirely occupied with it. 
 I produced hundreds of these rude sketches annually ; 
 and, for a long time, at my request, they made bonfires 
 on the anniversary of my birthday." 
 
 In his sixteenth year, that is, about 1798, he went to 
 France to pursue his education. He received lessons 
 in drawing from the celebrated David. But the "eyes 
 and noses of giants, and the heads of horses represented 
 in ancient sculpture," w 7 ere not the themes he would be 
 at ; and, although he prosecuted his studies sedulously, 
 his heart still panted for the sparkling streams and in 
 terminable forests of his "native land of groves." He 
 returned home the following year, with a rekindled 
 ardor for the woods, and commenced a collection of 
 designs, destined shortly to swell into that magnificent 
 series of volumes which the world has applauded as the 
 " Birds of America." They were begun on a beautiful 
 plantation which his father had given him, situated on 
 the banks of the Schuylkill, and near a creek known 
 as the Perkioming. There, amid its fine woodlands, its 
 
96 John James Audit-ban. 
 
 extensive fields, its hills crowned with evergreens, he 
 meditated his simple and agreeable objects, and pursued 
 his rambles, from the first faint streaks of day until late 
 in the evening, when wet with dew, and laden with 
 feathered captives, he returned to the quiet enjoyment 
 of the fireside. 
 
 Yet the passion for birds did not seem to seal his 
 heart to the influences of a still more tender and ex 
 alted passion. He married, and was fortunate in 
 marrying a lady who in vicissitude has animated his 
 courage, and in prosperity appreciated the grounds and 
 measure of his success. "But who cares," says he, 
 speaking of the event, "to listen to the love-tales of a 
 naturalist, whose feelings may be supposed to be as 
 light as the feathers of the birds he delineates?" 
 
 For many years the necessities of life drove him into 
 commercial enterprises, which in the end involved him 
 in a series of losses. His mind, in fact, was so filled 
 with Nature, that all his traffickings proved unprofitable. 
 From observation and study only could he derive grati 
 fication. He was compelled to struggle against the 
 wishes of all his friends, who, excepting his wife and 
 children, to their lasting honor be it said, strove to 
 wean him from pursuits that, in the world s eye, are so 
 barren and unproductive. These importunities had an 
 effect directly the contrary of what was intended. They 
 only kindled instead of dampening his ardor. He un 
 dertook long and tedious journeys ; he ransacked the 
 woods, the lakes, the prairies, and the shores of the At 
 lantic ; he spent years away from his family. "Yet, will 
 you believe it," says he, "I had no other object in view 
 than simply to enjoy the sight of nature. Never for a 
 moment did I conceive the hope of becoming, in any 
 degree, useful to my kind, until I accidentally formed 
 acquaintance with the Prince of Musignano (Lucien 
 
John James Audubon. 97 
 
 Bonaparte), at Philadelphia, whither I had gone with a 
 view of proceeding eastward along the coast." This 
 was the 5th of April, 1824. 
 
 Of his public labors we shall speak a word in the se 
 quel ; but for the present, let us follow him in his sol 
 itary wanderings. Having lived on his beautiful plan 
 tation for ten years, he was induced to remove to the 
 West. With a mattress, a few prepared viands, and two 
 negroes to assist him in the toils of emigration, he de 
 parted, accompanied by his wife and child, for a resi 
 dence which had been procured for him in the village 
 of Henderson, Kentucky. The method of travelling 
 at that day, which he has faithfully described, furnishes 
 a striking contrast to the more easy and expeditious 
 modes of modern conveyance. It was in the month 
 of October that the small party set out. The autumnal 
 tints, he says, already decorated the shores of that 
 queen of rivers, the Ohio, along which they rowed 
 their feeble skiff. Every tree was hung with long and 
 flowing festoons of different species of vines, many 
 loaded with clustered fruits of varied brilliancy, their 
 rich carmine mingling beautifully with the yellow foli 
 age, which yet predominated over the green leaves, re 
 flecting more lively tints from the clear stream than ever 
 landscape painter portrayed or poet imagined. The 
 days were still warm. The sun had assumed the rich 
 and glowing hue which at that season produces the In 
 dian summer. They glided down the river, meeting no 
 other ripple of the water than that formed by the pro 
 pulsion of the boat. Now and then a large catfish rose 
 to the surface, in pursuit of a shoal of fry, which starting 
 simultaneously from the liquid element, like so many 
 silvery arrows, scattered a shower of light, while the 
 pursuer, with open jaws, seized the stragglers, and with 
 a splash of his tail disappeared from view. At night, 
 5 
 
98 John James Audubon. 
 
 the tinkling of bells along the shore told them that 
 cattle were gently roving from valley to valley in search 
 of food, or returning to their distant homes. The 
 hooting of the great owl, or the muffled noise of its 
 wings as it sailed smoothly over the stream, were mat 
 ters of interest to them ; and so was the sound of the 
 boatman s horn, as it came winding more and more 
 softly from afar. When daylight returned, many song 
 sters burst forth with echoing notes, more and more 
 mellow to the listening ear. Here and there the lonely 
 cabin of a squatter struck the eye, giving note of com 
 mencing civilization. The crossing of the stream by a 
 deer foretold how soon the hills would be covered with 
 snow. Sluggish flat-boats were overtaken and passed ; 
 some laden with produce from the different head-waters 
 of the small rivers, that pour their tributary streams into 
 the Ohio ; others, of less dimensions, crowded with 
 emigrants from distant points, in search of "a new 
 home." The margins of the rivers were amply sup 
 plied with game. A wild turkey, a grouse, or a blue- 
 winged teal, could be procured in a few moments ; and 
 the voyagers fared well, for, whenever they pleased, they 
 landed, struck up a fire, and, provided as they were 
 with the necessary utensils, easily dressed a good re 
 past. 
 
 After jogging on for many days at this rate, they at 
 last reached their habitation in the wilderness. "When 
 I think of these times," continues Mr. Audubon, at the 
 close of his narrative, "and call back to mind the 
 grandeur and beauty of those almost uninhabited 
 shores ; when I picture to myself the dense and lofty 
 summits of the forests, that everywhere spread along the 
 hills, and overhang the margins of the streams, unmo 
 lested by the axe of the settler ; when I know how 
 dearly purchased the safe navigation of that river has 
 
John James Audiibon. 99 
 
 been by the blood of many worthy Virginians ; when I 
 see that no longer any aborigines are to.be found there, 
 and that the vast herds of elks, deers, and buffaloes, 
 which once pastured on those hills and in these valleys, 
 making to themselves great roads to the several salt 
 springs, have ceased to exist ; when I reflect that all 
 this grand portion of our Union, instead of being in a 
 state of nature, is now covered with villages, farms, and 
 towns, where the din of hammers and machinery is 
 constantly heard ; that the woods are fast disappearing 
 under the axe by day and the fire by night ; that hun 
 dreds of steamboats are gliding to and fro over the 
 whole length of the majestic river, forcing commerce to 
 take root and to prosper at every spot ; when I see the 
 surplus population of Europe coming to assist in the 
 destruction of the forest, and transplanting civilization 
 into its darkest recesses ; when I remember that these 
 extraordinary changes have all taken place in the short 
 period of twenty years, I pause wonder and, al 
 though I know all to be fact, can scarcely believe its 
 reality." 
 
 His new domicil at Henderson gave him ample op 
 portunities for the prosecution of his ornithological in 
 quiries. He was accustomed to make long excursions 
 through all the neighboring country, scouring the fields 
 and the woods, and fording the lakes and rivers. He 
 describes himself as setting out early in the morning, 
 with no companion but his dog and gun ; the faithful 
 tin box, containing his pencils and colors, slung to his 
 side ; now popping down the unconscious warbler that 
 makes the air vocal from some neighboring tree ; now 
 hastening to the broad shelter of a venerable oak, to 
 draw the form and paint the variegated plumage of his 
 victim ; now crouching for hours underneath some 
 withered trunk, to observe the habits of some shy and 
 
ioo John James Audubon. 
 
 timid bird ; now climbing the jagged side of a rocky 
 precipice, to find the nest-eggs of the eagle that screams 
 and flutters upon the dry top of the storm-blasted beech 
 still higher up ; now treading upon the head of the 
 serpent that hisses and wreathes among the thick leaves 
 of the copse ; now starting the bear and cougar from 
 their secret lairs in the fastnesses ; now cleaving with 
 lusty sinew, his gun and apparatus fastened above his 
 head, the troubled waters of a swollen stream ; now 
 wandering for days through the illimitable and pathless 
 thickets of the cane-brake, at night sleeping upon the 
 hard ground, or across the branches of trees, and by 
 day almost perishing with thirst ; and now hailing 
 with pleasure, at sunset, the distant but cheerful glim 
 mer of the lonely log-cabin fire. 
 
 The incidents, it may be imagined, of expeditions of 
 this sort are many and striking : exposed to danger on 
 every side, by floods, by tempests, by fires, by wild 
 beasts, and by the hands of man, his life was a per 
 petual scene of vicissitudes and adventures. At one 
 time, in the month of November, he tells us, travelling 
 through the barrens of Kentucky, he remarked a sud 
 den and strange darkness issuing from the western hori 
 zon. At first he supposed it might be a coming storm 
 of thunder and rain. He had proceeded about a mile, 
 when he heard what he imagined to be the distant 
 rumbling of a violent tornado. He spurred his horse, 
 with the view of galloping to a place of shelter, but the 
 animal, apparently more sagacious than the rider, 
 nearly stopped, or rather moved forward slowly, placing 
 one foot before the other with as much precaution as 
 if walking on a smooth sheet of ice. He dismounted 
 to ascertain what was the matter, when the steed fell to 
 groaning piteously, hung his head, spread out his fore 
 legs, as if to save himself from falling, and stood stock- 
 
John James. Ail dibbvn, 101 
 
 still. At that instant, all the shrubs and trees began to 
 move from their very roots, and the ground rose and 
 fell in successive furrows, like the ruffled waters of a sea. 
 It was an earthquake. "Who can tell of the sensations 
 I experienced/ he says, " when rocking on my horse, 
 and moved to and fro like a child in his cradle, with 
 the most imminent danger around, and expecting the 
 ground every moment to open, and present to my eyes 
 such an abyss as might ingulf myself and all around me? 
 The fearful convulsion, however, lasted only a few 
 minutes, and the heavens again brightened as quickly 
 as they had become obscured ; my horse brought his 
 feet to their natural position, raised his head, and gal 
 loped off as if loose and frolicking without a rider." 
 
 At another time, he had just forded Highland 
 Creek, and was entering the tract of bottom land be 
 tween that and Canoe Creek, when he discovered a hazy 
 thickness in the atmosphere, and apprehended another 
 earthquake ; but his horse did not stop, as before, nor 
 exhibit any propensity to prepare for such an occurrence. 
 He dismounted near a brook to quench his thirst. As 
 his lips were about to touch the water, he heard a most 
 extraordinary murmuring sound in the distance. He 
 drank, however, and as he arose, looked toward the 
 southwest, where he observed a yellowish oval spot, 
 quite new to him in appearance. At the next moment, 
 a light breeze began to agitate the taller trees ; it gradu 
 ally increased, until branches and twigs were seen fall 
 ing slantingly to the ground ; and two minutes had 
 scarcely elapsed, when the whole forest was in fearful 
 motion. The noblest trees, unable to stand against the 
 blast, were breaking in pieces. Before he could take 
 measures for his safety, a hurricane was passing op 
 posite the place where he stood. " Never can I forget," 
 says he, "the scene which that moment presented 
 
TO 2 Jwn James Audubon. 
 
 itself. Some of the largest trees were bending and 
 writhing under the gale ; others suddenly snapped 
 across ; and many, after a momentary resistance, fell up 
 rooted to the earth. The mass of branches, twigs, foli 
 age, and dust, that moved through the air, was whirled 
 onward like a cloud of feathers, and, on passing, dis 
 closed a wide space filled with fallen trees, naked 
 stumps, and heaps of shapeless ruins, which marked 
 the path of the tempest. The horrible noise resembled 
 that of the great cataracts of Niagara, and as it howled 
 along in the track of the desolating tempest, produced 
 a feeling in my mind which it is impossible to de 
 scribe." 
 
 Nor to the fury of the elements alone was our intrepid 
 man of science exposed. Once and, singular to say, 
 only once, in wandering for twenty years was he 
 threatened with death by the hand of man. This was, 
 when returning from the Upper Mississippi, he was 
 forced to cross one of the wide prairies of that region. 
 It was toward the dusk of the evening, when wearied 
 with an interminable jaunt, he approached a light that 
 feebly shone from the window of a log hut. He reached 
 the spot, and presenting himself at the door, asked a 
 woman of tall figure whether he might take shelter under 
 her roof. Her voice was gruff, and her dress carelessly 
 thrown about her person. Answering his question in 
 the affirmative, he walked in, took a wooden stool, and 
 quietly seated himself by the fire. A finely formed 
 young Indian, his head resting between his hands, with 
 his elbows on his knees, was seated in the centre of the 
 cabin. A long bow stood against the wall, while a 
 quantity of arrows and two or three black raccoon-skins 
 lay at his feet. He moved not : he apparently breathed 
 not. Being addressed in French, he raised his head, 
 pointed to one of his eyes with his finger, and gave a 
 
James Audiibon. 103 
 
 significant glance with the other. His face was covered 
 with blood. It appeared, that an hour before, in the 
 act of discharging an arrow at a raccoon, the arrow split 
 upon the cord, and sprang back with such violence into 
 his right eye, as to destroy it forever. "Feeling 
 hungry," Mr. Audubon continues, "I inquired what 
 sort of fare I might expect. Such a thing as a bed was 
 not to be seen, but many large untanned bear and buf 
 falo hides lay piled up in a corner. I drew a fine time 
 piece from my vest, and told the woman that it was late, 
 and that I was fatigued. She had espied my watch, the 
 richness of which seemed to operate upon her feelings 
 with electric quickness. She told me that there was 
 plenty of venison and jerked buffalo meat, and that on 
 removing the ashes I should find a cake. But my watch 
 had struck her fancy, and her curiosity had to be grati 
 fied with a sight of it. I took off the gold chain that 
 secured it from around my neck, and presented it to her. 
 She was all ecstasy, spoke of its beauty, asked me its 
 value, put the chain around her brawny neck, saying 
 how happy the possession of such a chain would make 
 her. Thoughtless, and, as I fancied myself in so retired 
 a spot, secure, I paid little attention to her talk or her 
 movements. I helped my dog to a good supper of 
 venison, and was not long in satisfying the demands of 
 my own appetite. The Indian rose from his seat as if 
 in extreme suffering. He passed and repassed me 
 several times, and once pinched me on the side so vio 
 lently, that the pain nearly brought forth an exclamation 
 of anger. I looked at him. His eye met mine ; but 
 his look was so forbidding that it struck a chill into the 
 more nervous part of my system. He again seated 
 himself, drew a butcher-knife from its greasy scabbard, 
 examined its edge, as I would do that of a razor 1 
 suspected to be dull, replaced it, and again taking his 
 
IO4 John James Auduban. 
 
 tomahawk from his back, filled the pipe of it with to 
 bacco, and sent me expressive glances whenever our 
 hostess chanced to have her back toward us. Never till 
 that moment had my senses been awakened to the 
 danger which I now suspected to .be about me. I re 
 turned glance for glance with my companion, and rested 
 well assured that, whatever enemies I might have, he 
 was not of the number." 
 
 In the mean time, he retired to rest upon the skins, 
 when two athletic youths, the sons of the woman, made 
 their entrance. She whispered with them a little while, 
 when they fell to eating and drinking, to a state border 
 ing on intoxication. "Judge my astonishment," he 
 says, "when I saw this incarnate fiend take a large 
 carving-knife, and go to the grindstone to whet its edge ! 
 I saw her pour the water on the turning-machine, and 
 watched her working away with the dangerous instru 
 ment, until the sweat covered every part of my body, in 
 spite of my determination to defend myself to the last. 
 Her task finished, she walked to her reeling sons, and 
 said : There, that ll soon settle him ! Boys, kill yon 
 
 , and then for the watch ! I turned, cocked my 
 
 gun-locks silently, and lay ready to start up and shoot 
 the first who might attempt my life." Fortunately, two 
 strangers entering at the moment, the purpose of the 
 woman was disclosed, and she and her drunken sons 
 were secured. 
 
 But no earthquakes, nor hurricanes, nor carving- 
 knives of the wild denizens of the desert, afflicted him 
 half so much as what he once suffered in consequence 
 of an attack by a wild and ferocious animal neither 
 more nor less than a rat. It was a calamity, the like 
 of which is seldom recorded in literary history. Edward 
 Livingston, it is said, having completed his great code 
 of Louisianian law, beheld the labor of three persevering 
 
John James Aitditbon. io5 
 
 years perish in an instant in the flames ; Thomas Car- 
 lyle, too, when he had finished the first volume of his 
 French "Revolution, had every scrap of it burned 
 through the carelessness of a friend ; and so Mr. Audu- 
 bon, having wandered and toiled for years, to get ac 
 curate representations of American birds, found that 
 two Norway rats had in a night destroyed two hundred 
 of his original drawings, containing the forms of more 
 than a thousand inhabitants of the air. All were gone, 
 except a few bits of gnawed paper, upon which the 
 marauding rascals had reared a family of their young. 
 "The burning heat," says the noble-hearted sufferer, 
 "which instantly rushed through my brain, was too 
 great to be endured, without affecting the whole of my 
 nervous system. I slept not for several nights, and the 
 days passed like days of oblivion until the animal 
 powers being recalled into action through the strength 
 of my constitution, I took up my gun, my note-book, 
 and my pencils, and went forth to the woods as gayly as 
 if nothing had happened." Ay, go forth to the woods, 
 lover of divine nature, with thy serenest hopeful heart ! 
 there is joy there still for thee ! for the whole earth is 
 laughing in its brightness and glory, and the forests re 
 echo the carols of innumerable sweet voices that call 
 thee to the duty of love. 
 
 " There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren, 
 
 And the gossip of swallows through all the sky ; 
 The ground-squirrel gayly chirps by his den, 
 And the wilding bee hums merrily by. 
 
 " There s a dance of leaves in that aspen bower, 
 
 There s a titter of winds in that beechen tree, 
 There s a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower, 
 And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea."* 
 
 * Bryant. 
 
io6 John James Audubon. 
 
 He went forth, and in less than three years had his 
 portfolio again filled. 
 
 It was in 1824, we remarked, that Lucien Bonaparte 
 suggested to him the idea of collecting and making 
 public the treasures which had been amassed in his wild 
 journeyings. For some time, in the depths of the 
 solitudes, his mind brooded over the thought. At 
 length he resolved upon a visit to Europe, and with that 
 instant action which has been the secret of his success, 
 he prepared for his departure. He sailed but maturer 
 reflection taught him to approach the shores of England 
 with despondency and doubt. There was not a friend 
 in all the nation to whom he could apply. When he 
 had landed, his situation appeared to him precarious in 
 the extreme. He imagined, he says, in the simplicity 
 of his heart, that every individual he was about to meet 
 might be possessed of talents superior to any on our 
 side of the Atlantic. Traversing the streets of Liverpool 
 for two whole days, he had looked in vain for a single 
 glance of sympathy. 
 
 But how soon did the aspect of things around him 
 change ! There are kind, generous hearts everywhere ; 
 men of noble faculties to discern the beautiful and true, 
 and women of warm gushing affections. In a little 
 while, he was the admired of all .admirers. Men of 
 genius, the Wilsons, the Roscoes, the Swainsons, frankly 
 recognized his claims ; learned societies extended 
 to him the warm and willing hand of fellowship ; the 
 houses of the nobility were opened to him ; and, wher 
 ever he went, the solitary, unfriended American back 
 woodsman was a conspicuous object of remark and 
 admiration. Under such auspices, in 1831, at Edin 
 burgh, he put forth his first volume of Ornithological 
 Biography. Its striking and original merit procured 
 him subscribers to the remaining volumes, from all parts 
 
John James Audubon. 107 
 
 of the kingdom. At once, he took rank as the most 
 worthy ornithologist of the age, able as an observer 
 and describer to wear the mantle of the gifted Wilson, 
 and, as a painter of animals, to take his place by the side 
 of the most famous artists. 
 
 From England, Mr. Audubon proceeded to France, 
 where he received the homage of the most distinguished 
 men of science of that learned nation ; among the rest, 
 of that gigantic but graceful genius, Cuvier, the glance 
 of whose eye into the great valley of death has infused 
 life into the dry bones of a thousand years. 
 
 When he returned to his native land, it was only to 
 renew with a more burning ardor his labors in the 
 woods. His first expedition was to the coast of Florida, 
 where, amid flocks of snowy pelicans and cormorants, 
 tortoises and flying-fish, he laid up treasures for his 
 forthcoming volumes. Having examined every part 
 of the coast, and of the different keys, passing even to 
 the Tortugas Islands, he returned to Charleston, S. G, 
 anxious to bend his course to the northeast, that he 
 might keep pace with the birds during their migrations. 
 Illness detained him for the greater part of the summer 
 at Boston, but having recovered about the middle of 
 August, he left his Boston friends on his way eastward. 
 He explored the whole of the State of Maine, the British 
 province of New Brunswick, a portion of the Canadas, 
 and when there were no more prizes in those districts 
 to carry away, he made his way to the shores of ice 
 bound Labrador. His researches into the habits of the 
 birds, beasts, and men of this hyperborean region were 
 successful, and he returned, rich with materials, to the 
 abode of his family and friends. Of the industry with 
 which he pushed his inquiries, and of the startling and 
 touching adventures to which his various excursions 
 gave rise, his volumes are full of entertaining and instruct- 
 
io8 John James Aitdubon. 
 
 ive proof. Our plan does not allow us, as we should 
 wish, to introduce them here. Let us add, however, 
 that his Ornithological Biography has expanded into 
 five large books; that his "Birds of America" are 
 finished in glorious style, and that his magnificent 
 "Illustrations," being those birds drawn to the size of 
 life, have, for some time, been the astonishment and 
 delight of the cultivated world. Yet his wanderings 
 continue, and he labors in the cause of his favorite 
 science as sedulously as ever.* 
 
 What a life has that been of which we have here 
 given a faint outline ! What a character is that of 
 which we have made only a rough sketch ! Is not John 
 James Audubon, as we said in the outset, an admirable 
 specimen of the Hero as a man of science ? For forly 
 years or more he has followed, with more than religious 
 devotion, a beautiful and elevated pursuit, enlarging its 
 boundaries by his discoveries, and illustrating its objects 
 by his art. In all climates and in all weathers ; 
 scorched by burning suns, drenched by piercing rains, 
 frozen by the fiercest colds ; now diving fearlessly into 
 the densest forest, now wandering alone over the most 
 savage regions ; in perils, in difficulties, and in doubts ; 
 with no companion to cheer his way ; far from the smiles 
 and applause of society ; listening only to the sweet 
 music of birds, or to the sweeter music of his own 
 thoughts, he has faithfully kept his path. The records 
 of man s life contain few nobler examples of strength 
 
 * During the last winter, which he spent in this city (New York), 
 he has worked on an average fourteen hours a day, preparing a work 
 on the Quadrupeds f America, similar to his work on the Birds. 
 The drawings, already finished, of the size of life, are masterpieces in 
 their way, surpassing, if that be possible, in fidelity and brilliancy, all 
 that he has done before. Early in the summer, he will depart to con 
 tinue his labors in the woods. 
 
John James Audubon. 109 
 
 of purpose and indefatigable energy. Led on solely 
 by his pure, lofty, kindling enthusiasm, no thirst for 
 wealth, no desire of distinction, no restless ambition for 
 eccentric character, could have induced him to undergo 
 so many sacrifices, or sustained him under so many 
 trials. Higher principles and worthier motives alone 
 have enabled him to meet such discouragements, and 
 accomplish such miracles of achievement. He has en 
 larged and enriched the domains of a pleasing and 
 useful science ; he has revealed to us the existence of 
 many species of birds before unknown ; he has given 
 us more accurate information of the forms and habits 
 of those that were known ; he has corrected the blun 
 ders of his predecessors ; and he has imparted to the 
 study of natural history the grace and fascination of 
 romance. 
 
 By his pencil and by his pen, he has made the 
 world eternally his debtor. Exquisite delineations of 
 the visible and vocal ornaments of the air, drawn with 
 so much nicety, colored with so much brilliancy, as 
 they are seen in their own favorite haunts, who can ad 
 equately describe ? We remember well the effect 
 wrought on our mind, when we first saw the whole of 
 his wonderful collection of paintings, as they were ex 
 hibited a few years since in New York. It produced 
 an overpowering sense of wonder and admiration. As 
 John Wilson has said of the same scene, shown at Ed 
 inburgh, the spectator instantly imagined himself in the 
 forest. The birds were all there, " all were of the size 
 of life, from the wren and the humming-bird to the 
 wild turkey and the bird of Washington. But what 
 signified the mere size ? The colors were all of life too, 
 bright as when borne in beaming beauty through the 
 woods. There, too, were their attitudes and postures, 
 infinite as they are assumed by the restless creatures, in 
 
iio John James Audubon. 
 
 motion or rest, in their glee and their gambols, their 
 loves and their wars, singing, or caressing, or brooding, 
 or preying, or tearing one another to pieces. The trees 
 on which they sat or sported, all true to nature, in 
 bole, branch, spray, and leaf, the flowery shrubs and 
 the ground-flowers, the weeds and the very grass, all 
 American as were the atmosphere and the skies. It 
 was a wild and poetical vision of the heart of the New 
 World, inhabited as yet almost wholly by the lovely or 
 noble creatures that "own not man s dominion." It 
 was, indeed, a rich and magnificent sight, such as we 
 would not for a diadem have lost. 
 
 A peculiar ease, simplicity, and elegance mark Mr. 
 Audubon s written style. His description of birds in 
 their various moods are not the dull and dry details of a 
 naturalist, but the warm, lively picturesque paintings of 
 a poet. To open at any page of his volumes is to step 
 at once into a region of agreeable forms and enrapturing 
 sounds. He seems to enter into the very spirits of 
 birds themselves, sings when they sing, and rises upon 
 the wing when they fly. And his whole life, like theirs, 
 seems to have been a perpetual and cheerful ascription 
 of praise, to that 
 
 " Power whose care 
 
 Teaches their way along the pathless coast, 
 The desert and illimitable air 
 Long wandering, but not lost." 
 
 [Parts of this hurried sketch were afterward used in an article I 
 contributed to Putnam s " Homes of American Authors."] 
 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.* 
 
 U A pard-like Spirit, beautiful and swift, 
 A Love in desolation masked ; a Power, 
 Girt round with weakness ; it can scarce uplift 
 The weight of the superincumbent hour ; 
 It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, 
 A breaking billow even while we speak 
 Is it not broken?" ADONAIS. 
 
 ]E design to make this work the occasion of 
 some remarks upon Shelley as a poet and a 
 man. We think that justice has never yet 
 been done him. His countrymen are not in a mood 
 either to apprehend or to confess his value. The gall 
 of prejudice has not yet passed from their eyes ; their 
 judgments are still warped by old remembrances ; and 
 it is left to posterity and other lands to form a proper 
 estimate of what he was. No time or place more 
 fitting for the formation of such an estimate, than this 
 age of progress and this land of freedom ! 
 
 Shelley was born at Field Place, in the county of 
 Sussex, on the 4th of August, 1792. His father was 
 Sir Timothy Shelley, a gentleman of property and high 
 
 * The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. By Mrs. Shelley : 
 4 vols., morocco. London, 1839. 
 
 From the Democratic Re r vie c w t December, 1843. 
 
1 1 2 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 family distinction, who traced his remote ancestry to 
 the chivalrous and poetical Sir Philip Sidney. As a 
 child, Shelley appears to have been delicate and sensi 
 tive to a painful extreme, ardent in his affections, and 
 tenderly alive to the influences of nature. The resi 
 dence of his friends, amid the stillness and beauty of 
 rural scenes, early impressed him with a love for tran 
 quil and domestic enjoyments. He has himself, in the 
 Revolt of Islam, touchingly described those aspects of 
 mankind and nature, which were the first to mould his 
 young imagination. 
 
 " The star-light smile of children, the sweet looks, 
 
 Of women, the fair breast from which I fed, 
 The murmur of the unreposing brooks, 
 
 And the green light, which shifting overhead, 
 Some tangled bower of vine around me shed, 
 
 The shells on the sea-sand and the wild-flowers, 
 The lamp-light through the rafters cheerly spread, 
 
 And on the twining flax in life s young hours, 
 These sights and sounds did nurse my spirit-folded 
 powers." 
 
 These the friends of his youth, his mother, the 
 home circle, and the green and sunny looks of outward 
 nature were his earliest teachers. He was, under 
 their mild discipline, gentle, studious, warm-hearted, 
 and contemplative. The stream of his life flowed on, 
 like the brooks near which he wandered and dreamed, 
 in silent and cheerful harmony. 
 
 But the placidity of the current was destined soon to 
 be ruffled by rough winds. His avidity for knowledge, 
 and the premature growth of his mind, fitted him, at 
 a greener age than usual, for the preparatory studies of 
 Eton. When he was sent thither, the trials of his 
 life began. His career in that seat of learning was a 
 
Percy By s she Shelley. 113 
 
 series of disappointments. Burning with a zeal for 
 truth, and expecting to find companions willing, like 
 himself, to devote days and nights to the pursuit of it, 
 he was mortified to discover that the votaries of learning 
 could be filled with a spirit of worldliness and false am 
 bition. This was the first revulsion which his feelings 
 received ; and the intensity of it was increased when he 
 was made the victim of that disgraceful custom called 
 fagging, which compels a certain class of the students 
 to wait as servants upon the others ! Shelley had too 
 much pride and independence to submit to such a deg 
 radation. He refused to "fag," and he was conse 
 quently treated, with arrogance, and even despotism. 
 His spirit, sensitive as it was, was no less firm. Neither 
 the cruel jibes of his fellows, nor menaces of punish 
 ment on the part of his superiors, could bend a will 
 whose single law was the self-imposed law of truth. He 
 rejected an obedience which could only be performed 
 at the expense of self-respect. It was not long, there 
 fore, before he was removed from Eton school. He was 
 afterward sent to Oxford College, which he soon found 
 as uncongenial as the school had been. His ap 
 pearance there must have been like that of a stray 
 beam of light amid the dust and darkness of an old, 
 cloistered hall. Slight and fragile of figure, youthful 
 even among those who were all young, retired and 
 thoughtful, yet enthusiastic, pursuing with eagerness all 
 branches of science, and exploring, with the impet 
 uosity of first impressions, whatever struck his fancy 
 as novel or useful, he found the college only a contin 
 uation, on a larger scale, of the school. The selfishness, 
 tyranny, and falsehood which had shocked him at the 
 one, he also found at the other. Was it not natural 
 that he should contract an aversion to the society of his 
 fellows ? Taking no pleasure in the gross and bois- 
 
H4 Percy By s she Shelley. 
 
 terous enjoyments of those about him, he retired to the 
 fellowship of books and his own thoughts. He be 
 came enamored of solitary reading, solitary rambles, 
 solitary experiments. Even the necessary usages of 
 discipline grew to be irksome to him. He could not 
 endure the servitude of regular hours and established 
 forms. An overfine notion of freedom brought him in 
 conflict with masters and laws. He was corrected ; but 
 instead of being corrected by gentle methods, he was 
 used with severity and imperiousness. His impatience 
 was not subdued, but aggravated, by this unnecessary 
 rigor, and he passed on to other, and still more offen 
 sive acts of independence. 
 
 At the same time, his restless desire of knowledge 
 had brought him acquainted with the bold speculations 
 of the French philosophers. As might have been ex 
 pected in a youth consumed with zeal for freedom 
 and justice, he was convinced by their reasonings and 
 captivated by their promises. He rejected the more 
 commonly received opinions in politics and religion ; 
 but too honest and fearless to hold his new faith stealth 
 ily, he openly declared his convictions, and sought to 
 make proselytes to his creed. He was seized with an 
 "ambition to reform the world." He threw down the 
 gauntlet of defiance at the feet of his teachers, and 
 challenged them to an encounter of reason, on such 
 normal questions as the truth of Christianity and the 
 being of a God. A student who thus formally set him 
 self up as a teacher of atheism, which he hurled in proud 
 scorn at the heads of his professors, could not, of course, 
 be tolerated in a secluded academical community. He 
 was again made the subject of discipline, and deliberately 
 expelled from a society whose prejudices he had as 
 saulted, and whose anthorities he had wantonly con 
 temned. 
 
Percy By s she Shelley. 1 1 5 
 
 This event exasperated and embittered his mind to 
 an extreme of almost madness. He was only- con 
 firmed in his false but sincere convictions by what he 
 esteemed the despotism of his enemies. He came to 
 regard himself as a victim of oppression. He ceased 
 to respect and love those whose main arguments had 
 been force, whose only replies to his appeals were exe 
 crations and reproaches, who shut him out from their 
 sympathies, and branded him as a reprobate and a 
 criminal. There was, undoubtedly, much morbid ex 
 aggeration in all this yet it had its effect in driving him 
 further from the religion to which most erroneously it 
 was intended to bring him back. Religion to him no 
 longer wore an aspect of loveliness and charity, but 
 was associated in his mind with falsehood, intolerance, 
 and hatred. 
 
 Entertaining such feelings, Shelley was not the man 
 to shrink from giving them definite form and shape. 
 Filled, at the same time, with a sentimental compassion 
 for his fellow-men, he mourned over the injustice, 
 wrong, and misery of human society. He fancied that 
 he everywhere saw the wicked triumphing and the 
 righteous ground to the earth. The whole history of 
 mankind, indeed, struck his fevered sensibilities as one 
 continuous chronicle of woe, want, wretchedness, on 
 one hand, and of blood-stained tyranny on the other. 
 
 "He heard, as all have heard, life s various story, 
 
 And in no careless heart transcribed the tale, 
 But, from the sneers of men who had grown hoary, 
 
 In shame and scorn, from groans of crowds made pale 
 By famine, from a mother s desolate wail 
 
 For her polluted child, from innocent blood 
 Poured on the earth, and brows anxious and pale 
 
 With the heart s warfare ; did he gather food 
 To feed his many thoughts." * * * 
 
1 1 6 Percy By s she Shelley. 
 
 In this spirit, he composed his first poem, Queen 
 Mab., Although it was not published until several 
 years afterward, and then surreptitiously, it suits our 
 plan to speak a word of it here. 
 
 Queen Mab must be regarded as one of the most 
 extraordinary productions of youthful intellect. The 
 author was but seventeen when he wrote it, yet in bold 
 ness of thought, vigor of imagination, and intensity of 
 language, it displays the maturest power. Resembling 
 Southey s Thalaba in metre and general form, it is su 
 perior to that poem in wild grandeur and pathos. The 
 versification, though often strained and elaborate, is, 
 for the most part, melodious. Its narrative portions 
 are well sustained, while the descriptions are, if we 
 may so express it, hideously faithful. It is easy to per 
 ceive, throughout, however, that the writer s ungov 
 ernable sensibilities ran away with his other faculties. 
 In the fragmentary state, indeed, in which it is given to 
 us in the later editions, there are long passages which 
 are merely rhapsodical. Yet it has one broad, deep, 
 pervading moral object a shout of defiance sent up by 
 an unaided stripling against the powers and principali 
 ties of a world of wrong. Every page is a fiery protest 
 against the frauds and despotisms of priest and king. 
 Like the outburst of a mass of flame from a covered 
 and pent up crater, it may be regarded as a struggle of 
 nature amid the fiercest wails to escape from oppres 
 sion. Its irregular convulsive movements, its lurid 
 and dreadful pictures, alternating with passages of 
 mild beauty and soft splendor, seem like the protracted 
 battle of Life with Death, of Giant Hope with Giant 
 Despair. The blasphemy and atheism of it are the 
 tempestuous writhings of a pure and noble spirit, torn 
 and tossed between the contending winds and waves of 
 a heart full of Love and a head full of Doubt. 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 1 1 7 
 
 It was never the intention of Shelley to publish this 
 indiscieet and immature effort of his genius. But the 
 unfortunate notoriety which certain events in his do 
 mestic life had procured him, induced a piratical book 
 seller to give it to the world. When it did appear, he 
 wrote a note to the London Examiner, disclaiming 
 much of what it contained. 
 
 The domestic events to which we refer, were his 
 marriage and separation from his first wife. We speak 
 of them only so far as the knowledge of them is neces 
 sary to the right understanding of his poetry and char 
 acter. In very early life some of his friends say, 
 impelled by interested advisers he married a young 
 woman, whose tastes he soon found altogether unsuit 
 able to his own, and from -whom, after the birth of two 
 children, he separated. A few years subsequent to 
 this voluntary divorce the wife committed suicide ; not, 
 however, before Shelley had united himself to another 
 woman. This woman was one of illustrious birth, 
 being the daughter of Mary Wollstoncraft and William 
 Godwin, and inheriting in some measure the splendid 
 abilities of both parents ; but great as she was in her 
 self, and glorious as were the associations that radiated 
 around her history, there was no defence for their con 
 duct while his first wife lived. 
 
 But the most melancholy part of this tragedy was the 
 catastrophe enacted in the court of chancery, under the 
 presidency of Lord Eldon. The children of Shelley s 
 first marriage, to whom he was devotedly attached, were 
 taken from him, on the ground that his opinions ren 
 dered him incompetent to provide for their education. 
 This wicked act of tyranny, this shameless violation of 
 the most sacred ties of the heart, filled the cup of 
 Shelley s woe. He never forgave the injustice, but to 
 
i i 8 Percy Bysske Shelley. 
 
 the hour of his death felt the keen and cruel pangs of 
 the blow. 
 
 Shelley, before these events, had been living with his 
 second wife on the Continent. He had already angered 
 his family, and been exiled from their protection and 
 sympathy. It is just, however, to say that this aban 
 donment did not take place without attempts on their 
 part to reclaim him from his errors. One of them 
 made him the offer of an immense fortune if he would 
 enter the House of Commons, to sustain the cause of 
 the Whigs. But he despised alike the money and the 
 motive, preferring the life of an outcast, true to his 
 convictions, to that of the idol of a party, false to his 
 own soul. The spirit which seems to have actuated 
 him on this occasion, was the spirit of his whole life. 
 He held no half-faced fellowship with God and Mam 
 mon. What he believed he acted out, leaving to the 
 developments of time the issues of his conduct. 
 
 Shelley s first acknowledged poem, Alastor, or the 
 Spirit of Solitude, written in 1815. exhibits his mind in 
 a more subdued state than that in which he must have 
 composed Queen Mab. He was then residing at Bish- 
 opgate Heath, near Windsor Forest, made immortal 
 in the early lays of Pope. There, in the enjoyment of 
 the companionship of cultivated friends, reading the 
 poets of the day, and visiting the magnificent woodland 
 and forest scenery to be met with in a voyage to the 
 source of the Thames, several months of health and 
 tranquil happiness glided away. The more boisterous 
 excitability of earlier years gave place to habits of calm 
 meditation and self-communion, while the vicissitudes 
 and disappointments which had already checkered his 
 young life, tempered, no doubt, his exalted hopes and 
 restrained the impetuosity of his zeal. 
 
 In Alastor, accordingly, we find the traces of more 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 1 1 9 
 
 mature and deeper inward reflection. It contains none 
 of those intense and irrepressible bursts of mingled 
 rage and love, which are at once the merit and defect of 
 Queen Mab ; but is a quiet and beautiful picture of the 
 progressive condition of the mind of a poet. It rep 
 resents, to borrow the language of his preface of 1835, 
 "a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous 
 genius, led forth by an imagination inflamed and puri 
 fied through familiarity with all that is excellent and 
 majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He 
 drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still 
 insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of the eternal 
 world sink profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, 
 and afford to their modifications a variety not to be ex 
 hausted. So long as it is possible for his desires to 
 point toward objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he 
 is joyous and self-possessed. But the period arises when 
 those objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length 
 suddenly awakened, and thirsts for an intercourse with 
 an intelligence similar to itself ; he images to himself the 
 being he loves, and the vision unites all of wonderful, 
 wise, and beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or 
 the lover could depicture." He, however, wanders in 
 vain over the populous and desolated portions of the 
 earth, in search for the prototype of his conceptions.. 
 Neither earth, nor air, nor yet the pale realms of 
 dreams can accord him the being of his ideal love. 
 Weary at last of the present, and blasted by disappoint 
 ment, he seeks the retreat of a solitary recess and yields 
 his spirit to death. 
 
 Such is the story of a poem, which, as much, if not 
 more than any of his works, is characteristic of the 
 author. It is tranquil, thoughtful, and solemn, min 
 gling the exultation caused by the sunny and beautiful 
 aspects of Nature, with the deep, religious feeling that 
 
I2O Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 arises from the contemplation of her more stern and 
 majestic moods, and with the brooding thoughts and 
 sad or stormful passion of a heart seeking through the 
 earth for objects to satisfy the restlessness of its infinite 
 desires. Full of a touching and mournful eloquence, 
 the impression it leaves is that of a soft and chastened 
 melancholy. 
 
 In the summer of this year Shelley paid another visit 
 to the Continent, where he met Lord Byron, with whom 
 an uncongenial spirit" he spent the greater part of 
 the time on the shores of the Lake of Geneva. He 
 seems to have wriiten little this year, besides a few shorter 
 pieces, among which are the Hymn to Intellectual 
 Beauty, and the Mount Blanc. But the following year 
 he returned to England, and though heart-harrowing 
 events, referred to above, awaited him there, though his 
 sufferings from illness grew more frequent and severe, 
 his mental activity revived. The very weakness that 
 depressed his physical powers, appeared to enliven and 
 incite his brain. Pain, which kept his mind awake and 
 restless, quickened his sympathies with the afflictions of 
 others. 
 
 He was established at Marlow, near London, a 
 sequestered abode on the banks of the Thames. He 
 4ed a meditative and studious life, but his meditations 
 and studies were of a nature unlike those of most se 
 cluded scholars, for the claims of his fellow-men were 
 not forgotten. Floating quietly down the stream of the 
 river, under the rich beech-groves of Bisham, or along 
 the exuberant and picturesque meadows of Marlow, his 
 head was filled with the gathering visions, and his heart 
 expanded with the noble affections that were destined to 
 give immortality to the Revolt of Islam. It was finished 
 in little more than six months, and given to mankind. 
 
 The "Revolt of Islam," though by no means 
 
Percy By s she Shelley. 1 2 1 
 
 Shelley s greatest work, if his largest, is the one which 
 will endear him most strongly to sympathetic minds. It 
 is written in twelve cantos of the Spenserian stanza, 
 and in his first design was to be entitled " Laon and 
 Cythna, or the Revolution of the Golden City," thereby 
 implying that it was intended to be a story of passion, 
 and not a picture of more mighty and broadly interest 
 ing events. As he advanced in his work, however, as 
 the heavy woes of mankind pressed and absorbed his 
 heart, the mere individual figures, around which the 
 narrative gathers, dwindled in importance, and he poured 
 out the strength of his soul in the description of scenes 
 and incidents involving the fates of multitudes and 
 races. The poem may have lost in interest as a narra 
 tive by the change, but it has gained much as a poem. 
 It is now a gallery of glowing and spirit-stirring pictures, 
 painting sometimes in dim and silvery outline, and 
 sometimes in broad masses of black and white "the 
 most interesting conditions of a great people in the pas 
 sage from slavery to freedom." 
 
 The first canto, like the introduction to an overture, 
 runs over, in brief but graceful and airy strains, the 
 grand harmonies that are to compose the burden of the 
 music. After illustrating with great beauty the growth 
 of a young mind in its aspirations after liberty, and how 
 the impulses of a single spirit may spread the impatience 
 of oppression until it takes captive and influences every 
 soul, the poet proceeds at once to his topic the awak 
 ening of a whole nation from degradation to dignity ; the 
 dethronement of its tyrants ; the exposure of the relig 
 ious frauds and political quackeries by which kings and 
 hirelings delude the multitude into quiet subjection ; 
 the tranquil happiness, moral elevation, and mutual 
 love of. a people made free by their own patriotic en 
 deavors ; the treachery and barbarism of hired soldiers ; 
 6 
 
122 Percy Bysshe SJielley. 
 
 the banding together of despots without to sustain the 
 cause of tyrants at home ; the desperate onset of the 
 armies of the allied dynasties ; the cruel murder and 
 expulsion of the patriots, and the installation of despot 
 ism, with its train of war, pestilence, and famine. It 
 then closes with prophecies for the sure and final reign 
 of freedom and virtue, which may be called the choral 
 hymn of struggling nations. 
 
 In this argument, to use the phrase of the older 
 poets, Shelley had a high moral aim. We refer not 
 merely to what he himself describes as an attempt "to 
 enlist the harmony of metrical language, etherial com 
 binations of fancy, and refined and sudden transitions 
 of passion in the cause of liberality, or to kindle in the 
 bosom of his readers a virtuous enthusiasm for those 
 doctrines of liberty and justice, that faith and hope in 
 something good, which neither violence, nor misrepre 
 sentation, nor prejudice can ever totally extinguish ;" 
 but to that fixed purpose with which he has avoided the 
 obvious conclusion that an ordinary mind would have 
 given to the poem. It ends, as we said, with the tri 
 umphs of despotism. What Shelley wished to teach 
 by this, was the lesson, so necessary in that age, when 
 the hopes of mankind had been crushed by the disas 
 trous events of the French Revolution, that every re 
 volt against the oppression of tyranny, that every strug 
 gle for the rights of man, though for the time it might 
 be unsuccessful, though it might fail in its resistance of 
 arbitrary power, was, in the end, worth the effort. It 
 destroyed the sanctity that surrounded and shielded the 
 dogmas of the past ; it broke the leaden weight of au 
 thority ; it kindled fear in the breast of the oppressors, 
 by awakening among the people a knowledge of their 
 power ; and it strengthened the confidence of men in 
 each other, while it filled them with visions and hopes 
 
Percy ByssJic SJielley. 123 
 
 of the speedy prevalence of a more universal justice and 
 love. 
 
 No lesson could then have been more needed by the 
 world. The excesses and apparent failure of the 
 French people had frightened even the warmest lovers 
 of freedom from their early faith. They had scarcely 
 foreseen, in the outset, that the weight of long centuries 
 of oppression could not be thrown off without terrific 
 efforts. At the first demonstration, therefore, that the 
 populace were really in earnest, the flush fled from 
 their faces and they gazed upon the scene aghast and 
 trembling. They were seized with a panic of dread. 
 They deprecated what they had before abetted. To 
 the wild exultation which hailed the opening of the out 
 break, there succeeded a feeling of despondency and 
 gloom. The people were no longer the objects of sym 
 pathy and hope, but the victims of misgiving and dis 
 trust. Men who had once espoused their cause, now 
 doubted their capacity of self-government. An uneasy 
 suspicion was diffused that the principles of liberty and 
 justice, having so signally failed in one instance, were 
 never to be tried in a second. 
 
 But in the number of these Shelley was not included. 
 To him, the French Revolution was not a failure. Its 
 atrocities and crimes, so far from diminishing his at 
 tachment to free principles, cemented and strengthened 
 it. He saw in every frantic outrage, in every unnatural 
 vice, in the mummeries, the violences, and the excesses, 
 only additional arguments for a milder and more benevo 
 lent government. "If the Revolution," says he, " had 
 been prosperous, then misrule and superstition would 
 lose half their claims to our abhorrence, as fetters which 
 the captive can unlock with the slightest motion of his 
 fingers, and which do not eat with poisonous rust into 
 his soul." The evils of that frightful upturning of so- 
 
124 Percy By s she Shelley. 
 
 ciety seemed to him, as they now seem to every observ 
 ant mind, transient, while the good was durable. 
 
 Under such convictions he prepared his poem. Bold 
 as it is, in many of the sentiments, it is a noble monu 
 ment to the loftiness of his aims, the brilliancy of his 
 imagination, the wealth of love in his heart, and the 
 breadth and power of his intellect. It is an armory 
 from which the young enthusiasts of many generations 
 to come may draw their weapons, in the assurance that 
 they are of tried temper and exquisite polish. We have 
 never read it without feeling our soul stirred as with the 
 sound of a trumpet it has enlarged our thoughts, ex 
 panded and warmed our affections, quickened our pur 
 poses of good, and filled us with an unquenchable 
 flame of philanthropy and love. 
 
 In 1818, Shelley left England, never to return. 
 That divine region, " the paradise of exiles," Italy, be 
 came his chosen residence. Under the influence of its 
 beautiful climate, and the inspiration of its scenery, his 
 poetical life seemed to have received a new impulse. 
 Three subjects presented themselves to his mind as the 
 ground-works of lyrical dramas : the first, the-touching 
 story of Tasso ; the second, the woes and endurance of 
 Job ; and the third, the Prometheus Unbound. With 
 the instinct of genius, or led by his growing delight in 
 the Greek dramatists, he selected the last of the three 
 as the one best suited to his purpose. In the very 
 cheice of the subject, he betrays the tendencies of his 
 nature. There is not in the whole round of thought 
 any real or imaginary personage so well fitted to dra 
 matic or epic representation as Prometheus. The my 
 thology of his existence is the grandest fable that the 
 human mind ever conceived. In the Lear of Shakspeare 
 we behold a grand conception ; we have a man, a 
 noble, towering man yet passionate and weak, bat- 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 125 
 
 tling, heedless of the war of the elements around him, 
 with the wilder storm of emotion in his own breast. 
 Again ; in the Satan of Milton we see the demigod, fierce, 
 defiant, unconquerable, wage a proud strife with the 
 Omnipotent ; but while we pity his fancied wrongs and 
 sympathize with his ambition, the nature of the com 
 bat forbids us to applaud his courage, and the exhibition 
 of his envy, falsehood, and revenge destroys our admi 
 ration. But in the Prometheus of the ancient fabulists, 
 we behold an Innocent One exposed to the oppressions 
 of evil, for the good which he had conferred upon 
 others ; bearing for ages, without complaint, the tor 
 tures of tyranny ; a spirit full of godlike fortitude and 
 hope, warring with the gods ; a calm sufferer, exempt 
 from bitterness or hatred, though sustaining the foulest 
 wrongs that -Infinite Power can inflict; an immortal 
 nature triumphing over mortal pangs ; a moral will 
 rising superior to the agonies of physical torment ; 
 embodied goodness and beauty, recovering from the 
 struggle of centuries of darkness into the clear light of 
 Heaven, and diffusing universal joy through the realms 
 of space. 
 
 In the treatment of the ancient fable Shelley has seen 
 fit to alter it so as to adapt it to his more exalted con 
 ceptions of the character of its hero. Prometheus, as we 
 gather his story from the ancient writers, was chained 
 to the rock by Jupiter, for having bequeathed to man 
 kind the gift of knowledge. But there was in the pos 
 session of the Titan the secret of a prophecy which it 
 much concerned the perpetuity of Jupiter s kingdom 
 that he should know. On condition that this should 
 be revealed to him, he offered the sufferer a full par 
 don for his primitive crime. The Titan resists, and in 
 the sternness and stubborn power of this resistance, the 
 moral sublimity of the myth consists ; but after enduring 
 
126 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 the inflictions of the god for ages, he purchases 
 freedom from torture by communicating the secret. 
 This latter part of the fable Shelley rejects. His Pro 
 metheus is true to himself to the last, since, to have 
 made him "unsay his high language, and quail before 
 his successful and perfidious adversary," would have 
 been reconciling the champion^of mankind with its op- 
 presser. He had a nobler aim 
 
 "To suffer woe, which Hope thinks infinite; 
 To forgive wrongs, darker than death or night; 
 
 To defy Power, which seems omnipotent ; 
 To love and bear ; to hope till Hope creates 
 From its own wreck the thing it contemplates ; 
 
 Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent : 
 This was thy glory, Titan ! tis to be, 
 Good, great, and joyous, beautiful and free, 
 This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory !" 
 
 It was the lost drama of ^Eschylus which suggested 
 this poem to Shelley. In the earlier portions of it, 
 where he describes the trials of the Titan, he has imi 
 tated the lofty grandeur and solemn majesty of the 
 Grecian master. But to avoid the charge of mere imi 
 tation, he has varied the story, and enlarged the ground 
 work of plot and incident. It would be an exaggera 
 tion to say that he had rivalled the sublimity of the 
 Father of theDramatists ; but it is no exaggeration to assert 
 the moral superiority of his conceptions. He has not 
 the force, the strength, and the awful and imposing 
 sternness of his robust and rugged model but he has, 
 we think, more delicacy, softness, and elegance. In 
 deed, the lyrical parts of the drama are only surpassed 
 in graceful ease and harmony by Sophocles. They 
 rise upon the ear like strains of sweet melody, ravish 
 ing it with delight, and leaving, after they have passed 
 
Percy ByssJie Shelley. 127 
 
 away, the sense of a keen but dreamy ecstasy. For 
 delicacy and beauty, nothing in the range of verse is 
 finer than the description of the flight of the Hours 
 not even the imagery in which lone and Panthea dis 
 course to each other while listening to the music of the 
 rolling worlds. The whole leaves the impression of a 
 noble oratorio, expressive of the Life of Humanity in its 
 passage from early darkness through pain and strife, 
 through weariness and anguish, to the overflowing joy 
 and sunshine of its maturer development. 
 
 During the following year, the tragedy of the Cenci 
 appeared. It has since attained so wide a popularity, 
 and been so often criticised, both in England and 
 among the Germans, that we shall have little to say of 
 it in this place. It has more of direct human interest 
 in it than any other of the author s poems, but, like all 
 the rest, it serves to" display his character. His keen 
 insight into the workings of the human heart his 
 dread of evil his hatred of oppression and above all, 
 his quick sympathy with the delicate and graceful emo 
 tions of the female nature, are exhibited in language 
 of unsurpassed fidelity and force. Through all the 
 developments of the terrible story there appears a lofty, 
 moral aim, not taught, as is the case with Euripides, in 
 formal declamations, but as Shakspeare teaches by 
 the unfolding of an actual life as if a curtain were 
 lifted suddenly from before an actual scene, to reveal 
 all the actors in their living and breathing reality. As 
 in the Prometheus, he had shown what Will could ac 
 complish under the dominion of Love ; so~ in the Cenci 
 he showed what that same Will could do when under the 
 adverse guidance of subversive passions. The elder 
 Cenci is the personification of unbridled Will. Rich 
 enough to indulge every desire, and yet purchase im 
 punity for every crime, the old human father, opposing 
 
128 Percy Bysske Shelley. 
 
 his own will, in bursts of tremendous and fearful rage, 
 to the will of the Almighty Father, becomes thereby an 
 incarnation of all that is inhuman. What a dreadful 
 contrast is drawn between his demoniacal spirit and 
 that of his angelic daughter, Beatrice, the lovely, sin 
 cere, high-minded woman, formed to adorn and grace 
 the most exalted position, but bearing about a load 
 of remediless griefs, of unparalleled sorrows ! She is 
 purity enveloped in a cloud of falsehood and strange 
 vice. Herself sportive and serene, yet the victim of 
 unnatural crimes and endless woes. " Around her are 
 the curtains of dread fate no lark-resounding Heaven 
 is above her no sunny fields before her no passion 
 throbs in her breast" but 
 
 " The beautiful blue Heaven is flecked with blood. 
 The sunshine on the floor is black ! The air 
 Is changed to vapors such as the dead breathe 
 In channel houses;" 
 
 and the wronged though beautiful maid is cut off from 
 life and light in youth s sweet prime. 
 
 We must here close our remarks upon Shelley s sepa 
 rate poems, and proceed to give our opinion of his 
 general character as a poet. Let it suffice to say of what 
 he has written at a date subsequent to that of the poems 
 to which we have referred, that he everywhere mani 
 fests the same general powers, enriched by experience 
 and use. We should like to have spoken in detail of the 
 " Rosalind and Helen," that touching tale of the suffer 
 ings of woman ; of the " Hellas," in which he celebrates 
 the revival of the ancient spirit of Grecian freedom, with 
 much of the spirit of the old Greek lyrical poets ; of 
 the "Adonais," so full of pensive beauty; of the 
 spiritual "Prince Athanase ;" of the wild "Triumph 
 of Life;" of the " Ode written in dejection at Naples," 
 
Percy By s she Shelley. 129 
 
 most pathetic of the lyrics of melancholy ; of the 
 " Hymn to Intellectual Beauty/ so high and grand in 
 its invocations ; of the "Skylark," in the profusion and 
 melody of which the author rivals the bird he sings ; 
 and, no less, of those translations from the Greek, 
 German, and Spanish, which are among the best speci 
 mens of that kind of composition in the English lan 
 guage ; but our space will not suffer us to engage in 
 this agreeable task. 
 
 What, then, are the claims of Shelley as a poet? 
 This is a hard question to answer in the case of any 
 poet, and particularly hard in that of Shelley. His 
 poetry, like his life, is set round by so many prejudices, 
 that it is with difficulty the critic preserves his mind 
 from the influence of common opinion on one side, or 
 the exaggeration of a reactive sympathy on the other. 
 Shelley s faults, too, are so nearly allied to his excel 
 lences, springing as they do, for the most part, from the 
 very excess of his intellectual energy, that the task of 
 discrimination is felt to be an embarrassing one. Aside 
 from these considerations, besides, there were some 
 notable and obvious defects in the very structure of his 
 mind. These are shown partly in his use of a peculiar 
 language and diction, but chiefly in the excessive sub 
 tlety of his thought. Words were often used by him, 
 not in their common or obvious meaning, but in a 
 sense derived from remote and complicated relations. 
 He indulges in such phrases, for instance, as the 
 "wingless-boat," meaning thereby, not a boat without 
 wings, which would be commonplace enough, but a boat 
 propelled by some mysterious power beyond the speed 
 of flight. Again, because of this over-refinement and 
 too 1 great delicacy of perception, his descriptions are often 
 strangely unreal. They seem to be enveloped in a hazy 
 wavering atmosphere, as if they were not actual scenes, 
 6* 
 
130 Percy By s she Shelley. 
 
 but the combinations of a remembered dream. One 
 does not look upon them, , as he looks upon living 
 nature, when he stands face to face with her beauty ; 
 but they are seen through a gauzy medium of memory, 
 like places which may have impressed the mind in the 
 earliest period of its consciousness. They strike us, 
 in the same way as those .views which come suddenly 
 upon us, when travelling in strange lands, as something 
 which we have seen before, but of which we know 
 neither the time nor place. It may be objected 
 further, that his imagery possesses too much of dazzling 
 glare and splendor. It is seldom sufficiently subdued 
 for the nature of the subject. This fault, however, is 
 the common fault of young artists. Their pictures are 
 all in warm colors. We believe it was Sir Thomas Law 
 rence who was accustomed to say to his pupils, put out 
 the lights. Some such monitor should have stood over 
 the writing-desk of Shelley. His many-colored fancy 
 needed frequent chastisement. Arrayed in gold and 
 lire, the objects of it were made to flame, like the forest 
 which lies between our eyes and the horizon, when 
 both trunks and leaves are lit up by the evening sun. 
 
 But a greater fault of Shelley s poetry is the obscurity 
 of which so many readers complain. His more enthu 
 siastic admirers, we are aware, answer, that as much of 
 this obscurity may lie in the minds of the readers as in 
 the mind of the poet ; and they answer with no little 
 truth. Yet we think that Shelley is chargeable on this 
 score, and chargeable because the fault springs from a 
 misuse of some of his highest powers. It takes its ori 
 gin from two peculiarities from the exceeding subjec 
 tivity of his mind, of which we have just spoken, and 
 the exquisite delicacy of his imagination. What we 
 mean by his subjectivity is the disposition to dwell upon 
 the forms and processes of inward thought and emo- 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 131 
 
 tion, rather than upon those of the external world. 
 Shelley no doubt loved the external world ; he was ever 
 living in the broad, open air, under the wide skies ; and 
 was keenly alive to the picturesque and harmonious in 
 Nature. But his emotional power dominated his intel 
 lectual power. He was thus ever proceeding from the 
 centre of his own mind, outward to the visible universe. 
 He was ever transferring the operations of his feelings 
 to the operations of Nature. Of this tendency he was 
 riot himself unaware. " The imagery which I have em 
 ployed," he says in the preface to Prometheus, "will be 
 found, in many instances, to have been drawn from the 
 operations of the human mind, or those external actions 
 by which they are expressed. " An appropriate instance 
 of this we have in the same poem, where the avalanche 
 is compared to the thought, not the thought to the 
 avalanche, reversing the usual process of comparison. 
 There is a class to whom this kind of comparison may 
 appear natural, but to the larger number of men, and 
 those even intellectual men, it is, to use a vulgar 
 adage, putting the cart before the horse ; it is illustra 
 ting the known by the less known ; it is an attempt to 
 make an object clear and intelligible, by comparing it 
 with that which is not clear and intelligible. 
 
 This is one cause of Shelley s obscurity ; but a more 
 frequent cause is the excessive subtlety and refinement 
 of his imagination. So keen was his intellectual vision, 
 that he saw shapes where others saw none, and shades 
 and distinctions of shade where, to others, it was blank 
 vacuity or darkness. He possessed, in an eminent 
 degree, that faculty which peoples the universe with 
 tenuous and gossamer existences, which sees a faery 
 world in drops of dew, which sports with the crea 
 tures of the elements, which is of finer insight and more 
 spiritual texture than the brains of ordinary mortals. 
 
132 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
 If Shelley has erred in the excessive use of this faculty, 
 we are also indebted to it for some of the most beauti 
 ful conceptions that ever adorned the pages of poetry. 
 
 But we pass from the faults of Shelley to a rapid con 
 sideration of his excellences. One of the first things 
 to be observed in entering upon the topic, is the eleva 
 ted conception which he had formed, and always strove 
 to carry with him, of the true function and destiny of 
 the Poet. The vocation of the bard impressed him as 
 the highest of all vocations. " Poetry," says he, in a 
 glowing passage of an exquisite prose composition, 
 " poetry is, indeed, something divine. It is at once 
 the centre and circumference of knowledge : it is that 
 which comprehends all science, and that to which all 
 science must be referred. It is at the same time the 
 root and blossom of all other systems of thought ; it 
 is that from which all spring and that which adorns 
 all ; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and 
 the seed, and withholds from the barren world the 
 nourishment and the succession of the scions of the 
 tree of life. It is the perfect and consummate sur 
 face and bloom of all things ; it is as the odor and color 
 of the rose to the texture of the elements which com 
 pose it, as the form and splendor of unfaded beauty to the 
 secrets of anatomy and corruption."- Again he says : 
 " Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments 
 of the happiest and best minds" "Poetry turns all 
 things to loveliness. It exalts the beauty of that which 
 is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is 
 most deformed ; it marries exultation and horror, grief 
 and pleasure, eternity and change ; it subdues to union, 
 under its light yoke, all irreconcilable things. It trans 
 mutes all that it touches, and every form moving with 
 in the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous 
 sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it 
 
Percy By s she Shelley. 133 
 
 breathes : its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the 
 poisonous waters which flow from death through life ; 
 it strips the veil of familiarity from the world and lays 
 bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit 
 of its forms." 
 
 In this spirit Shelley composed his own poems. It 
 would be absurd to rank him among the highest of the 
 great English poets as an artist, although it would not 
 be absurd to put him among the highest in other re 
 spects. We do not mean that he was altogether defi 
 cient as an artist, but we do mean that the qualities of 
 the artist were not those which predominated in him. 
 The opening chorus of Hellas alone, not to refer to 
 other instances, would prove that he possessed great 
 artistic capabilities ; yet the same poem, not to men 
 tion others, would also prove that these capabilities 
 were smothered beneath his exuberance of thought and 
 imagery. So, the skilfulness with which he has used, 
 in Prince Athanase, the lerza rima of the Italians, and 
 in the Witch of Atlas, the stanza of Pulci, show how far 
 he could have been successful in the region of mere 
 art, but he would not submit his chainless impulses to 
 the laborious discipline of Art. When the leisure and 
 humor for such discipline allowed, his minor lyrics be 
 tray no want of the most dexterous and versatile power 
 to perfect ; but in general, he impetuously tramples 
 upon the finer laws of creative effort. Like an improvi- 
 satore, he gives the rein to his fancy, and dashes wildly 
 onward wherever the bewildering trains of thick-coming 
 associations may lead. He was mastered by his genius, 
 rather than master of it, as Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, 
 and all the greater poets were masters. 
 
 Shelley s fertility of imagination, however, was no 
 less a part of his strength than it was of his weakness. 
 As Mr. Macaulay, in his beautiful essay on John Bun- 
 
134 Percy By s she Shelley. 
 
 yan, finely says : "Out of the most indefinite terms of 
 a hard, dark, cold, metaphysical system, he made a 
 gorgeous Pantheon, full of beautiful, majestic, and life 
 like forms. He turned atheism itself into a mythology, 
 rich with visions as glorious as the gods that live in the 
 marble of Phidias, or the virgin saints that smile on us 
 from the canvas of Murillo. The Spirit of Beauty, 
 the Principle of Good, the Principle of Evil, when he 
 treated of them, ceased to be abstractions. They took 
 shape and color. They were no longer mere words ; 
 but intelligible forms, fair humanities/ objects of 
 love, of adoration, or of fear. Some of the metaphysi 
 cal and ethical theories of Shelley were certainly absurd 
 and pernicious. But we doubt whether any modern 
 poet has possessed in an equal degree the highest 
 qualities of the great ancient masters. The words bard 
 and inspiration, which seem so cold and affected when 
 applied to other modern writers, have a perfect pro 
 priety when applied to him. He was not an author, 
 but a bard. His poetry seems not to have been an art, 
 but an inspiration/ 
 
 It was chiefly in the glow and intensity of his senti 
 ments that the vast fusing powers of his imagination 
 were manifest. His heart, burning with the purest 
 fires of love, seemed to melt all nature into a liquid 
 mass of goodness. Over the wildest and darkest wastes 
 of human experience he cast the refulgence of his own 
 benignant nature, as the many-colored rainbow glorifies 
 the dark bosom of the thunder-cloud. Out of the 
 rankest poisons he extracted the most refreshing of 
 sweets. 
 
 " Medea s wondrous alchemy, 
 
 Which, wherever it fell, made the earth gleam 
 With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale 
 From vernal blossoms fresh fragrance," 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 136 
 
 was his ; and from the exceeding fulness of himself he 
 poured out into the mighty heart of the world a per 
 petual stream of life. No poet that has come after him, 
 and few that were gone before him, had equal power of 
 stirring within the soul of humanity such noble aspira 
 tions such fervent love of freedom such high re 
 solves in the cause of virtue and intelligence and such 
 strong prophetic yearnings for the Better Future. 
 
 In the earlier part of his career, as we have seen, 
 he had been touched by the spirit of skepticism and 
 despair, which was the malady of those times. He sent 
 up to heaven, from a heart full of anguish, a keen and 
 infinite wail as the wail of a vast inarticulate multitude 
 without God and without Hope in the world. But 
 through the rifted clouds of the night he saw, more 
 clearly than any contemporary, the davvnings of the 
 day. With jubilating voice he prophesied its glories. 
 While the capacious genius of Scott was exhausting its 
 energies in rummaging the magazines of a forgotten 
 past, to amuse the fancy, or beguile the languor of 
 children, both great and small ; while Byron, like a 
 lubberly boy, was whining and scolding over his self- 
 inflicted and petty miseries Shelley, with dauntless 
 heart and kindling eye, wrestled in the wild, frightful 
 conflict of incoherence and discord, struggling upward, 
 till he stood upon the mountain-tops of the century in 
 which he lived, watching the dying agonies of the de- 
 crepid Old Order and hailing the swift approaches of 
 the New. 
 
 As a man, Shelley seems to us to have been worthy 
 of both admiration and love. He exhibited a rare 
 combination of all that was tender with all that was no 
 ble and daring. Like his own Alastor, he was * brave, 
 gentle, and generous." The delicacy and refinement 
 we are accustomed to ascribe to the female nature were 
 
136 Percy By s she Shelley. 
 
 united in him to the impetuous boldness of the mascu 
 line. A life of early suffering, of intense and pro 
 tracted illness, had trained his spirit to those passive 
 virtues of endurance and gentleness which often best 
 illustrate the greatness of the human soul. Except in 
 wisdom and knowledge, he never ceased to be a child. 
 He carried into manhood the same guileless simplicity, 
 the same ardent enthusiasm, the playful innocence, the 
 meekness, the modesty, and the truth, which were the 
 characteristics of his boyhood. Time did not blunt the 
 sharpness, nor the delusions of the world corrupt the 
 purity, of his keen and lively sensibilities. No seduc 
 tions nor wrongs could warp his judgment from the 
 perfect law which seems to have been impressed upon 
 his inmost nature. He was ever the same unspotted, 
 mild, genial, sensitive, yet lion-hearted being. All 
 who approached him loved him, and all whom he ap 
 proached he loved. 
 
 " Mid the passions wild of human kind, 
 He stood like a spirit calming them." 
 
 Not only did he bear himself manfully amid the rude 
 shocks and pitiless struggles in which he was destined 
 to walk, but his heart melted with pity and love for the 
 world that hated him, and his purse was ever the open 
 response to his sympathy. As deep as were his personal 
 griefs, he did not forget the deeper grief of his race. 
 He was the ready friend of the friendless, the instant 
 helper of the distressed, the companion, no less than 
 the benefactor of the poor. In the halls of the rich 
 and gay he singled out the despised and deserted, and 
 wherever he went he identified himself with the multi 
 tude. 
 
 This singular kindliness appeared in the minutest as 
 well as the greatest actions of his life. It was the grace of 
 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 137 
 
 his manner no less than the virtue of his heart. Lord 
 Byron once said that Shelley was the completest gentle 
 man he ever knew. He was regardful of the happi 
 ness of others, not always showing it in the vulgar way, 
 by relieving their distresses, but by consulting all their 
 shades of feeling. At the same time he was not un 
 mindful of the larger and broader manifestations of 
 good-will. A never-ceasing course of active effort 
 showed that his benevolence was not a sentiment but a 
 principle. It was both good-wishing and good-doing. 
 He who could walk the wards of a hospital, filled with 
 dangerous diseases, that he might qualify himself to 
 minister to the maladies of the poor, must have pos 
 sessed, not the sickly sentimentalism of Rousseau, but 
 the philanthropy of a Howard. He who could- give 
 the half of his whole income to a single work of charity 
 (the building a dyke to prevent inundations upon the 
 huts of a poor settlement), must have possessed a genu 
 ine sympathy. He who, when his funds where ex 
 hausted, could pawn his books, or favorite instruments 
 of science, to help a needy scholar, to cover a naked 
 child, or give warmth and plenty to the hearth of a 
 destitute widow, and be more careful to conceal his 
 deeds from the world than others are to publish them, 
 was actuated by no theatrical love of display, but by a 
 sincere and heartfelt fellow-feeling with his race. 
 
 It was a consequence of this exalted benevolence 
 and conscientiousness that the political principles of 
 Shelley were intensely democratic. It does not appear 
 that he had digested those principles into a system, or 
 that he had matured his notions into practical measures, 
 but every act and sentiment of his life shows him 
 friendly to every reform by which freedom is to be 
 extended or the condition of the multitude of men im 
 proved. In all the efforts of the masses, particularly to 
 
138 Percy By s she Shelley. 
 
 shake the tyranny of the aristocratic classes, he felt the 
 strongest sympathy. When the oppressed workingmen 
 of England manifested a determination to throw off the 
 despotism of their laws, he was their fast friend ; when 
 the Italian republics seemed about to make a stand 
 against their despoilers, he was raised to a pitch of en 
 thusiasm in their behalf ; and when the Greeks ap 
 pealed to his mind by the double attraction of their 
 glorious literature and history, and their equally glori 
 ous resistance to the murder-breathing Moslem, he 
 shared the dreams of their heroes, and made their 
 struggle immortal by his pen. The noblest fires of his 
 spirit were kindled by every cry of the oppressed against 
 the oppressor. 
 
 Nor did he confine his love of freedom to its external 
 and grosser forms. The peculiar splendor of his career 
 as a democrat was, that he fought the battles of intel 
 lectual freedom. He was the vigilant enemy of spirit 
 ual slavery and degradation. Others were content to 
 resist the encroachments of power, only when it invaded 
 plain and palpable rights when it robbed men of 
 property, or trampled upon their persons. But Shelley 
 pursued it with hatred in its most secret lurking 
 places, as well as in the open air, in the recesses of the 
 soul, as well as in the despotisms of the State. He 
 dreaded tyranny of any kind less because it produced 
 social unhappiness than because it crushed the human 
 mind. It was there that he hated it most, and it was 
 there that he most resolutely resisted its approaches. 
 
 Shelley was, furthermore, a democrat because of his 
 hopeful nature. It was the habit of his mind to look 
 forward to the future with bright and expanding antici 
 pations. In casting his eye over the arrangements of 
 society, he saw what prodigious advances it was capable 
 of making in all the dispositions of trade and social 
 
Percy By s she SJielley. 139 
 
 intercourse, and in all the departments of knowledge, 
 and he saw no reason why these advancements should 
 not be made. He believed that they would be made. 
 He believed that a glorious development awaited hu 
 manity, when it should cast off its ancient supersti 
 tions. So, in every attempt of the people to break 
 through the thick night of ignorance that enveloped 
 them, in every throe of the nations to snap the chains 
 by which they were bound, his fancy discerned the be 
 ginnings of this more than millennial glory. His soul 
 leaped with joy at the faintest flash of the coming light. 
 An iris of hope was ever stretched across his horizon. 
 
 Yet Shelley s, it must be confessed, was far from be 
 ing a perfect character. His judgment was always too 
 much overborne by his excitabilities. His mind 
 wanted that repose which is the emblem, of the highest 
 power. His efforts were consequently too convulsive 
 more like the throes of a hampered giant than the calm 
 and sustained efforts of a Hercules. It is evident that he 
 never had settled, to the satisfaction of his mind, the theo 
 ries of the Universe, Man and God, which perplex and 
 disturb all thoughtful persons. He was still struggling 
 doubtfully when he died, with the great problem of ex 
 istence. He questioned earth and heaven, to relieve 
 the weary doubts of his soul, but they made him no re 
 sponse. At length he appealed to the soul itself for a 
 reply. Then, over the mists of the dark conflict, rose 
 the rainbow of Hope in the form and aspect of Love. 
 This, he cried in the agony of his distress, shall be my 
 God ; Love is the soul of the universe ; Love explains 
 all mysteries ; Love comprehends all beauty ; Love is 
 the splendor of truth ; Love is the consummation and 
 flower of all things. Love is the highest power Love 
 is God. 
 
 Shelley was not a Christian in the technical sense, but 
 
140 Percy By s she Shelley. 
 
 he was essentially a religious man, not an atheist, but 
 rather, like Spinoza, intoxicated with God." From 
 the gross form of materialism in which he like all 
 other students of the English universities of that day 
 was educated, his etherial nature had led him into the 
 idealism of Berkeley. His latter works are all, more or 
 less, tinged by the subtle and delicate colors of the spir 
 itual theory. It penetrated and modified all his con 
 ceptions. His Supreme Being was not, like the ven 
 erated object of the grosser superstitions, a person of 
 human foibles and passions the mean and miserable 
 worshipper projected out of himself and magnified 
 but a pure, self-existent, intellectual, and moral Spirit, a 
 spirit of infinite Truth and Love. The world apparent 
 to our senses, was but an inconsiderable unit in the 
 measureless creation of which this Spirit was the sub 
 stance and centre. All human spirits were but separa 
 ble portions of a stupendous whole, bound to each 
 other by myriad sympathies and infinite desires, and 
 passing, in the successive stages of existence, to higher 
 forms of thought, and keener and nobler emotions. 
 Death, in this view, was not destruction, but the pas 
 sage or rather melting away into a better Life. The 
 forms and organs which reveal us to each other, he 
 thought, drop away at death our bodies fade from 
 our vision but the spirit remains in a congenial world, 
 intelligent, impassive, and unshackled. All things that 
 it loved are still around it, but it is no more the victim 
 of space and time. It has joined the company, and 
 lives in the presence of the Immortals, dwelling in that 
 spiritual world which enwraps the more material and 
 visible sphere of our present being. 
 
 But there was a cause still more powerful, though 
 more remote, in determining the mind of Shelley to 
 Infidelity, as it is called. It was the prevailing Chris- 
 
Percy By s she Shelley. 141 
 
 tian philosophy of the era. The disciples of Locke 
 had long held possession of the schools. Their 
 dogmas were generally received for the truth. Locke 
 himself was a Christian in theory and practice, but the 
 intellectual system of Locke was not Christian. His 
 firm faith in the Scriptures, his experimental knowledge 
 of their truth, prevented him from carrying his doc 
 trines out to their ultimate conclusion. He lived, there 
 fore, and died a Christian. But not so many of his 
 immediate followers. They received the seed he had 
 sown in no Christian hearts. There \vere no obstacles 
 to prevent them from pushing, indeed it was inevitable 
 that they should push, his doctrines to their more ulti 
 mate principles. Condillac, in France, when he pro 
 pounded his system of sensualism, borrowed it directly 
 from Locke. Hume, of England, more consecutive 
 and more acute than the rest of Locke s disciples, only 
 developed, although it may have been unconsciously, 
 the principles of their common master. The long 
 controversy, which took place in England in the time 
 of Shaftesbury, respecting the truth of the Christian 
 Religion, was a controversy that grew out of the system 
 of Locke. The champions of Christianity fought under 
 a disadvantage. Their philosophy and their religion 
 were at variance. To go into the fight against infidelity, 
 with weapons drawn from the magazine of Locke s 
 philosophy, was to fight with a broken reed and a 
 battered sword. The infidels had the best of the battle, 
 until some superior minds, perceiving the folly of their 
 philosophy, cut loose from its untenable grounds, fought 
 for Christianity on its own merits, and turned the tide 
 of victory. It is the misfortune of Locke s system, as 
 Cousin has shown, that its three great theories, of Free 
 dom, of the Soul, and of God, lead, by inevitable conse 
 quence, to Fatalism, Materialism, and Atheism. Now, 
 
142 Percy By s she Shelley. 
 
 Shelley, though he had logical power enough to follow 
 the system of Locke to its inferences, like the other 
 men of that day, did not have sagacity enough to 
 detect the falsehood of its premises. He was .only 
 more fearless than other thinkers in giving a public 
 expression to his opinions. Too pure in heart to com 
 promise with fraud and wrong in any shape, and too 
 noble to harbor even the wish to conceal his senti 
 ments, he at once proclaimed his opposition to Chris 
 tianity. 
 
 Yet, be it borne in mind, it was the Christianity of 
 tradition and the Old Church that incurred his hatred. 
 The misfortune of our beneficent religion is, to have had 
 its glory obscured in all ages by the absurd and repul 
 sive dogmas of its teachers, and by the follies and vices 
 of its friends. At no single period of its existence, since 
 its heaven-commissioned founder was nailed to the awful 
 tree, have its external aspects conformed to its inward 
 spirit ; at no period have the lives of its votaries corre 
 sponded to the high, divine, and eternal ideal which it 
 was intended to reveal. Its history has been a record 
 of selfish pretentions, absurd creeds, and pernicious 
 practices. From the close of the first century down to 
 the present time, how often has the Church been the 
 theatre of disgraceful broils and wicked persecutions ! 
 Under the dynasty of the earlier Romanists, indeed, the 
 Church became the nursing-mother of fraud and tyranny. 
 She crushed the human soul, she aspired to make good 
 her aspiration to universal despotism by fagot and 
 flame. And when her high claims, in this respect, were 
 contested when the giant-monk of Erhfurt brought in 
 the solemn protest of the enslaved soul, the new sects 
 that sprung up upon her ruins were filled with much 
 of her intolerant and persecuting spirit. 
 
Percy ByssJic Shelley. 143 
 
 It is true, there was much at all times to redeem the 
 character of Christianity, in spite of its abuses and cor 
 ruptions. But this, unfortunately, consisted in those 
 virtuous influences which escape the eye of the world, 
 which do not force themselves upon the public obser 
 vation, and whose presence, indeed, is never recognized 
 until after they have wrought their effects. While Christi 
 anity, in its external aspects, presented features of dread 
 and repugnance, it was silently regenerating the world. 
 Even when its professed teachers and friends were most 
 unfaithful to it, it was the great centre of moral and 
 civil elevation. It was working, with the might of God, 
 in secret places and among obscure men, the overthrow 
 of oppression. But the Free Thinkers were blind to 
 this aspect of its history. It was their misfortune to have 
 identified religion with the external Church. Their 
 sensibilities were arrested by the mockeries and wicked 
 ness of the latter, without being touched by the pure and 
 beautiful benignity of the former. Most gross and fatal 
 mistake ! 
 
 But we must tear ourselves from the subject : our 
 space, already exhausted, warns us that we can make 
 only the briefest allusion to the circumstances of Shelley s 
 death. He perished during a storm on the Gulf of 
 Lerici, in the 29th year of his age. It was a death in 
 singular correspondence with his life ; and in the clos 
 ing stanza of his Adonais, suggested by the untimely 
 death of Keats, a friend and brother-spirit, he seems to 
 have had prophetic glimpses of his fate. He says : 
 
 my spirit s bark is driven 
 
 Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng, 
 Whose sails were never to the tempest given ; 
 The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ! 
 
H4 Percy Bysshc Shelley. 
 
 I am borne darkly, fearfully afar ; 
 
 Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, 
 
 The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
 
 Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are." 
 
 His remains rest beneath the mouldering walls of 
 Rome the sepulchre of his ashes and the shrine of 
 our sincerest sympathy. 
 
THE LAST HALF-CENTURY.* 
 
 |HE half-century which has just closed has been 
 one of prodigious movement and significance. 
 Seldom, if ever, has the world seen a fifty 
 years of equal moment. Every day of it almost has 
 teemed with great events with events not of transient 
 or local, but of deep and world-wide interest. Those 
 years have been fertile also in great men, and not in any 
 single walk of human exertion, but in all departments, 
 in literature, philosophy, war, statesmanship, and 
 practical enterprise. 
 
 Doubtless, in the eyes of Providence, to which a 
 thousand years are as one day, all periods of human 
 history are alike, of equal weight or equal nothing 
 ness. But to Man, who is controlled by the events in 
 which he lives, all periods of history are not alike. 
 Each age has its distinct character, is adverse or propi 
 tious to him, pushes on or retards his civilization, his 
 refinement, his progress in knowledge and art, and his 
 practical conquests in the realms of space and time. 
 For this reason history is divided into epochs or eras, 
 of which we speak as good or bad, as ages of light or 
 of darkness, as ages when our race seems to have been 
 kept back in its course or impelled onward and upward. 
 
 The last half-century, therefore, we call an age of 
 
 * From the New York Evening Post, Jan. ist, 1851. 
 7 
 
146 The Last Half -Century. 
 
 great moment and significance because it has been a 
 time of grand events a destructive, and yet a prolific 
 period in which so many things have gone out and 
 so many other things come in, so many horrible errors 
 and prejudices been killed, and so many new and 
 beautiful truths bom that mankind, we believe, to the 
 end of their days, will rejoice in this period. They 
 will turn to it in after ages, as we now turn to the age 
 of the Greek dramatists, to the Apostolic age, to the 
 age of Shakspeare, to the Reformation, to the scien 
 tific years of the sixteenth century, etc., as to a great 
 fructifying season of the race when humanity was more 
 than ordinarily genial, and shot up into new growths and 
 blossomed into a more luxuriant bloom. Its mighty 
 political changes, its varied and novel discoveries in 
 science, its stupendous applications of art, the richness 
 and universality of its literature, the spread and ramifi 
 cations of its trade, and the lofty moral enterprises it 
 has begun, are the characteristics of its eminence the 
 tokens and titles of its glory. 
 
 I. POLITICAL CHANGES. 
 
 The year 1800 opened with Napoleon Bonaparte, first 
 Consul of France. Beginning his career as a subaltern 
 officer in the armies of the republic, that extraordinary 
 man had risen, by one brilliant achievement after an 
 other, to the highest posts of command. He had given 
 a finishing stroke to the tumults of the old revolution ; 
 he had conducted a campaign against the Austrians in 
 Italy, in which he imparted new terrors and new glories 
 to war, and by triumphant victories at Montenotte, Mil- 
 lissimo, Castiglione, Dego, Arcola, and Rivoli, by the 
 unprecedented passage of the bridge of Lodi, and by 
 the masterly siege of Mantua, established his position 
 
The Last Half- Century. 147 
 
 as the greatest military genius of all time. Elevated by 
 intrigue and stratagem to consular power, with col 
 leagues that were merely his tools, and an authority that 
 was almost despotic, he professed at first to exercise his 
 functions with moderation and justice. He made over 
 tures of peace to England, with which France had been 
 so long at war ; but the ministry of Pitt, distrustful of 
 his sincerity, and elated by the recent triumphs of Nel 
 son, on the Nile, repelled his advances, and prepared 
 for a general European conflict. 
 
 Then followed those movements of armies more 
 tremendous than Europe had before known, in which the 
 forces of Russia, Prussia, Austria, and England, com 
 bined for the overthrow of a single man, were succes 
 sively repulsed. Millions of men were precipitated 
 upon the field of battle, and a series of brilliant exploits, 
 at Marengo, at Austerlitz, at Wagram, at Jena, at Eylau, 
 gave the military chieftain almost universal dominion. 
 He reconstructed society abroad, and remodelled the 
 laws at home ; he subdued dynasties that had been 
 founded for centuries ; he dethroned monarchs by 
 edict ; he seated his brothers upon the most ancient 
 thrones, and caused the whole world to tremble at his 
 nod. 
 
 But with his unexampled successes came also unpre 
 cedented disaster. The foolish expedition into Egypt, 
 the offensive war on the peninsula, where Wellington 
 worsted his best Marshals, the gigantic but insane inva 
 sion of Russia, which ended in the conflagration of 
 Moscow, the awful retreat from the burning city, where 
 every step was marked by the bones of thousands who 
 perished of cold and famine, the final overthrow at 
 Waterloo, and the lonely imprisonment at St. Helena, 
 were the leading incidents in a drama of stupendous 
 grandeur and catastrophe. 
 
148 The Last Half -Century. 
 
 The effect of these immense adventures, of these sig 
 nal triumphs and woeful calamities, was to derange the 
 despotic system that had prevailed, to break down the 
 prestige of kings, to emancipate the smaller States from 
 the oppressive weight of the larger, to accustom the 
 people to the exercise of their forces, and to establish 
 new relations among the powers of Christendom. 
 Europe was prepared for new organizations ; the lead 
 ing sovereigns, no longer able to manage the affairs of 
 their respective kingdoms, entered into a Holy Alli 
 ance for mutual protection and general tranquillity. 
 They parcelled out countries, they partitioned nations, 
 they divided races, with as much arbitrary exercise of 
 command as was ever shown in the regulations of a 
 camp, and in complete disregard of tradition, nation 
 ality, and popular feeling. The consequence was, a 
 perpetual uneasiness on the part of the people, and a 
 perpetual struggle on the part of power, to retain 
 its position and to enforce its rule. The thirty years that 
 followed the Congress of Vienna, though nominally 
 years of peace, have been at no time exempt from war. 
 The disorders in Spain, the insurrections of Piedmont 
 and Naples, the revolt of Belgium, the dethronement 
 of Charles X. in France, with the revolutionary agita 
 tions that grew out of it, and finally, in 1848, the over 
 throw of French monarchy, the establishment of a re 
 public, and the general uprising of the whole continent, 
 when kings fled and the Pope abdicated, and the entire 
 aristocratic system began to totter and reel like a vessel 
 struck by opposing winds, were the direct outgrowths 
 of the false and tyrannic constitution adopted in the 
 treaties of 1815. 
 
 In the midst of these grander perturbations two new 
 powers, that had before exercised but little influence on 
 the politics of Christendom, were silently rising Russia 
 
The Last Half -Century. 149 
 
 and the United States. The former, at the opening of 
 the present century, was only regarded as an immense 
 unknown tract of country, inhabited chiefly by boors 
 and savages. It is true, that the fame of Peter the 
 Great and of Catherine had spread through Europe ; 
 that the vigorous wars kept up for years along the 
 shores of the Baltic, in which Sweden was conquered, 
 and an obstinate series of skirmishes with the Otto 
 mans and Turks, had demonstrated great military re 
 sources ; but, until the attempt to subjugate Poland, and 
 the war against Napoleon, Russia was estimated rather 
 as an Asiatic than a European power. Now, she is 
 the predominant influence among the absolute govern 
 ments. Her territory, embracing one-seventh of the 
 globe, is possessed by fifty-four millions of people, with 
 inexhaustible resources of wealth, a disciplined army of 
 one million soldiers, extensive manufactures and com 
 merce, a rapidly increasing civilization, and the most 
 ambitious hopes. 
 
 The other nascent power to which we refer, also just 
 beginning to be known in 1800 the United States is 
 now second to none. The five millions of people of 
 that time have grown to twenty-five millions ; the fif 
 teen States of the Union are now thirty-one ; a superfi 
 cial area of territory, then measuring one million of 
 square miles, is now nearly four millions ; and a com 
 merce which was then small, precarious, and timid, now 
 reaches every sea and every extreme river and lake of 
 the globe. We had then no possessions on the Gulf of 
 Mexico, and none beyond the Mississippi, but our land 
 marks now are the two oceans. The developments of 
 agricultural industry have been enormous ; a single seed 
 alone, that of cotton, has come to control the trade of 
 the world ; three successful wars and a skilful diplomacy 
 have given us fame abroad ; those great political ques- 
 
i5o The Last Half -Century. 
 
 tions which have deluged the old world for centuries in 
 blood, are here practically determined ; an experiment 
 of the most unlimited popular freedom is triumphantly 
 sustained ; while the progress of intelligence, industry, 
 peace, and general good-will sets at naught all the pre 
 vious experiences of the race. 
 
 Coeval with the immense changes in the political 
 state of Europe, and with the rise of Russia and the 
 United States, there have been great results effected else 
 where. The South American republics, though still 
 unsettled, have by successive throes cast off colonial 
 bondage, and redeemed U continent from foreign do 
 minion. Modern civilization has penetrated into Egypt, 
 Algiers, and other parts of Africa ; Persia feels the pres 
 sure of Christian intelligence and liberal art ; and while 
 England, through the ramifications of her trade, has 
 built up an empire of one hundred and fifty millions of 
 souls in the East, who are subjected to her laws and her 
 civilization, she has discovered and peopled a fifth di 
 vision of the globe, in Australia. Battering down the 
 barbarian walls of China, she has carried trade, refine 
 ment, -law. and religion to more than one-half the race. 
 The wild tribes of the desert, the furious savages of the 
 south seas, the wandering herdsmen and hunters of 
 India, as well as the stolid denizens of the Flowery 
 Land, have been breathed upon by the influences of a 
 higher life ; they are arrested and brought face to face 
 with a nobler social order ; vanquished by its strength 
 or reduced by its skill, they are made to feel its superi 
 ority ; and thus, in various ways, ignorance, brutality, 
 prejudice, horrid faiths, and oppressive castes are giving 
 way before the gradual advances of knowledge, art, and 
 social discipline. 
 
The Last Half -Century. i5i 
 
 II. LEGISLATIVE REFORMS. 
 
 The spirit of progress manifested on the continent of 
 Europe in violent overturnings and changes, has shown 
 itself among the freer people of England, in a grand re 
 form of laws and institutions. This movement was be 
 gun at the close of the last century, in those trials for 
 constructive treason, in which Tooke, Thelwall, Hardy, 
 and others figured, when the eloquence of Erskine ex 
 ploded the absurd maxims of constructive guilt, and 
 established the right of Britons to free speech, against 
 the combined influence of king, ministry, and judges. 
 The discussions that grew out of those trials gave a new 
 meaning to the law of libel and sedition, to the rights 
 of juries, and to the liberties of the subject. The total 
 abolition of the slave-trade, not long after, was another 
 great gain to the cause of humanity. It brought into 
 the ascendant, in the first nation of the earth, such men 
 as Sharpe, Clarkson, Wilberforce, Fox, Stephen, Ma 
 cau lay (father of the essayist), and Brougham, whose 
 humaner sentiments and progressive tendencies have been 
 infused into general opinion. Their efforts again pre 
 pared the way for those legal reforms in which Ben- 
 tham, Romilly, Macintosh, and Brougham won an 
 undying renown. The common laws of England, but 
 especially the penal codes, with all their good features, 
 were yet atrociously severe, bloody, and unjust. Hun 
 dreds of the most trivial minor offences could be pun 
 ished with death ; stealing a fish, marrying a couple out 
 of church, maiming cattle, transporting wool, pulling 
 down turnpike-gates, etc., were placed in the same cat 
 egory with murder, arson, and rape ; counsel were not 
 allowed to prisoners, even in cases of high treason ; 
 while the penalties prescribed were barbarous, and the 
 poor wretch condemned in any capital case, might be 
 
1 52 The Last Half Century. 
 
 dragged to the place of execution at the heels of horses, 
 might be quartered, might be embowelled, might be slit 
 in the nose, or have his skeleton left hanging on the 
 gallows to rot. But, thanks to the wonderful sagacity 
 and courage of Bentham, to the indefatigable parlia 
 mentary labors of Romilly, to the stately eloquence of 
 Macintosh, and the sledge-hammer logic of Henry 
 (not then Lord) Brougham, the crueller features of these 
 provisions were mitigated or removed. At the same 
 time, the fearful abuses of Chancery were purged, the 
 perfidies of the courts exposed, useless forms retrenched, 
 old and oppressive processes superseded, the statutes 
 consolidated, and a considerable number of titles codi 
 fied. It was in reference to these ameliorations that 
 Brougham said, citing the boast of Augustus, that he 
 found Rome brick and left it marble, " How much 
 nobler the sovereign s boast, when he shall have it to 
 say, that he found Law dear and left it cheap, found it 
 a sealed book and left it a living letter, found it the pat 
 rimony of the rich, left it the inheritance of the poor, 
 found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression, and 
 left it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence !" 
 The struggle between Right and Prescription, thus 
 begun in the sphere of criminal law, was extended even 
 within the domain of religious prerogative. The bish 
 op s mitre, like the monarch s crown the gown of the 
 churchman, as well as that of the lawyer and judge 
 were subjected to the same rigid scrutinies of reason 
 and justice. Those venerable strongholds of bigotry, 
 the Corporation and Test Acts, were the first of the 
 "bulwarks erected to secure the Established Church," 
 as Blackstone described them, which fell before the 
 modern assault. That no person could be legally 
 elected to certain offices without having previously taken 
 the sacrament of the Lord s Supper in the forms of the 
 
The Last Half -Century. 163 
 
 Establishment, or that all military and civil function 
 aries should have declared against the doctrine of 
 transubstantiation, were adjudged to be political tests so 
 unreasonable, so intolerant, and in their practical working 
 so pernicious levelled, as they were, equally at Prot 
 estant dissenters and Catholic recusants that, after a 
 series of stormy and protracted debates, they were blot 
 ted forever from the records. 
 
 III. LITERARY ASPECTS. 
 
 How many and what brilliant names pass before us 
 when we recall the literary history of the period of 
 time under review? As we hurriedly travel down the 
 vista, it seems as if our eyes swept the heavens when 
 the night is glorious with stars. Each object is in it 
 self a world, radiating from its single centre beams of 
 many-colored light, while the whole, gathered into 
 constellations, or poured along the skies in galaxies, 
 floods the air with its illumination. Scott, and 
 Wordsworth, and Byron, and Shelley, and Keats, and 
 Southey, and Coleridge and what multitudes of others, 
 of scarcely inferior genius : Goethe, the Schlegels, 
 Tieck, Heine, Hoffman, Freiligrath, Tegner, Chateau 
 briand, De Stael, De Genlis, Hugo, Lamartine, Sand, 
 Guizot, Thierry, Michelet, Sismondi, Manzoni, Car- 
 lyle, Macaulay, Dickens, Thackeray, Hood, Emerson, 
 Irving, Bryant, Hawthorne, and a host of lesser lights, 
 many of them gone out, but the most of them still 
 active in their various spheres of influence ! Who shall 
 compute their numbers ; who estimate the amount 
 and variety of the intellectual wealth they have con 
 tributed to the common treasury of the world ; or who 
 describe the extent and intensity of the delight they have 
 spread ? 
 
1 54 The Last Half -Century. 
 
 Modern literature, while it has degenerated in but a 
 single branch, falling short in its dramatic efforts, of the 
 splendid execution of the Greek dramatists and of the 
 noble vigor and pathos of the age of Shakspeare, has 
 yet made the most rapid advances in almost every 
 other. In the art of writing history, Niebuhr, Guizot, 
 Arnold, and Macaulay have little to learn from Herod 
 otus, Thucydides, and Tacitus. Esthetics, or artistic 
 criticism, has reached a depth of insight, and a breadth 
 of critical principle which show an immeasurable supe 
 riority ; while the century may be said to have origi 
 nated the style of periodical writing, and the infinite 
 fecundity of prose fiction. It is true, there had been 
 Guardians, Spectators, Gentlemen s Magazines, and 
 Critical Reviews, before the establishment of the Edin 
 burgh Review (1802), but they were mere penny whis 
 tles of thought and criticism compared with the trumpet 
 blasts of our recent quarterlies. It is true, also, that 
 Cervantes, Rabelais, Le Sage, Boccaccio, Bunyan, De 
 foe, Swift, and Fielding had written stories before the 
 mighty Wizard of the North began to pour out of his in 
 exhaustible fount, that series of tales in which he almost 
 rivals Shakspeare in the creation of character, and sur 
 passes Lope De Vega in fertility of invention. But the 
 peculiar distinction of our time is, that while those im 
 mortal narrators illustrated at distant intervals, and each 
 by himself, the age in which he lived, the fruitful effort 
 of Scott was but the beginning of an activity that has 
 gone on widening and extending its influences, until 
 novels have become an article of daily production and 
 daily luxury. Every well-educated man or woman 
 is a reader of them ; and almost every well-educated 
 man or woman a writer. Expatiating over every sub 
 ject illuminating history, science, government, and 
 religion, as well as the manners and customs of all 
 
The Last Half -Century. i55 
 
 classes of the people invading all realms of earth and 
 air, and, at times, even the bottomless abysses, they 
 have opened new worlds of thought and sentiment, and 
 purveyed to millions of minds an infinite diversity of 
 nourishment and pleasure. 
 
 But, in addition to this rapid and multifarious devel 
 opment of certain kinds of writings, our age has wit 
 nessed the creation of an almost entire national, litera 
 ture. Germany, which in literary productiveness and 
 vigor is now the foremost nation, was scarcely known 
 to the rest of Europe at the beginning of this century. 
 Saving Luther, and a few other reformers, her writers 
 were mostly of a jejune and imitative class, who withered 
 under an emasculate dependence on Roman and French 
 models. But with the advent of Wieland, Lessing, 
 Herder, and especially of Goethe and Schiller nearly 
 all of whose efforts date since the French revolution 
 her literature has expanded until it has finally become 
 the most fruitful source of modern culture. In any one 
 year now, it produces more sound learning, more use 
 ful science, more genuine criticism, and more beautiful 
 fiction than it was usual to produce in whole centuries 
 before. 
 
 Another striking peculiarity in the literary history of 
 the time is, that literary men of different nations are 
 becoming more and more acquainted with all that is 
 grand or beautiful in their respective productions. The 
 barriers of ignorance which formerly separated them 
 are thrown down, and they begin to regard themselves, 
 for the first time, as a real Republic of Letters, conse 
 crated to the loftiest purposes, and laying up for all 
 mankind an indestructible inheritance of Beauty and 
 Truth. No Pere Bowhours, as Carlyle says, now in 
 quires whether a German can possibly "possess a soul ;" 
 no Voltaire ridicules Shakspeare as a huge Gilles de 
 
1 56 The Last Half- Century. 
 
 Foires, or drunken savage ; no English critic describes 
 Goethe or Schiller as mere master-workers in a great 
 stagnant pool of indecency and dulness. The once ex 
 clusive treasures of the nations are thrown open to com 
 mon possession, and the mind of each people, confessing 
 the characteristic worth of all the others, finds everywhere 
 traits of excellence and nobleness. It finds that we all 
 live by one human heart, and are advancing in differ 
 ent ways to the same great goal of human elevation. 
 
 Yet the tendencies of modern literature are shown 
 quite as strongly by another fact, which is, that it 
 aims to become universal, both in the subjects it han 
 dles and in the persons to whom it is addressed. 
 It seeks for its materials, as its recipients, on every 
 side ; no longer confined to a narrow list of time- 
 consecrated themes, it expands itself to broader and 
 more general interests. It has learned the inestimable 
 secret, that no object in the universe is unworthy of note, 
 that nothing which concerns the human heart is either 
 low or trivial or commonplace. It sees that every sprig 
 which falls to the ground is connected with that won 
 derful Tree of Life, whose roots, ramifying through the 
 earth, make the solid foundation of the globe, while 
 its branches, growing year by year, reach up to the top 
 most Heaven. It sees that every emotion in the mean 
 est human soul is the emotion of an infinite spirit, sus 
 ceptible of an infinite happiness or infinite fall. It rev 
 erences the whole of Nature ; but, above all, it sympa 
 thizes with the whole of Man. It strives to reveal the 
 beauty and the grandeur there is in all existence ; and 
 to show, how rich in delight and nobleness are the lowly 
 and the habitual, even more than the lofty and distant. 
 Behind the realities of daily routine and toil, we are 
 made to see an exhaustless ideal world, glorious in en 
 chantments and fertile with every joy. Our homes and 
 
The Last Half - Century . i5f 
 
 poorest social duties are filled with dignity, and our 
 mother earth, trodden and trailed in the dust as she has 
 been, raised to her proper place among the planets of 
 the skies. 
 
 Consider, again, the unexampled rapidity with which 
 literature has been diffused ! Consider that the nine 
 teenth century has been the teeming age of the printing- 
 press the age of cheap books and cheaper newspapers 
 the age when infant, and Sunday, and ragged, and 
 free, and classical schools, have taught multitudes of 
 all classes to read. In Germany alone any year s book 
 fair would exhibit more new publications than was con 
 tained in many an ancient world-famous library. One 
 leading publisher now will often have upon his shelves 
 a larger variety of books than would have supplied the 
 reading of the world a century ago. Every day the 
 groaning press pours out its thousands of volumes. 
 Not light, trashy, or worthless works ; on the contrary, 
 the best specimens of the best literatures of all ages. 
 The choicest treasures of ancient art the ample tomes 
 of the learned eras the sacred classics of England s 
 ripest period books of science, of research, of antiqui 
 ties, of criticism, of philosophical inquiry and theologi 
 cal disquisition mingled with an overwhelming profu 
 sion of travels, biographies, essays, poems, novels, pam 
 phlets, and tracts are issued and reissued till one won 
 ders how the world contains them all. What books 
 fail to hold, overflows into the periodical and the news 
 paper. A single print now will circulate among its fifty 
 thousand subscribers, and be read daily by twice that 
 number of persons ; yet there are hundreds of these 
 penny prints. A single religious society will send the 
 words of Paul or John to a greater number of minds 
 in seven days than Paul or John could have preached 
 to had they preached incessantly for seven times seven 
 
1 58 Ihe Last Half -Century. 
 
 years. All the pulpits in the city do not address, once 
 a week, a congregation as large as that daily addressed 
 by half a dozen editors. So swift and prolific, in short, 
 are the multiplying energies of the press, that it alone 
 would have placed the people of the Nineteenth Century 
 in possession of a power more tremendous than was 
 ever before wielded by our race. 
 
 IV. SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES. 
 
 It is in the sphere of physical science that this activity 
 of the modern mind has been most conspicuously dis 
 played. The achievements here have been signal and 
 resplendent indeed, surpassing those of all previous 
 time, and conducting our race to the verge of discover 
 ies still more comprehensive and wonderful. We are 
 already so accustomed to acknowledge the truth of its 
 vast deductions we have come to receive their general 
 principles as so unquestionable, that it seems to most of 
 us they must have been always known. We can hardly 
 believe that it is within the memory of men still young 
 that the most important doctrines of Astronomy, of 
 Geology, of Optics, of Mineralogy, of Chemistry, of 
 Zoology, of Comparative and Fossil Anatomy, of Pa 
 leontology, of Magnetism, of Electricity, of Galvanism, 
 of Actinism, etc., have been first published. That the 
 world should have been ignorant of so much, and got 
 along with its ignorance, is surprising ; and it is still 
 more surprising that such an accumulation of facts as 
 now compose the body of the sciences, should have been 
 gathered within so short a period of time. But so it is. 
 Nearly all that we know of the natural sciences, as con 
 tradistinguished from the mathematical and moral 
 sciences, has come to us from the explorations, experi 
 ments, and reasonings of the last fifty years. Some of 
 
The Last Half -Century. 
 
 them have originated entirely within that time ; others 
 have been so extensively developed, as to be regarded as 
 almost new ; while others, in which the direct progress 
 has been less, have reached a precision and exactitude 
 in their details, that have placed them, for the first time, 
 on a fixed and certain basis. 
 
 The leading principles of astronomy, for instance, 
 were ascertained by Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Huy- 
 gens, and others, centuries since ; immense tables of 
 observation had been constructed by the old astrono 
 mers, the size and distance of several planets measured, 
 a consistent theory of the stellar universe attained, and 
 knowledge of the heavens almost indefinitely enlarged. 
 Yet a philosopher of their days were it Newton him 
 self would scarcely comprehend the latest treatise on 
 the subject, without preliminary study. For hundreds 
 of acute and patient minds, in the constant investigation 
 of the movements of the heavenly bodies, have added 
 fact after fact to the knowledge then reached, until the 
 whole aspect of astronomical science has changed. 
 Eleven new planets, and three new satellites have been 
 added to our system, their dimensions and orbits calcu 
 lated, and their relations to other bodies explained. 
 The distance of the fixed stars, which was once thought 
 to be an impossible problem, has been measured, and 
 some of those stars, inconceivably remote as they are, 
 weighed. A new system of binary and tnnary stars, 
 with their positions, their motions, their periodical 
 brightness, have been discovered, and the law of gravi 
 tation shown to prevail among them, linking them to 
 our own simpler system. A large number of comets, 
 with their precise paths ; immense circles of meteoric 
 bodies, with their periodical changes ; and Kirkwood s 
 recent law, which binds the entire system in harmony, 
 have been added to our knowledge. 
 
160 The Last Half -Century. 
 
 Kepler predicted that between the orbits of Mars and 
 Jupiter, a large planet ought to be found, and, strange 
 to say, the very opening of the present century was 
 illustrated by the discovery of four small planets, Ceres, 
 Pallas, Juno, and Vesta, occupying the very place antici 
 pated. Ceres, the first of these, was discovered by 
 Piazzi, at Palermo, in 1801 ; Pallas, the second of them, 
 by Dr. Olbers, of Bremen, in 1802 ; Juno, the third, 
 by Mr. Harding, in 1804 ; and Vesta, the fourth, by Dr. 
 Olbers, in 1807. After the discovery of the third, Dr. 
 Olbers suggested the idea that they were the fragments of 
 a planet that had been burst in pieces ; and, considering 
 that they must all have diverged from one point in the 
 original orbit, and ought to return to the opposite point, 
 he examined these parts of the heavens, and thus dis 
 covered the planet Vesta. But though this principle was 
 in the possession of astronomers, nearly forty years 
 elapsed before any other planetary fragment was dis 
 covered. At last, in 1845, Mr. Encke, of Driessen, in 
 Prussia, discovered the fragment called Astraea, and in 
 1847 another, called Hebe. In the same year, Mr. 
 Hind discovered other two, Iris and Flora. In 1848, 
 Mr. Graham, an Irish astronomer, discovered a ninth 
 fragment, called Metis. In 1849, ^ r - Gasparis, of 
 Naples, discovered another, which he calls Hygeia ; 
 and, within the last three months, the same astronomer 
 has discovered the eleventh fragment, to which he has 
 given the name of Parthenope. "But human genius 
 has been permitted to triumph over greater difficulties. 
 The planet Neptune was discovered before a ray of its 
 light had entered the human eye. By a law of the solar 
 system just disclosed, we can determine the original 
 magnitude of the broken planet long after it has been 
 shattered into fragments, and we might have determined 
 it even after a single fragment had proved its existence. 
 
The Last Half -Century. 161 
 
 This law we owe to Daniel Kirkwood, of Pottsville, a 
 humble American, who, like the illustrious Kepler, 
 struggled to find something new among the arithmetical 
 relations of the planetary elements." 
 
 " In passing from our solar system to the frontier of the 
 sidereal universe around us," says Sir David Brewster, 
 "we traverse a gulf of inconceivable extent. If we rep 
 resent the radius of the solar system, or of Neptune s 
 orbit (which is 2,900 millions of miles), by a line two 
 miles long, the interval between our system, or the 
 orbit of Neptune, and the nearest fixed star, will be 
 greater than the whole circumference of our globe or 
 equal to a length of 27,600 miles. The parallax of 
 the nearest fixed star being supposed to be one second, 
 its distance from the sun will be nearly 412,370 times 
 the radius of the Earth s orbit ; or 13,746 times that of 
 Neptune, which is thirty times as far from the Sun as 
 the Earth. And yet to that distant zone has the genius 
 of man traced the Creator s arm working the wonders 
 of his power, and diffusing the gifts of his love the 
 heat and the light of suns the necessary elements of 
 physical and intellectual life. It is by means of the 
 gigantic telescope of Lord Rosse, that we have become 
 acquainted with the form and character of those great 
 assemblages of stars which compose the sidereal uni 
 verse. " 
 
 In these instances we speak of a science which began 
 many centuries ago, and which was supposed at the end 
 of the last century to be almost perfect. How much 
 more striking the advances of the mind in sciences 
 which were then unknown ! Geology, but barely heard 
 of in the fanciful conjectures of Buffon, Hutton, Whis- 
 ton, etc., has since been erected into a distinct depart 
 ment of knowledge. It embraces millions of well- 
 observed and carefully recorded facts ; it has arrived at 
 
1 62 The Last Half* Century. 
 
 the most impressive and startling generalizations ; and 
 it has laid bare the history of the globe for thousands 
 of years. All continents, islands, seas, coal-pits, and 
 oceans have been explored by its devotees, and it is 
 rapidly advancing to a confirmation of a beautiful 
 theory of the material universe. Public encouragement 
 has been conjoined with private enterprise in the prose 
 cution of its objects ; the leading governments of 
 Europe, and most of the States of the Union, have sent 
 out expeditions to facilitate its researches ; and there is 
 no considerable portion of the globe, except at inacces 
 sible heights or depths, or among barbarous nations, 
 where the geologist has not been at work with his 
 hammer and spade. 
 
 Half a century ago huge bones were dug out of the 
 alluvion ; the forms of reptiles, fishes, and shells were 
 embedded in the solid rocks ; gigantic ferns and other 
 tropical plants were found among the coal strata, but 
 they attracted little notice and had no name. Now the 
 classification of the fossil world is well-nigh as complete 
 and exact as that of existing life. The fossil species, 
 animal and vegetable, discovered and classed, amount 
 to nearly ten thousand ; and the additions continually 
 made to this number, riot merely tend to complete the 
 series of these remains of former conditions of the 
 earth, but often even fill up the lacuna or gaps in the 
 forms of animal life around us. The Memoir of Owen 
 on British Fossil Marine Reptiles is a striking example 
 of what has been done in a single subdivision of the 
 subject. The results obtained by this eminent natural 
 ist from microscopic examination of the internal struc 
 ture of teeth, are further curiously illustrative of that 
 strictness and minuteness of research which have been 
 extended to every part of comparative anatomy, as well 
 of fossils as of existing animal life. And yet more re- 
 
The Last Half -Century. 16 
 
 o 
 
 markable in this light are the discoveries of Ehrenberg 
 among the fossil Infusoria, showing conditions and 
 changes of animal life before unknown ; and the pro 
 duction, from the silicious or calcareous coverings of 
 those microscopic beings, of aggregate masses of some 
 of the hardest rocks forming the crust of the globe. 
 
 The same may be said of all departments of miner 
 alogy and Natural History, whose students have spread 
 like a net-work of observers over the whole face of the 
 earth, diligently laboring without cessation in the col 
 lection of materials or in the description of nations, and 
 transmitting to great central depositories the results of 
 their labor, which, when they are once got together, 
 are arranged and classified into an instructive and beau 
 tiful order. The gigantic labors of Cuvier, St. Hilaire, 
 Edwards, Kirby, Spence, and ten thousand others, have 
 mainly fallen within the present century. 
 
 In respect to Natural History, it is stated, that owing 
 to increased zeal and enterprise of naturalists favored, 
 indeed, by facilities of travel before unknown the 
 number of distinct species collected and classified within 
 the last twenty years, has been nearly doubled in every 
 class. We might particularize the ratio of increase of 
 each, but will merely state as instances, that the Mam 
 malia, numbered in 1828, by Cuvier and Desmarest, 
 at seven hundred, now reach nearly one thousand two 
 hundred ; the Fishes, estimated somewhat earlier, by 
 Laeepede, at two thousand, are now increased to about 
 eight thousand ; while the Insects, calculated by Hum- 
 boldt, in 1821, at forty-four thousand, have at this 
 time reached the amount of more than one hundred 
 thousand collected species ! A profuse variety in the 
 forms of animal life, scarcely less confounding to the 
 imagination than are the numbers by which we meas 
 ure the heavens, or record the velocity and vibrations 
 
164 The Last Half -Century. 
 
 of light. We might draw from the progress of Botany 
 instances not less remarkable, did our limits allow of 
 such detail. 
 
 The foundations of chemistry were laid by Black, 
 Fourcroy, and Lavoisier, during the latter part of the 
 last century ; but its most substantial acquisitions and 
 most rapid advances are owing to the law of definite 
 proportions, revealed by Dalton, in the year 1803, and 
 extended and conformed by Berzelius, Wollaston, Gay- 
 Lussac, and their successors. This has given a mathe 
 matical basis to chemical affinities, and enabled ex 
 perimenters to get deeper into the secrets of nature than 
 they ever before penetrated. That all bodies, in their 
 interior-structure, had a fixed and invariable composi 
 tion, that they would combine and replace each other 
 in determinate proportions, of weight or volume, that 
 these proportions could be expressed in numbers, whose 
 ratios could be arranged in certain simple series of 
 multiples so as to yield numerical formulae instead of 
 vague tables of names these were the pregnant truths 
 which presented the key to nature, and unlocked the 
 storehouses of a vast knowledge. It showed that one 
 great law, capable of numerical statement, lay at the 
 base of all material phenomena, determining the rela 
 tions of the invisible atoms of matter, and the largest 
 visible globes, and subjecting the minutest as well as 
 the grandest portions of creation the mote in the sun 
 beam as well as the sun itself to the most precise and 
 unchanging expression. That compound bodies should 
 unite together in multiples of their combining propor 
 tions, as well as in single equivalents, was an almost 
 inevitable inference from the same law. But when our 
 knowledge in that direction was further extended by 
 the discovery of Isomerism, which showed that the 
 same elements combine in exactly the same proper- 
 
The Last Half -Century. i65 
 
 tions, yet produce compounds of different chemical 
 properties, and by Isomorphism, or the fact that the 
 chemical elements of certain bodies may be arranged 
 in groups so related together, that when similar com 
 binations are formed from elements belonging to two, 
 three, or more of them, such combination will crystallize 
 in the same geometric forms, new floods of light were 
 thrown into the darker recesses of Nature. 
 
 To enumerate the results of these doctrines would be 
 to write a complete history of chemical science to de 
 scribe all its important decompositions of gases, earths, 
 and alkalies to expound its manifold combinations, 
 whereby it has produced so many new substances, un 
 known in nature, and giving to it an almost creative 
 dignity to unfold its reductions of various gases into 
 the liquid or solid form, to explain the phenomena of 
 catalysis and of compound radicals, and to expatiate 
 over the endless field of organic chemistry, which the 
 daring and brilliant Liebig has cultivated with such 
 fruitful results. It is enough to say, that every part of 
 the material world has been subjected to the crucible or 
 the retort, and made to give up its secrets, while the 
 mysterious streams of life itself, in the animal economy, 
 are ascended almost to their source. 
 
 In electricity, the relation of which to lightning was dis 
 closed in the well-known experiment of Franklin toward 
 the close of the last century, the first grand impulse 
 was given by Volta, in the year 1804, and was followed 
 by Oersted s experiments in magnetism, and the identi 
 fication of the electric and magnetic forces as one ele 
 ment. The further determination by Faraday of the 
 identity of voltaic and animal electricity, and his recent 
 researches on electric induction, electrotyles, and the 
 measurement of electric power, have opened new and 
 fertile questions, and carried the sciences forward to the 
 
1 66 The Last Half -Century. 
 
 most brilliant practical applications, and the verge of as 
 tounding developments. 
 
 " In optical science, the discoveries of Young, Fres- 
 nel, Malus, Brewster, and others scarcely less eminent, 
 as to the diffraction and interference of light double 
 refraction and polarization in its several forms and inci 
 dents the phenomena connected with the optical axes 
 of crystals, and other properties of this great element 
 gave a sudden impulse and new directions to the inquiry 
 which the genius of Newton had originated. The un- 
 dulatory theory of light, fortified by these discoveries, 
 became the means of carrying them yet further ; afford 
 ing anticipations of unattained results as in the case 
 of the conversion of the plane polarization of light into 
 the circular which it was the province of the most 
 refined experiment to justify and realize. And when 
 Arago found it possible, through certain phenomena of 
 polarized light, to determine by a mere fragment of Ice 
 land crystal, whether the light of comets is their own or 
 not, and whether that of the sun is from its solid body, 
 or a gaseous envelope around it, it was evident that we 
 were entering into the midst of principles and relations 
 of the highest order. About the same period the sev 
 eral phenomena of the solar spectrum, ascertained by 
 the elder Herschel, Wollaston, and Frauenhofer, laid a 
 foundation for those more extended and delicate re 
 searches which have rendered the investigation of the 
 solar beam, in its whole complex constitution, but par 
 ticularly in its chemical relations and application to pho 
 tography and thermography, one of the most interesting 
 problems in physical science, the complete solution of 
 which is yet reserved as a triumph for future inquiry."* 
 
 * See an article in the Edinburgh Re-view, on the " Present State of 
 the Physical Sciences" (from which we have merely condensed these 
 facts and illustrations), for a more extended history of scientific discovery. 
 
The Last Half -Century. 167 
 
 Let us take Meteorology as another example a part 
 of our knowledge still very imperfect, from the number of 
 elements conjointly concerned, and the complexity of all 
 the phenomena, yet how entirely altered from its state 
 forty years ago ! With instruments far more perfect, 
 and at innumerable stations over the face of the globe, the 
 most minute and authentic registers are now kept of the 
 weight, temperature, and humidity of the atmosphere 
 of its electrical and magnetic conditions of the direc 
 tion, velocity, and duration of winds of the quantity 
 of rain falling and of the meteoric phenomena which 
 more irregularly affect our planet, either from causes 
 proper to itself, or from external agents in its orbital pas 
 sage through space. 
 
 Physical Geography, too, even in the early part of 
 this century, was not an object of systematic study. It 
 is now pursued with all the ardor that characterizes sci 
 entific research ; has attained the most beautiful and 
 comprehensive results ; and fairly illuminates our earth, 
 and with it the whole social history of man, by the 
 splendor of its various generalizations. The magnifi 
 cent Physical Atlas of Johnson, recently published, is 
 an admirable evidence of the indefatigable activity with 
 which it has been prosecuted. 
 
 We might further speak of. the various discoveries 
 regarding Heat, as it comes to us in the solar ray as it 
 exists in planetary space as it is present in the interior 
 of the earth and as it acts, or is acted upon by the 
 various forms of matter, in reflexion, absorption, radia 
 tion, conduction, polarization, etc. ; researches begun 
 by Black and Leslie ; extended under high mathemati 
 cal formulae by Fourier; and by the elaborate experi 
 ments of Dulong, Melloni, and others, carried forward 
 to new and unexpected results. We might yet further 
 allude to the physiology of animal and vegetable life, 
 
1 68 The Last Half -Century. 
 
 \vhere the attainments have been equally remarkable ; 
 bringing all sciences to bear upon vital phenomena 
 better defining the types of form and structural devel 
 opment substituting cellular for vascular action in em 
 bryology and the formation of tissues applying chem 
 istry to objects, and through methods, heretofore untried, 
 classifying anew the structure and functions of the 
 nervous system, and from every side approaching nearer 
 to the mysterious springs of life. 
 
 We might also refer to the series of observations 
 not yet science made by the followers of Gall and 
 Spurzheim on the anatomy and functions of the brain ; 
 to those wonderful manifestations of Animal Magnet 
 ism, which are too well authenticated as facts to be de 
 nied, though not yet referred to any satisfactory laws ; 
 to the gradual amelioration and improvement of medi 
 cal science, and the diffusion everywhere of better no 
 tions as to life and health ; but that we have scarcely 
 space to indicate the existence of what are deemed cer 
 tain sciences, arid cannot, therefore, refer to those which 
 are yet unacknowledged by the majority of the estab 
 lished authorities in such matters. 
 
 Many branches of science, it is true, are yet in their 
 infancy; they are only employed in the collection of facts, 
 and in the preparation of individual isolated results. 
 But this is the necessary course of all sound induction : 
 it begins with observation ; it concludes with principles. 
 All sciences at the outset are mere accumulations of de 
 tails. But in the course of time, the efforts of scientific 
 explorers take another direction. They see that their 
 work is not separated from that of others ; that all the 
 objects of their study are more or less directly connected ; 
 that one can scarcely advance without the other ; that 
 discovery in any one throws light upon the path of the 
 others ; and that each new relation detected in any depart- 
 
The Last Half -Century. 169 
 
 ment becomes an additional bond of union for the 
 whole. Heat and light, and electricity and magnetism, 
 are melting into one single science ; this, again, is more 
 and more involved in general physics ; and even the 
 three kingdoms of animal, vegetable, and mineral na 
 ture, once thought insuperably distinct, have lost their 
 boundaries, and are blending into one physiology. An 
 identity of composition and structure is exhibited in all 
 parts of the vegetable world, which is but an integral 
 manifestation of all the possible forms of vegetable life. 
 So the whole animal kingdom is but a single collective 
 animal, each class of which manifests one of the epochs 
 of its development. 
 
 Nor among the physical sciences alone are these ties 
 of a close affinity maintained. Between the world of 
 mind and the world of matter, identical processes and 
 analogous phenomena are every day unfolded. The 
 development of humanity proves to be but the develop 
 ment, on a larger scale, of the individual man. Cos 
 mology and noology proceed in parallel lines, while the 
 perfect accord of religion, philosophy, and science is 
 hourly receiving new proofs. Nature, amid the pro 
 digious variety and shock of her forces, is ever the 
 same, a magnificent and glorious universality, evolved 
 by a few simple laws from an eternal and pervading 
 unity ; and modern science, lately threatened to be 
 engulfed in the deluge of its own materials, finds its 
 chief glory in exploring the wonderful analogies of 
 creation. 
 
 V. MECHANICAL IMPROVEMENTS, ETC. 
 
 The applications of science to the useful arts and 
 mechanical improvement, present results more likely 
 to impress the general mind than any of its successes, 
 however glorious, in the sphere of abstract principle. 
 
i jo The Last Half -Century. 
 
 The former are tangible and visible results, which pro 
 duce tremendous changes in practical life, so that while 
 they are on a level with everybody s observation, they 
 more or less affect everybody s interest. The various 
 phenomena of heat are merely curious to the great 
 majority of men, so long as they are confined to the 
 region of law or general fact, but when they are made 
 to bear on the best and cheapest means of providing 
 fuel, or on the powers of steam as a propelling agent, 
 they become of absorbing importance to all of us. 
 
 Among the most remarkable contributions that 
 science has lately made to the arts, are the innumerable 
 methods of gliding the coarser metals with those which 
 are more rare and valuable, which are imparting so 
 much elegance and grace to many kinds of useful art ; 
 gun-cotton, an explosive material, much cheaper, and 
 quite as effective for many purposes, as gunpowder ; 
 sulphuric ether and chloroform, those compounds 
 which have the singular property of suspending the 
 sensibility of the nerves to pain ; and, most curious of 
 all, the various photographic processes, made known 
 by Daguerre, Niepce, Talbot, and others, wherein the 
 sun becomes the painter of pictures, and the thousand 
 fold objects of nature are delicately preserved on 
 imperishable tablets. The machines for economizing 
 time and expense, and for facilitating the different 
 processes, in agriculture and manufacture, are number 
 less. Patents issued from the office at Washington 
 alone, amount, since A. D. 1800, to over fifteen thou 
 sand the greater part of which, it is supposed, have 
 gone into successful operation, and in one way or 
 another, abridged the labor of human hands. Every 
 year increases, by an accelerating ratio, the number of 
 these contrivances and inventions. In fact, mere me 
 chanical implements promise to dispense altogether with 
 
The Last Half -Century. i/i 
 
 the fatiguing and wearing kinds of human agency. 
 What are to be the consequences to society, not only 
 in cheapening products, but in relieving laborers from 
 oppressive and degrading toils ? 
 
 These results are, no doubt, threatening enough to 
 the temporary welfare of the artisan and the laborer, 
 but it has been proved that in the end they are a 
 vast benefit, not merely to society itself, but to those 
 who, in the outset, are molested and almost destroyed 
 by their success. By cheapening products, and creating 
 demands for industry in new directions, they aid the 
 progress of society, and extend the means of human 
 well-being. 
 
 But the grandest triumphs of inventive genius, during 
 the last half-century, have been achieved within the 
 province of Commerce. The plank-road, the canal, 
 the steamboat, and the railroad, are all the products of 
 the last few years. At the close of the European wars 
 of the last century, with the exception of a few military 
 roads inherited from the Romans, and the roads of the 
 same class constructed by Napoleon, the means of com 
 munication between distant parts was almost confined 
 to inland seas and the larger rivers. It is for this reason 
 that the maritime cities and provinces attained such dis- 
 proportioned wealth. The want of modes of transit 
 imposed insuperable obstacles to internal commerce ; 
 such roads as they had were impracticable, and the 
 constant recurrence of desolating wars diverted the 
 minds of both princes and the people from this most 
 important element of civilization. 
 
 The time formerly consumed by common carriers 
 over such routes is, now-a-days, incredible. The post 
 man from Selkirk to Edinburgh, a distance of less 
 than forty miles, was always a fortnight in going and 
 returning. For years, after the beginning of the pres- 
 
1/2 The Last Half -Century. 
 
 ent century, the mail time between this city and Albany 
 was eight days. Emigrants to the Genesee Valley, only 
 twenty years ago, were sometimes twenty days in reach 
 ing their new purchases. There is a book still extant, 
 written by a lady, within the memory of middle-aged 
 persons, to describe a perilous journey she made from 
 Boston to New York. Even as late as 1835, there were 
 only seven coaches that ran daily from the capital of 
 England to that of Scotland, and until several years 
 within the present century, the internal transport of 
 nearly all the trade of Great Britain was performed by 
 wagons, at the slowest rates and an enormous expense. 
 The charge for carriage averaged about fifteen pence, or 
 thirty cents, a ton, per mile. Of course, all bulky 
 articles were excluded from exchange. These articles 
 are now carried over the same ground, the same dis 
 tance, at the rate of a penny, or two cents, per ton. 
 The speed of the wagons, then, did not exceed twenty- 
 four miles a day ; steam-cars now run thirty miles the 
 hour. 
 
 Canals were known to the ancients, and have been 
 used, in a small way, by all civilized nations, but 
 especially in Holland, for many years. But the world 
 did not fully awake to their importance, until it was 
 aroused by the vehement enthusiasm with which the 
 State of New York, in 1817, entered upon the project 
 of the Erie Canal. Since then, thousands upon thou 
 sands of miles of canal have been made by England, 
 France, Russia, Sweden, and Belgium, as well as by 
 our own country. 
 
 The invention of steamboats for river navigation, and 
 of locomotives for railroads, has superseded canals, 
 and invested them with an air of antiquity. It was only 
 in 1807, that Fulton put his first vessel on the Hudson, 
 and now our rivers, our lakes, our vast inland seas, and 
 
The Last Half -Century. 173 
 
 the ocean itself, are covered with steamers, while the 
 entire surface of Europe and North America is reticu 
 lated with net-works of iron, in which iron-ribbed and 
 flame-breathing monsters whirl enormous loads of 
 freight and multitudes of passengers with the rapidity 
 of the bird s flight. Add to this, the nineteen hundred 
 steamboats in America the one thousand in Eng 
 land, and the several thousands of other nations, 
 and we shall get some idea of the incalculable, yet 
 silent revolutions that have sprung from a simple 
 series of inventions, which almost any child can com 
 prehend ! 
 
 Yet more astonishing than the railway is the Magnetic 
 Telegraph, the exploits of which are literally miracu 
 lous, annihilating space and anticipating time. The 
 extremities of the globe are brought into immediate 
 contact ; the merchant, the friend, or the lover con 
 verses with whom he wishes, though thousands of miles 
 away, as if they occupied the same parlor ; and the 
 speech uttered in Washington to-day, may be read at 
 St. Louis an hour before it was delivered. Could the 
 wires be extended around the globe, we should be able 
 to hear the news one day before it occurred. Surely, in 
 view of such results, the gas discoveries of Mr. Paine, 
 or the aerial machines of Mr. Wise, seem not only 
 possible but certain. 
 
 It is well, therefore, on this opening year of a new half- 
 century, and as the crowning glory of modern industry, 
 that it should receive the tribute of a World s Fair, in 
 which men and women, led on by princes and emperors, 
 shall come from j;he uttermost parts of the earth to do 
 it homage ; when its gorgeous and delicate products 
 shall be enshrined in a crystal palace hitherto known 
 only to fairy lore ; and all the wealth, the intellect, the 
 beauty, the skill, and the power of mankind, combine 
 
174 The Last Half -Century. 
 
 to assist in its apotheosis. Never before has there been 
 called together such an assemblage for such a purpose. 
 May we not say that it portends an era of national good 
 will and universal peace ? and, that the mechanical 
 improvements that have removed the material barriers 
 of nations, will be followed by those spiritual advances 
 which shall melt all hearts into one ? 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Had this progress of mankind taken place in the 
 scientific or material sphere alone, it would have been 
 a doubtful question whether the fact should be regarded 
 as a cause of rejoicing or sorrow. But, fortunately, the 
 Moral and Religious advancement of our race, uki- 
 mating in improved social conditions, has been no less 
 marked and encouraging than any of its other charac 
 teristics. The world has been as active in doing good, 
 as it has in increasing comforts are they not, after all, 
 much the same? and in the comprehensiveness of its 
 benevolent undertakings, rivals the zeal of science and 
 the enterprise of trade. The eyes of Philanthropy, 
 with a sedulous and tearful care, have sought out the 
 lurking-place of indigence and misery, and ministered 
 to their wants, comprehending in their providence, 
 the health and habitations of the poor, as well as the 
 deeper needs of the vicious, and striving to elevate all, 
 with an impartial hand, in their physical, intellectual, 
 and moral condition ! How numerous and well- 
 managed the charitable organizations of the day ! How 
 extensive the agencies, and how indefatigable the zeal 
 of those great religious societies, which propose to 
 themselves nothing less than the Christianization of the 
 world ! Above all, what thorough and penetrating 
 significance in the problems raised by what, many in 
 
The Last Half -Century. i;5 
 
 fear and others in contempt, designate as Socialism, 
 but which, in reality, despite the occasional folly of 
 its disciples, looks to the adjustment of all political and 
 social relations on a basis of perfect equity and truth ? 
 The very thought of such a consummation fills the 
 generous mind with the most ardent wishes for its suc 
 cess. Was a nobler scheme ever conceived, one more 
 benevolent, more pacific, more promising of good in 
 every way, than that of the Organization of Labor? 
 Oh ! how the heart kindles with hope and sympathy 
 when it thinks of the vast forces of human society. 
 hitherto too often turned to mere human destruction, 
 combined in a unitary effort to develop, mature, and 
 elevate every individual member of our race ! 
 
AMERICAN AUTHORSHIP.* 
 
 |LI BABA, when he entered the cave of the 
 Forty Thieves, could scarcely have been more 
 amazed by the wealth of its contents, than 
 some people will be by the contents of this book. Its 
 very title flies in the face of two very sacred traditions. 
 It implies, firstly, that the ambiguous class of men 
 called authors, may be in the possession of Homes, 
 consequently of wealth, social position, and respectabil 
 ity ; and, secondly, that among the three thousand 
 American writers who pretend to the name, there are 
 some at least who are really authors ; by which is meant, 
 literary creators or men of genius. Are not both of 
 these, assumptions which the general mind will regard as 
 extremely bold. 
 
 The records of literary adventure have produced the 
 impression the world over, that authors are a peculiar 
 and exceptional class, shiftless, seedy, and improvident, 
 who. unable to live by any of the recognized methods 
 of society, have betaken themselves to the expedient of 
 living by their wits. It is understood that they reside, 
 when they reside anywhere, in some vacant comer of 
 a garret ; that they pass their days in lurking out of the 
 way of bailiffs and landladies ; and that, after leading 
 
 *The Homes of American Authors, etc., etc. 
 Co. New York, 1853. 
 
 From Putnam s Monthly, January, 1853. 
 
 G. P. Putnam & 
 
American Authorship. 177 
 
 lives of vicissitude, poverty, neglect, and sorrow, when 
 they come to die, they revenge their long quarrel with 
 mankind by bequeathing to it certain inestimable 
 treasures of poetry, wit, or thought, over which it will 
 gloat and glow forever. 
 
 Who cannot recall a multitude of disquisitions writ 
 ten on the hapless lot of the poet who " learned by suf 
 fering what he taught in song ?" How often have liter 
 ary men themselves bewailed the cruel injustice of 
 society to their order ! What sighs have we not ex 
 haled, what tears not wept, over the pitiful stories of mis 
 conceived and unrewarded genius ! The sad experi 
 ences of Savage, the miserable death of Otway, the more 
 miserable death of Chatterton, "the sleepless boy who 
 perished in his pride," the miscarriages of Burns, the 
 indigence of Coleridge, the protracted struggles of Hook 
 and Hood, the suicide of Blanchard, and a thousand 
 other mournful histories, are still fresh in all our mem 
 ories. Have not "the calamities of authors," indeed, 
 furnished the indefatigable Disraeli with the materials 
 fora volume? Or is there any possibility of our forget 
 ting those lines of Moore, how 
 
 Bailiffs will seize his last blanket to-day, 
 
 Whose pall shall be held up by nobles to-morrow ? 
 
 Schiller, in a pretty fable, represents Jupiter as dividing 
 all the wealth of the world among the different classes 
 of his creatures. To the kings he gives taxes and tolls, 
 to the farmers lands, to the merchants trade, and to the 
 abbots and monks most excellent wine ; but after having 
 disposed of all his worldly possessions, he espies a poet 
 wandering away from the rest, destitute, shabby, and for 
 lorn. " What ho ! my good fellow," exclaims the father 
 of men, " where wert thou when the general distribution 
 8* 
 
178 American Authorship. 
 
 was going forward ?" The bard modestly replied, 
 " Mine eyes were drunk with the glory of thy coming, 
 and mine ears filled with the harmonies of thy heaven !" 
 When the monarch of the gods, apparently no less 
 open to delicate flattery than any mortal, rejoined : 
 " Well, it s a sad case, my boy ! I have nothing left on 
 the earth to give you ; but, as a compensation, you shall 
 have, after death, the topmost step of my throne in the 
 skies." The poet was doubtless pleased, and went 
 away ; and ever since, it is said that this has been the 
 principal inheritance of his tribe. 
 
 Incidents and memories such as these have given rise 
 to a most unfavorable estimate of authorship as a pro 
 fession. In the minds of many, the writing of sonnets 
 is equivalent to going shirtless ; and the perpetration of a 
 romance, the next thing, in its social consequences, to 
 the perpetration of crime. And although the distin 
 guished successes of a few individuals the facts, for in 
 stance, that Scott could build a baronial castle, and Dick 
 ens live like a lord, and Disraeli achieve the chancellor 
 ship, and Bancroft get to be a foreign ambassador, etc., 
 have partially corrected the opinion, there is reason to 
 believe that a majority of the world still looks upon litera 
 ture as no better than a miserable and desperate dernier 
 ressort. Only the other day, Mr. William Jerdan, him 
 self pretending to be one of the leading critics of Great 
 Britain, wrote a book which is one long wail over the un 
 happy conditions and prospects of writers as a class, and 
 an earnest appeal to young men to avoid the professional 
 pursuit of letters as they would avoid any temptation of 
 the devil. " Let no man," he says, " be bred to litera 
 ture, for, as it has been less truly said of another occu 
 pation, it will not be bread to him. Fallacious hopes, 
 bitter disappointments, uncertain rewards, vile imposi 
 tions, and censure and slander from the oppressors, are 
 
American Authorship. 179 
 
 his lot as soon as he puts pen to paper for publication, 
 or risks his peace of mind on the black, black sea of 
 printers ink. " 
 
 This is the old story, but we think there is a great 
 deal of misconception in it ; at least we ought not, from 
 Mr. Jerdan s failure, which is to be ascribed to his own 
 want of capacity and prudence, to infer the inevitable 
 fate of the whole circle of authors. Literature is as 
 lucrative and promising as any other profession, to men 
 who are really qualified to discharge its exacting and 
 lofty functions. It records the disastrous rout of many 
 of its followers, because so many rush into it without 
 the requisite capacities ; and when they fail, their de 
 feats are chronicled for all the world to read. Hardly a 
 shiftless Corydon fails in walks of art that demand the 
 finest endowments of the mind, that he or his friends 
 do not parade him as another example of melancholy 
 shipwreck, as if he deserved or could fairly have antici 
 pated any other end. Now, if the same note were taken 
 of the miscarriages in law, medicine, and divinity if 
 every briefless barrister, every physician without a pa 
 tient, every clergyman without a cure, could make his 
 griefs the talk of the town, as authors manage to make 
 theirs, the disadvantages of their vocations would be no 
 less apparent than those of letters, and literature would 
 no longer stand solitary in its aggravations. 
 
 For, it is not true that literature is a peculiarly unkind 
 and unnatural mother. Her favors to those children that 
 are worthy of her, if not exuberant, are yet not stinted. 
 Writing is not so productive of money as cotton spin 
 ning or merchandise, because, as a late Westminster Re 
 view argues, the conditions of literary and of ordinary 
 commercial labor are very different. The latter sup 
 plies a constant want : the former ministers only to an 
 intellectual luxury, or to wants that do not wear out the 
 
180 American Authorship. 
 
 supply with such rapidity as to keep up a high and in 
 cessant demand. Both must he regulated, to some ex 
 tent, by the vulgar law of supply and demand ; and their 
 profits, by the same law, cannot be forced beyond the 
 natural level of cost and competition. "The latter 
 combines the joint action of capital and labor ; it feels 
 a continual competition ; it is not dependent upon the 
 humor or the accidents of the time ; no prosaic transi 
 tion of the public taste converts its productions, like 
 poetry, into a drug ; however people may become in 
 different to books, they are never likely to dispense with 
 shirts, or to decline the advantage of the steam-engine ; 
 and although the writer to whose merits the age is in 
 sensible, or whose merits are of no utility to the age, 
 may be left to starve, the manufacturer will thrive. Is 
 it reasonable to protest against a state of things which 
 has been inevitable from the beginning of the world, 
 and which will continue to be inevitable, so long as the 
 material wants of the world must be served, let its intel 
 lectual wants shift as they may ? The aims of the two 
 classes are essentially different, and each has its own 
 reward. The literary man has a glory which is denied 
 to the manufacturer, nor could he envy the latter his 
 wealth, if he knew how to appreciate his own position 
 at its true value. He has fame, if he deserves it, 
 honor, if he merits it : nor need he doubt of achieving 
 the highest social distinctions, if he asserts his right to 
 them as he ought, and maintains them with integrity 
 and self-respect ; while the other may be left to the un- 
 envied possession of wealth and obscurity." 
 
 This is well put ; but it should also be admitted, in 
 behalf of literary men, to explain and excuse, if not to 
 justify their complaints, that with most of them, the dif 
 ficulty is not so much the insufficiency of their incomes, 
 as the liberality of their outgoes. A thousand peculiar 
 
American Authorship. 181 
 
 temptations, springing partly from those menial suscep 
 tibilities which difference them from others, and partly 
 from their social aptitudes, beset them to spend more 
 than they make. The very qualities which form their 
 greatest glory, are those often which lead them into the 
 deepest humiliations. If they were as hard, as unim 
 aginative, as careful of the main chance, as the cotton 
 spinner or the merchant, they would grow rich like the 
 cotton spinner or the merchant ; but they are not so 
 constructed. The delicacy of organization out of which 
 literature comes, renders them keenly sensitive also to 
 the pressures and discomforts of existence, to the 
 sands which grit between the shell of their outward 
 condition and the fleshy fibres. Yearning then to 
 bring their surroundings into a better correspondence 
 with their tastes, their perpetual tendency is to gather 
 costly appliances and comforts about them, and to 
 shut out actual existence by one of ideal refinement. 
 Again, with superior powers to entertain, or an elevated 
 fame to render their acquaintance a distinction, authors 
 are more sought for than others by general society, 
 where, whether they contract nice or dissipated habits, 
 they equally expose themselves to expense. It is im 
 possible to keep up a varied and generous intercourse, 
 without falling into more or less extravagance ; and 
 genius with its irritable fancies and impetuous impulses, 
 is least of all likely to resist the allurements of luxuri 
 ous living, or to temper the seductions of taste with the 
 cold discipline of judgment. Not that genius is ever 
 destitute of judgment, for subtle, strong, unerring 
 judgment is its very essence, but then its judgment is 
 the theoretic judgment, which is displayed in the creation 
 and providence of a great drama or poem, and not the 
 practical judgment which controls every-day affairs. It 
 is not the judgment that keeps one from running into 
 
1 82 American Authorship. 
 
 prodigality, or, for want of an appropriate and ample 
 nourishment, from resort to questionable indulgen 
 ces. Ah ! then the clouds darken about it : the present 
 grows comfortless and the future minatory ; and poor 
 genius, losing its freshness and glow, is genius no 
 more. It utters its wail into the uncaring universe, like 
 one who falls at midnight from some on-rushing steam 
 ship, and hearing no reply but the splash of his own 
 sinking, goes down into the unyielding depths ! But is 
 the world to blame for such miscarriages? Is the 
 literary profession, as a practical pursuit, to blame? Is 
 such a lot worse, in its external liabilities, than that of 
 other men ; and would not the chimney-sweep or the 
 lawyer, who should forget the actual conditions of social 
 existence, to indulge in dreams and idealizations, fail as 
 signally as the author? 
 
 Let us not be understood, however, to maintain that 
 want of success in authorship is evidence either of want 
 of merit or of want of prudence. We mean no such 
 thing : on the contrary, we know that works of the 
 most unquestionable excellence have often to wait a 
 long while for appreciators that genius, as a general 
 thing, must create its own audience ; but this is as true 
 of other professions as it is of literature. It is true in 
 art ; true in science ; true in respect to mechanical in 
 ventions ; and sometimes true in practical enterprise. 
 All that we design to urge is simply that authorship is 
 no exception to other pursuits. If competent men en 
 gage in it with industry, patience, and consistent pur 
 pose, conducting their affairs with average foresight, 
 they will reap at the least the average pecuniary rewards. 
 The depreciatory view that prevails is both unjust and 
 injurious ; unjust, because it exaggerates the disparage 
 ments of a true and worthy literary life ; and injurious, 
 because in the world s estimate, the respectability of a pur- 
 
American A^lthoTsJ^ip. 183 
 
 suit mainly depends upon what the Californians call the 
 " prospecting," or the chance of turning up some rav 
 ishing deposit of sunny ore. 
 
 Nowhere has the literary profession been supposed to 
 be more hopeless than in the United States ; and yet, 
 we are persuaded that here as elsewhere, in spite of all 
 drawbacks, adventitious or necessary, a career of honor 
 and profit is open to all who engage in it with the 
 proper qualifications, and pursue it with fidelity and 
 self-control. We do not say that the pecuniary rewards 
 of it are as generous as they ought to be, or probably 
 will be hereafter ; we do not say that it will become in 
 the present state of society as fertile as trade, or even as 
 the learned professions ; but we do say that besides its 
 peculiar harvests in the way of reputation and of influ 
 ence on the great contemporary and prospective move 
 ments of thought, it holds out the guerdon of a reason 
 able pecuniary success, and of social compensations 
 that ought to satisfy reasonable desires. 
 
 In proof of this, we appeal to the experience of 
 those writers among us who have shown by their works 
 a proper fitness for their vocation. They are nearly all 
 in comfortable positions, and many of them are afflu 
 ent. Mr. Putnam s book contains an account of some 
 twenty of them (announcing others that are to follow) 
 and scarcely one of the number can be said to be poor. 
 Prescott enjoys a princely income, a part of it inherited, 
 it is true, but the other part derived from his books ; 
 the old age of Irving is made glad by more than com 
 petence, worthily won by his pen ; Cooper s novels en 
 abled him to live generously during his whole life ; 
 Bancroft is indebted for his political and social success 
 to his merits as an historian ; Bryant, though not alto 
 gether by his poetry, yet by the exercise of his literary 
 abilities, for the newspaper is a branch of literature, has 
 
184 American Authorship. 
 
 been placed at his ease ; while among those not in 
 cluded in this volume, Willis, Melville, Mitchell, Taylor, 
 Stephens, Curtis, and others, have reaped large rewards 
 from their publications. On the other hand, if Hawthorne 
 and a few others are not yet at the summits of fortune, 
 they have at least caught a glimpse of the golden heights. 
 These results are the more remarkable, because in 
 this country literary success is rendered doubly difficult 
 by the artificial obstructions thrown in its way. The 
 American author has to contend against two rivalries, 
 both formidable first, that of his native, and second, 
 that of the foreign competitor. Nay, he enters the lists 
 against the latter, indeed, under this further disadvan 
 tage, that while his own works must be paid for by the 
 publisher, those of the foreigner are furnished, like the 
 showman s wonders, "free, gratis, and for nothing/ 
 No sooner is a literary venture of Bulwer, Thackeray, 
 or Dickens afloat, than a whole baracoon of " book- 
 aneers," as Hood called them, rushes forth to seize it ; 
 and so long as they are able to do this, they will not 
 spend money not much of it certainly in any more 
 regular trade. Who will buy domestic goods when he 
 can import foreign goods without price? Our manu 
 facturing friends of the protectionist school declaim 
 dolorously against the policy of government which ex 
 poses their arts to the cheap competition of Europe ; 
 but what a clamor would they raise if the exotic pro 
 ductions, that come into market against their own, 
 were admitted, not merely duty free, but without having 
 been subjected to an original cost ! Yet this is pre 
 cisely the sorrow of the American author ! At great 
 expense himself, he works against an antagonism which 
 costs nothing ; for the slight percentage allowed to 
 foreign writers by our American publishers, for the 
 privilege of a first copy, is hardly to be taken into the 
 
American AutJiorship. i85 
 
 account. His case, therefore, is even worse than that 
 of the broomseller of the old anecdote, who, stealing 
 his raw materials, wondered how his rival could under 
 sell him ; until he was told that the cunning rogue stole 
 his brooms ready-made. Our publishers get their com 
 modities ready-made, and flood the market with them, 
 while the poor American producer hawks and sings his 
 articles about the streets in vain ! 
 
 But these considerations take for granted the second 
 assumption of Mr. Putnam s book, to which we alluded 
 in the outset, viz., that we have genuine American au 
 thors. Is it so ? We know that a different opinion 
 obtains, and that foreign writers declare, with some de 
 gree of emphasis, that, as yet, we are mere imitators, 
 unfledged provincials, repeating the copies set us in 
 the Old World, and quite destitute of originality, inde 
 pendence, or native force. It is not three months 
 since a callow Scotch critic, speaking ex cathedra, in 
 the North British Review, conceded to us only three 
 poets, and those, as he dogmatically alleged, mere ser 
 vile echoes of Wordsworth and Tennyson. Other 
 writers before him have repeatedly and triumphantly 
 asked for our dramatists, novelists, essayists, and wits ; 
 and Monsieur Philarete Chasles, in his late self-com 
 placent French summary of American literary achieve 
 ment, finds it difficult to drum up more than half-a- 
 dozen authors on whom he is even willing to bestow a 
 passing approval. There is, therefore, considerable 
 unanimity in the judgment against us ; and, though the 
 London Times, in its recent notice of the " Blithedale 
 Romance, " relaxes a little of its accustomed severity, 
 and warns contemporary British writers to bestir their 
 pens, it must be confessed that there still exists abroad 
 a general incredulity, if not a lurking contempt, in re- 
 pect to our literary pretensions. 
 
1 86 American Authorship. 
 
 We shall not gainsay the partial justice of this sen 
 tence, nor endeavor to hide the rags and tatters of 
 our poverty. We are poor ; we are feeble ; we have 
 little to show, compared with the older nations ; but 
 is the comparison implied in all this altogether fair? 
 Ought as much to be expected of us, in our national 
 teens as yet, as of others, with two thousand years 
 of Past behind them ? What was Greece, during the 
 early centuries ; what Rome in A. u. c. 70 ; what Eng 
 land, up to Elizabeth s day ; or what France, till the 
 Grand Monarque ? The issue never having been ac 
 curately stated, the discussion of it has shot wide of the 
 mark. The real questions are, whether we possess a 
 native literature at all, whether that literature, if it ex 
 ists, is equal to what might be justly asked of us under 
 the peculiar circumstances of our career, and whether, 
 such as it is, it furnishes any adequate and generous 
 ground of hope for the future ? 
 
 It would be absurd to expect of us, in this the seven 
 tieth year of an independent national existence, as full 
 and rich a literary growth as that of the older nations, 
 absurd, for the reason that we have had no time to pro 
 duce it in, while our intellectual energies have been 
 absorbed in other ways. A man who has his fields to 
 clear, his house to build, his shoes and clothing to 
 make, his ways of access to his neighbors to open, and 
 above all, his government and social order to invent 
 and institute, in short, who has to provide by dint of 
 the severest toil for the most immediate and pressing 
 wants of his existence, is not the man who constructs 
 epics, or amuses his fancy with the invention of dramas 
 or tales. His epics, and dramas, and romances he 
 finds in his work. The giants of the woods are the 
 giants most formidable to him, and whose conquest is 
 more important than any imagination might conjure 
 
American Authorship. 187 
 
 from the dim twilight of mythology. He is battling 
 face to face with the frost, and hail, and mud jotims 
 that Carlyle speaks of; and while the battle lasts, he has 
 as little relish as he has opportunity for idle songs about 
 them. Let him be deeply engaged the while in a novel 
 and somewhat momentous political experiment, work 
 ing out into practical and victorious solution a problem 
 in which the destinies of half a world are involved, and 
 the stern and trying task laid upon him will scarcely 
 permit of his turning aside to the gentle and capricious 
 arts. If, therefore, the whole of his earlier life should 
 exhibit an absolute want of literary result, the fact would 
 not argue against his capacity for that kind of produc 
 tion, but simply that his powers had been diverted into 
 other channels. But this consideration is so obvious 
 that we need not press it further. 
 
 Again, if in the progress of wealth and leisure, with 
 the growth of intellectual wants and refinements, we 
 should find him prone to imitate the artistic efforts of 
 those who had gone before, it would merely show a 
 very common trait of youth. Nothing is more natural 
 than for juniors to copy their seniors. Even men and 
 nations, endowed with indisputable genius, are apt, in 
 their first crude endeavors, to pursue the paths and ape 
 the manners of their predecessors, whose successes they 
 admire, and for whose qualities they feel a kindred sym 
 pathy, but the secrets of whose self-dependence they 
 have not yet learned. Fearful at first of the strength of 
 .their untried wings, though full of impulse for flight, like 
 young birds they watch the motions of their elders, until 
 in due time they may themselves launch forth into the 
 air. Indeed, we remember years ago to have read the 
 work of some unrecognized western philosopher, who 
 maintained, with an abundance of instances to con 
 firm his theory, that early imitation is a characteristic 
 
1 88 American Author skip. 
 
 mark of genius, and that the greatest of men have begun 
 their careers by a more or less conscious adoption of 
 some much-loved model. Be that as it may, we know, 
 in respect to nations, how much of the earlier art and 
 science of Greece was derived from the opulent store 
 houses of the East, though Greece became the mistress 
 of the intellectual world ; we know how dependent the 
 Romans were upon Greece, though Rome subsequently 
 enriched mankind from her native sources ; and we 
 know, too, what infusion of the Latin there has been 
 into French and English speech. May we not infer 
 from these examples, then, that if America, as she is 
 tauntingly charged, has sucked too much of her in 
 fantile instruction and culture from the breasts of her 
 noble mother, it does not prove that she is now unable 
 to go alone ; but simply that she was once young. 
 Speaking the language of England, was it not inevi 
 table that we should read the literature of England, and 
 draw thence much of our intellectual nurture ? The 
 whole of the earlier literature of England was, in one 
 sense, just as much ours as it is the modern Eng 
 lishman s. Up to the time of our revolutionary separa 
 tion, it was the common possession of the English 
 race ; and the mere change in our political relations 
 worked no defeat of our claim. We have a birthright 
 of appeal to Chaucer, Spenser. Shakspeare, Milton, &c., 
 as to our ancestors in the direct line, just as the younger 
 members of a family call the common progenitor father, 
 though they may not have inherited the title and the 
 estates. They may have quarrelled with the elder 
 brother even, and quit the paternal roof, and begun 
 new life-methods for themselves in some distant region 
 of the globe, but their lineage remains as clear and in 
 disputable as that of the first-born sons. 
 
 Now, all this being admitted, the question of Ameri- 
 
American Authorship. 189 
 
 can originality narrows itself down to this whether 
 the stock has degenerated by crossing the ocean, or in 
 being exposed to the different influences of new natural 
 and social conditions ? Do such of us as have devoted 
 our energies to literature give evidence of deterioration 
 and decay ; or is the old vigor still in our loins ? 
 
 We think that no fair mind can hesitate as to the 
 answer. We believe that our authors have at least not 
 retrograded. On the other hand, we believe that they 
 are worthy scions of the old stock ; and more than that, 
 that under the inspiration of a new order of things, such 
 as exists in this country, they have laid the foundations 
 of a peculiar literature, not yet copious, not yet com 
 parable for richness, depth, variety, or grace with 
 either of the ancient or modern literatures, but still full 
 of native freshness and promise. Like a noble youth 
 rounding into manhood, we are wild, extravagant, and 
 impulsive, betraying the faults of want of discipline and 
 culture, but strong in the consciousness of mighty 
 powers, and bounding forward to a future of glorious 
 developments. 
 
 No ! we may not point to bright galaxies like those 
 which shed lustre from other heavens ; we have no 
 thickly-studded constellations and luminous groups 
 scattered all above us ; but we do claim single stars 
 that shine with an unborrowed and unfading bril 
 liancy. Few will be disposed to deny that in meta 
 physics and moral reasoning Jonathan Edwards is of 
 the same order of men with Locke and Butler ; that in 
 experimental philosophy, Franklin, and in the science 
 of navigation, Bowditch, are names consecrated by his 
 tory ; that Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison rank 
 with the statesmen of any age ; that the historians 
 Bancroft and Prescott take their places by the side of 
 the best modern historians, whether we regard the ac- 
 
190 American AutJiorsJiip. 
 
 curacy of their research or the perspicuity and finish 
 of their style ; that Cooper, as a novelist, is only inferior 
 to Scott, to whom all others are inferior ; that the 
 pleasant essays of Irving fear no comparison with those 
 of Addison and Goldsmith ; and that poems of Bryant 
 will be read with delight as long as Gray s Elegy, or 
 Coleridge s Genevieve, or Milton s Lycidas, or Burns 
 songs, because, like those immortal productions, they 
 are perfect in their kind. When, moreover, we name 
 the only eloquence in our language which approaches 
 the comprehensive and masterly speeches of Burke, we 
 recall that of Webster ; the artist of modern artists who 
 approaches nearest to Titian is Allston ; the liveliest 
 magazinist of the day, not excepting Jules Janin, is Wil 
 lis ; the woman, who has written a book which has had 
 a wider instant circulation than the book of any other 
 woman, is Mrs. Stowe. Well, this is not much : it is 
 not Shakspeare, Milton, or Bacon it is not Swift, 
 Fielding, Thackeray, but it is some proof of what we 
 contend for that the old Saxon blood has not turned 
 to water in our veins, nor the old fire of the heart 
 become a putrid phosphor. 
 
 It is a piece of unworthy prejudice to pretend that 
 our leading writers are only second editions of European 
 celebrities. Cooper is no more an imitator of Scott 
 than is Bulwer or Dickens : his materials and his 
 methods of presenting them are his own ; and no man 
 not born in America, in the shadow of her primeval 
 woods, under the inspirations of her unsettled pio 
 neer, could have written any of the best of his works. 
 Bryant is wholly American, or if he resembles Words 
 worth or Cowper, it is because he writes English with 
 the deep meditative wisdom of the one, and the pensive 
 grace of the other ; but neither Wordsworth nor Cowper 
 have written more true, beautiful, or indestructible 
 
American Authorship. 191 
 
 poems than the Waterfowl or the Prairies. Whom does 
 Emerson imitate ? Carlyle ! Why, with scarcely a 
 quality in common with Carlyle, he is just as much the 
 superior of Carlyle, in clearness and depth of insight, 
 as he is in simplicity and melody of style. Has Mr. 
 Dana a prototype, has Channing, has Audubon, has 
 Webster, has Hawthorne, has Melville, has Uncle 
 Tom ? 
 
 There always must be more or less of structural uni 
 formity in the literature of nations which speak the same 
 language. Out of the same deep heart of the national 
 life, from which language comes, literature also is born ; 
 and those mysterious indwelling causes, and hardly 
 less mysterious external influences, which mould and 
 modify the one, must give form and color to the other. 
 It is impossible to separate ourselves wholly from the 
 features or the predominant traits of our parents. Had 
 the earlier settlers of this country been French or Ger 
 man, as they were English, our subsequent growth 
 would probably have partaken of a French or German 
 bias. What literature we might have created would 
 have borne a family likeness to Voltarie or Goethe, to 
 Victor Hugo or Freligrath, instead of to Milton and 
 Sir Walter Scott, to Addison and Pope ; and we should 
 in that event have had to struggle ourselves clear of 
 German mysticism and French elegance, as we now 
 have to make our way out of the heavy and melancholy 
 gravity of John Bull. 
 
 But this resemblance between our own literature and 
 that of England, springing from an identity of race and 
 tongue, made especially apparent during the formative 
 and transitional stages of our growth, will not prevent 
 a new self-prompted development in the maturer future. 
 Already we have cut ourselves loose from the leading- 
 strings which were inevitable to our childhood, not in 
 
192 American Authorship. 
 
 our political system only, but in our manners, morals, 
 and arts ; and, under the various influences pouring in 
 upon us from the vast accessions to our population 
 from the Old World, our whole literary and social char 
 acter is undergoing change. This is not the place to 
 speak of the social indications, but, as it regards the 
 literary, we allege that our younger writers abound in the 
 unmistakable evidences of a new and vigorous direction 
 given to their habits of feeling and thought. They are not 
 only less English than their predecessors were ; they are 
 not only more universal in their affinities and tastes, the 
 consequence of wider sympathies, and the infusion of 
 the European element ; but they are more entirely inde 
 pendent, and self-sustained. They have a more decided 
 character of their own. A certain ready, open impres 
 sibility, which takes in all the wonders of nature and all 
 the excellences of art, and has a quick feeling for every 
 variety of human character, is the mark of most of 
 them, accompanied by a fresh, buoyant, genial enthusi 
 asm. Without losing the earnestness of their northern 
 origin, they have had superinduced upon it the volatile 
 and graceful vivacity of the south ; they are more 
 external, sensuous, impassioned, but none the less 
 intense and thoughtful. The Saxon and the Celtic 
 bloods unite in their veins, giving brilliancy and facility 
 to a foundation of endurance and power. 
 
 It is scarcely time for these new combinations to show 
 themselves in full force except in practical enterprise, 
 where our achievements both in grandeur of concep 
 tion and force of execution surpass all that is recorded 
 in modern annals ; but in that branch of literature, 
 which comes nearest to enterprise in narratives of 
 travel, there are many signs of departure from the 
 old types. Stephens in Central America, Melville in 
 the South Seas, Curtis in Egypt and Syria, have 
 
American Authorship. 193 
 
 marked out styles of their .own, each differing from the 
 other, and each differing from any travellers that have 
 gone before them. They are full of freshness and 
 broad sensuous life, not like the worn-out debauchees 
 of Europe who travel to get rid of themselves or to find 
 a new sensation, but like marvellously wise children, 
 capable of surprises, but accepting all novelties with 
 good-humor ; indeed, with a certain rollicking fun in 
 them, and yet estimating things at their true value with 
 unerring practical sagacity. 
 
 Among our nascent poets, too such as Lowell, 
 Boker, Read, Taylor, and Stoddard we discern the 
 earnest of a departure from old methods, and an en 
 trance upon a new and original career. They are 
 more free, frank, and expansive than the modern British 
 poets, and superadd to the concentrated force and 
 strength of their insular models a more affluent, richly 
 colored, and catholic view of life. A luxuriance, as of 
 some deep virgin soil shooting up into weedy extrava 
 gance at times, betrays the inspiration of our prolific 
 nature, and reminds us of broad rivers and lakes, 
 flowery prairies, and interminable leafy woods. Their 
 faults, mainly, are faults of excess and not of defi 
 ciency. They want discipline, but they do not want 
 sensibility nor native vigor. They have the hale, ruddy- 
 complexioned look of health, and above all, a sincere 
 fearless spirit, which betokens the capacity for lusty 
 human growth. Let them be true to the promises of 
 their youth, and their manhood will ripen into luscious 
 and fragrant fulfilments. 
 
 But we cannot pursue these topics ; we have already 
 dwelt so long upon them, that we have left ourselves 
 little space to speak of the work by which they have 
 been suggested. It is confessedly the book of the 
 year. In the elegance of its embellishments no less 
 9 
 
194 American Authorship. 
 
 than in the interest of its contents, we know of no 
 holiday book that can compare with it, none at least 
 issued on this side the ocean. Still, we have some 
 faults to find with it : the plates are, here and there, 
 hastily executed ; and the letter-press of a few of the 
 contributions is not so sprightly, anecdotal, personal as 
 we should liked to have found. It is a prevailing vice 
 of our writers to be too didactic and sedate ; and in 
 such a book, of all others, heavy writing is out of 
 place. But this criticism does not apply to the whole 
 volume, in which there is much admirable and viva 
 cious writing ; while the entertainment which it 
 furnishes could not well be better. It introduces us, 
 by pencil and by pen, to the haunts of novelists and 
 poets, who are dear to the hearts of some, and will live 
 long in the imaginations of others. We visit Audubon 
 in his snug retreat on the Hudson, while his favorite 
 deer are stalking about us on the grass, and his favorite 
 birds sing to us from the trees ; we wander with Bryant 
 through his island woods, where his heart has learned 
 its lessons of severe simplicity, and his imagination 
 caught the glow of its bright autumnal foliage ; we loll 
 in the sumptuous study of Longfellow, where the old 
 panels suggest the memory of Washington, while the 
 poet sings us golden legends of the Old and the New 
 Worlds ; we hold high discourse with Emerson, in the 
 shadows of his Concord ian Mecca, while the weird 
 Hawthorne, himself a shade, flits through the umbrage 
 of the Old Manse ; the opulent library of Everett is 
 opened to us ; Lowell, fresh from his European harvest, 
 conducts us about the nooks of his paternal mansion ; 
 Miss Sedgwick roams with us amid the glorious hills of 
 Berkshire ; Simms chaperons us among the wild bays 
 and pines of the Carolina plantation ; Kennedy welcomes 
 us to the hospitality of the warm South ; the generous 
 
American Authorship. 195 
 
 Cooper throws open his lordly Northern hall ; Irving 
 tells quaint stories of the Western hunters, or of Spanish 
 Dons, or of old English cheer, as we sit beneath the 
 fantastic gables of Wolfert s Roost ; and Dana strolls 
 silently by our side, along the shores of the far-resound 
 ing sea, where we listen to the beat of its mighty pulses, 
 till some image of its boundlessness and glory passes 
 into our souls. But there is one Home, near that same 
 sea, in which we loiter with pleasure no more ; for the 
 presiding genius has departed from it, and we tread the 
 vacant lawns, and walk through the deserted halls of 
 Marshfield, full of sad and thoughtful memories of 
 Webster. 
 
ALISON S HISTORIES OF 
 EUROPE.* 
 
 |R. JOHNSON, in one of his ursine growls, is 
 reported to have expressed a very contemptu 
 ous opinion of the writers of History ; for, if 
 they narrate what is false, said he, they are not histo 
 rians, but liars ; and if they narrate what is true, they 
 have no field for the display of ability, because, as truth 
 is necessarily one, it must be told by everybody alike. 
 
 But this dilemma of the Leviathan is a superficial 
 one, or rather no dilemma at all, for the reason that the 
 historian does not deal with absolute truth, with naked 
 or abstract propositions of logic, nor yet with mere 
 individual and disconnected facts, but with phenomena 
 that may be variously interpreted, with complicated and 
 warring movements, that spring from violent passions in 
 the actors concerned in them, and that excite similar 
 passions in the beholders of them ; and with institu 
 tions and usages which represent vast and irreconcilable 
 differences of political and social faith. His art, there- 
 
 * The History of Europe, from the commencement of the French 
 Revolution, in 1789,10 the Battle of Waterloo. By Sir Archibald 
 Alison, Bart. : 8 vols., 1843. 
 
 The history of Europe, from the fall of Napoleon, in 1815, to the 
 accession of Louis Napoleon, in 1852. By Sir Archibald Alison, 
 Bart. : Vol. I, 1852. 
 
 From Putnam s Monthly, May, 1853. 
 
Alison s Histories of Europe. 197 
 
 fore, like that of any other artist, consists in the selec 
 tion of his topics, and in his method of treatment. He 
 must have his color and form, his foreground and back 
 ground, his light and shade, and his variety as well as 
 unity of composition. An ample scope is thus afforded 
 him for the display of any ability that he may possess, 
 for the nicest judgment, the most profound and active 
 imagination and consummate skill ; and, so far from 
 finding him either a liar on one side, or the utterer of 
 bald truisms on the other, we shall see that his function 
 is allied no less by the powers of the mind which it de 
 mands, than by the dignity of its objects, to the loftiest 
 forms of intellectual effort. The art of the historian, 
 indeed, is of so high a kind, and demands such rare 
 and various powers, such an almost impossible combi 
 nation of great faculties, that examples of really suc 
 cessful writers in this department are very few. We 
 find more great architects, great sculptors, great paint 
 ers, great musicians, great poets, great dramatists, great 
 novelists, great essayists, than we do of great historians. 
 To be a great historian requires some share in the en 
 dowments of nearly all the others some knowledge of 
 their specialties, some sympathy in all their aims, be 
 sides many aptitudes peculiar to his own walk. A his 
 torian, certainly, ought to be familiar with the origin 
 and influence of the plastic arts, which are so important 
 in the development of society. He should be able to 
 feel and conceive with the poet, to discern and dis 
 tribute character with the play-wright, and to tell a 
 story consecutively and interestingly with the novelist. 
 Again, the historian, besides his descriptions of the 
 scenes and characters of the drama of life, in which, 
 like the artist, he strives to produce the best general 
 effects effects infinitely more true than the most micro 
 scopic minuteness of detail would be without this artis- 
 
198 Alison s Histories of Eiirope. 
 
 tic management is required to refer these scenes and 
 characters to great general principles, and to evolve 
 comprehensive and permanent laws of development out 
 of the kaleidoscope of ever-shifting and variable appear 
 ances. He is, therefore, the philosopher as well as the 
 artist, and needs the penetration and insight of the clear 
 est reason, in addition to the finer qualities of the rheto 
 rician and the poet. 
 
 We have thought it well to premise thus much, in 
 order to show that it is with no low or narrow concep 
 tions of the province of the historian that we approach 
 a survey of the labors of Mr. Alison. He holds a 
 prominent place among the historians of his day. He 
 is a leading writer in the leading journals of the British 
 Empire ; he has put forth voluminous books, widely 
 accepted as authorities ; he traverses periods of time 
 which are among the most important in the annals of 
 our race ; he utters positive judgments on important 
 men and important things ; and, in short, he aspires to 
 the highest character in the department of literature to 
 which he is devoted. His position and pretensions, 
 then, entitle him to be judged according to the most 
 elevated standards of criticism. In an inferior walk of 
 art, with a more humble aim, or a less ambitious style 
 of execution, we might dismiss him in few words, to 
 find his level as he could among the multitude of au 
 thors. 
 
 The period which Mr. Alison has chosen for the sub 
 ject of his researches extends from the time of the first 
 French Revolution to the accession of Napoleon the 
 Third, if we must call that adventurer by a dynastic 
 name. It covers a space of about sixty years perhaps 
 the most busy, brilliant, and pregnant years that the 
 world has ever known full of grand events and crowded 
 by great characters and, in many respects, an era deci- 
 
Alison s Histories of Europe. 199 
 
 sive of the destinies of mankind for a long time to 
 come. Indeed, we do not suppose that any six decades 
 that have fallen upon man, scarcely excepting the most 
 glorious age of Greece, the epoch of the advent of 
 Christianity, or that of the Reformation in the sixteenth 
 century, have been more prolific of great men, more 
 agitated by great thoughts, more splendid in great dis 
 coveries, or more marked by signal and tremendous 
 changes in the condition of society, than the sixty years 
 embraced in the design of Mr. Alison s volumes. 
 
 The period begins, as we have said, with the first 
 French Revolution, which, strictly speaking, was the 
 end of the previous, rather than the beginning of the 
 present age ; or, more strictly still, it was the transition 
 between the two, " the Phenix birth and fire consumma 
 tion," in which an old economy passed away and a new 
 one sprang from its ashes. It was confessedly one of 
 the most stupendous events in the history of our race. 
 Huge, astounding, uproarious, memorable to all men, 
 and to the end of time, alike in the causes which led 
 to it, in the unparalleled scenes that attended its prog 
 ress, and in its far-reaching consequences, no event 
 in the annals of mankind is fuller of an absorbing in 
 terest. Covering in its duration only a few rapid years, 
 confined for the most part to a single city and its adja 
 cent provinces, costing, amid all its terrors, less blood 
 shed than often marks a single pitched battle it still 
 stands apart, from all other occurrences, as one of the 
 grandest and fearfulest products of any age. 
 
 Timid and unreflecting minds are accustomed to 
 consider the French Revolution as a mere wanton 
 explosion and whirlwind of frantic passions, and to stig 
 matize the chief actors in it as fiends ; a holiday of 
 malignant merriment to which all the devils of the earth 
 rushed as the witches rushed to the mad midnight 
 
2OO Alison s. Histories of Europe. 
 
 revels of the Blochsberg. Other minds, which strive to 
 pierce deeper into things, which believe that no effect 
 exists without a cause, and a justifying cause, which 
 cannot suppose that God ever abandons a whole people 
 to sheer imbecility and madness, or that he has no 
 deeper design in allowing the errors and crimes of men 
 than that they may serve as a bugaboo, or death s-head 
 and cross-bones for conservative moralists find in the 
 excesses and riots of this wonderful event another sig 
 nificance, however terrible. They discern a law of 
 Providence amid its sad dislocations and irregularities, 
 a rhythmic order in its wild Bacchic dances, a spark of 
 genuine fire through its meteor lights, a noble and 
 great thought in even its most monstrous utterances. 
 It is this thought, and not alone the carnage, which has 
 been greatly exaggerated, nor the ferocity which is more 
 or less incident to all civil wars, nor the sudden over 
 throw of a dynasty, of which we before have had many 
 examples, that fastens our attention to the external 
 events as it was never before fastened. 
 
 For the first time in the history of man had the 
 conviction of the divine rights of men, as opposed to 
 the pretensions of governments, institutions, and society 
 itself, taken possession of the hearts of a whole people, 
 to be proclaimed as a vital and inextinguishable fact. 
 Revolutions there had been before, but none so deep, 
 thorough, and radical as this none which penetrated 
 so directly into the very core of the relations of the 
 individual to the State. The contests in England, 
 during the reign of James the First, and the earlier 
 years of that of his successor, were parliamentary con 
 tests, carried on mainly by learned lawyers, and ending 
 only in a change of reign. The Revolution of 1688, 
 conducted by the appointed organs of the corporations, 
 the landed aristocracy, the town magistrates, and borough 
 
Alison s Histories of Europe. 201 
 
 proprietors, scarcely touched the frame of the govern 
 ment, and did not ask, as it had no need, of popular 
 interference. Again, the American Revolution was at 
 first but a strife between revolted colonies and an impe 
 rious mother country, and only in the minds of its more 
 exalted spirits looked to that final and broad assertion 
 of the supremacy of the people which it afterward 
 uttered. It was, even in the end, a conflict of State 
 with State. But the French Revolution, prepared from 
 afar by the whole course of European thought and 
 experience, was a solemn and unqualified proclamation 
 of the rights of man as man ; the protest of the indi 
 vidual against every form of domination, whether it 
 pretended to be human or divine. 
 
 It was a matter of course, that an assertion so extreme, 
 provoking every conservative resentment, and arousing 
 every aspiring passion, should issue in actions equally 
 extreme. The mean and petty squabbles of cabinets, 
 the windy debates of politicians and quidnuncs, were no 
 longer in place. The questions which had come to be 
 debated involved the very foundations of government, 
 the very basis of Society. How could they be debated 
 with the cold and formal logic of the schools ? The 
 people, stung to an intense sense of wrong, by the 
 injustice and licentiousness with which for ages they had 
 been governed, had rushed together, not to listen and 
 deliberate, but to act. Twenty-four millions of them, 
 courageously casting off the trammels of centuries, 
 dislodging temporal and spiritual tyranny from its 
 strongholds, elevating the multitudes from servile and 
 superstitious submission, and assuming the control of 
 their own destiny, presented a spectacle, which, in the 
 midst of its bloodshed and atrocity, is too original and 
 magnificent not to be admired, even while we tremble. 
 We may condemn and denounce those millions as we 
 9* 
 
2O2 Alison s Histories of E2irope. 
 
 please ; but they struck a blow with which humanity 
 still vibrates, and the echoes of their wild screams will 
 go down as jubilant harmonies to the end of time. 
 
 Yet great as the opening incident of the age we are 
 considering was, it scarcely surpasses in interest the 
 national convulsions by which it was followed. The 
 waves of the tumult had not subsided, when a majestic 
 figure appears, emerging from the ooze and slime of 
 the deluge, like Milton s postdiluvian lion, 
 
 "pawing to get free 
 
 His hinder parts ; then springs as broke from bonds, 
 And rampant shakes his brinded mane." 
 
 The year 1799 the last of the last century saw 
 Napoleon Bonaparte First Consul of France. 
 
 [Here followed an outline of the events of the ipth 
 century, which, as it has been anticipated substantially 
 by the foregoing essay on " The Last Half-Century," is 
 omitted.] 
 
 These, then, are the characteristics of the period of 
 which Mr. Alison has made himself the historian a 
 period, as we see even in the hasty sketch we have given 
 of it, of tremendous activity and expansiveness, marked 
 by great events on every side, not only in politics and 
 war, but in literature, science, social improvement, and 
 in practical as well as moral enterprise. In what man 
 ner has he treated the rich materials placed in his 
 hand ? 
 
 Hegel, one of the profoundest and acutest, as well as 
 most brilliant of the Germans, has divided history by 
 which he means history as an art, and not the course 
 of events into primitive, systematic, and philosophical. 
 By primitive history he means a simple narrative or 
 chronicle of events, as it might be given by an actual 
 
Alisons Histories of Europe. 203 
 
 witness of them, of which sort we have specimens in 
 Herodotus, Thucydides, and Caesar. Systematic history 
 aspires to a slightly higher character, and records the 
 life of a nation, or of nations, according to some 
 general scheme of thought in the author s mind, not 
 founded, however, upon any profound view of the 
 logical order of events, so much as upon external rela 
 tions of time and place, or the rhetorical requirements 
 of the subject ; it is exemplified in Gibbon, Hume, 
 Robertson, Macaulay, and Prescott. But philosophical 
 history takes a more connected and deeper, as well as 
 wider view ; it looks upon human actions and their 
 developments as illustrations of some principle, or at 
 least of some universal tendency, which is the work of 
 the Supreme Reason, realizing its purposes toward 
 humanity. In this style Vico, Herder, Guizot, Thierry, 
 Louis Blanc, and, to some extent, our own Bancroft, 
 are examples. For a higher order of history still, the 
 scientific order, which would blend perfect accuracy of 
 narrative with a deduction of absolute scientific prin 
 ciples, the time has not come, for the reason that the 
 science of history is not yet known, and cannot be 
 known except as the crown and summit of every other 
 science. 
 
 Mr. Alison modulates variously through all the dif 
 ferent styles, but has attained a brilliant success in 
 none, and only a mediocre success in either ; and, in 
 any large view of the historical function, must be con 
 tent to take a very humble place. 
 
 As a narrator of events, he has the two important 
 merits of patient and laborious industry, and of con 
 siderable animation and vigor of description. He 
 shrinks from no effort of research in collecting his ma 
 terials, and he puts them together with a ponderous 
 diligence. His works, as repositories of certain se- 
 
2O4 Alison s Histories of Europe. 
 
 lected facts, will save the inquirer a deal of pains that 
 he would otherwise be at, in reading newspapers, de 
 bates, bulletins, memoirs, and letters. He depicts 
 occasional scenes, too, especially the movements of 
 battle, in strong and vivid colors. But the ordinary 
 current of his narrative betrays constantly the want of 
 every quality necessary to a skilful or an interesting 
 story-teller. His vocabulary, in the first place, is re 
 markably deficient ; he cannot handle words, the ele 
 mentary tools of his art, with any facility or power ; and 
 his diction, in the second place, is equally poverty- 
 stricken. His sentences are often heavy, confused, 
 straggling, and ill-joined ; he commits blunders in 
 grammar that a child would be punished for at school ; 
 and being utterly destitute of fancy and imagination, 
 his metaphors are the stereotyped phrases of literary 
 commerce or the commonplaces of the street. We are 
 reminded of the "Alexander and Clytus" illustration 
 of Coleridge s school friends in almost every page of 
 Alison, by the recurrence, usque ad nauseam, of the same 
 similes and comparisons. What is worse, his figures, 
 hackneyed as they are, seldom run upon all-fours ; they 
 are both halt and blind, and, like the monsters in 
 Horace s Art of Poetry, have joined a horse s neck to a 
 human head, or spread the plumage of birds over the 
 limbs of beasts. 
 
 As proofs of these defects we refer to expressions 
 such as these : "the vast and varied inhabitants" of the 
 French empire, as if Frenchmen were vaster than any 
 other people; " an acquisition which speedily recoiled 
 upon the heads of those who acquired them ;" " Murat, 
 who made 1800 of their wearied columns prisoners," 
 which would have been more prisoners than the whole 
 Austrian army contained of men. We are told of a 
 narrative "tinged with undue bias ;" and of a historical 
 
Alison s Histories of Eiirope. 2o5 
 
 work "closing with a ray of glory." Of a certain event 
 it is said, " it could hardly have been anticipated that it 
 would have been attended by effects," etc., with innumer 
 able other similar carelessnesses. In respect to sen 
 tences, take this: "In 1789, Goethe, profound and 
 imaginative, was reflecting on the destiny of man on 
 earth, like a cloud which turns up its silver lining to the 
 moon / or this astronomical glorification of the age of 
 George III., " Bright as were the stars of its morning- 
 light, more brilliant still was the constellation which 
 shone forth at its meridian splendor, or cast a glow 
 over the twilight of its evening shades/ which is neither 
 poetry nor science. Again, he says, speaking of mod 
 ern enterprise and emigration, which he capriciously 
 calls the second dispersion of mankind : "No such 
 powerful causes, producing the dispersion of the species, 
 have come into operation since mankind were originally 
 separated on the Assyrian plains ; and it took place " 
 what took place? "from an attempt springing from 
 the pride and ambition of man, as vain as the building 
 of the tower of Babel." The first three sentences of 
 the Preface to his New Series read thus : "During a 
 period of peace, the eras of history cannot be so clearly 
 perceived, on a first and superficial glance, as when 
 they are marked by the decisive events of war ; but they 
 are not on that account the less obvious when their re 
 spective limits have been once ascertained. The tri 
 umphs of parties in the Senate-house or Forum are 
 not, in general, followed by the same immediate and 
 decisive results as those of armies in the field ; * * * 
 but they are equally real and decisive." The triple duty 
 imposed upon decisive in these three sentences is one 
 that Mr. Alison very often exacts of his sorry and jaded 
 vocables. 
 
 Because these secondary defects are so habitual with 
 
206 Alison s Histories of Europe. 
 
 him, marring his most studied and elaborate passages, 
 we speak of them at length ; but they should not be 
 allowed to detain us from the consideration of those 
 more grievous faults which mark his works as a sys 
 tematic historian, or one who writes according to an 
 avowed scheme. Mr. Alison s arrangement compre 
 hends the history of Europe from 1789 to 1852: the 
 first part, already published, closed in 1815 ; and the 
 second part, of which the first volume only is issued, is 
 intended to carry on the narrative to our own day. 
 Now, what will be the surprise of the reader to learn 
 that, in the proposed systematic view of Europe, there 
 is scarcely more than a reference to those great move 
 ments of thought, to those grand discoveries in science, 
 to those magnificent moral enterprises, of which we 
 have spoken in the outset of this article, as so charac 
 teristic of the period ? The whole ten volumes of his 
 first series are exclusively occupied with the French 
 Revolution and the wars that grew out of it, while " the 
 literature, the manners, the arts, and the social changes," 
 which he admits are far more permanently interesting 
 and important than the doings of statesmen in general, 
 are quite omitted ! 
 
 A critic has well objected to Niebuhr s great History 
 of Rome, that he exhausts his efforts in clearing up 
 and rendering intelligible the merely civic life of the 
 Roman people, while he tells us little or nothing of the 
 people themselves, of their ideas and feelings, of their 
 religion, morality, and domestic relations, of their 
 women as well as their men, of their children and their 
 education, and of their slaves and the treatment of slaves 
 "The central idea of the Roman religion and polity," 
 he says, "the family, scarcely shows itself in his vo 
 luminous works, except in connection with the classi 
 fication of the citizens ; nor are we made to perceive in 
 
Alison s Histories of Europe. 207 
 
 what the beliefs and modes of conduct of the Romans, 
 respecting things in general, agreed, and in what dis 
 agreed, with those of the rest of the ancient world. Yet 
 the mysteries of the Romans and their fortunes must be 
 there." But with how much more pertinence and force 
 may we apply similar objections to the oversights of 
 Alison, who speaks of wars, and battles, and intrigues, 
 as if Europe, for the last half-century, had done nothing 
 but fight. Were all Europeans ministers, or generals, 
 or diplomats, or monarchs, that no other characters are 
 permitted to figure on the scene ? Were there no other 
 movements but those of armies, no words uttered but 
 those of protocols, no letters written but the cipher of 
 secret agents, or the despatches of commissaries ? Had 
 not those thirty millions of Frenchmen, and those 
 other millions of Germans, Spaniards, Italians, Rus 
 sians, English, etc., like Shylock, "eyes, organs, 
 senses, affections, passions ?" or had they only hands to 
 handle swords, and bodies to be riddled by balls ? 
 Left to Mr. Alison s accounts alone for our sources 
 of information, we should be compelled to give a 
 most abhorrent answer to these questions, and to sup 
 pose that Christendom, for a quarter of a century, had 
 been surrendered to Milton s apostate angels, who 
 " only in destruction took delight." His pages remind 
 us of the Salon des Batailles, at Versailles, where every 
 picture is some grand state ceremonial, or a battle- 
 piece, covered with charging troops, and the carcases 
 of the slain, with noisy trumpeters in the foreground, 
 and vast masses of lurid smoke blotting out the green 
 earth and the skies. We are not unaware, as we trust 
 we have shown, of the surpassing greatness of the ex 
 ternal events of which his history is composed, nor do 
 we complain of the minute and laborious zeal with 
 which he has gathered every particular concerning 
 
208 Alison s Histories of Europe. 
 
 them, ransacking archives and measuring fields of 
 slaughter ; but we do complain that he has allowed the 
 tumult and dust of these vast contests to stop his ears 
 and blind his eyes to every object but themselves. 
 
 Mr. Alison acknowledges this serious deficiency in 
 the Preface to his Second Series, and attempts to supply 
 it by a promise to present "subjects of study more gen 
 erally interesting than the weightier matters of social 
 and political change," and he gives a chapter of the 
 literary history of England in the body of the work, by 
 way of specimen. The reparation comes too late ; for 
 we cannot see with what propriety he begins in 1815 
 an exposition that ought to have commenced in 1789, 
 or how he can be so weak as to suppose that desultory 
 sketches of certain prominent writers and discoverers 
 is a history of Arts, Manners, Literature, and Society. 
 These have as much a connected life, interdependent 
 relations, and an order of development, as the "weigh 
 tier matters of social and political change, " and, in any 
 consistent historical survey, ought to be treated with the 
 same abounding completeness and accuracy. A few 
 scraps of commonplace criticism, such as one reads in 
 the book-notices of Ladies Magazines, or in the essays 
 of young collegians, scraps loosely strung together by 
 mere contemporaneousness or sequence of time, and 
 as if their subjects had no relation, either to the spirit 
 of the age or to the condition and movements of so 
 ciety, cannot be called history, even in the lowest sense 
 of the term ; much less can they be called systematic 
 history. Yet it is precisely such scraps that he has set 
 before us in the chapter entitled "The Progress of Lit 
 erature, Science, the Arts and Manners, in Great Britain 
 after the Peace," a chapter designed to shadow forth 
 his intentions as to the future treatment of the Litera 
 ture, Art, etc., of the rest of Europe, 
 
Alisons Histories of Europe. 209 
 
 After a brief reference to the rapid growth of steam 
 navigation and of cotton manufactures, and to the im 
 pulse given to intellectual activity by great wars, he 
 sketches the literary or artistic characters of Scott, 
 Byron, Rogers, Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Paley, 
 Malthus, Herschel, and others, down to Miss O Neil 
 and Helen Faucett. We say he sketches them, and yet 
 a meagre term like that can hardly be applied to the 
 wretched chalk -and-water outlines he parades as pic 
 tures. Not to remark upon the singular anachronism 
 which permits him to speak of many of his personages, 
 such as Paley, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Scott, Crabbe, 
 Dugald Stewart, Davy, Kemble, Herschel, etc., as at 
 taining their chief celebrity "after the Peace " instead 
 of before it ; nor upon the still more singular over 
 sight, of omitting Shelley and Keats from his list of 
 poets, Faraday from that of philosophers, Godwin from 
 the novelists, De Quincey and Leigh Hunt from the 
 critics, and Sheridan Knowles from the dramatists ; we 
 must say that his characterizations of the men he names 
 are the most puerile, vague, and unsatisfactory that we 
 ever read in a book of any pretention. As to any 
 distinct or discriminating description of the peculiari 
 ties of these worthies, there is none whatever ; "charm 
 ing," "delightful," "fine," "brilliant," "graphic," 
 "interesting," are the epithets that exhaust his thesau 
 rus of praise ; and these are applied equally to all, 
 with a slight change of posture, in each case, but with 
 out a particle of insight in either. Take Tennyson, 
 whose merits and defects as a poet are alike obvious, as 
 an example of Mr. Alison s method of estimating lit 
 erary character. "Tennyson," he says, "has opened 
 a new vein in English poetry, and shown that real 
 genius, even in the most advanced stages of society, 
 can strike a fresh chord, and, departing from the hack- 
 
2io Alisons Histories of Europe. 
 
 neyed way of imitation, charm -the world by the con 
 ceptions of original thought. His imagination, wide 
 and discursive as the dreams of fancy (sic), wanders at 
 will, not over the real so much as the ideal world. The 
 grottoes of the sea, the caves of the mermaid, the realms 
 of heaven, are alternately the scenes of his song. His 
 versification, wild as the song of the elfin king, is 
 broken and irregular, but often inexpressibly charming. 
 Sometimes, however, this tendency (what tendency?) 
 leads him into conceit ; in the endeavor to be original, 
 he becomes fantastic ; there is a freshness and origi 
 nality, however, about his conceptions, which contrast 
 strangely with the practical and interested views which 
 influenced the age in which he lived, and contributed 
 not a little to their deserved success. They were felt to 
 be the more charming, because they were so much at 
 variance with the prevailing ideas around him, and re 
 opened those fountains of romance which nature had 
 planted in every bosom, but which are so often closed 
 by the cares, the anxieties, and the rivalry of the 
 world." 
 
 Now this mass of stuff, this feebleness, nonsense, and 
 mixed metaphor, might have been written, if any one 
 but Mr. Alison could have written it, about any poet 
 that has flourished since Pope, and would have given a 
 reader ignorant of him just as clear an idea of his quali 
 ties as it does of those of Mr. Tennyson. That is, it 
 would have given him just no idea at all. Tennyson s 
 subtle insight, intellectual intensity, refined spiritual 
 fancy, elaborate sculptural art, and pervading melody, 
 or any other traits that separate him from the rest of his 
 tribe, are terra incognita to the "great historian," who 
 seems, also, quite as impartially innocent of any real 
 knowledge of the other two or three score of personages 
 whom he attempts to delineate. 
 
Alison s Histories of Europe. 2 1 1 
 
 In this literary patchwork, Mr. Alison revels in 
 his fondness for repetitions. We read, not without 
 amusement, of Scott s "wide-spread reputation," By 
 ron s " most wide-spread reputation in the world," the 
 wide-spread interest of Moore s lines," Campbell s 
 "wide-spread fame," Dickens s "wide-spread reputa 
 tion," phrases that recur on every second page on 
 the very page, indeed, in which we are reminded, truly 
 enough, that "repetition and monotony are the bane of 
 literature and imagination." We are informed besides, 
 on one page, that Moore is "the greatest lyric poet in 
 the English language ;" on the next, that Campbell is 
 "the greatest lyric poet of England," and in a third, 
 that Gray "has made the most popular poem in the 
 English language." Again, Joanna Baillie s dramas are 
 said to be written "in sonorous Alexandrine verses," 
 which is a new measure for dramas, and Mrs. Hemans 
 is called "a rival to Coleridge, if not in depth of 
 thought, in tenderness of feeling and beauty of expres 
 sion." " Lalla Rookh" is made to clothe oriental im 
 ages and adventures with the genius and refinement of 
 the Western world ;" and Alison, who wrote the most 
 jejune of books on Taste, is said to have been "in 
 spired by a genuine taste for the sublime and beautiful." 
 Macaulay is spoken of as one whose "imagination often 
 snatches the reins from his reason," whose "ardor dims 
 his equanimity," whose "views, always ingenious, are 
 not uniformly just," whose "powers as a rhetorician 
 make him forget his duties as a judge, 7 who is " splen 
 did rather than impartial ;" while in the same passage 
 we are told that "his fascinating volumes" cause us 
 "to regret that the first pleader at the bar of posterity 
 has not yet been raised to the bench." Fine qualities 
 those for a judge ! 
 
 Nor are we less amused in hearing that Wilson, the 
 
2 1 2 Alison s PI i stories of Europe. 
 
 truculent editor of Blackwood, " wields his aerial flights 
 through the heavens, without alighting, or caring for 
 the concerns of the lower world" i. e., Wilson of the 
 Nodes ; and whose criticisms, "if they have any imper 
 fections, it is that they are too indulgent" i. e., Wilson 
 of the Chaldee MS. Mitford s dull and bigoted his 
 tory of Greece, as we learn, "combines the interest of 
 the romance of Quintius Curtius, with the authenticity 
 and accuracy of Arrian. " Thackeray, the greatest satirist 
 of England, since the days of Swift, is dismissed as a 
 writer of Mr. Dickens s school i. e., the school which 
 "aimed at the representation of the manners, customs, 
 ideas, and habits of middle and low life," " distin 
 guished by great talents and graphic powers," but not 
 " destined to be durable, " because "imagination is a 
 winged deity, whose flight, to be commanding, must 
 ever be upward ;" and because, further, "ridicule is val 
 ued only by those who know the persons ridiculed." 
 We might fill a volume with such crude and preposter 
 ous judgments, if we had space to waste in copying 
 them judgments formed without principles, and ex 
 pressed in the loose language of the newspapers. 
 
 Of criticism as an art an art which treats the great 
 products of literature and science, as the vital out 
 growth of genius, having their deep inward laws of 
 being, and related to the age in which they were pro 
 duced, by the profoundest ties and influences Mr. 
 Alison appears to have no more conception than a com 
 mon house-painter has of chiaro oscuro. When he has 
 given the title of a writer s principal works, adduced a 
 few facts of his external life, pronounced him charming, 
 widely celebrated, and enduringly known, or a man of 
 sane moral convictions, he fancies that he has written 
 the history of that writer. Of his individuality, as dis 
 tinguished from other writers, from what stand-point he 
 
Alisons Histories of Europe. -213 
 
 looked on life and nature, and interpreted their lessons, 
 or of his relations to great contemporaneous develop 
 ments in his own sphere, as well as in other spheres, 
 we are taught literally nothing. Sir Walter Scott, as a 
 novelist, for instance, was an altogether peculiar and sig 
 nificant phenomenon, making its appearance in the 
 midst of English literature, to revive the images of 
 feudal life, at a time when the whole current of the world 
 was agitated, and rushing on to an unknown future. 
 What did he express, what were his uses, what his value 
 to the age ? Can a thoughtful mind consider him, with 
 out asking questions such as these ? Has he any real 
 interest to us, as a fact of history, except in his relations 
 to the general course of literature, and to the general 
 life of society ? Yet Mr. Alison is satisfied with a few 
 personal details, and a very vague talk about his 
 "brilliancy of fancy," his "poetic conceptions," his 
 "great and varied powers," and that poetic tempera 
 ment which "threw over the pictures of memory the 
 radiance of the imagination ;" adding, as a proof, both 
 of Scott s morality and immortality, in true Alisonian 
 style, that " nothing ever permanently floated down the 
 stream of time but what was buoyant from its elevating 
 tendency !" 
 
 Coleridge was no less than Scott a notable man, not 
 in himself merely, but in the important influence which 
 he exercised upon the poetic taste of his generation, 
 and the new era which he may be said to have created 
 in the speculative tendencies of the English mind. 
 More than any man of his age, therefore, he deserves 
 at the hands of the historian a rigid analysis of his 
 splendid powers, and a careful estimate of his bearing 
 upon contemporary thought. At the least, he should 
 have been described as something more than a con 
 siderable poet, and an excellent translator, "with a 
 
214 AH sorts Histories of Europe. 
 
 strongly metaphysical turn of mind," less "abstract 
 and philosophical," though "more pictorial and 
 dramatic" than Wordsworth, and not destined to " last 
 ing celebrity," because his "ideas and images are too 
 abstract." How is it possible that any one could have 
 lived in Coleridge s own time, and perhaps read his 
 masterly essays, and yet describe him in this asinine 
 way ? 
 
 Our readers may, perhaps, object that it is too much 
 to expect of Alison any philosophical view, either of 
 men or things ; and we should admit the force of the 
 objection if he were not constantly thrusting reflections, 
 meant to be philosophical, into the course of his narra 
 tive. Not content with his verbose details of incidents, 
 and his attempted portraitures of character, he deals 
 sweeping judgments "round the land," uttering them 
 with the most positive confidence, and claiming for 
 them at times the authority of Heaven. One feels 
 bound, consequently, to look a little into his right to 
 assume this lofty judicial attitude, and to ask on what 
 principles he arrives at these elaborate philosophical 
 deductions. 
 
 It is difficult, we confess, to ascertain distinctly what 
 his philosophical views are ; but as near as we can 
 gather them from the maxims and theories he is fond 
 of sporting, they amount to this : that man is universally 
 corrupt, destitute alike of the goodness which should 
 lead him into the right path, and of the intellect that 
 enables him to discern it ; and as an inevitable result, 
 running perpetually into errors, from which he is alone 
 saved by an inscrutable Providence. Thus, when a 
 French Revolution comes, in a sudden access of frenzy, 
 to spread its Jacobinical wickedness over the continent, 
 a sober and constitutional England is raised up to stay 
 the deluge ; when a wicked Mr. Peel contracts the 
 
Alisons Histories of Eiirope. 2i5 
 
 currency or establishes free trade, to the infinite damage 
 of the landed aristocracy, Providence opens the way to 
 California, to supply the precious metals and give an 
 impulse to emigration ; and so on every occasion when 
 the iniquity and short-sightedness of mortals get them 
 into hopeless straits, Providence stands ready with a 
 method of relief! We have as much faith in Providence 
 as Mr. Alison has, but we believe that it works through 
 human agency and according to a fixed and intelligible 
 order, which is no further inscrutable than we are igno 
 rant, and which proceeds in every respect rationally, 
 because it is itself the Supreme Reason. We cannot 
 so degrade it as to regard it as a mere Jack-at-a-pinch. 
 There was once a class of talewrights and dramatists in 
 German literature, which somebody called the Need- 
 and-Help School, because it was their habit to allow 
 their characters to fall into all manner of dangers and 
 difficulties, in order at the critical moment to come to 
 their aid, either by providing some unexpected rescue, 
 or killing them all off in a heap. They very well illus 
 trate the kind of Providence to which Mr. Alison seems 
 to commit the universe a Providence which creates a 
 certain number of ninnies and villains, places them in 
 the midst of the scenes in which they are to move, sets 
 them at work until they are all at loggerheads and begin 
 to throttle the life out of each other, and then, at last, 
 interposes to make a display of its own adroitness and 
 superiority. 
 
 We say this seems to be his theory of the course of 
 providential guidance, but he is not always consistent in 
 his expositions of it. He accounts for the French 
 Revolution, in one place, for example, by alleging that 
 it was a part of "the universal frenzy which at times 
 seizes mankind from causes inscrutable to human wis 
 dom ;" and yet, in another place, he assigns a dozen 
 
216 Alisons Histories of Europe. 
 
 natural causes, such as the oppressions of the previous 
 reigns, for all its sanguinary violence. At one time he 
 insists on the radical depravity of man, and his inevi 
 table tendency to all sorts of self-destruction, while at 
 another time he tries to make out that there is, after all, 
 a steady progress and general improvement of the race. 
 Now, it is evident that both these views cannot be true ; 
 for if there is progress, there must be a law of progress, 
 and consequently, no incessant proclivity to evil ; or if 
 there be that uniform proclivity to evil, then there can 
 be no general progress, only a capricious, occasional, 
 and useless fluctuation from bad to worse. We must 
 do Mr. Alison the justice, however, to confess that for 
 the most part he adopts the obscurant theory, or that 
 view of human affairs which, when it cannot confirm 
 its own prejudices by the actual facts, refers the whole 
 to inscrutable wisdom. 
 
 As a matter of course, Mr. Alison distrusts all popu 
 lar movements, even to the extent of doubting whether 
 popular education does any good. He regards repre 
 sentative government everywhere as a failure, but 
 detests the United States especially, because it is an 
 illustrious example of its success. He imagines Eng 
 land on the verge of bankruptcy and dissolution, 
 because free trade has been carried there, and the 
 popular element of the constitution is coming into the 
 ascendant ; and he vaticinates like another Jeremiah over 
 the entire future. We do not, in fact, know a philos 
 opher on the face of the earth, who, if his own philo 
 sophic essays on man and nature be correct, ought to feel 
 more uncomfortable than he, in the present advancing 
 condition and brightening prospects of mankind. It 
 were scarcely worth while, however, to quarrel with him 
 for his inveterate and silly toryism ; nor take him to 
 task, as we might, for those reiterated misrepresentations 
 
Alison s Histories of Eiirope. 217 
 
 in which he chooses to indulge in respect to the charac 
 ter and progress of Democracy, particularly as it has 
 developed itself in this country. We shall merely 
 proffer him our sincerest compassion for the difficulties 
 of his position. A man who writes the history of the 
 nineteenth century, under a serious conviction that its 
 experiences are a solemn warning against liberalism, is 
 one of the saddest spectacles that can be presented to 
 our eyes. The labor of Sisyphus was nothing to his : 
 the fruitless experiments of the Danaides, nothing : and 
 only the swimming pig of Southey s Devil s Walk can 
 be his parallel. Every stroke that he makes helps to 
 cut his own throat every fact that he records upsets his 
 theory. His painful task is to read the riddle of things 
 backward. Nor ought we to be surprised that Mr. Alison 
 should give such sterile and incomplete accounts of the 
 great movements in literature, science, and practical 
 art, which have distinguished the years of which he 
 writes ; for if he had done otherwise, in good sooth 
 he would have been compelled to abandon his obscu 
 rantism, and to adopt a view of the progress of human 
 affairs quite damaging to his pet notion of the extreme 
 naughtiness and littleness of God s noblest creature, 
 Man. 
 
 Gervinus, one of the most accomplished and pro 
 found of German historians, lately sentenced to prison 
 at Baden for the publication of his opinions, taking up 
 the doctrine of Aristotle, that the law of human develop 
 ment was from the participation of the few to that of 
 the many in government, demonstrates and confirms it 
 by the subsequent experiences of two thousand years. 
 It is not a fancy, he says, nor a declamatory phrase, nor 
 a hypothetical judgment, but the absolute, scientific 
 order, as certain as the courses of the stars, or the 
 process of growth in the individual being. But what 
 
2 1 8 Alison s Histories of Europe. 
 
 Gervinus proves, mainly in the political sphere, made 
 still more manifest by the entire course and consequence 
 of the development of literature and science, is particu 
 larly striking in the wonderful achievements of the last 
 half-century. In the death-blows which it has given to 
 the old feudal and aristocratic maxims and practices, in 
 the ameliorations it has wrought in the spirit of laws, 
 in the growing political power, moral elevation, and 
 intellectual enlightenment of the masses of the people, 
 in the almost universal diffusion of letters, as well as in 
 their humanitarian tone, in the greater cheapness of all 
 the appliances of every-day life, whereby the luxuries of 
 the past age have become the daily comforts of this, in 
 the prodigious movements imparted to trade, by the 
 discovery of new outlets for population, new fields for 
 labor, new rewards for enterprise ; in short, in the 
 indescribably numerous and inexhaustible sources of 
 enjoyment and wealth, bestowed upon all communities 
 by the revelations of science and their practical appli 
 cation, we find the condition of mankind advanced 
 beyond the dreams of the most sanguine enthusiasts 
 of former generations, and we see in them, also, a pledge 
 of the more rapid and surprising conquests of the 
 future. But Mr. Alison finds in them, and sees in them, 
 no such things ; he finds in their past effects only a dis 
 turbance of his cherished notions of law and order, 
 and he sees in their future promises only another 
 "dispersion of mankind," like that on the plains of 
 Shinar, produced, too, by the same unholy pride and 
 ambition which raised the vain tower of Babel ! 
 
 Now, it is because he does not find and see these 
 things, or, in other words, because he does not com 
 prehend the spirit of the age he undertakes to describe, 
 but stands in a relation of antagonism to it, that we 
 pronounce him wholly incapable of his task. No actual 
 
Alisons Histories of Europe. 219 
 
 specimens of his unskilfulness are necessary to convince 
 us of his unfitness. He may string facts together with 
 never so much industry, describe isolated scenes with 
 the animation of a Napier, analyze individual character 
 with the eye of a Scott ; but so long as the characters 
 and events he portrays are no more than so many 
 shadows dancing upon the wall, he cannot become 
 their historian. A Sandwich islander, suddenly placed 
 before the footlights at Niblo s, when Sontag or Alboni 
 is electrifying the intelligent spectators with splendid 
 visions of beauty, might as well hope to write a com 
 petent criticism of the performance for the next day s 
 Tribune, as a historian of Mr. Alison s sympathies to 
 depict the Nineteenth Century. Granting that he sees 
 the incidents and events with as comprehensive and 
 minute an eye as any other man, he can yet see only 
 the outside of them, like the Otaheitan at the play ; it 
 is impossible that he should see the motives of the per 
 formers, and much less the scope of the drama. The 
 principle which explains all the struggle for human 
 freedom that contest of man for the mastery of nature, 
 of society, of himself, which is the open secret of all 
 history, he winks out of sight, and he puts in its place 
 some marrowless and conservative ignorantism. 
 
 For it is no less true of history in general, than it is 
 of the history of the last half-century, that without this 
 guiding principle of freedom, it becomes a vast and in 
 navigable ocean, clouded with mists and darkness. 
 The historian who puts his little bark forth into it, 
 moves forward without compass or chart. Innumerable 
 counter currents baffle him on all sides ; huge sand 
 banks arrest his course ; coral reefs and the wrecks of 
 stranded systems scrape his keel, the storms and winds 
 of fierce war harry the skies, so that he is driven he 
 knows not whither, and makes the shore, when he ar- 
 
220 Alison s Histories of Europe. 
 
 rives at all, by merest chance. But had he carried 
 with him the chart and compass of freedom, which is 
 the great law of all the evolutions of history, he might 
 have defied the tempests and mastered the stormy seas, 
 beholding beyond the chaos of the elements a beautiful 
 sunshine and the green world of peace. 
 
THE " WORKS" OF AMERICAN 
 STATESMEN.* 
 
 ]E TOCQUEVILLE, who has written the most 
 appreciative book on the United States that 
 has been published, yet falls into many errors, 
 among which we are disposed to class what he says of 
 our want of permanent national records. His words 
 are these : " The public administration (of the United 
 States) is oral and traditionary. But little is committed 
 to writing, and that little is wafted away, like the leaves 
 of the Sibyl, by the smallest breeze. The only historical 
 remains are the newspapers ; but, if a number be want 
 ing, the chain of time is broken, and the Present is 
 severed from the Past. I am convinced, that in fifty 
 years it will be more difficult to collect authentic docu 
 ments concerning the social condition of the Americans 
 at the present day, than it is to find the remains of the 
 administration of France during the middle ages ; and, 
 if the United States were ever invaded by barbarians, it 
 would be necessary to have recourse to the history of 
 other nations in order to learn anything of the people 
 who now inhabit them." 
 
 It is a curious comment on this speculation, that we 
 have, perhaps, more materials for the minute and faith 
 ful history of our political and social life, and for il 
 lustrating the characters of our great men, than any 
 
 * From Putnam s Monthly, June, 1853. 
 
222 Works of American Statesmen. 
 
 other nation. Our habit of preserving memorials, even 
 insignificant ones, of public occurrences, as well as of 
 men who have made any conspicuous figure, is almost 
 a vice. The voluminous correspondence of the Revo 
 lutionary worthies, from Washington and Franklin 
 down to the obscurer personages of their time ; the 
 private memoirs, that the families, or friends, of the 
 Adamses, Morris, Livingston, Jay, Story, Randolph, 
 Jefferson, and Hamilton, have so carefully compiled : 
 the labored collections of the Historical Societies of the 
 several States, extending to tracts, pamphlets, maps, 
 state papers, and books ; the records of local celebra 
 tions and festivities preserved in the archives of towns 
 and cities ; and, finally, the newspapers, of which, in 
 their multiplicity, there is no fear, as De Tocqueville 
 somewhat ludicrously intimates, that the issue of a sin 
 gle day will be lost, to break the chain of events are 
 so many hostages given to Time to secure us against 
 his fatal inroads. 
 
 We are reminded also of another disproof of the re.- 
 mark we have quoted, by this series of the "Works" of 
 some of our eminent later statesmen, put forth by them 
 selves or their admirers, to give extension and perma 
 nence to whatever they may have said or done worthy 
 of notice. There is now lying before us a score of 
 volumes, issued within the last few months, which 
 contain the speeches and writings of Levi Woodbury, 
 William H. Seward, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, 
 and Daniel Webster, together with attempts, more or 
 less elaborate, in the form of biographies and notes, to 
 convey "to other nations and to future times" some 
 knowledge of their deeds and characters. Mr. Wood- 
 bury s "Works" are in three volumes, consisting mainly 
 of his speeches as Senator, his reports as Secretary of 
 the Treasury, and his occasional addresses ; Mr. Seward 
 
Works of American Statesmen. 223 
 
 appears similarly in three large tomes ; Mr. Clay in 
 two, chiefly of speeches ; Mr. Calhoun, in one, con 
 taining his dissertations on Government and on the 
 Constitution, to be followed by four other volumes of 
 reports and speeches ; and Mr. Webster in six, em 
 bracing his orations, diplomatic papers, forensic argu 
 ments, and debates. There is, consequently, great 
 sameness in the subject-matter of these publications ; 
 but that fact rather heightens than impairs their utility, 
 at least in a historical sense, because it furnishes us 
 with the views of several different minds, in respect to 
 the same great questions and events. 
 
 Embracing as they do, moreover, discussions of 
 nearly all the more important issues that have arisen 
 since the origin of our democratic government and 
 under the peculiar structure of our mixed societies, 
 questions of agriculture, industry, education, and re 
 ligion, as well as of State and Federal politics, by men 
 who moved in the midst of the agitations they caused, 
 and applied the best energies of mind and heart to the 
 peaceful solution of each as it arose, these volumes not 
 only secure us, so far as they go, from the reproach of 
 De Tocqueville, but are valuable contributions to let 
 ters, as well as to history. 
 
 For it should be remembered that the literature of a 
 nation is not confined to magazines, books, journals, and 
 poems, or to those other forms in which the intellectual 
 life of a people is ordinarily expressed. All sincere 
 and vigorous utterances of national feeling and thought, 
 become, when recorded, a part of that literature. Po 
 litical debates, especially in a nation where the powers 
 and attainments of men are almost universally devoted 
 to active pursuits, as they are with us, are likely to 
 be a most original and vital part of it ; and springing 
 warm from the brains of foremost men, under the im- 
 
224 Works of American Statesmen. 
 
 pulse of great exigences, when their minds are taxed 
 to the highest extent to overcome opposition and to 
 bring about worthy and noble ends, they are likely to 
 possess an earnestness, freedom, and depth of pur 
 pose, which we do not always find in the colder essays 
 of the professed man of letters. At least they will be 
 truer to the form and pressure of the time, though, per 
 haps, less marked by scholastic perfections. 
 
 The editors of these books then have, in our opinion, 
 rightly called them "Works ; for the men from whom 
 they came were not only legislators, orators, magistrates, 
 but authors as well. They did not aim at literary rep 
 utation, yet their efforts have the characteristics of liter 
 ary performances. They are an expression of our 
 national peculiarities ; they abound in pleasant narra 
 tives of facts, skilful dialectics, comprehensive and 
 close argument, impassioned eloquence and sarcastic 
 retort ; and so they have a value beyond the occasion 
 in which they originated. 
 
 Mr. Woodbury, the first on our list, was not a man 
 who widely influenced his day and generation, and we 
 may dismiss him in few words. As a Senator of the 
 United States, in which capacity he served for some 
 years ; as Secretary of the Treasury during the admin 
 istration of Mr. Van Buren, and latterly as a District 
 Judge, he attained to a respectable position : he served 
 his party with diligence, and was evidently a man of 
 solid judgment and sincere faith in his opinions ; but 
 he was scarcely a leader out of the small State of New 
 Hampshire, in which he lived, and he never rose to 
 such eminence as to become the representative of any 
 distinctive or vital policy. He wrote with vigor, but 
 yet without grace ; his sentences are cumbrous ; what 
 he saw clearly even, he did not always state clearly ; 
 and when he seeks to illustrate a position, he rather 
 
Works of American Statesmen. 225 
 
 overloads it with commonplace ornament, than simpli 
 fies it by apt and lucid figures. A politician and a 
 jurist, the habit of his mind was reserved and cautious. 
 His propositions come to us with so many qualifying 
 phrases, with so many -i/s, buts t and provideds, that 
 they are shorn of their strength, and are often more of 
 a puzzle than an impulse to the intellect. At the same 
 time, Justice Woodbury had strong popular sympathies, 
 cherished an enlightened and liberal political philoso 
 phy, was an enthusiast, almost, in his hopes of human 
 progress, and only needed to have surrendered himself 
 more entirely to the inspirations of this side of his 
 nature, to have become an eloquent writer and a great 
 man. 
 
 Mr. Seward, we think, a higher order of mind, not 
 because he is more comprehensive or profound, but 
 because he has a finer fibre of brain, and rises more 
 easily into the region of general principles. He is a 
 yet living statesman, surrounded by prepossessions and 
 hostilities, and we are therefore aware that our estimate 
 of him may be influenced by current prejudices ; but 
 we have read his writings attentively, and are prepared 
 to give an honest judgment as to their merits. 
 
 Most men, engaged in the actual contests of politics, 
 are liable to be overrated by their friends, and under 
 rated by their enemies ; but the peculiarity of Mr. 
 Seward s case has been, that he has reversed the process, 
 and, if not underrated by his friends, is at least over 
 rated by his enemies. In other words, the peculiar 
 kind of opposition that he has encountered, has 
 given him a prestige beyond the influence he is enti 
 tled to by his real abilities. The masses of the peo 
 ple, hearing him decried so vehemently as a most dan 
 gerous fellow, the contriver of every nefarious plot, and 
 the secret agent of every disorganizing movement, are 
 
226 Works of American Statesmen. 
 
 apt to take his opponents at their word, and to be 
 lieve that one who is so fertile in expedients and so hard 
 to baffle, must be a prodigious force, destined sooner or 
 later to the most commanding sway. Men admire suc 
 cess, and even the reputation of it, and have a secret 
 liking for those who are roundly abused. This was 
 proved in another case lately, that of Martin Van Bu- 
 ren, who was more indebted to the magical influence 
 his foes ascribed to him, than to the attachment of his 
 friends or any native sagacity. Give a man a name for 
 rare shrewdness and management, and you give him a 
 host of admirers ; in fact, open his way, without efforts 
 of his own, to almost any advancement. 
 
 The characteristics of Mr. Seward s mind are clear 
 ness, activity, and cunning, to use the last term in its 
 best sense. He grasps his subjects sharply, manages 
 them with subtle and quick dexterity, and being of a 
 sanguine temperament, never wearies of the labor of 
 elucidation and display. His logic, however, is not of 
 the close and compact sort which may be compared to 
 mailed armor, impregnable to all assaults. It is rather 
 demonstrative than convincing, and consists more in the 
 adroit linking together of facts, than in the rigid deduc 
 tion of principles. But he has great facility of expres 
 sion, both as a writer and speaker ; is always perspicu 
 ous, generally pleasing, and sometimes eloquent ; he 
 has read considerably, and understandingly ; and his 
 style, without being idiomatic or classical, is not offen 
 sively incorrect. He avoids, for the most part, that 
 excessive ornament, that turgid floridity so common to 
 our orators ; although there is a tendency to diffuse- 
 ness, and a swelling, and consequently, languid wordi 
 ness in his hastier efforts which greatly impair their 
 strength. He expatiates too much, is too long in cov 
 ering his ground, and is apt to be tedious when he 
 
Works of American Statesmen. 227 
 
 ought to be touching. Had he compressed what he has 
 published into one-third the space, he might have said 
 everything that he has now said, and much better. Nor 
 is it any excuse for this carelessness of composition, to 
 say that his addresses and letters were prepared in the 
 midst of active occupations, on the spur of the mo 
 ment, and without time for that limes labor which gives 
 finish to language. This might have been an excuse 
 for them, as originally uttered, but not for them as de 
 liberately collected and edited. Besides, it is not im 
 possible to acquire a compact, precise, and simple style, 
 even in extemporaneous effusions to make compres 
 sion the habit of the mind and when we consider what 
 a lasting charm it lends to speech, the neglect of it, es 
 pecially by men who desire to be read widely, and in 
 after-times, seems a strange imprudence. 
 
 There is another defect of his compositions, arising 
 partly in the same causes which produce diffuseness, and 
 partly in a limited range of cultivation, which is, the 
 use of worn and current metaphors, or commonplace 
 turns of expression. Not remarkably original in his 
 views, he is less so in his language. We miss that nice 
 choice of words, those racy, idiomatic phrases, those 
 graceful and happy allusions, those pregnant epithets, 
 which condense a whole argument into a word, and 
 those novel and picturesque suggestions, which relieve 
 the weight of argument, to be found in the masters of art. 
 Yet Mr. Seward goes far toward supplying the place of 
 these finer strokes of genius by his amiable and con 
 ciliating manner, his temper singularly free from gall, 
 his vivacious readiness, and his elastic, almost exuber 
 ant vitality, answering the purpose of a genuine en 
 thusiasm. If he does not produce deep and vivid im 
 pressions, he carries his readers with him by the lucidity 
 of his statement, the intrepid and manly spirit in which 
 
228 Works of American Statesmen. 
 
 he meets difficulties and announces principles, and his 
 obvious command of his position. Never impassioned, 
 even in his most declamatory passages, he is yet always 
 animated and fresh, full of hope, and thoroughly 
 American. 
 
 It is no part of our duty, as reviewers, to question the 
 sincerity of Mr. Seward s convictions as a politician ; 
 the less so, as we find his opinions cohering in an in 
 telligent and consistent scheme of political doctrine. 
 Nor do his volumes furnish us any occasion for doubt 
 ing the perfectly unaffected nature of his popular ten 
 dencies. He everywhere expresses his opinions frankly, 
 even in the face of a known hostile sentiment. We do 
 not detect him in any of the meaner arts of the dema 
 gogue, cannot lay our hands upon any single act of 
 political trimming, but, on the contrary, note an un 
 usual persistence of purpose, and a manly assertion 
 often of generous though unaccepted truths ; and yet 
 we fear the while that his virtue is not of "the incorrigi 
 ble and losing" sort. 
 
 Perhaps our utter disagreement with the school of 
 statesmen to which Mr. Seward belongs, may account 
 for this uneasy feeling. The school we allude to is that 
 which tends to aggrandize the action of government at 
 the expense of the spontaneous action of the people. 
 It makes the State a sort of omnipotent and omnipres 
 ent, and consequently omnivorous power in society a 
 Jack-of-all-trades, a supreme moralist, a universal peda 
 gogue, a high Justice Rotulorum, a beneficent Provi 
 dence. It comprises, within the sphere of government, 
 every function almost of society and of individuals, 
 causing it to build railroads and canals, regulate com 
 merce, encourage trade, equip steamships, promote 
 agriculture, educate children, and support the poor all 
 in additioji to its ordinary and more legitimate duties of 
 
Works of American Statesmen. 229 
 
 protecting, on terms of perfect equality, the persons and 
 property of its citizens ! Now, is it not obvious at a 
 glance, that this theory of the objects of legislation, 
 whatever advantages it may have in other respects, opens 
 the way to enormous abuses, inviting the assaults of 
 schemers and profligates, and inflaming while it debases 
 the contests of parties ? Wherever it is adopted a State 
 must be looked upon, not as the arbiter of an absolute 
 justice between man and man, but as the dispenser of 
 corrupt and mercenary favors ; and those statesmen who 
 make themselves conspicuous in bending legislation 
 from its lofty, important, and true ends, to the advance 
 ment of local and individual privileges, must inevitably 
 excite against themselves the suspicion of sinister and 
 unworthy motives. Of course that suspicion is often 
 misplaced, but the general prevalence of it cannot be 
 denied. Only a man of Washington s continence, or 
 of Hampden s integrity, could escape the taint of impu 
 tation ; and Mr. Seward, therefore, who has long been 
 active in pushing projects of one-sided benefit, should 
 not complain if the public, in spite of his nobler and 
 more disinterested performances, should confound his 
 motives with those of his sordid clients. The whole 
 system of special legislation and patronage, is deplora 
 bly wrong, and those who dabble in it can hardly avoid 
 defilement. 
 
 We think this idea of the sphere of government is 
 deplorably wrong, and yet we are not prepared to state 
 with any precision where the limit of State action properly 
 begins or ends. How much should be left to the indi 
 vidual, and how much the State may legitimately do, is 
 the great unadjusted question of political science. If 
 ve adopt the extreme democratic theory, which confines 
 the State to the simple protection of person and prop 
 erty, or to those objects which are common to every 
 
230 Works of American Statesmen. 
 
 member of society, we deprive ourselves of an important 
 means of advancing individual and social welfare, which 
 could not be so well advanced in any other way ; whilst, 
 on the other hand, if we assume the unlimited authority 
 of government to interpose in every subject of public 
 concern, we cannot stop short either of gross despotism 
 or gross corruption. The liberty of the citizen to 
 achieve his own fortune in his own way, provided he 
 does not infringe on the same right in others, ought to 
 be sacred under all circumstances ; yet, who will deny 
 that there are objects of vast general utility, "enter 
 prises of pith and moment," which cannot or will not 
 be accomplished, if abandoned to the voluntary efforts 
 of individuals ? Take a case in point, of immense 
 interest just now the railroad to the Pacific ! Ought 
 it to be undertaken by the Government or by individ 
 uals ? If you say by individuals, the reply is, that it 
 would require an outlay of labor and capital to which 
 no private company could be competent, even were 
 such a prodigious company itself not a dangerous thing 
 to create. Again, if you say by the Government, you 
 must see that it would inevitably lead to a most perni 
 cious concentration of patronage, to a wholesale jobbing 
 in the Legislature, and to acts of aggravated injustice in 
 respect to different localities. Who will draw the line, 
 therefore, between what the State ought to do, and what 
 it ought not? Who will tell us how far individuals 
 ought to surrender to society, or where its interference 
 is an encroachment, or where a right ? Everybody ad 
 mits that society ought to punish crime, for without 
 such discipline the continued existence of society would 
 be impossible but ought it not then, for a stronger 
 reason, to institute means for the prevention of crime to 
 guarantee the poor against anxiety and dependence, the 
 most prolific causes of crime ; to educate the ignorant; 
 
Works of American Statesmen. 231 
 
 to remove the means of temptation, and to encourage 
 virtue in every way ? You answer yes ! Then why not 
 establish a religion which experience has proved is a 
 most efficient agent of social regeneration ? But by estab 
 lishing a religion you are a long way on toward des 
 potism. Or to reverse the process of the argument, we 
 may say, that if you leave religion to the voluntary ac 
 tion of the people, why not the whole subject of educa 
 tion ; why not the support of the insane and poor ; 
 why not the organization of the police ; why not the 
 line of coast defences ; in short, why have any govern 
 ment at all, why not surrender the care of every interest 
 of society to voluntary action ? But this would be an 
 archy, and thus on either hypothesis we fluctuate from 
 one extreme to the other, until our faith in the existence 
 of any stable political science is quite lost.* 
 
 Henry Clay, whose works are the next on our list, 
 was, by general consent, the most finished and splendid 
 orator of a nation prolific of orators. Versatile, adroit, 
 bold, profound, pathetic, and imperious an able tac 
 tician, a far-sighted statesman, a born leader of men, 
 his eloquence was of that masterly order which 
 "wielded at will the fierce democratic, " but commanded 
 no less the selecter applause of senates. But great as 
 was its influence on his contemporaries, and intense 
 and fervent the admiration which it excited, it will be 
 perpetuated, we suspect, rather as a remembrance and a 
 tradition, than as a still living power. The volumes in 
 which it is recorded convey some idea of its combined 
 fervor, grace, and force, but a most inadequate one. 
 They are not as bad as the skeletons of Whitfield s 
 
 [* I allow this passage to stand, although since it was written I 
 have been led to adopt the democratic theory in all its length and 
 breadth.] 
 
232 Works of American Statesmen. 
 
 sermons, which cause us to wonder how the man could 
 have left such a reputation mere simulacra of a de 
 parted reality; for they contain his arguments, his facts, 
 his illustrations, his appeals; in short, some indications 
 of the large make and movement of the man ; but the 
 charm and the spirit are spent. The flashing eye, the 
 rich melodious voice, the commanding form, "the 
 snowy front, curled with golden hair," which gave them 
 their original life, are gone ; and, as we read them, we 
 feel like one who walks through the cavern of some 
 mighty dead magician the tools and instruments of his 
 spells are about us, his gems, his treasures, his magic 
 rings, his weird circles and diagrams in fine, all the 
 evidences of his art but the fire smoulders in his fur 
 nace, and he himself hath vanished into thin air. 
 
 Both roof and floor, and walls, are all of gold, 
 But overgrown with dust and old decay. 
 
 This is the proverbial disadvantage of the orator, 
 compared with the writer, that the best part of his per 
 formance escapes with the occasion ; and if he be an 
 active politician, he has no time to compensate, by the 
 labors of the study, for the haste and immaturity of his 
 extemporaneous efforts. His words are given loosely 
 to the wind, and the wind carries them on its. swift 
 wings to the distant interlunar caves, to be returned to 
 him no more forever. On the other hand, the writer, 
 ripened by nutritious culture, and purified from taint by 
 the refining processes of his art, commits his treasures 
 to the imperishable amber of print. So, being dead, 
 he yet speaks, and, in addition to the effects he wrought 
 and the honors he enjoyed while living, diffusion and 
 perpetuity are given to his fame when he is dead. 
 
 Mr. Clay, perhaps, less than most other orators, 
 
Works of American Statesmen. 233 
 
 requires to be embalmed in type, because his services 
 as a statesman, though not always successful, were so 
 active and comprehensive, as to have connected his 
 name with the history of his country, and left an endur 
 ing mark upon its legislation. Nevertheless, we cannot 
 but think that the world has been a loser by the liberal 
 share of time and tafent which he allowed the cares 
 of office, and the details of party management, to 
 absorb. His endowments were so generous, that he 
 needed only to have nurtured and husbanded them, to 
 have raised himself to the loftiest niche of greatness. 
 The love and admiration, which are now confined to 
 his countrymen and his friends, would, in that case, 
 have been expanded into the love and admiration of 
 mankind ; and no position, in the universal respect, 
 that it was possible for penetration, sagacity, vigorous 
 powers of reason, affluent imagination, quick sympa 
 thies, and high aspirations to attain, could have been too 
 exalted or permanent for his reach. 
 
 Mr. Clay, in genius and character, was not unlike 
 Hamilton, whose work he may be said to have taken 
 up where it was left, and to have carried on with the 
 same indomitable purpose, and a no less brilliant dis 
 play of power. Cherishing the same tendencies toward 
 a strong and splendid government, gifted with the same 
 courteous and seductive personal qualities, dividing 
 opposition by the assiduity of their address, and rally 
 ing support by their exultant confidence in success ; 
 alike bold, ambitious, and patriotic, they identified 
 their names with every great question of the day, both 
 of domestic administration and of foreign policy ; they 
 infused their own spirit into a vast and powerful party, 
 while they held its opponents in check ; and after the 
 glory of having founded our institutions, they share the 
 next honor of having modified and controlled their 
 
234 Works of American Statesmen. 
 
 character and development. It was the superior fortune 
 of Mr. Clay, however, to have lived to the mellow fruit- 
 fulness of his autumn : envious Death did not snatch 
 him away untimely, while the glow of his young hopes 
 was yet fresh on his cheeks ; but, full of honors, full 
 of years, the little enmities of partisan warfare softened 
 by his venerable age, as the fierce heats of the sun are 
 cooled by the coming night 
 
 " Life s blessings all enjoyed, life s labor done, 
 Serenely to his final rest he passed." 
 
 Mr. Calhoun, in respect to the preparation and finish 
 of his works, enjoyed no inconsiderable advantage over 
 Mr. Clay. Engaged, like him, for the greater part of 
 his life, in the arduous labors of leadership and office, 
 the peculiar habits of his mind yet enabled him to pre 
 serve more pure and compact, and consequently more 
 lasting qualities of style. The dissipations of debate 
 never prevailed over his stern intellectual integrity. He 
 read little, but reflected much, and when he spoke, 
 which was not often, considering his multiplied oppor 
 tunities, he spoke from a full mind, with extreme pre 
 cision and directness, and always in view of some single 
 and important end. His speeches, therefore, are 
 models of severe and cogent reasoning, and no less 
 complete as compositions than they are crowded as 
 storehouses of thought. The intense will that pervades 
 them, carrying the reader along with impetuous force, 
 as if he were in the hands of a giant, stamps them with 
 an individual and peculiar life. Besides this, Mr. 
 Calhoun was permitted, in his latter days, to embody 
 the malurer results of his lifelong studies in the perma 
 nent form of a treatise on Government. Those original 
 views of politics, which are scattered through his reports 
 
Works of American Statesmen. 23.5 
 
 and addresses, in incomplete expositions, were thus con 
 densed into an elaborate system, perfect in its parts and 
 finished as a whole. We see in it the mother-thoughts 
 of all his political action ; explaining whatever may 
 have been supposed to be inconsistent in it ; and 
 exhibiting him as an acute and profound metaphysical 
 philosopher as well as an orator and statesman. 
 
 The characteristics uniformly conceded to Mr. Cal- 
 houn, by men of all shades of opinion, were, a power 
 ful and subtle analytic intellect, a subdued and chastened 
 but intense enthusiasm, fearless reliance upon the con 
 clusions of his own mind, chivalric honor, and a 
 stainless purity of personal character. Another impres 
 sion, however, was no less universal in regard to him, 
 namely, that he carried his logical processes to an 
 impracticable degree of refinement, allowing mere 
 abstract speculation to override his more practical con 
 clusions ; while the earnestness of his convictions, 
 hurrying him into hasty judgments, narrowed his sym 
 pathies, and blinded him to the broader interests of 
 humanity. His Book both confirms and relieves this 
 estimate. It deepens our sense of his abilities, and also 
 of the dangers they were exposed to from his metaphys 
 ics ; but at the same time it raises his extreme Southern- 
 ism, from the suspicion of a mere sectional bias, into a 
 systematic principle. We see that a singular unity 
 pervaded his opinions because they were legitimate 
 outgrowths of his fundamental ideas, and in no sense 
 transient or temporary feelings. He was the fanatic 
 using the words in no offensive sense of his reason, 
 and wherever that led him, he pursued it, regardless of 
 the consequences. 
 
 Two curious inconsistencies strike us in the intellec 
 tual constitution of Mr. Calhoun. Born in a region 
 where the tropical sun is apt to ripen human passion 
 
236 Works of American Statesmen. 
 
 into the rank luxuriance which it imparts to physical 
 nature, he was yet the severest dialectician and the least 
 ornamental writer among all our distinguished men. 
 His style, though intense, was rigidly intellectual, 
 plain, direct, cogent, sinewy, and unyielding. No 
 flowers of fancy ever bloomed along its path ; it never 
 wandered into rich meads or leafy woods ; but, arid 
 and hot, like a way across the desert, it bore along its 
 burdens of thought, without furnishing us a single 
 cooling oasis or one refreshing shade. The voluptuous 
 life, the magnificence and pomp, the exuberant ful 
 ness and deep-toned harmonies of the Southern zones, 
 seem not to have moved the springs of his being, 
 never made his brain delirious or kindled his heart into 
 poetry. As well might he have been born in Nova 
 Zembla, or anywhere above the line of perpetual snow, 
 as in the South, for any effect that climate produced 
 upon his imagination and fancy. On the contrary, the 
 sobriquet given to him, of " the cast-iron man," would 
 show rather that he came out of the bowels of our 
 rugged northern mountains ; like iron, he was 
 capable of intense heat and a slight glow, but of no 
 brilliancy or sparkle. Stern, dignified, upright, he 
 was at all times neither more nor less than the great 
 Senator. A witticism, proceeding from his mouth, 
 would have seemed a sort offelo dese ; and a capricious, 
 fantastic, or grotesque conceit, the beginning of mental 
 aberration. It is said that in the bosom of his family, 
 among his friends, neighbors, and servants, he relaxed 
 into some lambent play of the affections, but we who 
 saw him only wrapped in his senatorial robes, like a 
 stern old Roman, must regard the report as a myth. 
 
 The second peculiarity of Mr. Calhoun consisted in 
 this: that he, the only one of our .statesmen who 
 defended the social anomaly of slavery, not as a politi- 
 
Works of American Statesmen. 2 
 
 37 
 
 cal expedient or a necessity of circumstance, but as an 
 intrinsic and actual good, yet passed his life in the elab 
 oration of a scheme of government for giving the amplest 
 security to individual freedom. A republican by con 
 viction, as well as a democrat by party affinity, he was 
 so dissatisfied with that democracy which allows the 
 majority of the people to rule, that he contrived an 
 ingenious system of checks and negatives for protecting 
 minorities against its oppressive domination. His 
 posthumous treatise on Government has for its principal 
 object a demonstration of the despotism of the many, 
 and the absolute need of a constitution of society in 
 which every interest, and as near as possible every man, 
 shall be represented. All the acumen of his analysis, 
 all the craft and vigor of his logic, all his experience of 
 affairs, and the untaxed energy of his imperious will, 
 were turned to the elucidation and enforcement of these 
 views, in the hope of restraining power and enlarging 
 liberty. No man ever inveighed more vehemently than 
 he against the encroachments of the State upon the 
 rights of the citizen, except that when he depicted the 
 blessings of slavery, he was equally vehement. He 
 thus exhibited to the world the spectacle of a democrat 
 who resisted the organized expression of the will of the 
 majority, and a republican who consecrated his days to 
 the support and extension of a state of society founded 
 on the subjugation of one race by another. Nor is it 
 less worthy of note, that his countrymen, convinced of 
 his thorough simplicity and truthfulness, forgot the 
 inconsistency of his opinions in their admiration of his 
 character. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun s theory of government was simply this : 
 That as society is the natural state of man, and man 
 prefers his own interests to the well-being of others, 
 government is necessary to balance the selfish by the 
 
238 Works of American Statesmen. 
 
 social propensities. But then, as the exercise of its 
 powers must be lodged in the hands of individuals who 
 are prone to prefer their own interests to the general 
 good, a constitution is necessary to restrain the govern 
 ment. How, then, is that constitution to be framed ? 
 We see that it can only be administered by men ; and 
 we see, too, that those men will be tempted by the uni 
 versal tendency of their natures, to become unfaithful 
 to their trusts. By what contrivance shall the public be 
 secured against the abuse of their power, against extor 
 tion, oppression, and wrong ? Quis cuslodes ipsos 
 custodial*} If you say, by universal suffrage, you only 
 substitute a dominant majority for your former authority, 
 and which would have the same tendency to the misuse 
 of its powers as any other irresponsible ruler. Nor 
 would a free press be any restraint, because, firstly, it 
 cannot change that principle of human nature in which 
 the necessity of governments originates ; and secondly, 
 because the press always leans to the heavier side of the 
 scale, to the strongest interest or combination of 
 interests, so that it exasperates rather than cures or 
 alleviates the evil. 
 
 The only solution of the difficulty Mr. Calhoun finds 
 in his doctrine of "concurrent majorities," as opposed 
 to numerical majorities, whereby he gives to separate 
 parts or interests of society a negative upon the action 
 of the other parts or interests. Thus, in the Roman 
 republic, the power of the patricians, which would have 
 been otherwise exorbitant, was restrained by the unquali 
 fied veto of the tribunes, who represented the plebeian 
 orders ; thus, in the Polish diet, each member had a 
 liberum veto, an absolute negative upon the passage of 
 offensive laws ; thus, too, in the Iroquois confederacy 
 or league of the Six Nations, in our own history, each 
 tribe possessed a power to resist its decisions ; and thus, 
 
Works of American Statesmen. 239 
 
 in the United States, he would have given a power of 
 nullification to each of the separate States, in all cases 
 of fancied grievance or outrage. 
 
 This original and ingenious system, to which we 
 only allude, not pretending to furnish more than the 
 meagerest outline of it, Mr. Calhoun develops with 
 amazing energy of argument.* His incidental remarks, 
 especially on the tyranny of majorities, and the odious 
 practice known in this country as "the division of the 
 spoils," are replete with the profoundest wisdom. But 
 his system, as a whole, is, in our opinion, unsound in 
 its premises, and impracticable in its applications. In 
 the first place, we do not believe that government 
 originates in this supposed conflict between the selfish 
 and social propensities of mankind, but that it is as 
 much an original impulse of nature as society itself. 
 In other words, we think that the tendency of man to 
 some form of unitary organization is an instinct of his 
 being, prior to all reflection, and as strong as his in 
 most soul. History has given us no instance of society, 
 even in its most savage state, without government, nor 
 can w^e conceive of society as possible, without some 
 kind of central authority and direction. Society, to be 
 a society at all i. e., to act as a corporate existence in 
 any sense must also be a government, and that, too, 
 whether we suppose its members to be the devils in 
 hell or angels in heaven. In the second place, ad 
 mitting Mr. Calhoun s notion of the predominance of 
 the selfish propensities, it seems to us that he does not 
 allow sufficiently for those other tendencies which con 
 cur in mitigating and modifying their practical action, 
 such as the affections which bind families and neigh 
 borhoods together, and even the governors to the gov- 
 
 * We have considered it at length in another Essay 
 
240 Works of American Statesmen. 
 
 erned such as the natural sense of justice, which re 
 strains all men more or less and the common interest 
 which all men have in order, peace, and security. He 
 takes his single principle, of the all-pervading force of 
 individual selfishness, and pushes it to its conclusion 
 without regard to opposing principles or moderating 
 circumstances. 
 
 Again, in his provision of remedies for the abuses of 
 power, he runs into an impracticable conclusion, be 
 cause his scheme, if carried out, could only result in 
 anarchy. If you give to every interest in society a con 
 stitutional ability to arrest the action of the government, 
 whenever it might please to withhold its concurrence 
 from a law, we do not see how there could be any 
 government at all. Some one or other of the parts 
 would be forever in conflict with the whole ; for though 
 Mr. Calhoun alleges that the effect of his arrangement 
 would only be to cause the different interests, portions, 
 or orders to desist from attempting to adopt any meas 
 ure calculated to promote the prosperity of one or more 
 by sacrificing that of the others, and then to force them 
 to unite in such measures as would promote the pros 
 perity of all we are quite sure, from the almost uni 
 versal experience of our race in schemes of concerted 
 action, that the practical operation would be no action 
 at all. The case of a jury which he cites, as to the 
 practicability of unanimous decisions, is not in point, 
 for the reason that a jury is chosen expressly on the 
 ground that it has no interest in the verdict ; but if we 
 suppose that each of the twelve men who compose it 
 had a separate personal interest to be determined, what 
 would become of, not the unanimity only, but the con 
 currence? A compromise, founded on the majority of 
 their interests, is the nearest approach that they would 
 be likely to make to any just decision. 
 
Works of American Statesmen. 241 
 
 But while we are disinclined to adopt the theory of 
 Mr. Calhoun, we are eager to remark that he seems to 
 us to have been aiming at a most important principle in 
 the sphere of political and social organization. It is 
 this : The necessity of restricting the powers of our 
 general governments, and of referring society back 
 more and more to its local and individual elements. 
 The leading peculiarity of our political system has been 
 said to be the recognition of the township ; and we see 
 no reason why the township itself should not be organ 
 ized, with its separate industrial interests, so as to give 
 a larger scope to individual freedom, and at the same 
 time provide for an affiliated or combined action. This, 
 however, is not the place nor time for advancing new 
 theories, and we return to our task. 
 
 What Mr. Calhoun is supposed by many to have 
 wanted, Mr. Webster had in perfection robust, broad, 
 practical understanding. He was the personification 
 of the Understanding, as distinguished from the intui 
 tive Reason and the creative Imagination. Our read 
 ing does not enable us to recall many men, of any 
 epoch, more largely endowed with what is best expressed 
 by the simple word, mind. There have been many 
 more brilliant men, men of more original insight, of 
 finer instincts, of more versatile and comprehensive 
 genius, of quicker and bolder and more susceptible 
 imagination, of more delicate and irritable fancy, of 
 loftier moral aspirations, but few of more masculine in 
 tellect. If we were required to designate him by a 
 single phrase, we should say that he was a man of su 
 perb talent. He cannot, of course, be compared to 
 Plato or Bacon, or any of that exalted order whose 
 thoughts create epochs in the history of the race ; nor 
 yet to those commanding geniuses of action, like Caesar 
 or Napoleon, who handle nations as an artist handles 
 
242 Works of American Statesmen. 
 
 his materials ; still less to the all-prevailing poets, the 
 Shakspeares, Miltons, and Goethes, on whom the most 
 exuberant measure of the divine glory is poured : for 
 his faculties lay in a different line from all these ; 
 his sphere was not that of creation, but of advocacy ; 
 and we must look for his parallel, therefore, among the 
 Ciceros, the Pitts, the Mirabeaus, the O Connells, the 
 Peels, and the Clays of the Senate House and the 
 Forum. Less than some of these in certain respects, 
 he is greater than any one of them in others ; Cicero 
 excels him in culture, Mirabeau in energy, Pitt in fer 
 tility of resource ; but for the union of strength with 
 grace of intellect, for calm, easy dignity of manner, 
 for ponderous facility of argumentation, for lawyer- 
 like clearness of perception, and solid, broad, practical 
 diplomacy, he occupies a position almost apart. 
 
 " deep on his front engraven, 
 
 Deliberation sat, and public care : 
 With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear 
 The weight of mightiest monarchies." 
 
 The late eulogists of Mr. Webster were fond of com 
 paring him with Edmund Burke ; but, as we think, 
 without a due and discriminating appreciation of their 
 respective natures. Webster could never have spoken 
 the speeches which grew out of the Warren Hastings 
 affair, every sentence blazing with the splendors of a 
 gorgeous rhetoric ; nor could he have written those 
 burning and glowing reflections on the French Revolu 
 tion. On the other hand, Burke could scarcely have 
 made that prodigious extempore reply to Mr. Hayne, 
 so versatile, satiric, overwhelming and solemnly elo 
 quent. Because they were men essentially different ; 
 and the coupling of their names is suggestive rather in 
 the way of contrast than of agreement. Webster pos- 
 
Works of American Statesmen. 243 
 
 sessed talent, but Burke genius. Burke, therefore, was 
 the superior in imagination, in culture, in earnestness, 
 and in moral sensibility ; Webster in dialectics, in sim 
 plicity and strength of style, in decorum and grave 
 manly debate. The vocabulary of Burke was more 
 rich and gorgeous ; that of Webster more chaste, terse, 
 and manageable. Webster was pre-eminently an advo 
 cate, always argumentative, always collected, always 
 addressing himself to the intellect, or to the feelings 
 only so far as they might move the intellect ; Burke 
 was a poet as well as an orator, irritable and impetuous, 
 and operating through the will and fancy quite as much 
 as the mind. Where Webster reasoned, Burke philos 
 ophized : where Webster was serene, equable, ponder 
 ous, dealing his blows like an ancient catapult ; Burke 
 was clamorous, fiery, multitudinous, rushing forward 
 like his own " whirlwind of cavalry." The one was 
 Doric in his firmness and elegance, the other Corinthian 
 in his elaboration and ornament. Webster was the 
 Roman temple, stately, solid, and massive ; Burke, the 
 Gothic cathedral, fantastic, aspiring, and many-colored. 
 The sentences of Webster roll along like the blasts of 
 the trumpet on the night air ; those of Burke are more 
 like the echoes of an organ in some ancient minster. 
 Webster advances, in his heavy logical march, and his 
 directness of purpose, like a Caesarean legion, close, 
 firm, serried, square ; Burke, like an oriental proces 
 sion, with elephants and trophies, and the pomp of 
 banners. 
 
 It is implied in this parallel that Webster was deficient 
 in imagination : he was, however, not destitute of it, 
 seeing that no man can be an orator at all without some 
 degree of it ; but we mean to say, that his imagination 
 fell short of the ample dimensions of his other faculties. 
 We use the term to designate that power of which poets 
 
2 44 Works of American Statesmen. 
 
 are "all compact," which melts whole worlds of 
 thought into a single phrase, which evokes a new 
 universe out of the commonest realities, which has an 
 instant touch and feeling of all the subtle analogies of 
 nature, which sees into the heart of things, and which, 
 whenever it speaks, pours itself forth in language full 
 of interfused passion, thought, melody, and tears. 
 Every line almost of Shakspeare is pregnant with it ; 
 as for instance, " Our little life is rounded by a sleep," 
 on which Jean Paul says he always meditated when 
 he heard it, for three days. Homer exemplifies it, 
 when the descent of the wrathful Apollo at noon is com 
 pared to the coming on of night ; Dante, too, in that 
 sad story of Francesca, which closes, "that day we 
 read no more ;" Byron, in his " starry Galileo ;" and our 
 own Bryant, when he hears in the domestic hum of the 
 bee on the prairies " the tread of the advancing multi 
 tude which soon shall fill the borders." Among orators, 
 Burke, where he describes Hyder Ali, in his retreats, 
 meditating vengeance on the Carnatic, as, "hanging 
 like a cloud upon the declivities of the mountains," 
 gives a rare instance of this power; and so does Mr. 
 Webster in this passage of the oration on the Bunker 
 Hill Monument : " Let it rise till it meet the sun in its 
 coming : let the earliest light of the morning gild it, 
 and parting day linger and play on its summit." Again, 
 speaking of the power of England, he says, "Her 
 morning drum-beat, following the sun and keeping 
 company with the hours, circles the earth daily with one 
 continuous and unbroken strain of martial airs." There 
 are also examples of imaginative power in his allusion 
 to the slave-trade in the Plymouth oration, and in his 
 description of the murder of the venerable Mr. White. 
 But it is rarely that he rises to such heights, or on 
 occasions of intense excitement only, when he Iran- 
 
Works of American Statesmen. 245 
 
 scends himself, and momently catches the fine madness 
 of the poet. In general we do not discover the play of 
 this faculty, even of that lambent and gentle flashing 
 out of it, which resembles its grander displays, as the 
 aurora resembles some terrific blaze of lightning. 
 
 Nor do we find the cultivation of Mr. Webster so rich 
 and various as we had been led to suppose by the 
 admiration of his followers. Out of his profession he 
 does not appear to have been an extensive reader. A 
 few well-known Latin books, the poetry of Pope and 
 his school, who were the fashion in his youth, the his 
 torical plays of Shakspeare, and the Old Testament, 
 the last two, it must be admitted, worlds in themselves, 
 were his chief resources. But it cannot be said at least 
 it is not made manifest in his published works that 
 he had any profound or critical knowledge of English 
 literature, as a whole ; to the German, Italian, Spanish, 
 and French literatures, he made no pretentions ; while 
 his classical stores were obviously quite limited. We 
 do not discover any evidences, at the same time, that he 
 was well instructed in any of the sciences, or that he 
 possessed any controlling love for the fine arts. If he 
 had been a reaper in those fields, the rich and luscious 
 juices of the harvest would have inevitably exuded into 
 his speech. They who wander through groves of 
 bloom, catch the Sabean odors in their dress, and 
 exhale them in every breath. 
 
 In respect to the degree, thoroughness, and variety of 
 their culture, indeed, we cannot but think that the states 
 men of foreign nations, especially of France and Eng 
 land, greatly surpass those of our own country. 
 Furnished, in the outset, by the superior discipline and 
 more exacting standards of their schools, with a more 
 solid education, they are also more apt to carry with 
 them into the duties of active life the tastes of their 
 
246 Works of American Statesmen. 
 
 scholastic days. A literary performance of some sort, a 
 lecture, a poem, a memoir, or a history, becomes their 
 relaxation from the fatigues of the forum or the bureau. 
 In France, the most eminent statesmen are better known 
 as litterateurs, as Guizot, Thiers, Lamartine, De Tocque- 
 ville, etc. ; and even in England, where literature, as a 
 profession, is not so nobly requited, Lord John Russell 
 writes dramas and edits biographies, Gladstone dis 
 courses of Church and State, the Earl of Carlisle 
 lectures, and Brougham philosophizes, experiments, 
 and disserts on Natural Theology and Athenian orators. 
 But who of our statesmen, saving Everett, Sumner, and 
 Legare, to whom politics seems a stray visiting-place 
 father than their native habitat, has taste for such studies 
 or is competent to borrow grace from them for his 
 severer pursuits ? An annual address before some 
 literary society or mechanics institute, is generally the 
 limit of their excursions in this field, while the barren 
 ness, tautology, and sophomorical ornament of these 
 occasional displays, are dreary evidences that they are 
 "not to the manner bom." This deficiency, it is true, 
 is partly incident to the incessant demands of our active 
 national life, but is owing still more, we suspect, to the 
 want of a real appreciation of the value of literature, 
 science, and art, among our public men. 
 
 But if Mr. Webster had not rifled the flower-gardens 
 of literature, he compensated for his deficiencies, in 
 part, by the possession of a fine natural taste. His 
 modes of expression are always neat, correct, and 
 forcible. Apt words aptly chosen, well planned and 
 well executed sentences, an exquisite clearness of state 
 ment, a sober chastity of figure, a round, melodic, 
 stately rhythm, sometimes swelling and grand, but 
 never grandiloquent, are the every-day beauties of his 
 style. He is even remarkably graceful at times, and 
 
Works of American Statesmen. 247 
 
 when deeply moved by his subject, a sonorous charm 
 accompanies the full, equable flow of his thoughts. 
 No painful effort is apparent in him, no turgid labor, 
 no gymnastic contortions, no nervous, spiteful, moment 
 ary flashes which are all symptoms of weakness. On 
 the contrary, we may apply to him one of his own 
 favorite quotations, and say that he is 
 
 Strong without rage, without o erflowing, full. 
 
 In this respect, indeed, he is a model for our young 
 orators and writers, who, if they would become really 
 cogent and impressive, must chasten their extravagance 
 with somewhat of his moderation, and temper their 
 fervors with somewhat of his dignity. It is a part of 
 our life to be excessive in action and ambitious in 
 phrase, and we have not learned that the suaviter in 
 modo is quite as effective as the forliter in re. 
 
 As an orator, however, Webster s greatest defect was 
 the want of a thoroughly profound and delicate moral 
 sensibility ; of that noble, yet lively susceptibility to 
 suffering and wrong, which makes the world s woes and 
 hopes our own, and our own those of the world, 
 which raises us to the heights of heroism, while it softens 
 us into the sweet tenderness of woman, which inspires 
 generous devotion and the sternest spirit of self-sacrifice, 
 at the moment when the heart swells with emotion, and 
 the lips tremble, and the eye is suffused with tears and 
 which, when we come to the utterance of it, gushes over 
 into deep pathos, or a cry that shivers to the tingling 
 stars. " Mr. Webster shows a certain sort of religious 
 sentiment, but it is not deep nor acute, nor apparently so 
 much an original inspiration, as something learned from 
 the schools. He uses it as a material of his art, as one 
 of the graceful and effective appliances of rhetoric, 
 
248 Works of American Statesmen. 
 
 giving elevation to the tone of his thought, but it never 
 bursts out as an irrepressible, overwhelming impulse, 
 carrying both speaker and listener along in a whirl 
 of agitation. His prevalent tone is cold, subdued, 
 almost impassive. Because of this want of moral senti 
 ment he had no fine lyric enthusiasms. No one, we 
 suspect, was ever made a martyr by his persuasion ; few 
 have ever wept over his pages or under the sound of his 
 voice ; though many, we have no doubt, have been 
 often lifted by him into higher ranges of thought and a 
 loftier patriotism. He moved men by the commanding 
 power of his intellect, but not by the appealing, pathetic, 
 melting utterances of the heart. He never impresses 
 us as a man " terribly in earnest," but always bears about 
 with him the conscious air of an advocate, of one who 
 pleads powerfully for his cause, but for the reason that 
 it is his cause, and not that it is the truth of God. In 
 reading Mr. Calhoun, though you differ from every 
 word he utters, though you see that he is imposing on 
 his own mind, you are still persuaded of his intense 
 conviction of what he says, of his willingness to stake 
 life and honor on each sentence, of his deep, ineradi 
 cable, personal interest in the success of his case. But 
 no one feels that Mr. Webster would break his heart 
 over a defeat, or swoon with joy at an unexpected 
 triumph. 
 
 It is probably because he carried this advocate spirit 
 into his public life, that he achieved so little as a man 
 of action. His successes were those of the lawyer. He 
 expounded the Constitution as only Marshall before him 
 had done, and he conducted diplomatic disputes with 
 ability ; but no original measures signalized his name. 
 The measures that he supported have been condemned 
 by the larger wisdom of the people, whilst those he 
 opposed have been incorporated into the settled policy 
 
Works of American Statesmen. 249 
 
 of the nation. He was, therefore, not too great to be 
 popular, as some of his foolish friends assert, but not 
 great enough nor sufficiently original, unselfish, and 
 earnest. 
 
 But, in spite of every objection that a nicer criticism 
 raises, the nation may well be, as it is, and long will be, 
 proud of the fame of Daniel Webster. His eminent 
 qualities as an advocate would have distinguished him 
 as primus inter illustres in any age. Had he lived in the 
 time of Demosthenes, his name would have come down 
 to us as no unworthy compeer of that father of elo 
 quence ; had he pleaded in the Roman forum, he would 
 have shared the plaudits of its listeners with all- 
 accomplished Tully himself; and in the most brilliant 
 era of British oratory, he would have added a fifth to 
 the glorious four who thundered in the Commons. 
 Our young country then may well cherish whatever was 
 good or great in the inheritance of his fame. 
 
 We must now, however, draw these desultory thoughts 
 to a close. In doing so, let us express our pleasure 
 in the practice which obtains more and more, of 
 collecting the works of our conspicuous men. Let 
 us also suggest to younger statesmen, the new account 
 ability to literature to which they will be hereafter bound 
 over. With the vision of a book in the distance to 
 transmit their folly or wisdom to larger audiences and 
 severer judges than they are apt to find in the Senate, 
 they should be encouraged or warned to a more careful 
 husbandry of their powers. A more glorious trust than 
 is put into their hands cannot well be conceived. Our 
 old revolutionary statesmen, who laid the foundations of 
 empire, have long since passed away ; their immediate 
 successors, who conducted it through the stormy tran 
 sitions of its formative period, with the single exception 
 of Benton, are likewise gone ; and a new race is ad- 
 
25o Works of American Statesmen. 
 
 vanced to the vacant places. But they advance also to 
 weightier responsibilities and broader duties. Our 
 country swells with such velocity in greatness of extent 
 and greatness of power, that the very statistics of its 
 growth startle us, as the figure of her future breaks, 
 
 " Like a comet, out 
 Far-splendoring the sleepy realms of night" 
 
 In a quarter of a century the young Republic will 
 have attained a dominion greater than that of Rome at 
 the zenith of her strength, or of England in the time of 
 Pitt, standing the first among the nations. Every Ameri 
 can is elated with the consciousness of this near reality, 
 but is he equally alive to the nobler duties that it im 
 poses upon him ? Do our statesmen reflect that they 
 legislate, not for the meagre twenty millions of this age, 
 but for the hundred millions of an age just at hand ? 
 Oh ! what men they should be to be equal to their des 
 tinies ! What a deep base of generous qualities they 
 should lay for the superstructure of great deeds to 
 come ! what inflexible integrity of character they should 
 cultivate, what comprehensive sympathies cherish, what 
 exalted purposes demand of Heaven ! With what 
 moderation, what wisdom, what fearless independ 
 ence, what utter hatred of wrong, what an aching love 
 of justice, they should strive to comprehend their po 
 sition to thrust aside with utter loathing and disgust 
 the petty ends of party, and to rise with "a clear fore 
 sight, not a blindfold courage," toward the summits of 
 their great office ! 
 
COMTE S PHILOSOPHY.* 
 
 j|T is some ten or twelve years since, entering 
 the bookstore of Wiley & Putnam, in Broad- 
 i&Sjttil way, we took from the shelves four large and 
 dingy volumes, printed in French, and bound with 
 coarse, rose-colored paper, purporting to be a treatise 
 on the entire circle of the sciences. The first page we 
 opened upon contained a statement of the imperfections 
 of analytical geometry, and we said, "Here is a con 
 ceited fellow, who believes himself capable of reforming 
 the mathematics." But on reading further, we discov 
 ered that he was an earnest partisan of the mathematics, 
 carrying his respect for them, indeed, so far as to assert, 
 in speaking of the progress of their astronomical appli 
 cations, that " the heavens declare the glory" not of 
 God, as the good old Bible says, but "of Hipparchus, 
 Kepler, and Newton." An audacious thinker, at any 
 rate, we thought to ourselves, and strove to penetrate a 
 little deeper into his book. Repulsed at first by the 
 novelty and boldness of his remarks, we were at the 
 same time held fast by a certain assurance of move 
 ment. As he passed along the dizzy heights of the 
 most adventurous speculation, we were convinced that 
 
 * The Positive Philosophy of Augusts Comte : Freely translated and 
 condensed by HARRIET MARTINEAU. 2 vols. 
 From Putnam $ Monthly, June, 1854. 
 
252 Comtes Philosophy. 
 
 no ordinary thinker held us in his hands ; and when, 
 toward the close of the work, we came full-face upon 
 the announcement of a wholly new science, for which 
 all other sciences were but preparatives the Science 
 of Society the fact jumped in too nicely with the tenor 
 of our own previous researches and hopes, to allow any 
 dictates of economy to hinder us from becoming the 
 owner of those shabby-looking volumes. 
 
 We read them, not with avidity, because they were 
 written quite too much in "the dry-light," as Bacon 
 calls it, for that, and yet with a deep though forced at 
 tention. It was clear, from the very outset, that the 
 .author was a novel and independent thinker ; his great 
 instrument of a mind moved along with the regularity, 
 though by no means the velocity, of a machine, im 
 pressing one, as it drew him on, with a feeling that he 
 might be supposed to have when caught up by the 
 gearing of some monster corn-mill or cotton factory. 
 No pleasant episodes of the imagination adorned the 
 way ; no scintillations of fancy sparkled like fire-flies 
 around it ; no gentle play of the affections warmed it ; 
 but a stern and relentless Intellect, marching remorse 
 lessly forward, was treading down our dearest hopes, and 
 crushing out the noblest and sweetest sensibilities, and 
 dragging us with it to its infernal goal. 
 
 As we became more familiar with our demon, how 
 ever, we found that he was not altogether so bad as he 
 seemed ; a silver lining of humanity was now and then 
 turned from out the folds of his dark frown ; he was 
 clearly very much in earnest, and impelled by an un 
 questionable love of truth. Speaking ill of nobody, 
 threatening nobody, he pursued his own silent and 
 impassive way among the stars, and through the depths 
 of the earth, and amid the busy haunts of men, intent 
 only on his purpose, which, the more it was pondered, 
 
Comte s Philosophy. 263 
 
 grew to be more and more dignified, noble, and be 
 nevolent. We finally dismissed all fears of our guide, 
 and honestly set to work to discover what he was at. 
 When we add that those volumes were the "Positive 
 Philosophy" of Comte, since so widely known as a pro 
 found and comprehensive scientist, the intelligent reader 
 of this day will need no further explanation of either 
 our surprise or our admiration. 
 
 It is always a momentous discovery this of a new 
 and really great thinker of a man who discusses with 
 consummate familiarity and ease the highest problems 
 of science ; and we naturally turned to the Records to 
 see what the world had made of him to ascertain his 
 whereabout, as well as to compare our secluded esti 
 mate of his rank with that of the accredited standards 
 of opinion and criticism. Alas ! we searched in vain 
 for any notice of him. The Reviews of France and 
 England, though noisy enough in their praises and 
 dispraises of the little tadpoles of literature, had no 
 word for this Leviathan ; learned societies the world 
 over, eager as they are sometimes to rescue their insig 
 nificance from oblivion, by blazoning the name of 
 whoever has won a momentary glory in deciphering 
 the wrappages on an old mummy, or discovering a 
 nation in Africa one degree nearer the monkey than 
 any before known, were unconscious of his name ; 
 and, in private circles, few persons whom we met 
 had ever heard, or, if they had heard, knew anything 
 definite of the star which had risen with quite porten 
 tous light upon our small horizon. At last, however, 
 we were told that we might find in the Edinburgh Re 
 view of 1838 many years after Comte s first book was 
 published, and eight after the completion of the last 
 a notice of the Positive Philosophy, written by Sir David 
 Brewster, which showed plainly enougli that Sir David 
 
254 Comics Philosophy. 
 
 had failed to get even a glimpse of the peculiarity of 
 the system. When Whewell, too, published his ; Phi 
 losophy of the Inductive Sciences," it was evident that 
 he had read Comte, but was either afraid or not honest 
 enough to own it ; and the first public recognition of 
 him of any importance we found in the Logic of John 
 Stuart Mill, who borrows largely from him, but without 
 the meanness of concealment. Indeed, no attempt, as 
 we are aware, has yet been made toward an elaborate 
 and impartial judgment of Comte, save in a series of 
 able articles published in the Methodist Quarterly Review 
 of this city, where the writer, though disagreeing with 
 many of his conclusions, yet frankly and admiringly 
 confesses his merits. Morell s "Philosophy of the 
 Nineteenth Century" has a superficial account of Comte s 
 system, and Professor De Saisset has written something 
 about him in the Revue des Deux Mondes, which we 
 have not seen. 
 
 This uniform neglect of Comte, during the quarter 
 of a century in which he had been laboriously working 
 out his views, struck us as strange, particularly as con 
 temporary science contained not a few direct appropria 
 tions of his labors. We tried to account for it, on one or 
 the other of three suppositions : we argued that either his 
 works were intrinsically unworthy of study, or that their 
 departures from the accepted and reigning opinions 
 were so flagrant as to excite a silent contempt for them, 
 or that the range and comprehensiveness of their topics 
 lifted them quite above the ordinary apprehensions and 
 intellectual sympathies of the age. 
 
 Yet, on reflection, we soon saw that neither of these 
 solutions could be entirely satisfactory. It was obvious, 
 at a glance, that those works were worthy of study, as 
 their marked originality and power, their logical co 
 herence, their dignity of manner, and the importance 
 
Comte s Philosophy. 255 
 
 of the results at which they aimed, abundantly proved. 
 A rational and consistent classification of the sciences, 
 on the basis of nature, and the construction of a new 
 science, destined to become the queen and crowning 
 glory of all other sciences, were projects which, even 
 if they had been unskilfully carried out, nevertheless 
 deserved the most serious attention. It was no disposi 
 tion, then, we were persuaded, to pooh-pooh Comte 
 which had left him to obscurity. Nor was it, again, 
 the offensive nature of his conclusions ; for, hostile as 
 these were to existing prejudices, they were no more so 
 than the systems of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, whose 
 speculations have gone the circuit of the globe. If he 
 was atheistical, they were pantheistical ; and we had yet 
 to learn that the one error was more acceptable to 
 orthodoxy than the other. Meanwhile, it was patent 
 that the theories of Comte, though profound and com 
 prehensive, and marked by great logical severity, were 
 not difficult of apprehension. They could scarcely be 
 called abstruse ; they contained few neologisms, did 
 not abound in hard words, while in their general aims 
 they were addressed to a prevailing character of the 
 present era its physical or materializing tendency. 
 There was, then, more reason, or at least as much rea 
 son, why Comte should have been well known, as that 
 Cousin, Hegel, or Kant should be. 
 
 In the end, two considerations occurred to us, as more 
 likely to explain the little attention he had received. 
 The first was, the acknowledged indisposition of scien 
 tific men to enter into large or general views, absorbed 
 as. they were in the study of details, and distrustful as 
 they were of all applications of the inductive method, 
 save the most elementary and simple. The habit of 
 petty analysis, which has been so "victorious" in 
 physics, had finally succeeded in conquering its masters, 
 
256 Comics * Philosophy. 
 
 so that your natural philosopher was quite as much 
 afraid of deserting it, for higher and synthetic general 
 izations, as a slave is to rise against his keeper. He 
 looked upon the " theorizer," consequently, as a 
 monster, and was glad to get quit of him as soon as 
 possible. Comte could expect no hospitality from this 
 class. Then, again a second reason for neglecting 
 him, even among those capable of general views, was, 
 that the reigning science couid not, in consistency with 
 its own principles, deny the validity of his method, 
 while to admit his conclusions, would be flying directly 
 into the face of the reigning theology. There was a 
 two-faced allegiance to be maintained by the Scientists 
 one of consistency, and the other of respectability ; and 
 we can readily understand why it was thought best, in 
 the dilemma, to say as little as need be about Comte r 
 lest the secret sympathy of science should be exposed 
 on one side by a futile attempt to contemn him, or lest, 
 on the other hand, the frowns of the Church should be 
 incurred by an open proclamation of sympathy. In a 
 word, Comte had been more faithful to the spirit and 
 method of modern science, as it is generally conceived 
 by scientific men, than they had dared to be themselves, 
 because of their theological timidity. His conclusions 
 were the logical outgrowth of their premises ; but 
 while they persistently held to the premises, they cau 
 tiously avoided the conclusions. A choice between 
 Science and Faith was laid upon them, but inasmuch as 
 they could relinquish neither, nor reconcile the two, 
 they found discretion the better sort of valor. They 
 retired from the field rather than join battle. 
 
 Thus physicists and metaphysicists were alike disdain 
 ful, expecting neither profit nor entertainment from 
 those lumbering octavos of a poor Parisian teacher of 
 mathematics, whose style was not the most attractive in 
 
Comtes Philosophy. 2$j 
 
 the world, and whose matter required close and con 
 tinued, if not subtle study. 
 
 Comte, however, is at length famous. He has been 
 taken under the especial patronage of Miss Martineau 
 " philosopher Harriet," as our laughing Howadji has it 
 and of Mr. G. H. Lewes, who last year published an out 
 line of his works, under the title of "Comte s Philoso 
 phy of the Sciences." His books are available in toler 
 able English ; the diminutive leaders of small coteries 
 begin to jabber of the virtues of integral calculus ; 
 metaphysics and theology are growing decidedly unfash 
 ionable ; and young men and women will soon be as 
 tonished that they could ever have entertained such anti 
 quated notions as those of God and Infinity, or ever 
 supposed anything to have had a beginning, as all 
 beginnings ex necessitate are supernatural, or, will ever 
 have an end, as all ends in the flux and play of shadows 
 are at best but problematical. Phenomena and the 
 laws of phenomena, which are themselves phenomenal, 
 are the sole gospel which the reason can comprehend or 
 our hearts revere ; and this poor universe, at once dis 
 embodied and soulless though we have deemed it all 
 along the substantialest of dwelling-places is in danger 
 of becoming a stupendous magic-lantern, but with no 
 one with within it, or behind it, to show the pictures. 
 
 It may not be useless, then, for several reasons, to 
 undertake a brief survey of Comte and his claims. This 
 we shall proceed to do, premising, however, that we 
 have no strong hope of administering much consolation 
 either to his extravagant admirers or his more bigoted 
 enemies. 
 
 The first question with a philosophy always is, what 
 it aims to do ; and here we must say that Comte s 
 pretensions are of no mean extent. He intends a sys- 
 temization of all human knowledge, a reconstruction 
 
258 Comtes Philosophy. 
 
 of the human understanding, and the determination, 
 through these, of the true order and evolution of human 
 society. His ambition takes rank with that of Spinoza 
 in his Traclatus, with Bacon s in his Instauraiio Magna, 
 and with Fourier s in his Unite Universelle, only falling 
 short of the reach of Swedenborg s, which includes the 
 economy of the heavens and the hells as well as of the 
 earth. Nor does the execution of his plan prove him a 
 wholly unworthy compeer of those aspiring men. With 
 more knowledge than Fourier, and a soberer judgment 
 than Spinoza, he is less than Bacon only in that mascu 
 line strength, rich wit, and fruity imagination, which 
 are the unrivalled charms of the great Chancellor. But 
 he differs mainly from all these reformers of thought in 
 the rigid bounds he has set to the province of knowl 
 edge. They, almost without exception, "leaping the 
 walls of time and space," have scaled the heavens of the 
 infinite ; yet he will hear of nothing but the actual and 
 the conditioned. They have endeavored to penetrate 
 into causes and essences, while he admits nothing but 
 phenomena. They have believed, with all the rest of 
 mankind, in substance, but he believes only in appear 
 ances. In short, he calls his philosophy the "Positive 
 Philosophy," because it avoids all impalpable realms, 
 and is real, useful, certain, definite, and organic ; or, as 
 he in one place expresses it, "good sense systema 
 tized." 
 
 I. The first fundamental principle of it, then, is a 
 determination of the limits of knowledge, which it as 
 sumes is confined to the perception of phenomena, and their 
 invariable relations. Absolute knowledge, it is affirmed, 
 is an impossibility, the perception of things in themselves, 
 as it is sometimes termed, a chimera. The exclusive 
 function of the mind consists in observing the appear 
 ances of things and co-ordinating their relations of ex- 
 
Comics Philosophy. 269 
 
 istence or succession. When we have determined what 
 a thing is, i. e., how it stands related to other things, as 
 an existing fact or a sequence, we have exhausted the 
 intelligible sphere. We cannot tell whence it is, nor why 
 it is, but simply how it is, or that it is invariably con 
 nected by certain resemblances or differences with other 
 things, or by a certain order of priority or posteriority, to 
 other things. W 7 e cannot say that it is a substance, a 
 being, a cause, an essence, but only a phenomenon, 
 which exists and continues in certain uniform modes. 
 All researches into the supposed causes of that phenom 
 enon, whether natural or supernatural, are consequently 
 illegitimate, an endeavor after the unattainable, a pur 
 suit of shadows and dreams. All faiths, opinions, aspi 
 rations, etc., not susceptible of being reduced to these 
 observed relations, transcend the powers of the intellect, 
 and may be dismissed as illusions, or, at best, as mere 
 transitional and infantile expedients, helping the mind 
 on, while it is learning to discern its true beat. 
 
 This, we say, is Comte s starting-point, and it be 
 comes us to analyze it, before advancing further. We 
 will admit that all knowledge is relative; / . e., in a 
 double sense, first, as to its objects, which could not be 
 things unless they were finited or distinguished from 
 each other by sensible differences; and second, as to 
 it s powers, which is a mere relation of our sensitive 
 organization to nature, whereby one is revealed in the 
 other. Things are in virtue of their relativity ; for if 
 they were not relative, they would be absolute, and so 
 indistinguishable as things, inappreciable to the senses, 
 and of course unknowable. 
 
 Our sensitive experience, consequently, must be the 
 basis, the occasion, the material of all knowledge. We 
 do not bring with us, when we are born, a solitary iota 
 of thought, except what comes to us from our relations 
 
260 Comtes Philosophy. 
 
 to the medium in which we are born. Everything has 
 to be learned by us, and that, too, in the slowest 
 way. Chickens and puppies, as soon as they break the 
 shell, or open their eyes, have, as Swedenborg says, a 
 complete science of their lives ; the former will run 
 about to pick up worms, and the latter to lap milk, 
 as confidently on its first as on its last day ; but a human 
 baby does not know enough for some years to keep 
 itself from starving to death. It has to be taught all 
 things. It is a mere capacity of knowing, and a mere 
 inclination to love, and nothing more. Experience 
 awakens its sensations, builds up its imagination, de 
 velops its reason, kindles its desires, and creates its 
 sciences. In other words, our existence, being phe 
 nomenal, is constructed by our experience, is but 
 an extension and envelopment of nature, a part and 
 parcel of nature, its finer outgrowth, its crowning pro 
 duct and flower. But man, as we shall see by and by, 
 is more than this ; he is more than a simple animal and 
 intellectual existence ; he is a self-hood or personality, 
 and therefore a spiritual being. The phenomena with 
 which he is conversant, or may become conversant, are 
 not merely physical or natural, but spiritual. His 
 world is one of affection, thought, faith, as well as of 
 sensation. A denizen of time and space, he yet con 
 ceives of that which is beyond all time or space. 
 
 Comte is right, therefore, in assuming that we can 
 know nothing out of the sphere of our experience, or, in 
 other words, which does not come through our phenom 
 enal organization ; so that all a priori notions of what 
 things are, apart from what we feel or see them to be, 
 are gratuitous and idle. But he is wrong in the infer 
 ence, that we cannot properly believe what we do not 
 know. Knowledge is not the equivalent or measure of 
 being. We know sensible facts, and their relations, 
 
Comtes Philosophy. 261 
 
 but we believe truths or propositions which transcend 
 those facts ; we know changes, but we believe in causes ; 
 we know Tom, Dick, and Harry, but we believe in 
 man ; we know the relations of difference which dis 
 tinguish things, but we believe in a unity which is the 
 ground or support of their distinction. We know the 
 finite, the conditioned, the multiple, the changeable, 
 but we believe in the infinite, the unconditioned, the 
 absolute, and the permanent, not as contradictory or 
 antagonistic to the former, but as contained in them ; 
 not as natural or phenomenal, but as rational or spiritual. 
 Every step that our minds take within the sphere of 
 experience itself, or beyond the first intimations of sense, 
 is a belief well or ill supported, and not a knowledge. 
 In popular language, we are accustomed to speak of 
 our opinions as what we know ; but strictly, they are 
 only what we opine, with more or less fixity of assent. 
 They are faiths accredited to us by certain evidences. 
 We say that we know the truths of mathematics, the 
 principles of astronomy, the laws of chemistry, the dic 
 tates of morals, etc., but we have only a conviction of 
 them, founded upon our reasonings, which reasonings 
 are only various logical processes for producing Faith. 
 Neither the results arrived at, nor the processes them 
 selves, fall within the cognizance of the senses. They 
 are rationally discerned i. e., they are rationally dis 
 cerned by those who investigate them and authenticate 
 them for themselves ; but the larger part of mankind 
 are satisfied to take them upon the testimony of others. 
 Perhaps one man in ten millions of Christendom has 
 demonstrated the theory of gravitation for himself, all 
 the rest believing it because they have been so taught. 
 Let it not be supposed that this distinction is merely 
 technical, for it is fundamental and controlling, and 
 cuts to the very quick of the Positivist pretensions. 
 
262 Comics Philosophy. 
 
 "Truths are known to us in two ways," says John Stuart 
 Mill, who is good scientific authority; "some are 
 known to us directly and of themselves ; some through 
 the medium of other truths : the former are the sub 
 jects of intuition or consciousness" (which is knowledge 
 proper); "the latter are the subject of inference" 
 (which is properly Belief). " Whatever is known to us 
 by consciousness is known beyond possibility of ques 
 tion ; what one sees and feels, whether bodily or men 
 tally, one cannot but be sure that one sees and feels ; no 
 science is required for establishing such truths ; no rules 
 of art can render our knowledge of them more certain 
 than it is in itself." But the truths inferred from these 
 truths, or inferred in any way, may be rightly or wrongly 
 inferred, are contingent upon the legitimacy of tlue 
 process by which they are reached, and are therefore 
 not known, but simply believed. That belief may 
 reach the solidity of the most absolute intuition, ac 
 cording to the nature and degree of the evidence by 
 which it is supported, but it is none the less a belief 
 and knowledge only by a popular extension of the term 
 knowledge. Even in practical life, in our every-day 
 concerns, in the endless ramifications of business, we 
 walk as much by Faith as by Knowledge, and we de 
 pend as completely upon the truths that we simply be 
 lieve as we do upon those we are supposed to know. 
 Social existence, indeed, would be impossible were it 
 not so, any existence, in short, above that of the 
 animal. 
 
 The question of philosophy, therefore, does not, as 
 it is commonly stated, refer to the validity of our knowl 
 edge, which, being commensurate with our sensible 
 experience, the first fool can determine as well as the 
 last philosopher,-*-but to the validity of our beliefs. 
 Accepting the vast variety of credences, on which the 
 
Comte s PJiilosophy. 263 
 
 whole business of society, its trades as well as its sciences 
 and religions, proceeds, what ground is there for each ? 
 In what way are they related to our sensible experience, 
 and how can that experience be made serviceable to 
 them ? Which are unsupported, which are illusions, 
 which are worthy of trust ? Especially, what are we to 
 make of our transcendent ideas? All the world, for 
 instance, at every period of the world, has professed a 
 belief in that which is perfect and unconditioned, which 
 cannot be bounded by the senses, which the senses are 
 ignorant of, which is invisible to the eye, and inaudible 
 to the ear, but how is it to be explained ? Must we 
 wink it out of sight, or may we refer it to a life within 
 us which is supersensuous, which is a window of the 
 soul, if we may so express it, opening into God and the 
 absolute, as the senses are windows of the soul, open 
 ing into nature? Philosophy, we say, is called upon 
 to answer, not merely to systematize what we know, 
 but to explain what we believe and hope. Philosophy 
 deals with all the fundamental questions of human ex 
 istence. Is there any truth ? and what criterion of it 
 have we ? Is there any reality? and how are we to dis 
 tinguish it from phantasm ? Whence the universal 
 order that we observe, and whither does it tend ? 
 Theology, metaphysics, science itself, each gives us its 
 own responses to these questions ; but are these so 
 many groping guesses, or satisfactory solutions ? It is 
 easy to say that such problems are insoluble, but who 
 can prove that blank and awful negative ? It is easy to 
 raise the barrier of the "Unknowable," but by what 
 authority are reason and revelation restricted ? W T ho is 
 wise enough to fix the last limits to the capacity of re 
 finement and expansion in the human powers ; who 
 knows what we may or may not know in the gradual 
 evolutions of spiritual being ? What depths may we not 
 
264 Comtek PJiilosophy. 
 
 yet penetrate (say, by new generalizations of the known), 
 what heights may we not yet scale ? 
 
 Now, Comte is quite right in considering the rela 
 tions of phenomenal nature, the facts furnished to us 
 by the senses, and digested by reason, as the starting- 
 place of the sciences ; but he is wrong in restricting 
 philosophy to this natural plane. He is right, in the 
 first point, because phenomenal nature is the continent 
 or base of all truth, in which it resides as in its body ; 
 but he is wrong in the second point, inasmuch as it 
 excludes the deeper truths, which are the soul of that 
 body. Let us illustrate. The twenty-six letters of the 
 alphabet contain the whole of Shakspeare, but how 
 wretched would be the commentator who should con 
 fine his attention to the names of the letters, or to the 
 spelling of a few syllables, or to the construction of a 
 few sentences even, and not ascend to the higher com 
 binations of the thoughts ! It is indispensable to know 
 the letters and the words, in order to understand Shaks 
 peare, but the letters and the words are not Shakspeare. 
 They are only instrumental to Shakspeare ; they are the 
 external collocation, of which he is the interior signifi 
 cance nay, more, they are the condition of his exist 
 ence, and the ladders by which we climb to him, but 
 they are not the immortal spirit of the man, which is 
 alone worth our seeking. Hence the care with which 
 we investigate his text ; but should we not despise a 
 scholar who could spend his life in the pursuit of the 
 text, while he neglected the meaning which alone im 
 parts to the text its glory ? 
 
 So Science begins with the sensible sphere, because 
 it is the letter and text of truth, but it ascends from 
 that, by its rational processes, to the mental or spiritual 
 sphere, which is the ground or meaning of the former, 
 giving it existence and reality. Science is nature no 
 
Comtes Philosophy. 265 
 
 longer seen by the eyes, but by the reason. Let it be 
 observed, however, that in ascending from the senses, 
 as we have termed it, we do not recede or separate 
 from nature ; we do not run away into a ghostland of 
 abstractions, but we simply look through nature s su 
 perficial aspects or integuments, into its realities, or 
 rather into its rationalities, into its intellectual sub 
 stances and ends, which constitute it, make it consistent 
 and significant, and show it to be a glorious mirror of 
 our own souls. If Science halts, therefore, at the thresh 
 old ; if it regards nature as a thing of superficial dimen 
 sions only ; if it dallies with the outside shows, refusing 
 to penetrate the inward meaning, it misses the most 
 precious part of the entertainment. It sees the vast 
 mechanism, the prodigious apparatus, the great gilt 
 Candlesticks of the heavens, and the four sapphire walls, 
 and the multitudes that walk therein, but the Divinity 
 of the magnificent temple, who is the light and heat 
 and glory of it, it cannot behold ! 
 
 Science, we repeat, cannot be too "positive" in the 
 study of phenomena, cannot be too accurate in its re 
 searches or comprehensive in its generalizations ; cannot 
 tell us too plainly what the actual forms and sequences 
 of the universe are ; but it does this, not for the sake of 
 the phenomena, which are, in themselves, dead and 
 passive surfaces, obeisant, mechanical, vehicular, but 
 for the inner worlds of rational, civil, moral, and 
 spiritual uses which they contain. It is because they 
 are an expression, a representative, a bodying forth of a 
 more real life, the vast depository of spiritual forces in 
 action, a theatre of an ascending series of wisdom and 
 goodness, the supporting bed of the eternal marriage of 
 love and truth, and the perpetual, ever-renewed miracle 
 of divine creation, that they deserve our elaborate study 
 and care. As the plane on which all effects are 
 
266 Comics Philosophy. 
 
 wrought out, we cannot know too intimately the great 
 leading facts of Experience ; but to rest in those facts 
 is to abandon reason to a barren nominalism, to close 
 the eyes of the soul, and shut out God from his own 
 universe. 
 
 II. Comte s second fundamental principle is, that 
 each of our leading conceptions, each branch of our knowl 
 edge, passes successively through three different theoretical 
 conditions the Theological or fictitious, the Metaphysical or 
 abstract, and the Scientific or positive. In other words, 
 the human mind, by its nature, employs, in its progress, 
 three methods of philosophizing, the characters of 
 which are essentially different, and even radically op 
 posed viz., the theological method, the metaphysical, 
 and the positive. "Hence arise," he adds, "three 
 philosophies, or general systems of conception, of the 
 aggregate of phenomena, each of which excludes the 
 other." The first is the necessary point of departure 
 for the human understanding, and the third its fixed and 
 definitive state, while the second is only transitional.* 
 
 In the theological stage, the human mind, seeking 
 the essential nature of beings, the first and final causes 
 (the origin and purpose) of all effects in short, abso 
 lute knowledge supposes all phenomena to be pro 
 duced by the immediate action of supernatural agents. 
 In the metaphysical state, which is only a modification 
 of the first, the mind supposes, instead of supernatural 
 powers, abstract forces, substantive principles, veritable 
 entities, inherent in nature, and capable of producing a 
 diversity in phenomena. But in the final or positive 
 state, the mind has given over the vain search after ab 
 solute notions, such as the origin and destination of the 
 universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies 
 
 * Miss Martineau s Abstract, vol. i., c. i. 
 
Comte s Philosophy. 267 
 
 itself to the study of their laws, that is, their invariable 
 relations of succession and resemblance. 
 
 Comte adds, that the theological state reached its 
 highest perfection, when it substituted the providential 
 action of a single Being (monotheism), for the varied 
 operation of numerous divinities (fetichism and poly 
 theism) which had before been imagined. In the same 
 way, in the last stage of the metaphysical system, men 
 substitute one great entity, Nature, as the cause of all 
 phenomena, for the multitude of entities which they 
 at first supposed. And thus the Positive system will reach 
 its ultimate perfection (if such perfection can be hoped 
 for) in the representation of some single general law 
 (gravitation, for instance), as the unity of all particular 
 phenomena. 
 
 Before entering upon an examination of this alleged 
 " law of the three stages/ let us remark a moment the 
 singular nomenclature in which it is expressed. "The 
 ological," "metaphysical," and "positive" are terms 
 that have no sort of co-relation with each other ; neither 
 of affinity or contrast. They are arbitrary designations, 
 and therefore, as the reader will find out if he attempts 
 to pursue the study of Comte, somewhat ambiguous and 
 confused. Theology is stretched a good deal from its 
 native meaning when it is made to cover the lowest sort 
 of fetichism, as well as the mere devilism of much early 
 superstition. So, again, metaphysics, which is now 
 commonly restricted to intellectual and moral philoso 
 phy, is identified by Comte with Ontology, or the sci 
 ence of being, though he sometimes recurs to the 
 former sense. But his use of the word " positive" is 
 the most curious reversion of terms. Among the old 
 speculators, such as the schoolmen, and in Bacon, Spi 
 noza, Leibnitz, and Descartes, even down to Kant, posi 
 tive knowledge always means primitive, irreducible, ne- 
 
268 Comics Philosophy. 
 
 cessary truth, or that which is derived from intuitive per 
 ception, as distinguished from that which is obtained 
 by observation and experiment : but Comte, rejecting 
 the former kind of knowledge, appropriates the term 
 to that which originally it was used to oppose. This, 
 however, by the way, for what he really means is clear 
 enough. 
 
 It is the instinct of childhood to personify everything, 
 to drench its whole outward existence in the hues of 
 its persona] feelings, .and to invest every stone, and tree, 
 and shadow with a vague mysterious life ; but in youth, 
 as the reflective or intellectual powers are developed, 
 we begin to question these creatures of the imagination, 
 to strip them of their personal individuality, and to 
 refer them to a dead external mechanism, which we call 
 nature ; and then, finally, we investigate their actual 
 properties, that we may turn them to use, in furthering 
 the practical purposes of existence. The savage sees in 
 the lightning the glances of an offended deity, whom 
 he propitiates by offerings : when more enlightened, he 
 regards it as a destructive and unmanageable agent, of 
 which he is afraid ; but when more enlightened still, he 
 calls it electricity, and renders it harmless by an iron 
 rod. The savage considers an epidemic as a direct 
 infliction of the gods, or, as our American Iroquois 
 thought, a great serpent that lived in the pools. He 
 learns by experience that it may be generated by the 
 pools and marshes, and calls it not a serpent, but a 
 malignant nature : then, a little further advanced in 
 knowledge, he connects it with a mysterious "Provi 
 dence," till the man of science teaches him that it is a 
 simple consequence of appreciable causes, and institutes 
 sanitary regulations to prevent its recurrence. Thus, 
 in regard to all other phenomena, the progress of our 
 intelligence is marked by the progress which it makes 
 
Comte s Philosophy. 269 
 
 in referring them, from arbitrary wills, or independent 
 and inscrutable causes, to intelligible and invariable 
 laws. 
 
 Now, this general fact we admit, but we are not pre 
 pared to characterize it precisely as Comte does, nor to 
 surrender it to the same inferences. He treats the theo 
 logical and metaphysical states as exclusively provisional, 
 the positive state as definite or final. Now, we regard 
 them all as alike provisional, and included in the same 
 general law of progress. The idea of Deity, and the 
 idea of Cause, are not infantile conceptions, which it is 
 the function of science to supersede ; but they are per 
 manent, controlling, ineradicable instincts, which it is 
 the function of philosophy to illustrate, purify, and 
 complete. In other words, the phenomenal manifes 
 tations of these great ideas, their appearances in history, 
 are the successive stages by which the reason of the race 
 ascends from a gross sensualism, or a blind confusion 
 of God and nature, to the spiritual perception of a 
 living, creative, and all-sustaining unity of life. They 
 are the process of the mind s growth, by which it is 
 gradually enfranchised from its primitive subjection to 
 nature, into its final mastery of nature and conjunction 
 with God. 
 
 Thus the theological conceptions exhibit the gropings 
 of religious feeling for a unitary life, which will explain all 
 the vast variety of phenomenal lives. So the metaphysical 
 and positive conceptions exhibit the gropings of thought 
 for a causative principle, which will explain all the vast 
 concatenations of phenomenal order. Our Humanity 
 is ever in a process of education, is growing out of its 
 infancy into its manhood, and these theological, meta 
 physical, and scientific systems are the tutors, by whose 
 assistance it attains its majority. They are not, there 
 fore, radically antagonistic to each other, but co-oper- 
 
2/o Comtes Philosophy. 
 
 ative from distinct spheres, the one preparing the heart, 
 and the other the intelligence, for the whole man s final 
 assertion of his independence and freedom. 
 
 In respect to the theological credences of our race, 
 it is evident that their historical development has not 
 exhausted the conception of God, but refined it more 
 and more from all mere finite adjuncts, and filled it out 
 to an ideal completeness. From fetichism, the first rude 
 personification of stocks and stones, through Sabeism, 
 or the worship of the stars, and the Polytheistic deifica 
 tion of the great powers of nature, to the Monotheism 
 of Mohammed and the Jews, there is an almost 
 measureless progress. So in Monotheism itself, begin 
 ning with the conception of God as the special and 
 avenging protector of a nation, of Jewry or Islam, and 
 ending with it as the impartial judge of all the earth, 
 there is an equal rise in the purity and dignity of the 
 thought. The conception becomes less and less natural, 
 i. e., less and less limited and conditioned, and more 
 and more humane, until it rises to the highest expres 
 sion which it has yet received, the orthodox theism of 
 the Church, in which God is the merciful and universal 
 Father, and profoundly interested in the fortunes of the 
 human soul. But he is still a God ab extra, according 
 to this faith, a God above and separate from humanity, 
 until a more sympathetic insight into the life of Christ 
 (such as we get in Swedenborg), reveals him as the 
 Divine Humanity, or the essential unity of God and 
 man. 
 
 Again, the metaphysical philosophy of our race 
 has been a gravitation of thought toward a similar 
 end. At first cosmological, explaining the universe 
 by a great controlling force or phusis external to it, and 
 then physical, ascribing each particular effect to its par 
 ticular entity, residing in it as a kind of physical soul, 
 
Comics Philosophy. 271 
 
 metaphysics has gradually relieved itself of the domi 
 nation of nature, discharging her phenomena of every 
 characteristic save the principle of Law. Arrived at 
 this stage, it is called Positivism, which, however it may 
 disclaim all metaphysical parentage, is still a phase of 
 metaphysics ; for it only substitutes law for cause or 
 entity, perpetually speaking of "the laws controlling 
 phenomena," "the laws which subject properties," 
 etc., as if laws were an external and authoritative 
 imposition, in which sense they are just as metaphysi 
 cal as any of the entities of the schoolmen. 
 
 The distinctive character of Positivism, for example, 
 is the conception of the invariableness or immutability 
 of the Laws of Nature. But this is a metaphysical con 
 ception as a whole, and each of its leading terms is 
 metaphysical, and the first of them is absolute as well as 
 metaphysical, implying as it does, an eternal, fixed, 
 unconditional impossibility of change. We are no 
 where told, it is true, nor is it very clear, whether this 
 impossibility of change is a mathematical, a moral, or 
 a physical impossibility ; it is represented only as a 
 kind of Fate or Destiny. 
 
 Again, the second term of this pet phrase, Law, is a 
 metaphysical expression, borrowed from jurisprudence, 
 where it means the command of a superior, and which 
 it attributes to the facts and sequences of the material 
 world. Even the third term in the formula, or "Nature," 
 in the mouths of the strictest scientists, often means an 
 entity external to our thought, in which the sum of 
 phenomena is supposed to inhere. What is there more 
 metaphysical in the arke of the ancient lonians, in the 
 atoms of the atomists, in the quiddities of the school 
 men, in the animism of Stahl, or in the vital principle of 
 the later physioligists, than in the electricity, galvanism, 
 magnetism, and caloric of modern science. We ven- 
 
272 Comtes Philosophy. 
 
 ture to say that ninety-nine of every hundred of the 
 writers on these branches of research give as much 
 objective validity to their fluids and affinities as ever 
 Scotus did to his entities or plastic forces. 
 
 Mr. Lewes, one of the leading teachers of Positivism, 
 has noted this, and says : "The conception implied in, 
 or suggested by, the phrase Laws of Nature/ is the 
 last and most refined expression of the metaphysical 
 stage of speculation ; it replaces the ancient principle ; 
 it is the delicate abstract entity superadded to phenom 
 ena." It is something which "coerces the facts, and 
 makes them to be what they are, " "a more subtle, a 
 more impersonal substitute for the supernatural power, 
 which in the theological epoch was believed to super 
 intend all things." "If the savage says it is a demon 
 who directs the storm, does not the man of science say 
 it is a law which directs it ? These two conceptions, 
 are they not identical ?" Not entirely, we answer, be 
 cause the last is more rational than the first, and brings 
 us nearer to a true theory of the universe ; but both 
 spring from the same source, the irresistible desire of the 
 mind to go behind the phenomenal and the relative to 
 the rational and constitutive. Mr. Lewes proposes to 
 relieve himself by the employment of the word 
 "methods." 
 
 But will it be any more possible to satisfy the philo 
 sophical instinct with " methods" than with " laws," or 
 with " entities" or " gods?" No, for what that instinct 
 demands is the intrinsic reason of things, the why as 
 well as the what and the how. " He is a poor lawyer," 
 says Cicero, "who, knowing all the extant statutes of 
 the realm, does not know the reason of the law." Thus, 
 behind the theorems of the mathematics, there is a 
 philosophy of mathematics; behind all the decom 
 positions and recompositions of chemistry, a philosophy 
 
Comtes Philosophy. 273 
 
 of chemistry ; behind all the sciences, in short, a 
 science of sciences to which they are only subservient. 
 Why are they, those sciences, i. e., for what end are 
 they ? Or, in plain, popular language, what is their 
 use 9 which is again the same thing as to ask, what is 
 their cause ; for as the End for which any thing is, deter 
 mines its existence, its form, its relations to other things, 
 its rank in the orders and series to which it belongs 
 that end must be, disguise it as we may, its formative 
 principle, its fundamental idea, its soul. "Are you 
 there, old truepenny ?" Behold, the Use of a thing, in 
 the last analysis, is its rational cause, and Positivism 
 does not say the final word of science ! It may have an 
 eminent function, in determining what things are, what 
 the forms and relations of phenomena are, in teaching 
 inquirers to stick to the inquiry in hand, and when they 
 are investigating a thing, not to run off into a wild-goose 
 chase after something else ; but having done that, it 
 has only prepared materials. The great work has yet 
 to be done. Comte s own attempt to show that all the 
 sciences are made for the last science, or the science of 
 man 2. e., his attempt to deduce the end or use of the 
 sciences is an ample confession of this very truth, and 
 an abandonment of the what is, for the why it is. But, 
 reaching this question of the Why, we come at once and 
 peremptorily upon the great truth which he himself 
 educes that all the sciences, 2. e., that all the realms of 
 creation, look to the aggrandizement of man ; that all 
 their arrangements, all their efforts, are subservient to 
 his development, are all accommodated to his growth, 
 all culminate in his supremacy. Thus, once more, we 
 are brought by the slow evolutions of science to the 
 same landing-place in which we were left "by the theo 
 logical series, 2. e., to man as the Lord and Master of 
 Nature, and consequently one with God. 
 
2/4 Comtes Philosophy. 
 
 There is an obvious fallacy in the suggestion that 
 these "three states" are either exclusive of each other, or 
 regularly successive in a direct line of development ; 
 for they have all existed concurrently, from the begin 
 ning of the world, and often in the same nation and the 
 same mind, at the same time. The veriest barbarian, 
 who sees a fetish in a stone, still believes that if it falls 
 on his head it will give him a hurt, thus proving his 
 Positivism, so far forth, or his sense of nature s invari 
 able laws. The most flourishing period of Greek 
 polytheism was precisely the time when the Greek 
 schools were most devoted to independent metaphysical 
 studies. Who were more theological and more meta 
 physical at the same time than the schoolmen ? 
 Besides, is not the very study of any .subject, whether 
 theological or metaphysical, a quiet assumption of 
 Positivism i. e. , does it not proceed upon the suppo 
 sition that the laws of the mind at least are invariable ? 
 Could there be any conclusion without such a pre 
 supposition? The "three states," consequently, are 
 successive in this respect alone, that at a particular 
 period one of them preponderates, while the others are 
 held in abeyance. They are in no sense radically exclu 
 sive of each other, for a man may investigate phenomena 
 positively, and believe at the same time in that which is 
 ultra-phenomenal, or rather intra-phenomenal. All that 
 sound science requires, and what we take to be the real 
 meaning of Positivism, is this : that in the natural 
 order, a man should stick to the facts of his case, that 
 he should not generalize beyond those facts; but it does 
 not follow from this that he has no right to construct a 
 spiritual philosophy of those facts, or to refer them to 
 some more radical theory of the universe after their 
 phenomenal relations are ascertained. All the Positivists 
 in the world, and to the end of time, will not succeed 
 
Comte s Philosophy. 
 
 in eradicating this notion of a super-sensual Reason of 
 Things from the human mind. They may correct the 
 misapplications of it, made in the immaturity of 
 the race, as the progress of Science has done and is 
 doing perpetually ; but they will never persuade men to 
 relinquish it, for the reason, that it proceeds from an 
 ineradicable instinct, is implied in the fundamental 
 " categories" of all understanding, and imperatively 
 demanded by the yearnings of the heart. 
 
 If we have rightly apprehended the matter, then 
 Comte s law of " the three stages" is a very inadequate 
 statement of the principle of development. Theology 
 and metaphysics do not terminate in the elimination of 
 Science, but they bear entire reference to the elimina 
 tion of Man. Positivism itself is no less a propaedeutic 
 than either of the others, and only helps to carry on 
 the problem to its final solution by a more compre 
 hensive philosophy. Theology, all drenched and 
 dripping at the outset in fetichisms, struggles to read 
 the riddle of the universe, onward through sabeisms, 
 polytheisms, and monotheisms, until it finally ceases to 
 conceive of God at all under sensible conditions, or 
 as a finite and outward being, and rises to the thought 
 of his infinite inward personality. So, Metaphysics 
 and Science, after torturing nature for the secret of her 
 existence, after striving to explain the world by a fate 
 superior to the gods ; by the fortuitous rencontres of in 
 finite atoms moving freely through space ; by a plastic, 
 all-controlling mundane soul ; by number, by chem 
 istry, by electricity, by physiology, and lastly by a tre 
 mendous phantasm of "phenomena and laws," are 
 pointed away from nature herself, by her innumerable 
 fingers, to him for whom all her suns have risen and 
 set, all her fields waved, and all her oceans rolled. 
 
 Now the law of "the three stages" means to express 
 
276 Comtes PJiilosophy. 
 
 this succession of theological and philosophical schemes, 
 but does so in an incomplete and one-sided way. Its 
 proper formula would be, that man stands in respect to 
 all the objects of his belief or thought in three great 
 orders of relation : he is related (i) to the invisible or 
 spiritual world, (2) to nature, and (3) to his fellow-man ; 
 each of which dominates him in turn, during the process 
 of his development ; but his education consists in the 
 successive reduction of each to unity. Neither theology 
 nor metaphysics, rightly conceived, are transitory ; they 
 abide in their ultimate principles, and change only in 
 their successive superficial forms ; they have never been 
 deserted or left behind in the course of our progress ; 
 they still flourish, and will flourish till at last they meet 
 and are reconciled in that Divine Philosophy which 
 has ever been their .aim. Growing pari passu with man, 
 they rocked the cradle of his infancy, and will live to 
 witness the glory of his crowning manliness, through 
 Christ. 
 
 Before quitting this branch of the subject, we cannot 
 but protest against the tone of disparagement in which 
 Comte and his followers are led by their system to 
 speak of all theological and speculative studies, as if 
 they were a hopeless imbecility, as contemptible as 
 they were fruitless. Granting that they do not possess 
 that precious faculty of prevision, that capability of 
 verification by experiment, which is the advantage of the 
 natural sciences, and the application of which has led 
 to such astonishing discoveries in modern times, they 
 may still be not without their value. It pertains to the 
 difference in the very nature of these studies to produce 
 different kinds of results ; and to be tested, therefore, 
 by different criteria. No conceivable doctrine of God 
 is likely to enable us to predict eclipses ; no ontological 
 or psychological truth or falsehood will help or hinder 
 
Comte s Philosophy* 277 
 
 the construction of a steam-engine ; neither, on the 
 other hand, does natural science help us much, when 
 we ask ourselves the question of the dying Roman Em 
 peror, Whither art thou going, oh my soul?" In 
 fact, the most "victorious analysis" has not yet proved 
 that we have a soul, nor, with all its fertile previsions, 
 enabled us to look into our immortal destiny. Yet 
 there are matters quite as interesting to us as the bi 
 nomial theorem or the precession of the equinoxes. 
 Besides, the disability as to present uses, with which 
 the speculative sciences are reproached, is one that is 
 common to nearly all the higher spheres of thought. 
 We know scarcely more of morals, politics, history, 
 art, than we do of theology or metaphysics, perhaps 
 not so much, but are we to drop them, on that ac 
 count, as chimerical and illusory ? Who, for example, 
 is going to tell us by what laws of nature, by what uni 
 formities of co-existence and sequence Homers, Dantes, 
 and Shakspeares are produced ? Shall we not listen to 
 Geniu-s, till some Scientist shall have probed the secret 
 of his genesis, and told the precise amount of salt, phos 
 phorus, oxygen, and what not, may have gone to his 
 composition ? Shall we not believe in him, though we 
 may not comprehend him ? 
 
 Admitting, further, that no positive results have been 
 attained in either theology or metaphysics, and that we 
 are as far now from satisfactory conclusions as they 
 were in the days of Thotmes or Anaximander, will it 
 be contended that the mere process of research has not 
 been accompanied by the most prodigious advantages 
 for the human mind ? From the fetichism of a Zooloo 
 to the mysticism of a Fenelon, there is a broad interval 
 of thought and feeling, and though one may be no 
 nearer to the real truth than the other, is nothing gained 
 to our race by the difference ? Between the cosmogony 
 
278 Comtes Philosophy. 
 
 of a Thales and that of a Plato there is an immense 
 gap, but, if equally untrue, are they also equal imbecili 
 ties, unworthy of a rational mind s regard ? Has Des 
 cartes, has Leibnitz, has Kant, has Swedenborg done 
 nothing that we may not now derisively dismiss, as the 
 merest puerility and phantom-mongering ? If we mis 
 take not, Comte himself inscribes some of these illus 
 trious names as saints in his new calendar of scientific 
 religion. He admits them, though not signalized as 
 the discoverers of much positive truth, among the 
 benefactors of mankind ; but why does he do so ? Be 
 cause he felt, that as a mere gymnastic of the intellect, 
 apart from every question of the amount of truth they 
 contained, the works of these men are of incalculable 
 value. In this view, indeed, what work of simple 
 science, that has been written since the beginning of 
 the world, is so capable of building up, informing, en 
 larging, disciplining the mind of man, as the Dia 
 logues of Plato, all metaphysical as they are, or even 
 those grand and sweeping dissertations of Hegel on 
 Logic, Esthetics, and Religion, all compact of non 
 sense, by every scientific estimate? No one doubts 
 that a prodigious amount of silliness has been labori 
 ously achieved by the speculative thinkers, that the 
 hopeless task of the Dana ides of dipping up water in 
 seives has often been revived by them, that endless 
 volumes of moonshine have been carefully bottled away 
 for future enlightenment, but, along with all these pain 
 ful and preposterous efforts, they have made no less 
 prodigious displays of intellectual vigor and acumen, 
 that can never wholly die out of the interest and grati 
 tude of mankind. For Science itself, which despises 
 the questions of the schools, cannot proceed far in its 
 own legitimate path without hitting its head, and fre 
 quently to the damage of its brains, against the very 
 
Comics Philosophy. 279 
 
 topics it so much derides. Let it push its researches to 
 the ultimate lurking-place of the phenomenal, let it 
 master all facts, and co-ordinate them into a final fact ; 
 let it synthesize till it have reached the last synthesis of 
 all, or prove that no such finality is possible ; and still 
 the question will come, whether the total order be, so 
 far as it goes, a blind fate or an intelligent God, whether 
 an undecipherable entity or a pervading wisdom, 
 whether a mute principle of Law or a living principle 
 of Love. 
 
 But let us add, for the assurance of the Positivists, 
 should they ever come to adopt the latter alternative, to 
 have no fear that the laws of the universe, under this 
 new reign of God, will be administered in any more 
 "arbitrary" or "variable" manner, or that it will be 
 any more difficult to foresee the certain action of phe 
 nomena in the future, than under their own most 
 superlative rule. Indeed, deprived as we are by Posi 
 tivism of all intelligent and kindly causes, on which, 
 amid the terrifying vicissitudes of human affairs, our 
 perturbed spirits may rely, we are sometimes haunted 
 with a vague suspicion that this huge necessity called 
 Law, may itself take a turn for the worse by and by ; 
 that instead of showing itself on the side of good, as 
 Cornte contends it does, it may show itself on the side 
 of evil, and then what is to become of us ? We greatly 
 prefer, therefore, to consider law as the perpetual pres 
 ence of a sovereign Life, of one who is Wisdom itself 
 and Goodness itself, which are universal Order itself, 
 and whose infinite power is intent only, through all the 
 crimes, calamities, and changes of the world, on edu 
 cating his creatures into the similitude of his own im 
 mutable perfection. We imagine that in all our doings, 
 as well as in all our reasonings, we can trust to the 
 fixity of his statutes, in the least things as well as the 
 
280 Comic s Philosophy. 
 
 greatest, though they happen to be living forces instead 
 of a spontaneous mechanism, with as sound a confi 
 dence as the best of the Positivists on the regularity of 
 Maws/ Our science is as capable of " prevision" as 
 his, but, we suspect, with an immeasurably broader 
 reach, and an inexpressibly sweeter solace. 
 
 III. The third fundamental view of Comte relates to 
 the hierarchy or classification of the sciences according to 
 the order of the dependence of their phenomena. It is clearly 
 his most brilliant achievement, though vitiated in some 
 respects by the preliminary errors to which we have 
 already referred. Bacon, D Alembert, Bentham, Am 
 pere, and others, have attempted a similar construction 
 of the scale of knowledge; but with vastly inferior suc 
 cess. Bacon proceeded upon a tripartite division of 
 the human faculties into memory, imagination, and 
 reason, upon which he founded the three generic divi 
 sions of knowledge, as History, Poesy, Science. It 
 was a superficial arrangement, and incoherent and con 
 fused to the last degree. D Alembert s scheme substi 
 tuted philosophy for science in Bacon s division, and 
 modified, without materially improving the details. 
 Bentharn, abandoning Bacon s trinity, applied a dichot 
 omic or dual classification, but his terminology is so 
 bizarre, with its centmtalogies, idionlologies , and anoop- 
 neumatologies, that no one has cared to master its mean 
 ing. Ampere s scale, better than the others, makes a 
 primary order of the cosmological and the noological 
 sciences, which he subdivides into the mathematical, 
 the physical, the natural, the medical, the philosophic, 
 the dialegmatic, the ethnological, and the political, dis 
 tributing these again into subordinate species. But it 
 was reserved for Comte to digest these schemes into 
 a really natural order, and superior to all preceding 
 
Comtes Philosophy. 281 
 
 ones, in that it works upon a simple and definite prin 
 ciple. 
 
 His arrangement is this : i, Mathematics ; 2, Astron 
 omy ; 3, Physics ; 4, Chemistry ; 5, Biology ; 6, 
 Sociology ; to which he has subsequently added, though 
 rather as parts of the last, Morals and Religion. The 
 subordinate divisions in their order are : analysis, 
 geometry, and mechanics ; celestial geometry and 
 celestial mechanics ; barology, thermology, acoustics, 
 optics, and electrology ; inorganic and organic chemis 
 try ; anatomy and physiology, including the cerebral 
 functions, and social statics and dynamics. These 
 divisions, both primary and secondary, rest upon the 
 comparative generality or complexity of the phenomena 
 to which we refer. Mathematics is put first, because it 
 considers the most "general, simple, abstract, and 
 remote" phenomena known to us ; and sociology the 
 last, because it embraces phenomena the most particu 
 lar, compound, concrete, and interesting. Now, that 
 this is the proper order, is proved by the fact that what 
 ever is observed in the most general cases, is disengaged 
 from the incidents of particular cases, and may be 
 studied with the greatest facility. Besides, being more 
 remote from human interests, the study is less liable to 
 be warped by passions and prejudices. Moreover, this 
 is the order of the dependences of the sciences in nature, 
 the most special and complex depending upon the 
 more general, so that to know the latter perfectly the 
 former must be to some extent previously known. This 
 order, again, is the order in which the sciences have 
 been chronologically developed, and marks the degree 
 of precision which each of them has attained. Comte, 
 finally, contends that the effect of pursuing the sciences 
 in this order will be to improve method, education, and 
 
282 Comics Philosophy. 
 
 morals, demonstrating this with remarkable force, while 
 its signal performance is that it necessitates the discovery 
 of a new science to complete the rest viz., a sound 
 doctrine of Social Progress and Order.* 
 
 In the discussion of each branch of this division, 
 Comte treats, in the most luminous manner, of the 
 nature or object of each science, of its method or means 
 of exploration, of its relations to the foregoing and the 
 succeeding sciences, and of its prospective improve 
 ments ; and, before proceeding to remark on his general 
 scheme, we must say, that it is impossible for any one 
 to read .his thorough and masterly criticisms, without 
 being deeply impressed by his eminent learning and 
 ability. He exhibits, throughout, such a comprehensive 
 grasp of principles, such ready sagacity, such consistent 
 logic, such a wonderful steadiness of aim, and such an 
 easy proficiency in all the minutest details of his sub 
 jectin spite of a few mistakes here and there, which 
 are the battle-horses of his incompetent critics as to 
 rank him clearly among the highest class of speculative 
 intellects, at least with Pythagoras, Aristotle, and 
 Schelling, if we cannot quite equal him to Plato, 
 Bacon, Hegel, and Swedenborg. Even his deficiencies 
 are suggestive, arid his errors open up a way to the most 
 Valuable and pregnant thoughts. 
 
 As to his classification of the sciences, we know of 
 no better, and we can conceive of its being improved, 
 
 * It is quite curious that Hegel, who is the very antipode of Comte, 
 in his method of philosophizing, Hegel beginning with the most 
 abstract conception of absolute Being, while Comte begins with the 
 most concrete phenomena of the Senses, should have arrived at a 
 scientific arrangement nearly resembling Comte s. Hegel s order is, 
 I, Logic 5 2, Mechanics or Mathematics; 3, Physics; 4, Chemistry; 
 5, Organic Physics, or Vegetable and Animal life ; 6, The Mind ; 
 7, Politics, and subsequently, Art, Religion, and Philosophy. 
 
Comic s Philosophy. 283 
 
 as a whole, apart from a few though quite important 
 modifications of detail, only by a larger and more rigid 
 application of the principle upon which it proceeds. 
 We can conceive a system of knowledge, which should 
 treat Logic, or formal method, distinctly as the Basis of 
 all the sciences, and Philosophy, including Theology, 
 as their Result (a distinction which points out at once 
 the great and injurious defects of Comte s scheme) ; 
 but within the sphere of strict science, we cannot sup 
 pose it susceptible of improvement, except, as we have 
 just said, upon its own main principle. In other words, 
 we believe that this proceeding from the general and 
 simple to the complex and special, is the secret of all 
 effective organization, whether in nature, in method, in 
 the growth of the mind, or in the movement of soci 
 eties. It is a principle, too, let us here observe, which 
 will carry Comte himself clear off the legs of his ma 
 terialistic Positivism, into the profoundest depths of 
 religion.* 
 
 A complete scheme of knowledge or belief implies 
 three things : ist, A region to be explored ; 2d, An 
 instrument to explore it with; and 3d, A method of 
 working that instrument. In other words, there must 
 be a body of sciences, a doctrine of the perceiving 
 mind, and a method of action; and these three, if there 
 be unity in the constitution of the scheme, must prove 
 each other in the last result / . e., they must correspond 
 with each other in the procession of their movements. 
 Now, Comte s system ization, tested by this criterion, re 
 veals what it has, and what it has not done : it has given 
 .us a body of science, imperfect to the extent in which it 
 
 * [This prophecy has been signally fulfilled : for, Comte s latest 
 books show him as the High Priest of a new Religion the religion 
 of Humanity.] 
 
284 Comtes Philosophy. 
 
 has excluded a large class of our most important beliefs ; 
 it has given us a very shallow doctrine of the perceiving 
 mind, only as a subordinate division of physiology, car 
 ried forward by sociology ; while his method, admirable 
 in many respects, we are left to learn from its practical 
 applications, which prove, as we think, that it is in 
 complete. There is not, consequently, that accordance 
 between Comte s schemes of nature, of mind, and of 
 method, which is the triple lest of a sound systemiza- 
 tion, and which inevitably follows, as we wish we had 
 space to illustrate, from his own law of "decreasing 
 generality," etc. 
 
 The narrowness of Comte s survey of the field of 
 knowledge we have already remarked, and we must 
 now state in what respect we think his method incom 
 plete. He has shown, in an admirable manner, that 
 each science has a method and spirit of its own, which 
 is not applicable to others ; that mathematical method 
 is one thing, and physical another, and physiological 
 another, and sociological another ; that the method of 
 one should not be allowed to encroach upon the domain 
 of another, and that, as we ascend in the scale of the 
 sciences, our means of exploration increase with the 
 dignity of the pursuit : but he has nowhere, so far as we 
 are able to discover, risen to a conception of that uni 
 versal method which will use, while it absorbs, all par 
 tial and inferior methods. We refer to the method of 
 Universal Analogy. Knowing how scientific men are 
 apt to deride it, and how easily it may be abused in 
 superficial hands, we yet believe that it will be found 
 the final instrument of Philosophy. No one can have 
 studied nature with any thoroughness without having 
 perceived that her system is one of ascending repetitions, 
 or of progressive orders and reduplications ; that she is 
 a process of phenomenal variations, implicated in a 
 
Comtes PJiilosophy. 285 
 
 permanent unity ; that each part of an organic form 
 is a miniature reproduction of its whole ; that every 
 higher organism carries forward with it its inferior or 
 ganisms ; in short, as Goethe expresses it : 
 
 " Wie Alles sich zum Ganzen webt, 
 Eins in dem andern wirkt und lebt ! 
 Wie Himmelkrafte auf und neider steigen. 
 Und sich die gold nen Eimer reichen ! 
 Mit segendduftenden schwingen 
 Vom Himmel durch die Erde dringen, 
 Harmonisch all das All durchklingen." * 
 
 Goethe s own scientific labors were animated by the 
 method of analogy, and seem in their results like poetic 
 intuitions. A most exquisite use is made of it also in 
 Mr. Wilkinson s book, "The Human Body, in its 
 Connection with Man," which, we presume, no one can 
 read without entering into a new world of the most 
 striking and beautiful truth. It is this method which 
 has illuminated the gigantic labors of the modern Ger 
 man naturalists, such as Cams, Oken, Schubert, etc., 
 with an almost heavenly light, filling the universe of 
 natural forms with humanitary meanings, and building 
 up a glorious natural theology, not on the empirical 
 basis of " contrivance proves design," but on the more 
 satisfactory and scientific ground, that man, the image 
 of God, is also, to use an expression of Novalis, the 
 "systematic index" of the creation, which attests, by 
 every line and movement, that he is truly the son of an 
 
 * " How the all weaves itself into the whole, and one in the other 
 acts and lives ! How celestial forces ascend and descend, and pass 
 each other the golden pails ! With wings perfumed with blessings, 
 they pervade the earth from heaven, all ringing harmonically through 
 all." 
 
286 Comics Philosophy. 
 
 infinite Father. " In man," says Professor Slallo, "all 
 the powers of the universe are concentrated, all devel 
 opments united, all forms associated. He is the bearer 
 of all dignities in nature. There is no tone to which 
 his being is not the response, no form, of which he is 
 not the type ;" but he does not give the reason, which 
 furnishes the ground for natural analogies, as well as 
 for a deeper spiritual correspondence, viz., that the au 
 thor of nature is essentially a Man. He is the supreme 
 Wisdom and Love, of which the goodness and truth of 
 our humanity is the living, active form. The world of 
 nature, therefore, whose unceasing yearnings are to 
 minister to the spirit of man, is instinct everywhere w r ith 
 conspiring humanities. 
 
 It would be unjust to infer from what we have said, 
 that Comte has no perception of this method ; for he 
 distinctly recognizes an elementary form of analogy in 
 the " comparisons" instituted both in his biology and 
 his sociplogy. He even speaks of the comparative 
 method as "one of the greatest of logical creations," 
 and in another place, as " a transcendent method of 
 logical investigation," but it is at the same time clear 
 from the sense in which he employs it that he had not 
 fully penetrated its more fertile uses. The inveterate 
 hatred with which he is imbued for every process hint 
 ing the slightest approach to theological or metaphysical 
 conception, has blinded his eyes, not only in this respect 
 but in many others, even to the most beautiful induc 
 tions contained in his own premises. It will be the 
 lasting honor of his system, for instance, that it has so 
 clearly demonstrated the science of society as the cul 
 minating glory of all the sciences, without which they 
 would have undergone their long and painful evolu 
 tions in vain, and from the reflected lustre of which 
 they derive their brightest illustrations and surest char- 
 
Comics Philosophy. 287 
 
 acter ; but with this great truth, tingling as one might 
 suppose in every vein, announcing, too, that "the fun 
 damental type of evolution is found in the increasing 
 preponderance of our humanity over our animality," 
 he has yet failed to perceive the pre-eminent mark and 
 distinction of that humanity he does not discover the 
 characteristics which make man, a man. He confesses 
 the superiority of his physical, intellectual, and social 
 attributes (though some of these he intimates are ob 
 scurely anticipated by the brutes), but he does not dis 
 cern, behind these attributes, a supremer life, a life no 
 longer held in bondage to any sensuous or finite good, 
 no longer subject either to nature or society, but which 
 feeds upon a perfect or infinite goodness, beauty, and 
 truth. His loftiest conception is of the natural or sci 
 entific man; but of the artist, in the genuine sense, or 
 of the truly religious man, the gouls of whose aspira 
 tion are the "All-Fair and the All-Good," a beauty 
 and loveliness unconditioned by any evil or defect, he 
 seems to entertain scarcely an inkling. It is true, that he 
 is forced, by his own logic, as we shall see hereafter in his 
 "Positive Politics," to construct, as the final and com 
 prehensive unity of thought, a "Supreme Being" and 
 a " religion," but that " Grand-Eire is no more than 
 the visible and organized aggregate called Humanity, 
 a humanity "subject to all the fatalities, mathematical, 
 physical, chemical, biological, and social," and that 
 " religion" is the reflective worship of that stupendous 
 Grand-Eire phenomenon ! 
 
 But a final and full estimate of Comte depends upon 
 a consideration of his "sociology," which we must re 
 serve, if happily we shall be permitted, for a future 
 opportunity.* 
 
 * [This was never undertaken.] 
 
STRAUSS S LIFE OF JESUS.* 
 
 | HIS is the only book of any pretension that we 
 have received this month : so, perforce, we 
 must notice it, whether we have what Carlyle 
 calls inward vocation" or not. 
 
 It is just twenty years since the now famous Leben 
 Jesu made its appearance at Ttibingen, in Germany. 
 A gun suddenly fired among a crowd of women could 
 not have produced a greater flutter and scream than this 
 publication did among the theologians. Not because 
 there was anything particularly new in its doctrine, inas 
 much as the same views of the Gospels had been taken 
 by Bauer, Krug, Gabler, and others, but because 
 these views were set forth with an elaborateness of learn 
 ing and logic, and a keenness and severity of criticism, 
 which had never before been surpassed. Strauss wrote 
 in a style as crisp and vigorous, almost, as that of Les- 
 sing ; he was a complete master of the erudition of his 
 subject ; he prosecuted his researches with a minute and 
 thorough attention to every detail, while his apparent 
 spirit was not that of the vulgar and virulent freethinker, 
 but of the calm and ardent inquirer after truth. He was, 
 moreover, a clergyman, in the active preparation of 
 
 * The Life of Jesus, critically examined. By Dr. David Frederick 
 Strauss. Translated from the fourth German edition, by Marian 
 Evans. Calvin Blanchard : New York, 1855. 
 
 From Putnam s Monthly, August, 1855. 
 
Strdiisss Life of Jesus. 289 
 
 young men for the ministry, and thus his grenades were 
 discharged in the very citadel of Christianity. 
 
 Having stirred up a twenty years theological war in 
 Germany, France, and England, this work is now pre 
 sented, in an excellent translation, to this country, where 
 it will probably reach the popular mind, and confirm 
 whatever of skepticism or indifference, as to religious 
 matters, may be lurking behind our vast material ac 
 tivity. That it will produce, however, anything like the 
 sensation here which it has abroad, we do not believe : 
 in the first place, because it falls upon us very much as 
 a spent shot ; and secondly, because there is not the same 
 preparation for it in the philosophical culture of the 
 people. In Europe, it was the legitimate outgrowth of 
 a vast intellectual movement, begun by Hegel and his 
 school, of which we know comparatively little in this 
 country, and from which, with our decided practical 
 tendency, we are not likely to suffer any great damage. 
 
 We do not propose, therefore, to add another to the 
 thousand and one replies which have been made to the 
 book, on theological grounds, since there is no occasion 
 for it, in its probable influence. But the historical and 
 literary problem which it presents, is one of permanent 
 interest and curiosity, apart from its momentous reli 
 gious bearing, and which we think worthy of the most 
 serious examination. 
 
 The truth is, that, if Strauss s procedure in regard to 
 the Gospels can be sustained, we do not see how any 
 history, ancient or medieval, is to stand. We may dis 
 pose of nearly all the great names of literature and art, 
 no<- only of the remoter ages, but of times as late as 
 those of Luther, Shakspeare, and Milton, in this way, 
 and so convert the universal records of our race into a 
 mere mesh of figments and lies. Indeed, we believe 
 that a learned literary lady has already announced her 
 \\ 
 
290 Strauss s Life of yes us. 
 
 intention of showing that no such poet as Shakspeare 
 ever lived, only a player of that name, who was a butt, 
 for the wits of his time, whose peculiar jest consisted in 
 writing dramas, such as Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello, 
 and fathering them on simple William. According to 
 this view, the age of Elizabeth spawned immortal plays, 
 just as, in the view of Strauss, the age of Jesus spawned 
 the most sublime and beautiful of religious legends. 
 
 But, let us first state, more at length, what the theory 
 of the German Doctor is, before we proceed to any re 
 marks upon its historical and literary deficiency. He 
 admits that a man named Jesus appeared among the 
 Jews, as a Messiah or religious reformer, just about the 
 time in which our Lord is said to have come in the 
 Gospel narratives, so generally accepted as authentic 
 records. He probably believed himself to be the Mes 
 siah dimly shadowed forth in the religious writings and 
 traditions of the Jews, and persuaded a considerable 
 number of followers to adopt him in the same character. 
 Having adopted him as such, of course they began to 
 ascribe to him all those qualities which were supposed 
 to characterize the Messiah. But, in the midst of their 
 propagandism, he was put to death by the government. 
 This was, for a time, a fatal blow to the hopes of his 
 disciples, as well as to his own pretensions. Yet, in the 
 midst of their despondency, the report is spread that the 
 leader, whom they had buried, had risen from the grave. 
 They eagerly believed the report, and some of the more 
 impressible, the women especially, fancied that they saw 
 him in person. Thus, gradually, the doctrine of his 
 resurrection came to be regarded as an actual fact, and 
 the conviction of his Messiahship was confirmed. Ac 
 cordingly, in the course of the thirty years subsequent 
 to his death, every element which entered as a compo 
 nent part into the current traditions of the Messiah was 
 
Strauss s Life of Jesus. 291 
 
 ascribed, by the enthusiastic veneration of his adherents, 
 to Jesus. He became the focus in which all the scat 
 tered rays of Jewish Scripture, rabbinical gloss, and 
 popular desire were concentred. The glorious Psalms, 
 the lofty prophecies, the marvellous deeds, the divine 
 appearances of the ancient Jewish mythology were 
 blended, by the ardent and exalted hopes of his imme 
 diate friends, around the few, scanty, and insignificant 
 facts of his actual life. He was the nucleus of all the 
 sensitive and poetic religious imagination of the time. 
 Wonders and marvels accompanied his steps, and a 
 halo of sacred glory encircled his head. 
 
 Now, the Gospels are the records of these popular 
 and glorifying legends, which had been slowly formed, 
 with no avowed purpose of deception, with no open 
 intention to palm upon the world a historical falsehood, 
 but inevitably and naturally out of the circumstances of 
 the age, into a large, complex, richly colored, though 
 inharmonious, Christian mythology. They are the ac 
 cretions of fancy and love, gathered, by imperceptible 
 degrees, in the hearts and minds of the people, around 
 the name which had come to represent to them the 
 highest religious aspiration or idea of the human soul. 
 There is no need, therefore, of saying with the Deists 
 of the eighteenth century, that Christianity was a wilful 
 imposition ; there is no need of trying to account for 
 its miracles, as the Rationalists do, by natural or magical 
 causes, for there is a more obvious and satisfactory 
 way of accounting for everything in the doctrine of 
 myths. All other religions have had their origin in 
 these popular myths, and analogy would lead us to sup 
 pose that Christianity is no exception. 
 
 A plausible theory, Dr. Strauss, but one that does 
 not at all convince our judgment ! Without going into 
 the theological argument, but simply on historical and 
 
292 Strauss s Life of Jesus. 
 
 literary grounds, we will tell you why. It does not 
 begin to account for the historical and literary facts of 
 the case. We say nothing of the impossibility of a few 
 illiterate and obscure Jews of Palestine having spun out 
 of their heads the most sublime, the most spiritual, the 
 most .profound, and the most consolatory religion that 
 was ever known ; but we do say, that, historically and 
 artistically, the origin of the Gospels, in the way in 
 which you describe, would be a greater miracle than 
 any they themselves record, or any even that may be 
 recorded in the archives of Romanism. 
 
 There is an antecedent improbability in this theory, 
 to our minds, because the age in which the Gospels 
 appeared was not a mythical, but a historical age. All 
 the great mythological religions that we are acquainted 
 with have arisen in the dawn and twilight of time, in 
 the beginning, and not at the close of national existence s, 
 and by very slow and successive steps, running over 
 periods of thousands of years, and not suddenly or 
 within a single generation. This was clearly the case 
 with the fabulous stories of Egypt, India, Greece, Rome, 
 Scandinavia, Mexico, and the Pacific Islands. They 
 date from the most primeval times, they cover vast 
 epochs, and they bear unmistakable traces of local and 
 national origin. But the Gospels arose in Judea, in 
 the midst of a well-known and critical condition of 
 things. The ancient faith had lost its simplicity, and 
 had become a pompous ritual : oppressed by the Ro 
 man power, its people had lost the real significance of 
 their traditions and oracles, and were looking only for a 
 political liberator. All around them were highly culti 
 vated cities and nations ; Alexandria, with its gymnasia 
 and schools ; Athens, with its intellectual civilization ; 
 Arabia, with its treasures of learning ; Antioch, famous 
 for its erudition ; and Rome, with its philosophers and 
 
Strauss s Life of Jesus. 293 
 
 historians. Few a^es that we can recall were less favor 
 able to the growth cf a new religion, and particularly 
 one founded upon the fables of the most despised of all 
 existing races. Doubt, unbelief, derision, and scorn, 
 were the characteristics of the lighter literature, and un 
 sparing, minute, and active criticism, that of the higher 
 learning. Lucian, the Greek Voltaire, who jested re 
 morselessly with all the gods of the Pantheon, was the 
 representative of the one, and the lecturers of Alexan 
 dria, who analyzed and probed all systems of philosophy 
 and thought, like anatomical dissectors, were the repre 
 sentatives of the other ; while an easy epicureanism gave 
 its tone to manners and practical life. Was it likely 
 that, in the midst of all this doubt, learning, criticism, 
 and philosophy, a few Jewish fables should grow into 
 a living faith, and become the dominant conviction of 
 mankind ? 
 
 Then, again, the narratives of the Gospels do not 
 read, in the least, like the myths and legends with 
 which we are familiar. They have, throughout, the air 
 of veritable narratives. They profess, on the face of 
 them, to be records of things actually said and done. 
 They clearly distinguish, in their own text, what is 
 meant to be historical from what is meant to be fabu 
 lous or allegorical, as in the case of the parables. Read 
 the introduction to St. Luke, for instance, and see with 
 what care the writer asserts that his Gospel is founded, 
 not upon popular credulity or tradition, but upon first- 
 handed evidence. His very object, he says, is to correct 
 these traditional histories of Christ, and to supply an 
 account from eye-witnesses, whose statements he had 
 sedulously scrutinized, and traced to their origin. But 
 the whole tenor of these narratives is so unlike that of 
 the confessedly apochryphal Gospels, and of legends 
 generally, that a reader the least accustomed to literary 
 
294 Strauss s Life of Jesus. 
 
 discrimination would detect the difference at once. 
 Compare the "Gospel of the Infancy," or the " History 
 of the Twelve Tribes," or the "Book of Joseph, the 
 High Priest," or the Ada Sanctorum of the Bolland- 
 ists, or "Turpin s Chronicles of Charlemagne," or 
 any other works, the result of popular credulity, with 
 the Gospels, and instantly you discover a world-wide 
 disparity. In these you recognize the hand of truth, 
 but in those the hand of fancy and superstition. You 
 can no more confound them than you could a page 
 from Mandeville s Travels with a page from Burns s 
 Justice. Indeed, we could wish no better evidence, 
 wherewith to convince a jury of twelve intelligent men 
 of the genuineness of the Gospels, than these legendary 
 books which aspire to something of the same character. 
 In the former, we find simplicity, honesty, unity, 
 naturalness, and detail (to say nothing of their lofty 
 wisdom and purity of morals), while, in the latter, are 
 exaggeration, distortion, inconsistency, unnaturalness, 
 and vagueness, to say nothing of their ignorance, cun 
 ning, immorality, and vulgar human traits. 
 
 Strauss has dwelt at great length, and with the coolest 
 and most impassive criticism, upon the many discrep 
 ancies of the several Gospels, but he does not, and 
 cannot, deny the wonderful unity of aim and spirit that 
 pervades them, in spite of verbal differences and insig 
 nificant contradictions. But could there be a stronger 
 characteristic of real history, or a more fundamental 
 departure from the mythical embellishments of histpry, 
 than this general adherence to a single purpose, in the 
 midst of considerable varieties of detail ? Have we 
 genuine accounts by several hands, of any period or 
 of any distinguished man, from the days of Thucydides 
 and Zenophon to those of Bancroft and Graham, in 
 which such unity with variety is not a prominent 
 
Strauss s Life of Jesus. 296 
 
 feature ? Or, on the other hand, have we any mytholo 
 gies in which the diversities are not wholly irrecon 
 cilable ? Strauss s particular instances of contradiction 
 between the Evangelists we leave to the theologians to 
 settle, but they no more affect the real question with us, 
 i. e., whether the Gospels are substantially historical or 
 mythical, than the fact that Todd says John Milton was 
 born in 1608, Toland, that he was born in 1606, and 
 Hallam, that he was born in 1609, affects our belief in 
 the actual existence of Milton. Macaulay and Lingard 
 give us very different accounts of the reign of James the 
 Second of England, yet we believe that there was a 
 James the Second, and that he was not a creation of the 
 myth -forming propensities of the whigs and tories of 
 1685. 
 
 If there were no other proof of the genuineness of 
 the Gospels than the character which they ascribe to 
 Christ, that alone would furnish evidence beyond all 
 cavil and doubt. It is a character so transcendently 
 original in its mere conception, so thoroughly and pro 
 foundly consistent in its working out, so remarkable for 
 its combination of almost opposite traits so full of a 
 mingled majesty and loveliness, firmness and gentleness, 
 candor and reserve, and so radically free from every 
 morbid tendency or sentiment, from fanaticism, pride, 
 impetuosity, weakness, or one-sidedness of any kind, 
 that, if not drawn from the life, it is the most stupendous 
 and wonderful piece of art that was ever exhibited by 
 the human mind. We may search the records of 
 ancient or modern literature in vain, to find anything 
 like it, in i;s singular perfection and beauty, and yet in 
 its complete naturalness, and, we may say, unconscious 
 ness of development. The old Greeks were the most 
 intellectual people of the world ; they were tremblingly 
 alive to every form and semblance of beauty ; their 
 
296 Strauss s Life of Jesus. 
 
 divinities were the ideal types of their most exalted 
 conceptions of men and women ; yet we travel through 
 their populous heavens, among their Zeuses, their 
 Poseidons, their Heres, and their Aphrodites, and find 
 no shape that comes within a million furlongs of that 
 noble and lowly Figure which meets us on every page 
 of Luke and John. Our modern imaginations, with 
 all the advantages of the Christian exemplar, have 
 exhausted their powers in the creation of poetic and 
 lovely personages Dante, Chaucer, Shakspeare, Scott, 
 Goethe, and Byron and yet, in all this world of "fair 
 humanities," there is not one that would not have 
 thought it an impious presumption to be compared with 
 Him, who was, after all, says Dr. Strauss, a figment of 
 the brain of Jewish fishermen and peasants ! What the 
 Homers and Eschyluses, what the Shakspeares and Scotts 
 could not do, or have not done, the popular credulity 
 of a few unlearned enthusiasts, acting upon the meager- 
 est basis of facts, has accomplished ! Verily, there 
 may be difficulty in believing miracles, but none equal 
 to that which such a supposition implies. 
 
 Consider, further, the marvellously original and com 
 prehensive scheme of reform which these fables impute 
 to their principal character and his followers. It was 
 not a restoration of the political fortunes of their coun 
 try, nor yet the establishment of a perfect State, not 
 the founding of a great school, nor the construction 
 of a model society, but the radical regeneration of the 
 whole human race. Now, there had been before them 
 a great many heroes, a great many statesmen and kings, 
 a great many philosophers, and a great many founders 
 of religion ; there had been Moseses and Solomons, 
 Solons and Lycurguses, Socrateses and Pythagorases, 
 Zoroasters and Confutses, but there was never one w-hc 
 had conceived a plan of human improvement at all 
 
Strauss s Life of Jesus. 297 
 
 comparable, in benevolence, in extent, in wisdom, in 
 practicability, with the plan which grew up by chance, 
 it is said, in Judea, and took form in the hearts of its 
 lowest populace. All others had been either local in 
 their aims, or, at most, national ; or circumscribed to 
 few objects, such as intellectual culture or political 
 change ; or unjust in their application, as involving the 
 conquest of other nations ; or entirely impracticable, 
 like the academies of Pythagoras and the republic of 
 Plato ; but this scheme was, at once, universal and indi 
 vidual, embracing all nations, all times, and all men, 
 discarding the use of force, discarding secret agencies, 
 discarding indirection and deceit, resting its claims 
 entirely upon its inherent truth and goodness, appealing 
 only to the most elevated motives, compromising with 
 no prejudices, courting no power, flattering no vanities 
 or vices, sternly rebuking every evil, not in its external 
 form or its excrescences, but in its inward sources in 
 the affections and thoughts, and, yet, promising itself 
 the ultimate sway of society and mankind. Where, ir 
 the name of reason and common sense, did the popu 
 lace of Palestine obtain a scheme at once so magnifi 
 cent, so pure, so wise, and so benevolent ? From the 
 Hebrew oracles ? No ! for it is there concealed in the 
 sevenfold obscurity of types and shadows. From the 
 vague and misty pantheisms of the East, with their 
 metempsychoses and indolent contemplations, their 
 astrologies and their fire-worships ? No ! from the 
 wrangling, squabbling, concupiscent, and, very often, 
 dirty gods of Greece ? No ! centuries afier the Gospels 
 had got a foothold in the world, influences from these 
 sources came in to corrupt their purity, to debase their 
 morals, to distort them into formalities, and asceti 
 cisms, and superstitions, and to blossom into rank 
 and luxuriant growths of bigotry and error. But the 
 
298 Strauss s Life of Jesus. 
 
 Gospels themselves are free from every stain. They 
 stand alone in their simplicity ; they are unique in their 
 loveliness ; they lift their heads above the faiths, tra 
 ditions, and systems by which they were surrounded, 
 as the snowy Alps tower over the dark shrubs and 
 bushes tangled around their feet. Is it possible, then, to 
 believe that they were the accidental or even wilful 
 offspring of the popular mind of Jerusalem, attaching 
 itself to the fallen fortunes of a misguided youth, and 
 weaving together, with the desultory memorials of his 
 unhappy career, a scheme at once so consistent, com 
 plete, and sublime? 
 
 There could not be a greater contrast in substance 
 and form, between what is true and what is fanciful, 
 than is presented by the incidents of the Gospel, as they 
 are given to us for historical facts by its writers, and the 
 same incidents, as subsequently worked up by the myth- 
 forming propensities of human nature. Take the treat 
 ment of Mary, the mother of Jesus, for an example. 
 What a fine subject for all kinds of sentimental and 
 rhetorical embellishment. No woman that ever lived 
 sustained such august and wonderful relations rela 
 tions to man and God. How touching every thought 
 connected with her singular lot ! What a theme for the 
 heart and the affections to dilate upon, for the mystical 
 imaginations of the East to brood over, and for the more 
 sensual imaginations of the Greeks and Romans to 
 adorn ! Read, in the legends of the Madonna, col 
 lected by Mrs. Jameson, of the endless, extravagant, 
 and clustering fables of which she became the centre, 
 even in colder Europe ; how she inspired so much of 
 the beautiful art of art s most beautiful age ; how the 
 name of "our lady" kindled the romantic enthusiasms 
 of chivalry ; how poetry, sentiment, devotion, poured 
 their emotional fulness upon her, till she became, in the 
 
Strauss s Life of Jesus. 299 
 
 solemn decrees of the Church, the very mother of God, 
 immaculate from her birth, and an object of venera 
 tion, and worship, forever ! Panegyrics and prayers 
 are still wafted to her from every Catholic cathedral of 
 Christendom, and breathed in the silence of every Cath 
 olic home. She shares the throne of Heaven with her 
 divine Son, and receives even a warmer adoration than 
 He. Such is Mary in the estimation of the myth- 
 forming faculties, under the natural action of the mind, 
 contemplating the peculiarities of her story. Such she 
 ought to have been in the Gospels, if the Gospels were 
 only myths. But there is not a trace of all this in the 
 primitive record. She is only two or three times men 
 tioned by name, and then without an epithet of praise. 
 Pier virtue and her glory, whatever they were, are ig 
 nored. No attempt is anywhere made to environ her 
 with lustre, to reflect the divine greatness of the Son 
 upon the mother, or to pay her a single tribute of 
 honor. Her emotions, whether of anguish, or of joy, 
 are left to the solitude of her heart. She is simply 
 " Mary, the mother of Jesus," and no more ; because, 
 the evangelists, writing history, wrote the literal truth, 
 whereas, had they been under the control of the mythic 
 faculties, they could not in this respect have said 
 enough, but would have anticipated all the fanciful 
 legends of the middle ages. 
 
 A thousand similar and other objections to the theory 
 of Strauss occur to us, which, if we were writing a reg 
 ular review of his book, for the body of our Magazine, 
 might be adduced, but, in these compressed editorial 
 notes, \ve can only glance at a few of the more obvious 
 considerations. There is, however, one thought which 
 we cannot pass over. It is this : that on Strauss s prin 
 ciples, the momentous changes which Christianity has 
 wrought are effects without a cause. It is impossible to 
 
;oo Strauss s Life of 
 
 fesus. 
 
 conceive how a myth, or a mass of ill-digested myths, 
 should have so "got the start of the majestic world" as 
 to become the inspiring soul of all its best art, learning, 
 literature, jurisprudence, practical activity in short, of 
 its highest civilization. We can readily see how the 
 admiration of Christ s early friends should have raised 
 him into a hero and a demigod. We can see how the 
 virtues and sentiments ascribed to him should come to 
 have a powerful influence on men s minds. But we do 
 not see what impulse there can be in a fabulous history, 
 to lead thousands of men, women, and children, during 
 the very age of its origin, to ignominious and cruel 
 deaths in attestation of its literal truth. We do not see 
 how a cluster of legends should have undermined Ju 
 daism, the most tenacious of all faiths, overthrown the 
 idolatry of Paganism, supplanted the light mythology 
 of Greece, and ascended the throne of the Roman 
 Caesars, when Rome was in her vigor. We do not see 
 how they should become the nucleus of all the public vir 
 tues and the private hopes of the world how they should 
 have borne the cause of humanity above the turbulence 
 and barbarism of the middle ages, as the ark bore it 
 above the waters of the Deluge how they should have 
 moulded the institutions and manners of all modern 
 nations convinced the reason and conquered the affec 
 tions of the most enlightened men of every race, and 
 been the balm and consolation of its humblest spirits a 
 power mighty to arouse and soothe, to strengthen and 
 purify the souls of men, in all their varieties of condition 
 which is at this day the synonym of whatever is free, 
 lovely, noble, and living in the most advanced civiliza 
 tions ; and which, as if only beginning to manifest its 
 real strength, promises, for the future of the globe, a 
 more lustrous and beautiful development than art has 
 ever pictured or poetry dreamed. Ah, no, these leaves 
 
Strauss s Life of Jesiis. 301 
 
 of the Gospels, meant for the healing of the nations, 
 were more than sprouts from the withered trunk of Ju 
 daism ! 
 
 Strauss is aware of this last difficulty in his views, and, 
 in a weak concluding chapter, endeavors to account for 
 the effects of Christianity on the ground of its inherent 
 truth. He evaporates its historical contents, but leaves 
 its dogmas as a residuum behind ! Christ, instead of 
 being an individual, is an idea He is the idea of the 
 race. "Humanity is the union of the two natures 
 God become man, the infinite manifesting itself in the 
 finite the child of the visible mother and the invisible 
 father, nature and spirit the worker of miracles, in so 
 far as the spirit more and more subjugates nature the 
 sinless existence ; for pollution cleaves to the individual, 
 but does not touch the race. It is humanity that dies, 
 rises, and ascends to Heaven, as, from the negation of 
 its phenomenal life, ever proceeds a higher spiritual 
 life, and from the suppression of its mortality as a per 
 sonal, national, and terrestrial spirit arises its union 
 with the infinite spirit of the heavens." But how did 
 those Jewish fishermen, two thousand years ago, get 
 informed of this profound Hegelian philosophy? 
 
THE LATE HORACE BINNEY 
 WALLACE.* 
 
 IE tahe some shame to ourselves that we have 
 not before directed the attention of our read 
 ers to this remarkable volume. It is true 
 our pages have twice referred to it, with brief though 
 admiring comment, but it deserves a more elaborate 
 consideration at our hands. Wallace was one of those 
 accomplished and noble minds, which ought never to 
 be suffered to pass away without a tribute from the 
 grateful hearts of his countrymen, and especially from 
 those who are laboring, as he labored, in the cause of 
 the humanities. 
 
 This recognition is all the more due to him, because 
 he was not of that intellectual and moral constitution 
 which enables the possessor of it to attain a ready and 
 popular acceptance. He had all the ability requisite 
 to a great literary or professional success, and earnest 
 ness as well as vivacity of spirit enough to have attached 
 a large share of public regard to whatever he might un 
 dertake ; but his modesty was even greater than his 
 parts. He was ambitious of the scholar s rather than 
 the writer s fame. Conservative in his habits, and above 
 
 * Art, Scenery, and Philosophy in Europe. Being Fragments from 
 the Portfolio of the late HORACE BINNKY WALLACE, of Philadelphia. 
 Philadelphia: Herman Hooker, 1855. 
 
 From Putnam s Monthly, September, 1855. 
 
Horace Binney Wallace. 303 
 
 the necessity of labor, he made fewer public trials of 
 his powers than their unquestionable superiority would 
 have warranted. His earlier works, which he regarded 
 as mere tentatives, were published anonymously ; but, 
 had he put his name to them, they would have earned 
 him rank and influence. We do not regret, however, 
 that, in an age when the temptations to a premature 
 publicity are so many, he should have preferred to 
 husband his resources. A single book, like the one 
 before us, the result of years of careful study and 
 thought, even if there are no others among his manu 
 scripts, would be a rich repayment of his reticence. 
 
 Mr. Wallace was born at Philadelphia in the year 
 1817, and died at Paris in 1852. He was, conse 
 quently, only thirty-five years of age at the time of his 
 death. His father, a gentleman of property and cul 
 ture, had carefully supervised his education in earlier 
 years, particularly in the Greek and Latin classics. 
 Long before the usual age at which boys are received 
 in college, he was well grounded in the preparatory 
 branches. The atmosphere of social and religious 
 refinement that surrounded him in the home of his 
 parents, noted alike for their cheerfulness and culture, 
 developed the better qualities of his heart along with 
 those of the mind. 
 
 In his fifteenth year, he was matriculated at the Uni 
 versity of Pennsylvania, where he attached himself par 
 ticularly to mathematical pursuits, in which he attained 
 a wonderful proficiency. After two years study, he 
 was then removed to Nassau Hall, Princeton. It was 
 there that we made his acquaintance, and we can speak, 
 from personal knowledge, of his extraordinary attain 
 ments and capacity at that time. He was, however, so 
 much of a recluse in his habits, that it begat among 
 his fellow-students a suspicion of hauteur and aristo- 
 
304 Horace Binncy Wallace. 
 
 cratic feeling, not favorable to his general popularity, 
 though his accurate and extensive scholarship was uni 
 versally conceded. In the higher departments of the 
 mathematics he stood almost without a rival, while his 
 familiarity with the languages was scarcely less marked. 
 But he paid little regard to the routine of college ex 
 ercises, seeming to have already anticipated the greater 
 part of the regular studies, and consequently was not 
 graduated wiih as high honors as he otherwise might 
 have attained. 
 
 Having left college in 1835, he passed a short time 
 in attendance upon the medical and chemical lectures 
 at Philadelphia, when he commenced the study of the 
 law, first in the office of his father, and afterward in 
 that of the late Charles Chauncey, a distinguished prac 
 titioner. He studied it with characteristic avidity, not 
 as a system of details for the regulation of practice, but 
 as a profound and philosophic science, mastering es 
 pecially the theory of tenures and estates, which lies at 
 the foundation of so much collateral learning. Yet, in 
 the midst of his intense and varied professional labors, 
 he was not so unwise as to relinquish, as too many 
 lawyers do, the habit of literary composition. It is 
 said, by his biographer, that if the essays and larger 
 works, which he published from his seventeenth year 
 to the time of his death, generally under assumed 
 names, were collected, they would form no less than 
 sixteen duodecimo volumes, of two or three hundred 
 pages each. This is a grand example of industry for 
 his professional successors. 
 
 Among the works to which Mr. Wallace put his 
 name, were several of a legal character, such as the 
 notes to Smith s leading cases in Law, White and 
 Tudor s leading cases in Equity, and on American 
 leading cases, of which the highest authority of the 
 
Horace Binney Wallace. 306 
 
 American bar said : "There is not a remark in the 
 whole body which does not show the mind of a law 
 yer, imbued with the spirit of the science, instinct 
 ively perceiving and observing all its limitations, its 
 harmonies, its modulations, its discords, as a cultivated 
 musical ear perceives, without an effort, what is con 
 gruous or incongruous in the harmonies of sounds." 
 The Boston Law Reporter also commends them for 
 that thorough and logical precision, as well as fertility 
 of illustration, which evinces the mind of a true legal 
 philosopher, no less than the various accomplishments 
 of the skilful lawyer. 
 
 In 1849, Mr. Wallace spent a twelvemonth in Eu 
 rope, in the study of its monuments of art, its science, 
 its natural productions, and its social condition. He 
 passed the time mainly in England and Germany, 
 without, however, neglecting Italy and France. It was 
 in the latter country that his interest in social philoso 
 phy led him to form the acquaintance of the eminent 
 speculator Comte, who appears to have conceived the 
 most exalted opinion of his abilities, and to have formed 
 the highest hopes of his usefulness, as a disciple of the 
 Positive Philosophy, in the propagation of it in this 
 country. But Mr. Wallace was one of those independ 
 ent disciples who, thinking for themselves, are not al 
 ways the most profitable to a master. He adopted 
 Comte s scientific methods, so far as they tended to 
 render all the moral as well as physical sciences in 
 ductive, but he adopted them with considerable and 
 even revolutionary departures from Comte s own appli 
 cations of them. In a brief but well-considered letter 
 to Dr. McClintock, of the Methodist Quarterly Review, 
 he has stated to what extent he received the Positivist 
 doctrine, approving the beautiful and comprehensive 
 classification of the sciences which Comte has given, 
 
306 Horace Binney Wallace. 
 
 but qualifying his definition of the "three stages" of 
 humanitary progress, and vehemently protesting against 
 the political and religious errors into which he fell. He 
 considers the "Positive Philosophy" as a greater work 
 than the "Positive Politics," and that Comte is, in the 
 former, an oracle, and in the latter a babbler. In this 
 he scarcely does justice to his author, whose system is 
 in nothing else more remarkable than its logical con 
 sistency, so that if you grant its fundamental principles, 
 you are irresistibly led to nearly all its conclusions. 
 Mr. Wallace was saved, by his earnest religious belief, 
 from the more dangerous tendencies of Comteism, and 
 we regret that he did not live to complete what he had 
 projected the application of scientific method to the 
 history of politics and religion. 
 
 When Mr. W T allace returned to this country in 1850, 
 he made arrangements with his publishers for the issue 
 of a series of works on commercial and civil law, after 
 he should have completed his knowledge of those sub 
 jects by a residence of some years in one of the German 
 universities. But in the spring of 1852, his eyesight 
 failing, and his general health becoming otherwise de 
 ranged, he was forced to set out on a tour of foreign 
 travel. He sailed on the I3th of November, reached 
 England in the latter part of the month, and, in 
 December, repaired to Paris. His health was, un 
 fortunately, made worse, not better, by the change. 
 Travelling exhausted him, and repose brought on fits 
 of extreme depression. He wrote to the only surviving 
 member of his family to corne out and take care of him, 
 and three days after despatching the letter, "suddenly 
 expired." The news of his demise so unexpected 
 gave a shock to the small circle of his friends and 
 admirers ; for his immediate friends had never been 
 many ; but such as were admitted to his intimacy, loved 
 
Horace Binney Wallace. 307 
 
 him with warmth and tenderness. His extraordinary 
 accomplishments, too, were -making him gradually 
 known : the enthusiastic eulogies of Comte, copied 
 into the journals, had introduced his name to popular 
 respect ; and when it was announced that one so va 
 riously endowed, so rich in learning, so vigorous in 
 power of thought, so sincere in his sense of religious 
 duty, and withal so young, was no more, it was felt that 
 death had left a painful void, even by those who knew 
 little of the man or his writings. 
 
 " His leaf has perished in the green, 
 And, while we breathe beneath the sun, 
 The world which credits what is done, 
 Is cold to all that might have been !" 
 
 In person Mr. Wallace was slim, but not tall ; his 
 face was sharp and of a saturnine expression ; and his 
 manners were cold, until intimacy had broken through 
 the outer walls of his reserve, when he became frank, 
 cordial, and communicative. His conversation, illus 
 trated by an immense range of knowledge, was in the 
 highest degree both interesting and instructive. It was 
 so full and yet so accurate, whatever its topic, that you 
 left him with an impression that that topic had been the 
 specialty of his studies. Whether he talked or wrote 
 on law, literature, the fine arts, philosophy, religion, 
 mathematics, the natural sciences, poetry, or even mili 
 tary art, his reading had been so extensive, his memory 
 was so tenacious, his grasp of principles and details 
 alike so firm, that he seemed to be talking or writing 
 of his favorite theme. Yet, he never paraded his ac 
 quisitions, nor infringed the strictest rules of propriety 
 and good taste, by self-display. His accomplishments, 
 like his virtues, were worn with that graceful humility 
 
308 Horace Binney Wallace. 
 
 which proceeds from high symmetrical culture, refined 
 by habitual religious trust. 
 
 The papers in the book before us were found in Mr. 
 Wallace s portfolio, after his death. They had been 
 written in America, but were still unfinished, "imma 
 ture buds and blossoms shaken from the tree" says the 
 biographer "and green fruit, evincing what the har 
 vest might have been." They were immature, however, 
 only in the sense of not being complete. In thought 
 and manner they exhibit a rich autumnal ripeness. 
 Precise in language, -and thoroughly informed by 
 thought, they glow, also, with the warmest imagination 
 and feeling. We know of few books which speak so 
 intelligently and yet so genially of Art which show a 
 more lively sensibility to the influences of nature, and 
 a heartier relish for the great works of man which 
 combine so much poetic feeling with philosophic dis 
 crimination, or keen critical sagacity with tender and 
 lofty religious enthusiasm. In the abstract discussion 
 of the nature and aims of Art, in the almost technical 
 description of the mighty cathedrals of Europe, in the 
 impressive scene-painting of the Alps, and in the fine 
 characterizations of the great painters of Italy, he appears 
 equally at home always familiar with his subject, and 
 with the learning about it ; always truthful in tone, 
 always vigorous in thought as well as just and appropri 
 ate in style, and not rarely, when the occasion justified 
 it (as in what is said of the Roman forum), grandly 
 eloquent. 
 
 The greater part of Mr. Wallace s work is devoted to 
 Art, and the interesting questions involved in it, both as 
 a philosophy and a practice. He has entitled the lead 
 ing essay, "Art, an emanation of Religious Affection :" 
 illustrating the maxim by an elaborate review of its 
 general forms, in their most flourishing periods. A 
 
Horace Binncy Wallace. 309 
 
 second paper argues that "Art is symbolical, not imi 
 tative." A third discusses the principle of " Beauty in 
 works of Art;" while a fourth relates to " the law of 
 the development of Gothic. Architecture. These are 
 followed by studies of special works of art, such as the 
 great cathedrals of the continent, and the master works 
 of painting in Italy. Together they constitute a treatise 
 on the whole subject of Art its origin or genesis in the 
 human mind its characteristic property or function 
 the nature of that beauty which is its object and the 
 qualities which, in its best actual works, move our 
 admiration and delight. 
 
 The art-creating faculty, Mr. Wallace says, is not the 
 same as the rational or scientific, whose office is per 
 ception and inference, but a more sensitive and impas 
 sioned faculty an instinct holding a place between 
 mere emotion and the clear intellect, partaking of the 
 properties of both, and combining them into the unity 
 of its own original character and action. Yet, twofold 
 as its affinities are, it is a single and peculiar faculty, 
 given to some men and withheld from others, which no 
 process of intellectual cudgelling can create, no theory 
 of education develop, no culture of sentiments confer, 
 but which, as is the case with the other great gifts of the 
 Spirit, "bloweth where it listeth, and you hear the 
 sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh nor 
 whither it goeth." It is for this reason that men of 
 genius are a mystery to themselves and a perpetual 
 miracle to the world. 
 
 But history shows that as this art-creating faculty is 
 more active and prolific in certain men than in others, 
 so it is vouchsafed to certain nations in richer measure 
 than to others ; there are certain golden ages, when it 
 blossoms and blooms with a fervid luxuriance and 
 splendor. Nor does it spring up suddenly, in all its 
 
3io Horace Binney Wallace. 
 
 completeness, as if it were an arbitrary inspiration, but 
 gradually, from rude beginnings, until it advances to 
 that pitch of excellence which may be called perfection. 
 " Continuing in bright and flowing vigor for a limited 
 time, then flickering and going out like a lamp, or 
 drooping and dying like a plant, or breathing and fad 
 ing away, like a vision-haunted slumber of humanity ; 
 thai light no efforts can again relume : to that sweet, 
 half-conscious dream of glory, not all the drowsy syrups 
 in the world can medicine once more the faculties of 
 that people." 
 
 What, then, is the origin and nature of this artistic 
 activity, and how is it manifested ? Mr. Wallace 
 answers the first part of the question, by saying that 
 the art-faculty is nothing else but earnest religious 
 feeling, acting imaginatively, or imagination working 
 under the elevating and kindling influences of religious 
 feeling." There is no instance in history, he avers, of 
 a single manifestation of art-power, except among 
 people and in ages where religious enthusiasm and 
 religiousness of nature were prominent characteristics. 
 He adds, also, in italics, by way of emphasis, that there 
 is no instance of supreme excellence in art having been 
 reached, excepting where " the subject of the artisfs 
 thoughts and toils the type which he brought up to perfec 
 tion was to him an object of worship, or a sacred thing 
 immediately connected with his holiest reverence." Thus, 
 the cause of the special superiority of the Greeks in 
 sculpture was the anthropomorphous character of their 
 theology, which made the human form an image of 
 what they worshipped. So, too, the Madonna the 
 inspired and inspiring centre of Italian painting in the 
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was an image of 
 worship ; and the controlling thought of the stupen 
 dous and beautiful cathedrals of the middle ages, as well 
 
Horace Binney Wallace. 3 1 1 
 
 as of the Athenian temples, identified their sacred forms 
 with the residence and glory of the Divinity. 
 
 Consequent upon this truth, and in answer to the 
 second part of the question above, Mr. Wallace confines 
 the great general forms of Art to architecture, sculpture, 
 and painting, which, he alleges, are the three forms 
 best adapted to the display of its character. Literature, 
 on the one hand, he thinks too intellectual, and music, 
 on the other, too sensuous to exhibit "that fusion of 
 the mental and material, that perfect balance of the 
 sensible and thoughtful, which art requires." Only in 
 these three departments just named, do the actual evolu 
 tions of art exhibit an excellence so surpassing and 
 irresistible as to render it a nature and existence by 
 itself. It is only in the ages of Greek sculpture and 
 architecture, of Italian painting, and the Gothic cathe 
 drals, that we discover genuine evidences of artistic 
 inspiration ; only there that we encounter works so 
 complete in their beauty, so exalted in significance, and 
 so absolute in splendor, as to fill our deepest capacities 
 of emotion, and satisfy the loftiest demands of the 
 mind. These "stand in the mystery of an inherent 
 perfection, participating in an apparent divinity in the 
 inscrutableness of their nature, as well as in the 
 over-swaying might of their moral power. Through 
 them the mind runs upward, along the viewless 
 chains of spiritual sympathy, till it loses itself in the 
 Infinite." 
 
 We propose to say a word or two of these important 
 views, less by way of contradiction than of expansion ; 
 for, while they are fundamentally correct, they are yet 
 not stated with all the fulness and precision of an ade 
 quate philosophy. 
 
 It is proper to speak of Art as an emanation of religious 
 feeling, because of the signal and intimate union which 
 
3 1 2 Horace Binney Wallace. 
 
 subsists between them, whether we consider their 
 sources in the human mind, or their more concrete 
 manifestations. But we cannot say that this is the 
 whole truth. A great many other influences besides 
 religion are concerned in the production of a vigorous 
 state of the arts. It is also true, that the great artist 
 finds, in the object of his labor, an image of worship, 
 or of devout and earnest feeling ; but this, again, is not 
 the whole truth, inasmuch as the great artist requires a 
 great deal more than this single qualification. 
 
 In a certain general sense, all the achievements of 
 the human mind, all the elements and characteristics of 
 the different civilizations, are the products of religious 
 belief. The intellectual apprehension or theory which 
 a nation forms of its relations to the universe, or, in 
 other words, its theology or doctrine of the gods, is 
 what determines its kind and degree of development. 
 This measures the height to which it shall rise in the 
 scale of existences, moulds its manners and laws, and 
 marks the limits of its moral and practical activity. If 
 that theory be fetichtic, as with the savages ; or poly 
 theistic, as among the Greeks ; or simply monotheistic, 
 as among the Jews and Mohammedans ; or, again, a 
 strictly historical theism, founded upon the actual incar 
 nation of the divine in the human, as in Christianity, 
 we know, with more or less precise approximation in 
 each case, what the contemporary science, literature, 
 customs, government, are likely to be. As religion is 
 the deepest impulse of the soul, overmastering all 
 others, even in the lowest states of human society, as 
 our relations to the invisible world are more profound 
 and vast than all other relations, controlling us, by their 
 hopes and fears, more energetically than any wants of 
 the body, or any ties of worldly affection or interest, so 
 our conception of these relations, or our theology, 
 
Horace Binncy Wallace. 313 
 
 masters and controls all other conceptions the forms 
 of art among the rest, and more than the rest, because 
 of its more sensitive and impressible character. Thus, 
 the tragedies of Eschylus are moulded upon the ancient 
 idea of a stern and irresistible destiny, which underlies 
 them, like the deep bass of an air, and they are what 
 they are because of that idea. The tragedies of Shaks- 
 peare, on the other hand, breathe of a personal God, in 
 whom a living justice, consulting the interests of human 
 freedom, has supplanted a blind fate. Yet we can 
 hardly maintain that the ancient conviction of destiny 
 originated the plays of Eschylus, any more than we can 
 say that Christianity originated those of Shakspeare. 
 They respectively controlled the poets views of the char 
 acter of man, but they did not create or give birth to the 
 inner life of the poets. For though the artist takes the 
 form of his thought generally from the religion and life 
 of his age, the inspiration of it, that which imbues him 
 with something of a prophetic ken, rising above and look 
 ing beyond his age, comes more immediately from God, 
 who endows him with his peculiar and marvellous genius. 
 Were it an exclusive truth that art emanates from 
 religion, the most religious ages of the world would 
 have been the most artistic, and the most artistic again 
 the most religious. Does it appear, however, that the 
 age of Pericles, in Greece, when the arts reached their 
 highest bloom, was the age most earnestly receptive of 
 the Greek mythology? Or, was the age of Leo the 
 Tenth, in Italy, that in which Christian faith was more 
 active and powerful than it ever had been before ? No 
 doubt a serious, heartfelt interest is felt by the artist in 
 the religious sentiment which he embodies, for, without 
 that, there would be no motive in his mind ; but a 
 combination of other influences concurs also in the 
 grander development of art. To the sincere and ear- 
 14* 
 
314 Horace Binncy Wallace. 
 
 nest popular sentiment, whether religious or humanitary : 
 must be added a vigorous national life, stimulating 
 energy and hope, and an access of wealth sufficient to 
 give the repose and culture which the laborious yet 
 peaceful nature of artistic pursuit demands. In short, 
 then, we should say, that the great eras of art have been 
 eras of a universal, intellectual, and moral excitement, 
 when the imagination was kindled by some great sym 
 pathy, and the whole soul, not of the artist only, but of 
 the nation, aroused into an intense and almost preter 
 natural life. 
 
 For the same reason, when it is said that the artist 
 finds an image of worship in the object of his labor, we 
 recognize a great truth, but not the entire truth. It is 
 true of certain displays of art, but not of all art. If 
 this saying were universally true, there could be no art 
 but such as should be directly and consciously employed 
 in the celebration of the Divinity. But, when Agasias, 
 or whoever it was, modelled his Fighting Gladiator, 
 when Angelo chiselled that wonderful Bacchus at 
 Florence, when Cellini chased some exquisite golden 
 cup, when Raphael painted the Parnassus in one of the 
 Stanzas of the Vatican, when Mozart composed the 
 Don Giovanni, or Shakspeare wrote Othello we doubt 
 whether the artists saw in their objects the remotest 
 image of anything to be worshipped. Their themes are 
 not in any way connected (and the same might be said 
 of a thousand other immortal examples) with any living 
 mythology ; yet, these were works of art, and some of 
 them of very high art. Can any one deny that a very 
 fine and even noble species of art was attained by the 
 Flemish and Dutch painters, whose subjects were 
 mostly drawn from incidents of ordinary life, such as 
 the fetes of the peasantry, or the manoeuvres of dragoons ? 
 Mr. Alston, no mean judge in such things, and who, 
 
Horace Binney Wallace. 316 
 
 if we may infer from his own exalted works, was not at 
 all inclined to lessen the deep religious significance of 
 art, speaks in one of his lectures of a picture by 
 Ostade, in which the figures are a woman nursing her 
 child, and the carcass of a hog hung up to dry, 
 where every accessory hints of low culinary occupation ; 
 and yet he speaks of it as a genuine work of art, full 
 of "magical charms," displaying a very "sorcery of 
 color," and exciting a depth of "pleasurable emotion 
 which passes off into poetic dream !" He contrasts the 
 originality and invention it discovers with the same 
 qualities in the Death of Ananias, by Raphael. Now, 
 what he means by this, and what we mean in our 
 argument thus far is, that the functions of art are uni 
 versal, ranging from the expression of the highest 
 religious adoration to that of the lowest every-day 
 delight which is in itself innocent. No definition of 
 art, therefore, can be accepted as adequate, which con 
 fines it to its higher types alone, or which excludes 
 those lesser displays of it commonly condemned by a 
 pragmatic criticism as low and trivial. 
 
 In order to show the relations of art to religion, and 
 to get at the grounds of that seeming exaggeration 
 which designates all art as divine, we should be obliged 
 to enter upon a minute philosophical inquiry, for which 
 we have now neither time nor space. But we may sug 
 gest our view of the matter, so far as to render what we 
 may say intelligible, in few words. 
 
 Man, as the creature of God, is the subject of a two 
 fold life the first natural, which connects him through 
 his body and senses with the physical world, and through 
 his affections with his fellow-man and the second, 
 ideal or spiritual, which connects him, through faith 
 in an infinite Goodness, Wisdom, and Beauty, to God. 
 It is this second life which gives him the distinctive 
 
3 1 6 Horace Binney Wallace. 
 
 mark of his manhood. His relation to nature, or to 
 his physical organization, he shares with the vegetables ; 
 and his relations to society, so far as society is simply 
 natural, or not yet raised into a spiritual fellowship, he 
 has in common with many animals ; but his belief in 
 an unlimited goodness and truth, and his power of act 
 ing in obedience to that belief, is what especially consti 
 tutes his humanity. The vegetable and the animal have 
 no existence superior to thejr physical organization ; 
 they are the slaves of that, and, when the wants of that 
 are satisfied, they are complete and happy. Man, too, 
 in so far as his existence is subject to his organization 
 and its corresponding affections, is only a higher kind 
 of vegetable and animal. But being made, as he is, 
 capable of perceiving by his reason, and of obeying by 
 his freedom, ends which are above his merely animal 
 and social wants, he becomes an ideal or spiritual 
 being, which means a true man. 
 
 Now the characteristics of the lower sphere of life are, 
 that it is not only limited, but exists solely by limitation ; 
 that it is not only dependent in each of its particulars 
 upon something out of itself, but that the very end of 
 its existence is subservience ; that it is not only transi 
 tory, but that incessant change is the law of its life ; 
 and consequently, that it is not only unsatisfying, but, 
 if trusted in, disgusting, venomous, and deadly. On 
 the other hand, the characteristics of the higher sphere, 
 are an infinite freedom, an existence in and for itself, 
 an unchanging permanence, and a fulness of activity 
 and delight, which the Apostle describes as unspeakable. 
 Our humanity, therefore, in so far as it is a genuine 
 humanity, not a mere animality, perpetually aspires to 
 this upper world of Love, and Truth, and Beauty, 
 revealed to its hope, and incessantly beckoning it on 
 ward and upward. 
 
Horace Binney Wallace. 317 
 
 Still, as we are made primarily the denizens of nature 
 as we are not God in ourselves, but his creatures 
 we can know goodness, truth, and beauty only as we 
 reproduce them in nature, or as they are fixed and em 
 bodied in act. We learn Love by loving, and Truth by 
 living truly, and Beauty by realizing it in some actual 
 type. They are, before that, not objects of direct con 
 sciousness, of immediate perception, but of vague long 
 ing and desire a blind hunger of the soul, which 
 craves, but has not yet found its food. They are not 
 ours, but God s ; yet they become approximatively 
 ours, as we translate them, by prayer and effort, and 
 the putting away of untruth, wickedness, and imper 
 fection from our lives, into the natural life. The en 
 deavor to appropriate them, however, is our normal 
 work i s the end for which we were made in which 
 we find our true freedom and joy ; while the threefold 
 aspect of this endeavor, as it is directed to the supernal 
 Love, or Wisdom, or Beauty, we call, respectively, re 
 ligion, philosophy, and art. These move in the same 
 sphere, they spring from the same source the immor 
 tal fountain of life but they operate in different modes 
 and on different planes. Religion deals primarily with 
 the heart, without separating itself from the intellect and 
 senses, and stands nearest to God ; philosophy works 
 with the intellect, and dwells in the intermediate world 
 of thought ; while art comes down to the senses, and 
 flows through all the forms of sensible nature, trans 
 forming and glorifying them with soul. Religion seeks 
 to reduce the facts of human life, inward and outward, 
 to a universal unity of love ; philosophy, to the uni 
 versal unity of truth ; and art, to a universal harmony 
 of sensible appearance. In essence and derivation they 
 are all one like streams which rise from the same 
 sacred spring, but they flow through separate channels 
 
318 Horace Binney Wallace. 
 
 and in diverse directions toward distinct realizations. 
 They all come from God, and they all end in life or 
 action. 
 
 We see from this why it is not unusual or irreverent 
 to speak of "divine philosophy," and "divine art," as 
 well as of a divine or holy religion not because the 
 immediate object, in any philosophical or artistic re 
 search, is "an image of worship," but because the 
 ultimate tendency of it is to emancipate our spirit from 
 the fetters of its finite condition. It is through philos 
 ophy, or its handmaid, science, that we subdue the 
 stormy and truculent antagonisms of nature, who would 
 kill us by her frosts and whelm us in her tempests if 
 she could, till they have become the willing servitors of 
 every human use. So, too, by means of science, we 
 lift society out of brute gregariousness into an organism 
 of the sweetest and tenderest humanities. And so 
 again, through art, we breathe over the earth the- free 
 atmosphere of heaven, people its glades with angelic 
 living shapes, and tune its myriad voices into "halle 
 lujahs and sevenfold harmonies" of song. All true 
 philosophy, and all true art, then, have the same ulti 
 mate aim with the one true religion. 
 
 In a deeper sense, however, than this, art deserves 
 the epithet of divine ; for it raises us to an activity 
 which approaches more nearly than any other to the 
 highest that we can conceive of the real divine life ; of 
 that life which, as St. Augustine says, per cuncta diffu- 
 sus, sine labor e regens, et sine onere coniinens, is sufficient 
 unto itself, having neither bodily limits nor social de 
 pendences, dwelling forever in its fulness of absolute 
 perfection, and yet flowing forth forever in infinite 
 streams of love, and splendor, and joy. The artistic 
 life is the image of this supernal glory, because of its 
 .free spontaneous productivity. It has its end in itself; it 
 
Horace Binney Wallace. 319 
 
 exists for no extraneous purpose ; it inhabits its own 
 independent world ; it finds in its own bosom an im 
 measurable delight ; and though the reconciliation of 
 form and thought, of real and ideal, of matter and 
 spirit, it annuls forever the contradictions of actual ex 
 istence. Therefore is it in every work of art that you 
 are impressed with its unalterable repose, its calm 
 majesty and grace, its inexhaustible joyousness, and its 
 serene freedom. 
 
 Art being a universal mediator between the interior 
 world of aspiration and faith, and the exterior world of 
 sensible experience, we cannot limit its functions, as 
 Mr. Wallace has done (though somewhat doubtingly), 
 to the mere arts of design. Architecture, sculpture, 
 and painting are the most impressive forms of art, but 
 they do not exhaust those forms. The vast realm of 
 beauty which music evokes, when sentiment marries 
 sound, must not be forgotten, nor the still vaster worlds, 
 the constellated worlds of poetry, peopled with radiant 
 creatures who use the speech and enact the dramas of 
 the gods. It would be a fatal oversight, indeed, to 
 reckon the grosser, the more material, the more ob 
 jective arts among "the glories of our mortal state," 
 and omit the more subtile, subjective, spiritual, delicate, 
 and profound. Mr. Wallace s fine sense deserts him 
 (as the hesitated doubt seems to imply), when he de 
 cides that music is too sensual, and poetry too intel 
 lectual, to be considered among the number of the 
 arts ; and still more so, when he assigns as a reason for 
 this sentence of banishment, that they miss "that fusion 
 of mental and material, that perfect balance of the 
 sensible and the thoughtful, which art requires/ 
 
 It might be replied, in detail : first, that music is less 
 sensuous than either architecture, sculpture, or paint 
 ing, and more variously emotional ; secondly, that 
 
320 Horace Binney Wallace. 
 
 architecture itself does not exhibit that complete fusion 
 of mental and material of which he speaks, and is at 
 best only a symbol of it ; and thirdly, that poetry, 
 though more intellectual than other arts, has yet much 
 to do with the affections, the fancy, and the sensuous 
 imagination. But, instead of exposing the several in 
 accuracies of this judgment, we prefer to indicate what 
 we regard as the source of the error. 
 
 It is this : that our author has failed to treat of the 
 several species of art, as parts of an organic whole, 
 necessary to each other, because necessary to the com 
 plete expression of man s artistic capacity. Confined to 
 the arts of design, art is like the torso dug from ancient 
 ruins, or like the early pipe of Pan, beautiful so far as 
 it goes, yet not the rounded statue, yet not the full-toned 
 organ instinct with every sound. No single art, con 
 sidered in itself, is adequate to the utterance of our 
 boundless spirit. Each art has its circle and domain, 
 within which it gives us glimpses of the eternal heights, 
 but beyond which it is opaque and blind. Each art, 
 beyond itself, craves and promises a brother. Thus, 
 architecture tells us, as in the Greek temple, of the 
 graceful majesty and serene repose of the gods ; or, as 
 in the Gothic minster, it lifts our souls in adoration 
 and a tumultuous throng of praises to the Infinite One. 
 It needs sculpture, however, to inform us that these 
 gods are men, with the "high passions and high 
 actions" of men, or that the Infinite has incorporated 
 itself in human shape. Sculpture, again, with its 
 sightless orbs and moveless body, has a limitation, 
 where painting comes in to fill those eyes with tender 
 lustre, and animate those limbs with a fresher glow. 
 Yet the deepest inner world of sentiment and thought 
 no painting nor sculpture can reach, and only the airy 
 wands of poesy and sound, penetrating to the inmost 
 
Horace Binney Wallace. 321 
 
 of our being, bring forth spirits too subtile and swift to 
 be grasped by any but ethereal hands. For, it is sin 
 gular in the relations of the arts, as Hegel has admi 
 rably argued in his Esthetics, that there is a march or 
 progress, both in respect of their sensible materials and 
 their powers of expression, from the gross, the con 
 crete, the objective, the material, to the fine, the ab 
 stract, the subjective, and the spiritual. Architecture, 
 dealing with matter in its three dimensions of length, 
 breadth, and height, and as subject of necessity to the 
 law of gravitation, enjoys only a circumscribed liberty 
 of expression. Even in the best examples of it, as in 
 the cathedrals, the sentiment and thought are ever 
 more or less dominated by the form ; there is a ten 
 dency in the technical and constructive to prevail over 
 the imaginative and the reflective ; the inward signifi 
 cance is apt to be overlaid by the outward representation. 
 A larger freedom in the use of the material and a nicer 
 expression is obtained, in sculpture, when the idea and 
 the form are made to coalesce ; but sculpture itself does 
 not transcend the corporeal, or what the corporeal con 
 tains. In painting, on the other hand, while it retains 
 the corporeal, so far as that is needed for its purposes, 
 it yet escapes from the coarser properties of matter, 
 deals with light and shade, and the magic of color, 
 instead of with ponderous masses, and imparts to forms 
 a flexibility and freedom, which enlarges, almost mir 
 aculously, its powers of combination and its reaches of 
 spiritual utterance. Yet there are sentiments and shades 
 of sentiment, delicacies and grandeurs of emotion, suc 
 cessions and fluxes of inward experience, which color 
 seeks in vain to convey, and which the finer medium 
 of sound alone can interpret ; until the soul, withdraw 
 ing more and more into itself, and dispensing more 
 and more with external media, speaks through signs of 
 14* 
 
322 Horace Binney Wallace. 
 
 sound only, or the viewless, intangible word. As in 
 architecture we saw the objective dominate, so in poetry 
 we see the subjective prevail, that art, as a whole, may 
 exhaust the domain of nature, and claim the sovereignty 
 of both her inner and outer worlds. 
 
 The oversight of Mr. Wallace in excluding music and 
 poetry from the circle of the arts, has led him into an 
 other mistake quite common among the writers on 
 art just now that of depreciating the artistic attain 
 ments of the moderns. It is almost a cant of the times 
 to assert that art worthy of the name no longer exists. 
 Mr. Ruskin, among the rest, divides the eras of art into 
 the classical, the medieval, and the modern, and com 
 pares them, as a bad grammarian might do, as good, 
 better, worst. Classicism he defines as embracing all 
 ancient time, down to the fall of the Roman Empire ; 
 medievalism, as extending from that to the close of the 
 fifteenth century ; and modernism, as from then for 
 ward to our own days. The first was distinguished, he 
 says, by an earnest Pagan faith the second, by Chris 
 tian faith and the third by no faith. Consequently, he 
 declares our modern art to be just no art at all. 
 
 Now, Mr. Ruskin has said many of the best and some 
 of the worst things that have ever been said of art, but 
 this is not among his best. Mr. Wallace, with whom 
 we are more concerned, virtually adopts the same prin 
 ciple of distribution, by confining the great epochs of 
 art to the age of Pericles, the age of the Gothic cathe 
 drals, and the age of painting in Italy. It seems to us, 
 however, that both writers take a contracted and an un 
 fair view of the matter. We shall say nothing of the 
 singular latitude which allows Mr. Ruskin to class the 
 winged bulls of Nineveh and the monstrous sphinxes 
 of Egypt among the remains of classicism, nor shall we 
 contend that in the arts of design our modern eras may 
 
Horace Binney Wallace. 323 
 
 boast of works equal to those of Phidias and Cle- 
 omenes, of Raphael and Angelo ; but we shall and do 
 most earnestly protest against any philosophy of art 
 which excludes music and poetry from its domain, and, 
 on the strength of such an exclusion, disparages the 
 abilities and character of the moderns. 
 
 If we were disposed to discuss the question between 
 the ancients and moderns, even in respect to the arts of 
 design, we should premise that Rubens and the land- 
 scapists of the seventeenth century, that Flaxman, Dan- 
 necker, and Chantrey, that Kaulbach, Cornelius, Cou 
 ture, Delacroix, Turner, and Alston, and many other 
 eminent sculptors and painters who might be men 
 tioned, are not to go for nothing ; but then we should 
 freely admit that we have no schools of plastic or pic 
 turesque art equal to the great schools of antiquity and 
 of the close of the fifteenth century. Having made the 
 admission, our point would be this : that modern art, 
 responsive to the changes in the spirit of society, or in 
 obedience to the greater spirituality and larger indi 
 vidual freedom of the age, has taken another form. It 
 has taken the form of the subjective and spiritual arts, 
 which are certainly of equal dignity and worth with 
 other arts, if not superior to them, while it has carried 
 the new forms to a degree of vigor and excellence it 
 would be idle to look for in antiquity or the middle 
 ages. When we consider what a sun-burst of music 
 fell upon the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
 when we recall the names of Palestrina, Bach, Handel, 
 Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Bellini, and Men 
 delssohn, when we remember what a ready stimulus 
 and upbearing elasticity music affords to the inspirations 
 of thought, what a depth and fulness and variety of 
 emotion it awakens, what rapturous and graceful 
 charms it breathes upon the senses, incapable through 
 
324 Horace Binney Wallace. 
 
 it of any but pure delights, how, it is not the luxury 
 of the rich, but the household blessing of the poor 
 cheering, even in its rudest strains, the swain at his 
 plough and the village maiden at her wheel diffusing 
 everywhere an exquisite and innocent sympathy, and 
 how, there is no solitude which it cannot enliven, no 
 Saul-like moodiness which it cannot charm away, no 
 hardness of feeling which it cannot soften, no sorrow 
 which it cannot in some degree assuage, no joy which 
 it cannot spread through ten thousand hearts, and no 
 adoration which it cannot deepen and strengthen, till 
 the soul is lifted, as on the wings of the cherubim, to 
 the very presence of God, we say, when we consider 
 all this, its capacity, its universality, its purity, its 
 power, we are utterly amazed at the criticism which 
 denies the existence of modern art. But if we turn 
 from music to poetry, if we remember that Shakspeare, 
 whose mind, like the ocean, filled all the inlets and 
 creeks of our existence with its own majestic glory, was 
 a modern ; that Spenser and Milton, with the immortal 
 race of bards which has followed them in England, were 
 moderns ; that the entire beautiful literature in Ger 
 many, with Jupiter Goethe on its throne, is of modern 
 growth ; and that this poetry, so multiform, so lovely, 
 so grand, so humane, so fantastic, so infinite in its re 
 sources and its effects, is a common possession of every 
 man, woman, and child who can spell, -we are still 
 further lost in wonder at the cries which bewail the de 
 crepitude and departure of art. 
 
 We have no space to dwell upon the theme, more 
 than to hint that the great ages of art, distributed ac 
 cording to a principal type in each case, were the ages 
 of symbolic art in Egypt ; of plastic art, in Greece ; of 
 constructive art, in the middle ages ; of picturesque art, 
 during the period of transition from Catholicism to 
 
Horace Binney Wallace. 326 
 
 nationalism ; and of musical and poetic art since the 
 Reformation. Considered in this light, we see more 
 distinctly than in any other way, how the special form 
 and highest glory of art grows directly out of the spirit 
 of the time, how the evidences of the Eternal favor 
 are never wanting to man, and are even most generous 
 when most unseen, and how it is folly to mourn the 
 fossils of a defunct vegetation, when the hill-sides and 
 meadows around us are everywhere breaking into new 
 and rosy blooms. 
 
THACKERAY AS NOVELIST.* 
 
 |N laying down the. last page of "The New- 
 comes, "one is tempted to exclaim, in language 
 similar to that which the eminent critic, F. 
 Bayham, Esq., applied to his good friend and patron, 
 the Colonel : " Brave old Thackeray, noble old soul !" 
 With the same restrained ardor that the brave Colonel 
 himself used to charge at the head of his Indian dra 
 goons upon the Mahrattah cavalry, you charge upon 
 the selfishness and shams of our hateful little societies. 
 With the same dauntless courage of your sturdy country 
 men that fills the ditches and heaps the ramparts of Sebas- 
 topol, you lay about you on all sides the dead and 
 wounded Cossacks of the false life on which you war. 
 You are a regiment, at least, in yourself, now pouring 
 a rattling fire of grape into the enemy now picking 
 down a general with a Minie rifle and now exploding 
 grandly like a line of bombs while ever and anon is 
 heard, in the midst of the more general roar, the deep 
 boom of some thirty-two pounder, doing an amazing 
 deal of damage. 
 
 But brave old Colonel Thackeray, noble old soul, 
 you have done more in "The Newcomes" than discharge 
 
 * The Neivcomes. Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family. Edited 
 by ARTHUR PENDENNIS, Esq. New York: Harper & Brothers. 
 
 1855- 
 
 From Putnam s Monthly, Sept., 1855. 
 
Thackeray as Novelist. 327 
 
 your files of musketry and your parks of artillery upon 
 the murderous social Cossacks, sweeping them down by 
 the hundred. You have turned Miss Nightingale, too, 
 and visited the hospitals, and helped the sick, and as 
 suaged the horrors of the dying, and pointed their last 
 hopes to the blessed consolations of Christian goodness 
 and truth. You have shown that you have a great big 
 heart (of which we that knew you did not need to be 
 convinced), though some said that you had none, and 
 that you were only a hard old soldier, sabering people 
 all round, without human pity or remorse. Yes, indeed, 
 a heart as big as that of the Colonel himself, but with 
 a head a great deal wiser than his ; large and generous 
 sympathies, tenderness, a kind love of your brother, 
 and yet a truthfulness which does not allow you to say 
 that the world is made up of these ; and a deep, noble, 
 Christian philosophy, which gives you comfort in the 
 absence of these. " 
 
 The merits of Thackeray, which have raised him to 
 his eminent position, are now almost unanimously al 
 lowed. They have been so often dwelt upon, at least, 
 that no one need be ignorant of what they are. First and 
 foremost is his wonderful humor a quality in which he 
 is not inferior to Swift, Fielding, Dickens, or any other 
 among the illustrous English humorists and which, in 
 some form or other, steeps and saturates every page of 
 his writings. And this humor is as various as it is deep 
 and fine now broadly grotesque, as in " Yellowplush s 
 Letters," and some of the contributions to " Punch" 
 and now as gentle and delicate as the nicest touches of 
 Addison or Goldsmith. Even the exquisite irony of 
 Cervantes scarcely surpasses that of many a passage that 
 might be taken from the "Paris Sketch Book," the 
 Irish Sketches," or the "Journey from Cornhill to 
 Cairo." The exuberant fun, the rollicking animal 
 
328 Thackeray as Novelist. 
 
 spirit, which sometimes carries Dickens away into cari 
 cature, is not found in Thackeray, who is more uniformly 
 equable in his vivacity, and is never mastered by, but 
 always masters his genius. 
 
 Indeed, the calm impassive tone which he preserves, 
 as if he were only a spectator of what he describes, 
 quite disinterested and heedless, might be mentioned 
 as the second among those admirable traits which have 
 gained him a name. His scenes never seem to be in 
 vented. They come to pass. The author lifts the cur 
 tain and the play goes on. He comments and ridicules, 
 he sneers and laughs at the motley throng, but he does 
 so as one of the audience. You do not feel that he is re 
 sponsible for the result ; the actors are only about their 
 own work, and the stones tell themselves. Mr. Tit- 
 marsh is the man at the door, who takes our tickets 
 and points out the best seats. Or, rather, he is the 
 friend who asks us to his chamber, to take a peep out 
 of his window at the busy world of the streets, or into 
 the neighboring windows, while he chats pleasantly at 
 our side about what we both see. Old Pendennis, and 
 Costigan, and Farintosh, and Becky, and Bareacres, 
 and a thousand more, are the people who are passing, 
 or who occupy the parlors and bedrooms opposite. 
 He knows them all, and tells us who they are, if we 
 are ourselves too dull to guess it from their mere ap 
 pearance. 
 
 It is this remarkable realism which gives his books 
 their aspect as an actual transcript of life. Everybody, 
 on reading them, is quite convinced that the author has 
 seen what he sets forth, and some even suppose that his 
 own agency in the business is little more than that of 
 the camera lucida which reflects the picture. "He 
 simply puts down the reports of his eyes," exclaims 
 Mr. Keen, "as any well-informed gentleman might 
 
Thackeray as Novelist. 329 
 
 do." But, then my friend, what eyes they are! how 
 they take in every minute particular of the visible ap 
 pearance ; and having got that, have strangely pierced 
 the entire significance of it ! Almost every person, 
 as you say, is in the habit of looking at the world and 
 its ways with his eyes, and Thackeray does no more ; 
 but there is something so sharp, so penetrating, so lu 
 minous in his look, that when he sees the thing he sees 
 the whole of it inside as well as out and that not 
 only with his eyes, but with his brain and heart. We 
 know of no writer, save Balzac, whom he resembles in 
 other points, whose characterizations of men and of 
 incidents are so sharply defined, so nicely and finely 
 cut, so chiselled, as if from the block, like a piece of 
 statuary, and yet so free and flowing, and full of anima 
 tion, the most unlike statuary of anything in the world. 
 It would be impossible not to recognize his men and 
 women, should we meet them again in the streets. In 
 fact, when we once attended an opening of Parliament in 
 London, we saw a great many of them, and were about 
 to accost them on the score of old acquaintance. We 
 heard the Captain sing an Irish song in a cider-cellar 
 in the Strand. Mr. Jeames waited upon us when we 
 dined at Blank House, and we were introduced person 
 ally to a dozen well-known fellows at the club. It is 
 needless to mention their names, as, we are sorry to say, 
 they were generally snobs. 
 
 But, besides his realism and insight, Thackeray owes 
 much of his success to his style which we hardly know 
 how to describe. It is so clear and simple, that it seems 
 at first to possess no really salient qualities to be a kind 
 of unconscious flow of the author s thoughts and yet 
 the impressions produced by it are so positive and pe 
 culiar, that we are inclined to regard it as a result of 
 the most elaborate art. Yet there are no signs of effort 
 
330 Thackeray as Novelist. 
 
 about it, no marks of labor, no incompleteness or clum 
 siness, no commonplaces or affectations of phrase, and 
 no decided polish or brilliancy, but only an easy, off 
 hand, charming, and irresistible grace, which you 
 would not observe if you did not set about it purposely, 
 in order to analyze your pleasure. Like a stream which 
 runs through a rich meadow, it rolls on quite ignorant 
 of its own sweet murmur and its own gentle ripple. 
 Addison s style suggests it, but Addison s was more ar 
 tificial ; Goethe s had much of the same clearness, but 
 Goethe s was more staid and stately ; Fielding s had the 
 same naturalness, but was at times too careless and hur 
 ried ; and, in fact, we can only speak of it as Thack 
 eray s own, original, vigorous, natural, limpid, idiom 
 atic, and flexible a perfect vehicle for the man s pecu 
 liar spirit. 
 
 All this is admitted, we say all these qualities are 
 pretty unanimously conceded to him and yet Thack 
 eray can hardly be called a popular writer. He is not 
 popular in the sense that Dickens is. He is not loved 
 nearly so much as he is admired. He has not taken 
 hold of the hearts of his readers, and become their in 
 timate personal friend. We do not refer to those who 
 Would say of him what the criminal said of the judge, 
 and on the same grounds, " Take that man away, for I 
 go in fear of my life because of him ;" but to a class, 
 a large class, who view him with distrust, if not with 
 positive dislike, even in the midst of considerable re 
 spect. They allege that his writings, with all their pleas 
 ant excellence and inventive freshness, with all their 
 wit, and pathos, and sagacity, and wisdom, and variety 
 of character, and healthful scrutiny, are offensive from 
 their excessive severity, from their misanthropical views 
 of life, from their essential injustice in dwelling upon 
 the worse aspects of human nature instead of the better. 
 
Thackeray as Novelist. 331 
 
 We are acquainted with several gentlemen, amply qual 
 ified, by endowment and culture, to undertake the task 
 of criticism, who express a total inability to read Thack 
 eray. They get weary, they tell us, of representations 
 of society wholly made up of snobs, rascals, demireps, 
 flunkeys, tuft-hunters, fools, coxcombs, managing mam 
 mas, flashy daughters, insolent and silly nabobs, and 
 hoary old reprobates in general. They long to see 
 among the figures which flit through his phantasmago 
 ria, among the black silhouettes of his canvas, some 
 reminiscences of the heroes and angels who exist in the 
 real world as well as in the old books of romance. 
 They acquit him of all fondness for monsters, for high 
 waymen and murderers, and the various nondescripts 
 which give a hobgoblin and hideous look, or a sulphur 
 ous smell to the French, Newgate, and Gas-light litera 
 tures ; but they aver that his varnished and well-dressed 
 but thoroughly rotten sinners, and their hollow and 
 hypocritical satellites, his Steynes, and Crawleys, and 
 old Majors, his Deuceaces and Crabs, his Becky Sharps 
 and Lady Kickleburys, with a miscellaneous rabble of 
 unmitigated villains behind, are not a whit more desir 
 able company. Granting, what is true, that he throws 
 in a good old Dobbin at times, or a Laura, or an Ame 
 lia, it is also true that these are almost as weak as they 
 are good, and go for nothing in the midst of the over 
 whelming mass of scapegraces and scoundrels. 
 
 Women, especially, have been shocked by the repre 
 sentations which Mr. Thackeray makes of their world. 
 They protest that he knows nothing at all about the 
 mysteries of their delicate and beautiful spirits that 
 they are not all husband and fortune hunters, or brain 
 less and fond little fools, willingly allowing themselves 
 to be imposed upon by brutal husbands and cruel 
 brothers, for the sake of occasional shawls and trinkets, 
 
332 Thackeray as Novelist. 
 
 or a kiss now and then but that they have souls, and 
 consciences, too, and a strength of love and goodness 
 greater than man has ever conceived. They do not 
 deny that there might be a Mrs. Becky in existence, or 
 a Lady Griffin even, with an interminable line of Mac- 
 kenzies and Clutterbucks, as ambitious as they are vacu 
 ous ; but they do deny that the entire sex feminine is 
 confined to two- genera, simply represented by Becky, 
 Blanche, and Beatrix on one side, and by Amelia, Mrs. 
 Pendennis, and Lady Esmond on the other. We re 
 member that an honored contributor to our own Maga 
 zine, herself distinguished by a combination of the gen 
 tlest virtues of the woman with the noblest of the man, 
 earnestly repelled this narrow view of one half the race. 
 She complained, that while there were women who had 
 all the weakness, without a particle of the affection of 
 their sex, unrelenting in selfishness and unscrupulous as 
 fiends that while there were women insipid, diluted, 
 and colorless, mere waxen dolls, simpering prettily, and 
 dressing prettily, but inwardly all bran that there were 
 also a vast variety of other women of a nobler and higher 
 make the Queen Catharines, and Rosalinds, and Por 
 tias of actual life, who could be wise as well as good, 
 strong as well as gentle, generous but discerning, self- 
 sacrificing but not through weakness, brilliant but amia 
 ble and loveable, or, like the delicious Madonnas of 
 Raphael, at once heavenly and full of the sweetest hu 
 man love. But this latter sort, she said, Mr. Thackeray 
 had never described. 
 
 It was in vain to urge, in defence of the novelist, 
 that his function in literature was not to invent ideal 
 worlds, or imagine new, that he was not a Shakspeare, 
 a Goldsmith, or a Scott, but simply Mr. Thackeray, 
 whose peculiar intellectual constitution forced him to 
 grasp the facts of things as they were, not to paint them 
 
Thackeray as Novelist. 333 
 
 as they ought to be ; and that, consequently, if his can 
 vas abounded in disagreeable forms, it was because 
 society had previously much more abounded. It was 
 vain to urge that he dealt with English social life, as a 
 false system had rendered it, ridden by nightmares of 
 flunkeyism, re-enacting, under fashionable sanctions, 
 the infamous practices of the suttee or the slave-planta 
 tion, and consecrating, by the sacredest rituals, an inor 
 dinate consumption of toads and spittle. It was in vain 
 to urge these things, because the dissentients imme 
 diately replied, with an air of triumphant pity, " Heaven 
 save the man who sees nothing in our human life but 
 selfishness, cowardice, intrigue, sycophancy, pretension, 
 bluster, vulgarism, and the intensest mammon-wor 
 ship !" Or, " Heaven save the society which produces 
 a luxuriant crop of these as its perennial staples ! It is 
 not such a man we want to know, such a society that 
 we care to contemplate. It is not in such circles, or 
 under such a guide, that we desire to make the tour of 
 England. No doubt mean and vile creatures are there 
 in abundance no doubt Thackeray exposes them in 
 the truest light ; but we believe much better than these 
 exist, who would be more delectable companions for 
 us and our children. We will leave a P. P. C. for Mr. 
 Thackeray, then, and seek a purer and more genial 
 atmosphere." 
 
 As for ourselves, we cannot but think that there were 
 some grounds for these complaints, especially in the 
 earlier books of our author, while the justifications of 
 them were not in every respect adequate, not even his 
 own, as given in that noble closing lecture on Charity 
 and Humor. We have certainly felt, in perusing the 
 "Shabby-Genteel Story," the " Luck of Barry Lyndon," 
 "Men s Wives," and even "Vanity Fair" and " Pen- 
 dennis," that the weak and wicked phases of human 
 
334 Thackeray as Novelist. 
 
 development were brought too much into the light, 
 while the better phases were kept in shadow ; as if a 
 man should take the bar-room and the cock-pit for his 
 school, and not the home and the church. But, feel 
 ing this, we have none the less trusted the genius of the 
 master. We saw that he took no satyr s delight in 
 offensive scenes and graceless characters ; that he was 
 even sadder than the reader could be at the horrible 
 prospects before him ; that his task was one conscien 
 tiously undertaken, with some deep, great, generous 
 purpose ; and that, beneath his seeming scoffs and 
 mockeries, was to be discerned a more searching wis 
 dom and a sweeter, tenderer pathos than we found in 
 any other living writer. We saw that he chastised in no 
 ill-natured or malicious vein, but in love ; that he cau 
 terized only to cure ; and that, if he wandered through 
 the dreary circles of Inferno, it was because the spirit 
 of Beatrice, the spirit of immortal Beauty, beckoned 
 him to the more glorious Paradiso. Even his deficien 
 cies in the portraiture of women did not disturb our 
 faith, because we knew of no artist who evinced, though 
 tacitly rather than by words, so thorough a sympathy 
 in the position of woman, and who cherished a more 
 pure, ardent, and holy reverence for her true nature. 
 Many a time did he make our heart ache, by a passing 
 glance, it might have been, at the wrongs of some poor 
 wife, teaching the little ones, as she put them to bed, 
 to pray " God bless papa/ while the dissolute husband 
 was squandering his all, and their happiness, at the 
 club ; and we had yet to recall a single word of his cal 
 culated to bring a really womanly woman into con 
 tempt. Traces of a latent enthusiasm for excellence, 
 of a fervent admiration of worth, too, broke through the 
 crust of his cynicism and satire on almost every page, 
 as the golden veins of California crop out of the rough 
 
Thackeray as Novelist. 335 
 
 masses of quartz and sand. Besides, however much we 
 might have failed in discovering the extent of Thacke 
 ray s genius ourselves, we remembered that the author 
 ess of "Jane Eyre/ than whom there was none more 
 capable of appreciating originality and power, had, in 
 dedicating her second edition to him, spoken of him as 
 "an intellect profounder and more unique than his 
 contemporaries yet recognized" (for he was then com 
 paratively unknown), as " the first social regenerator of 
 the day/ and as the "very master of that working corps 
 who would restore to rectitude the warped system of 
 things." We had too much confidence in the sympathy 
 of genius for genius to allow any more superficial judg 
 ments to balk our hope. 
 
 When we saw Thackeray in person, all doubts of 
 him were dissipated. When we saw that round; good- 
 natured, yet earnest face, when we heard the manly, yet 
 soft and loving tones of his voice, when we marked in 
 his estimate of illustrious predecessors his intense impa 
 tience of the morbid, the hollow, and the malignant, 
 and his kindly affection for the simple, the true, and 
 the good, even though erring, when we found how 
 Swift, and Sterne, and Congreve were not favorites, and 
 how Dick Steele, Hood, and Goldy were and how his 
 magnanimous spirit overflowed into delightful recog 
 nition of the merits of his compeer and rival, Dickens ; 
 and, above all, when we were told, in private life, not 
 only of an honest freedom from conventionalism, which 
 might have been expected, but of a hearty, genial, and 
 exuberant candor and generosity we were glad that 
 we had never yielded to the theory of his morbidness 
 and misanthropy. 
 
 Well, The Newcomes" is here at last to justify our 
 fondest criticisms. It is Thackeray over again ;. but the 
 old, current conception of Thackeray, sublimated into 
 
336 Thackeray as Novelist. 
 
 what his particular friends had always believed him to 
 be. There is the same keen sarcasm, the same savage 
 satire, the same unrelenting persecution of pretension, 
 frippery, cant, and falsehood the same calm, cold 
 scrutiny of human weakness and vice, and the same 
 stern view of life ; but mingled with these, in fuller 
 measure than ever before, are gushes of tenderer feel 
 ing, gleams of heavenlier light, a deeper pity, and a 
 more tearful love. Not that the work has any senti- 
 mentalism in it, for of that the author is incapable : it is 
 still a walk in the immense realm of Vanity Fair, which 
 this world happens to be ; but the characters you meet 
 are more elevated, and the scenes more touching. It 
 seems as if the air of that region had grown less harsh ; 
 as if the colors, not less brilliant, had been mellowed 
 into softer tints ; and as if the tones, which begin in 
 laughter or scorn, die away into the thick, earnest 
 utterances of the heart. All the old inhabitants are 
 there, with many others, with the indefatigable sleuth- 
 hound, the aristocratic manager never before so well 
 depicted as in the Countess of Kew with the cold, 
 self-seeking, mean-spirited, prosperous merchant, as 
 Sir Barnes Newcome with the vulgar good woman, 
 Mrs. Hobson, who thanks God that she and hers are 
 not like yonder publicans with the brainless, pampered 
 fop, like Lord Farintosh, and his tail of toadies with 
 the smiling, gracious, genteel, artful, thoroughly selfish 
 and detestable mother, as Mrs. Mackenzie, the Cam 
 paigner with the poor little, harmless, simpering lady, 
 Mrs. Clive, that bloomed for a day under the hothouse 
 nurture of her bad parent, and then withered, and 
 pined, and perished under it ; all the old passions, and 
 hypocrisies, and lies, turning the fair earth into a fore 
 court of Pandemonium, are there : but, contrasted 
 with these, and giving a deeper hue to their dread 
 
Thackeray as Novelist. 337 
 
 folly by the contrast, are noble creatures, like the good 
 old Colonel and his son, and Laura, and the lovely 
 Ethel ; and noble lives like those of J. J., the artist, 
 and of the author himself, the sincere, hard-working, 
 sympathizing Arthur Pendennis. As you follow your 
 guide, huge cynic as you may deem him, through the 
 intricacies of his Fable-land, you everywhere feel the 
 warm pressure of his hand, and not unfrequently catch 
 him brushing away the big drops from his eyes. Sad 
 he is, as ever, in the midst of his raillery ; but it is a 
 sadness of the kind by which the heart is made better. 
 If it cannot be said, therefore, that Thackeray displays, 
 in this work, either a deeper tragic or a broader comic 
 power than his previous works have indicated, it is yet 
 very clear that he has used his power, in both respects, 
 with a more uniform gentleness, and under the inspira 
 tion of a more open humanity. He is not so anxious 
 to conceal his own tenderness as if he were ashamed of 
 it, nor does he so frequently " dash his brightest pic 
 tures with needless dark." In the characters of the old 
 Colonel, and of Ethel, he has drawn us better speci 
 mens of our kind than any he has yet given ; not be 
 cause they are more ideal, but because, with all their 
 beauty and nobleness, they are rigidly true to our every 
 day life. Even his female readers, we think, will for- 
 giVe his past offences, for the sake of Ethel. 
 
 But we have not yet told our readers the story. 
 Thousands of them have already, no doubt, read it as 
 it has appeared, from month to month. [Here fol 
 lowed an outline of the plot, which we omit.] As a 
 story, it is not superior to the previous inventions of the 
 author, serving rather as the mise en scene for his char 
 acters than as the means of a deep-wrought and con 
 sistent development of dramatic incident. There is 
 little that is thrilling in it nothing that makes you 
 
338 Thackeray as Novelist. 
 
 hold your breath in suspense no regular unfolding of 
 event after event, all subtly linked together till the end 
 brings in some heart-rending catastrophe. There are 
 no passages which make you afraid to sit alone in your 
 study lest some mysterious door in the wainscot should 
 suddenly open, or the lights begin to burn blue or to 
 go to bed without a candle. It is simply a plain, 
 straightforward history of a respectable family, some 
 rich and some poor, some good and some bad, now in 
 England, and now on the continent, but who all con.- 
 duct themselves very much like certain friends of our 
 acquaintance. 
 
 A hundred characters are introduced into the story, 
 and a thousand incidents, at which we have not glanced 
 in this hasty abstract, characters and incidents such as 
 only Thackeray can describe. It is a bald outline we 
 have given without them, but enough to enable our 
 readers to see, as we have before said, that it is not much 
 of a story in itself; some parts are inartistically managed, 
 and the whole is greatly protracted ; a few expedients, 
 indeed, such as the killing off of the old Countess, to 
 prevent the marriage of Ethel, and the demise of Mrs. 
 Clive, to set Clive free again, are commonplace ; but, 
 in general, the interest is well maintained, and the plot 
 sufficiently so to pique curiosity. All the young ladies 
 will be very sorry that there was a first Mrs. Clive, and 
 everybody lament the senility and untimely end of the 
 Colonel, worthy to live in hale and happy vigor a thou 
 sand years. We do not ourselves, however, find fault 
 with this "taking off" of the dear old fellow. It has 
 gathered about his memory something of the tragic 
 pathos which clings to the white-haired, tempest-beaten 
 
 Lear. 
 
 The most delightful features of the book, besides 
 those already mentioned, are the glimpses it gives us of 
 
Thackeray as Novelist. 339 
 
 the serene artist-life, the exquisite fineness of its drollery 
 and banter, its exhibitions of the nobler aspects of French 
 character, the many really lovable personages, though 
 quite imperfect ones, it makes us acquainted with, its 
 masterly fidelity to nature throughout, and its lofty, 
 uncompromising adherence to truth. No one can read 
 it without deriving from it a great benefit, not to his 
 mind alone, but to his sympathies and conscience. 
 
 Mr. Thackeray has somewhere called the humorous 
 writers, the week-day preachers of the world, and ought 
 himself to be put among the archbishops of the class. 
 JMo one of them has preached more excellent sermons 
 in a lively way, or to a larger and more attentive diocese, 
 than he. Nor is it a commonplace morality that he has 
 preached. Was it not he that "aroused the national 
 mind," as Punch says, "on the subject of snobs?" 
 Has he not tried to render his fellows, as he was him 
 self, sick of court circulars ; to make them loathe haul- 
 ton intelligence ; to believe such words as exclusive, 
 fashionable, aristocratic, wicked, unchristian words ; to 
 hold a court-system which sends men of genius to the 
 second table, a snobbish court-system ; and to stigma 
 tize a polite society which ignores arts and letters, as a 
 snobbish society? " You, who despise your neighbor," 
 he reads us the lesson of the day, "are a snob ; you, 
 who forget your own friends, meanly to follow after 
 those of a higher degree, are a snob ; you, who are 
 ashamed of your poverty, and blush for your honest 
 calling, are a snob, as are you who boast of your pedi 
 gree and are proud of your wealth." And this salutary 
 lesson has been followed up by how many startling and 
 terrible epistles on the awful, foolish superstition which 
 has translated the suttee from India to Europe which 
 sacrificed wives on the graves of their husbands, and 
 broke the hearts of tender maidens, who might have 
 
340 Thackeray as Novelist. 
 
 made good men good wives in an insane worship of 
 rank and fortune ! 
 
 But the gospel of this preacher has gone deeper yet 
 than the rebuke of social vices for it has embraced 
 the profoundest philosophy of life, the noblest prin 
 ciples of conduct. The greatest good he asks, is it to 
 be a lord, is il even to be happy? May not poverty, 
 illness, a hump back, be the reward and conditions of 
 good, as well as that prosperity the riches, the fame, 
 the honors we all unconsciously run after ? In other 
 words, is not the great lesson of our human existence, 
 the very end and aim of it, of all our sufferings and 
 disappointments, of that happiness which is so transi 
 tory, of that glory which is so unsatisfying that we 
 may be taught to love truth and goodness for their own 
 sakes, as their own best reward, as sufficient unto them 
 selves, as the only completeness and harmony of our 
 being? We confess that such seem to us to be the 
 principles which Thackeray s books illustrate, and that 
 we esteem them as infinitely loftier and truer than those 
 other moralities, so common with the novelists, which 
 fill the mouth of the virtuous hero with luscious plum- 
 pudding, and enable him to ride in a gilded coach, 
 and to sniff homages from his admirers at every turn. 
 What though the brave and good are so often wretched, 
 and the selfish so often prosper ? Is there not a glory 
 and a solace in goodness which the selfish never know, 
 and which can never be brought into comparison 
 with any outward splendor? Wealth, distinction, 
 luxury, power, are not the true successes of life, but the 
 simple and contented manhood and womanhood which 
 God honors. 
 
GOETHE.* 
 
 |E may apply to Goethe the sentiment of his 
 own Shakspeare und Kein Ende, and say, he is 
 perennial. The interest he continues to excite 
 among the critics seems to have no limit in variety or 
 duration. What has been written about him consti 
 tutes of itself no small body of literature. Not to 
 mention the anecdotes, conversations, sketches, lam 
 poons, and eulogies of which he has been the occasion, 
 we might reckon the critical essays upon his works by 
 the thousand. All that he ever said and did has been 
 put in print ; his physiology, even, has furnished a theme 
 to Carus and Hufeland : while his smaller poems have 
 originated bushels of controversial pamphlets, and his 
 larger ones become the texts of elaborate courses of 
 lectures at the universities. Only Dante has caused 
 more dispute, and only Shakspeare been so volumi 
 nously bewritten. 
 
 The questions which exercise the critics are, whether 
 Goethe was a poet at all, and of what rank ; whether 
 his conceptions of art were the lowest or the loftiest ; 
 and whether, personally, he was a god or a demigod, 
 
 * The Life and TVorh of Goethe : with Sketches of his Age and 
 Contemporaries, from published and unpublished Sources. By G. H, 
 LEWES. 2, vols. Boston : Ticknor & Fields. 
 
 From Putnam s Monthly, Feb., 1856. 
 
34 2 Goethe. 
 
 or merely a well-dressed and specious-looking devil ? 
 Between Menzel and Riemer, between Heine and 
 Carlyle, we may find all sides argued with infinite talent 
 and an inexhaustible enthusiasm. It seems to be as 
 necessary, in the critical world, to have a theory of his 
 existence and character, as it is to have a theory of 
 Hamlet, or of the authorship of Junius. Mr. Lewes s 
 book, therefore, is only one more contribution cast 
 upon the heap which, for the last thirty years, has been 
 rising like a pyramid around the bones of the great king 
 of German literature. 
 
 We have already expressed our opinion of the work, 
 in a way which, on a closer perusal, we find but little 
 occasion to qualify. As a narrative,_ it abounds in 
 interest : much of it, indeed, is an acquisition to litera 
 ture ; but the critical parts of it we cannot estimate very 
 highly. Mr. Lewes s principles of art are so superficial, 
 being founded on the shallowest of all philosophies, 
 when applied to the deeper problems of art, that his 
 judgments of Goethe s works are littie worth. The 
 more obvious rhetorical qualities of them he feels and 
 appreciates ; but their interior significance, their real 
 artistic value, he often misses. Cherishing a kind of 
 phobia, as every Positivist must, against everything that 
 does not lie on the surface as plain as the nose on your 
 face ; and having adopted, at the outset, that stupid 
 commonplace of some of the Germans, that Goethe 
 was a Realist, while Schiller was an Idealist, he flurries 
 and flounders, before the Wilhelm Meister and the 
 Faust, like a frail coasting shallop suddenly driven out 
 to sea. He persists, too, in trying to measure the vast 
 billowy waters with the line and lead that may have 
 served him so well among his native creeks and inlets. 
 
 As the result of all that has been said of Goethe, the 
 phrase which best describes him is this : the Artist of 
 
Goethe. 343 
 
 his Age. Mr. Carlyle calls him the Spokesman of his 
 age, and Emerson, varying the term, the Writer ; but 
 it is clear in the case of both, that they use the words 
 as in some sort synonymous with the words poet or 
 artist. He was more than the mere secretary or recorder 
 of the visa el cogitata of his time. He was the man who 
 best expressed its results the utterer of its aspirations 
 the lens which brought its varied tendencies to a focus. 
 He was an artist in that his endowments were peculiarly 
 those of the artist ; because his whole life and training 
 were artistic ; because he produced some of the best 
 specimens of art, in its worthiest department that of 
 poetry ; and because he was so thoroughly possessed by 
 .the idea of art, and devoted to it with such a consistent 
 and absorbing devotion. His entire outward and inward 
 life was one great picture ; the soft atmosphere of beauty 
 was the element he breathed : while he saw, in the 
 issues of art, results as grand, universal, and beneficent 
 as those which the philosopher ascribes to his science 
 or the enthusiast discovers in his religion. He was not, 
 however, like our Shakspeare, the artist of humanity 
 and all time, but only of his age. His mission was to 
 interpret to the first half of the nineteenth century the 
 riddle of its being ; to gather up its weltering facts, 
 sciences, and philosophies, and to hang them on its 
 front as a garland of flowers ; to exhibit the poetry of 
 its vast prosaic explorations ; to detect the unitary and 
 the universal amid its infinite details ; and to mould its 
 distracted activities into some sort of organic vitality. 
 Whatever his deficiencies, then, they were the deficien 
 cies of his era ; and whatever his greatness, it was the 
 greatness of that era consummated in a single head, or, 
 rather, precipitated from its solutions by the wonderful 
 electricity of genius into a few single and brilliant 
 results. 
 
344 Goethe. 
 
 We shall the better perceive the force of these truths if. 
 following Mr. Lewes, we first run over briefly the lead 
 ing incidents of his career, and the more prominent 
 traits of his writings. 
 
 All the earlier circumstances of Goethe s life seem 
 to have been peculiarly adapted to the development of 
 his fine natural parts. Frankfort, his birth-place, so 
 cosily lying among the gardens and green fields of the 
 silver-flowing Maine, though a provincial town, was 
 hoary with ancient associations, and yet beginning to 
 bustle with modern activity. Its fairs and coronations, 
 its quaint old customs and fantastic parades, its cloisters 
 and trenches and queer gabled buildings, contrasting 
 with the stir of commerce and free-citizenship, were 
 things likely to excite a youthful imagination. The 
 little Wolfgang, with an organization so sensitive that 
 already, in his ninth week, as Bettina amusingly tells 
 us, he had troubled dreams ; who could be convulsed 
 by a look at the moon, and was savagely intolerant of 
 any kind of deformity or discord, and withal insatiable 
 in his thirst for nursery tales (of which the good mother 
 fortunately had a store), was early and richly nourished 
 by the gloom and the glitter of his native city. A 
 genial, brown-eyed, handsome child, he appears to have 
 absorbed all influences with a keen relish, and yet with 
 calm thoughtfulness. For the most part he saw exist 
 ence on the sunnier side, in country rambles, amid 
 cheerful friends, rural occupations, home sports, studies 
 of art, and coronation magnificences. But the darker 
 aspects were not wanting to him, as \ve see in what he 
 has told us of his trembling visits to the Jews quarter, 
 of the skulls of state criminals grinning from the 
 highways, of the judicial burnings of books, of the 
 seven years war, with its excitements and family feuds, 
 and of the great earthquake at Lisbon, which spread 
 
Goethe. 345 
 
 consternation over the world. Mr. Lewes, in his ac 
 count, has doubtless omitted many of these details, be 
 cause they were already so charmingly narrated in the 
 autobiography. 
 
 It was a good thing for the young Goethe, with his 
 sensibilities and impulses, that his father was of a rigid 
 didactic turn, with a hand and eye for art, and an un 
 yielding zeal for discipline. For he was thereby indoc 
 trinated into science and history, into half a dozen lan 
 guages, into riding, and drawing, and dancing, and 
 other graceful accomplishments. The warm affection 
 and active fancy of one parent fed his heart and imagi 
 nation, while the stern teachings of the other trained 
 him into character and self-command. On the one side 
 was the dear and noble literature of the nursery, with its 
 ballads and snatches of old song, and puppet-shows, 
 opening the child s paradise ; and on the other was 
 classic lore, severe tutorships, and innumerable accu 
 racies and drillings, with now and then an appeal to 
 ambition. At the same time, the social position of the 
 family drew about it decided men men of strong na 
 tures and cultivation, whose houses were furnished with 
 books and pictures, and whose talk was full of charac 
 ter and thought. All this aroused the intellect of the 
 boy ; who, in executing little errands among artists and 
 tradesmen, was also often brought in contact with 
 the humbler classes, where he saw life in its narrowness 
 and debasement. It was in one of these excursions 
 from his own charmed circle into the nether regions of 
 want and despair, that he was led into that first serious 
 experience, which imparts so singular a pathos to his 
 boyish life the passion for Gretchen, at once full of 
 simplicity, fervor, distress a passion which rose upon 
 him like a fair young dream, and then, after a few 
 months of delicious dalliance, withdrew into the night, 
 15* 
 
346 Goethe. 
 
 leaving him dark and lonely and inconsolable. That 
 experience never entirely passed away ; for when the 
 impetuous boy had grown into the world-famous man, 
 the vanished Gretchen reappears as the sad, sweet, im 
 perishable Margaret of the Faust. 
 
 Goethe s youth was a continuation of the same favor 
 able influences, controlled by a strong inward force, 
 which had surrounded his childhood. His student 
 years at Leipsic, Strasbourg, etc. (of which Mr. Lewes 
 gives the best account that we have seen, vastly better 
 than Goethe s own, where the most interesting parts are 
 strangely disguised), cover a period in which opinion on 
 all subjects was undergoing a singular ferment. Full of 
 buoyancy, of hope, of uncouth provincial life, yet glow 
 ing with the consciousness of uncommon strength, "he 
 had," as Wieland said afterward, "the devil in him at 
 times, and could fling out before and behind like a 
 young colt." He seemed fitted for all fortunes for 
 fun, frolic, adventure, study, logic, and eke love and 
 religion. Among the musty professors, and the wild, 
 break-neck, but withal intellectual students, he was at 
 home with all a young unacknowledged giant, secretly 
 glorying in his prowess, now and then" using it in very 
 grotesque fashions yet docile, pretensionless, avid of all 
 sorts of knowledge, and possessed of a great, free, and 
 laughing heart. 
 
 German literature was very much in the same in 
 choate condition as himself: in the flush of a mighty 
 youth striving to emancipate itself from the swaddling 
 bands of timidity, imitation, and awkwardness, and 
 dashing forward to a career of original and self-sustained 
 power. A watery deluge, says Goethe, swelled up to 
 the very top of the Teutonic Parnassus. Yet a rainbow 
 of promise began to form itself upon the clouds. One 
 by one, minds of considerable magnitude managed to 
 
Goethe. 347 
 
 emerge from the prevailing obscurity. Gunther, Gotts- 
 ched, Gellert, Gessner, each in his line, did something 
 to bring back the national writing from the stateliness of 
 Roman decorum, and the tinsel of French glitter, to 
 German nature and truth. But the most complete revo 
 lution was effected by three men, very different from 
 each other, Klopstock, Lessing, and Wieland, of whose 
 efforts Mr. Lewes gives a just critical view. The strug 
 gle was long and difficult, giving rise to some of the 
 fiercest battles of words that were ever fought. 
 
 Goethe, with constitutional ardor, threw himself into 
 the thickest of the fight. He pierced at once the very 
 heart of the mystery which had baffled inferior intel 
 lects. His good sense, his prodigious attainments in 
 both ancient and modern learning, but more than all, 
 the unerring instincts of the born poet, enabled him to 
 unravel the twists of the critics, and expose the inner 
 and deeper principles of art. Early taught in the 
 school of the noble old Hebrew prophets and singers, 
 and more recently initiated into the wizard ring of 
 Shakspeare s genius, he contemptuously broke through 
 the entanglements of a formal and shallow pedantry, 
 and soared away into the clearer regions of poetic truth. 
 He saw the barrenness, the constraint, the utter futility 
 of the prescriptive principles which then prevailed ; he 
 saw that artists were laboring over the stiff and hard 
 shell of the matter, not even suspecting the existence of 
 a kernel ; and then with doubt at first, with mani 
 fold trial and sorrow, and perplexities afterward he 
 labored painfully but surely into a conception of what 
 the modern spirit demanded of art. 
 
 His attention, however, was not exclusively confined 
 to the literary and artistic strivings of his contempora 
 ries. All the sciences, and nearly all learning, along 
 with civil society itself, partook of the general confusion, 
 
348 Goethe. 
 
 while his nature was such that it could not rest till it 
 was all set right in his head. Medicine, philosophy, 
 jurisprudence, religion, he pursued with almost as 
 much fidelity as art -; and he endeavored, with the 
 same native and decided force, to master and mould 
 their elements into unity. And the singular triumph 
 of his activity, the great beauty of his power, was, that 
 these tormenting and momentous inquiries were carried 
 on in the midst of a most exuberant and joyous out 
 ward life curious adventures, such as are known only 
 to the roistering student-life of Germany ; frequent and 
 frolicsome rambles by flood and field ; tavern-scenes ; 
 visits to distant famous structures, even to manufac 
 tures and mines ; and love-commitments that stirred 
 the profoundest depths of emotion. A constant inter 
 est in all the doings of courts and cottages, alternated 
 with protracted studies, with deep, almost agonizing 
 questionings of the riddles of the world. Thus, what 
 ever the matter in hand, his broad, mercurial, rich na 
 ture was found to get at the bottom of it, to compre 
 hend it, to make it entirely his own. No half-way 
 tasting of existence, in any of its forms, was satisfactory 
 to him ; no manifestation of the great soul of human 
 ity, be it a rural pastime or a great world-venerated in 
 tellectual system, was uninteresting to him ; he looked 
 at mankind, in all their likings and leavings, with open 
 eye, and with sunny, open heart. In Carlyle s para 
 phrase of his own distich 
 
 "Life, his inheritance, broad and fair; 
 Earth was his seed-field, to time he was heir." 
 
 With such a nature, and such a development of it, 
 having met and overcome most of the trials of the more 
 impulsive periods of life a naturally strong, noble fig- 
 
Goethe. 349 
 
 ure of a man, richly adorned and embroidered with all 
 the graces that fortune, family education, and society 
 can superadd Goethe found a sphere for which he was 
 peculiarly prepared, in the brilliant court of Karl Au 
 gust. The young Prince of Weimar, attaining his ma 
 jority and his power just about the same time, was 
 fortunately one who had a heart capable of love, as well 
 as a head fit to rule. The sudden but lasting attach 
 ment which sprang up between himself and Goethe, 
 was as honorable to both as it appears to have been cor 
 dial and dignified. A thoughtless radicalism has im 
 puted it to Goethe, that this, on his part, was a devotion 
 to the ruler, rather than to the man ; but the fact was, 
 that this friendship was one of reciprocal respect and 
 equal favor, where any social advantages conferred by 
 the archduke were more than compensated by the ce 
 lebrity conferred by the poet. The life of neither of 
 these illustrious personages was made up of court- 
 parades or court-intrigue, but of useful labors in their 
 several spheres. Karl governed his little province with 
 a manly sense of his duty: Goethe immortalized it by 
 the best works of the best modern literature. Indeed, 
 it was a rare and beautiful sight, this intimacy and good 
 will cemented in earliest youth, and carried on to late 
 old age between one worthily born of a race of kings, 
 and another destined to become greater than any king. 
 There was nothing in it to carp at there was much in 
 it to admire. Goethe it placed at once in a position 
 where his majestic and graceful intellect could freely 
 unfold in a circle of cultivated friends, possessed of 
 leisure and means for the pursuit of art, and capable of 
 the most delicate appreciation of his own lofty endow 
 ments. An organization so fine, and yet so magnifi 
 cent, found its genial atmosphere in the almost ideal 
 refinement of a court. The simplicity of his manners 
 
35o Goethe. 
 
 could not be corrupted by it, while it nourished and en 
 riched his imagination. True, Jean Paul has said that 
 "under golden mountains many a spiritual giant lies 
 buried ;" but had they been greater giants, they might, 
 as Goethe did, have melted these mountains into images 
 of beauty. 
 
 His court-life was valuable to him, however, riot be 
 cause of its glitter and show, but because it simply gave 
 him freedom. Tis a mistake to suppose that genius 
 always thrives best in loneliness and poverty. Life of 
 every sort finds its most sure and healthful growth in a 
 fitting and congenial medium. Burns as a peasant 
 was no greater than he would have been as a prince : 
 on the other hand, a larger nurture would have aided in 
 a larger development. Men of strong native force will, 
 no doubt, overcome obstacles of formidable compass ; 
 but the same force exerts itself all the more effectively, 
 where such obstacles are wanting, or of less oppressive 
 magnitude. In the one case, we may get a rugged, 
 monstrous upshoot a very Polyphemus of savage en 
 ergy ; in the other, we are likely to have a mightier, self- 
 poised, majestic Jupiter. Gold mountains have buried 
 many a spiritual giant ;" yes, but there have been many 
 more in this world, buried in mud-holes and ditches. 
 
 Goethe, we have said, valued his prosperous condition 
 for its freedom : it gave him opportunities for a rare 
 and expansive culture ; it gave him books ; it gave him 
 the instruments of art ; it gave him access to all modes 
 of life, to all classes of society ; and what was better 
 than all, and so essential to his being, the means of a 
 free communion with nature by observation and travel. 
 That impartial judgment of men and things, which was 
 one of the kindly traits of his character ; that many- 
 sided interest in all that relates to the intellectual desti 
 nies of humanity ; his unceasing researches into the 
 
Goethe. 35 1 
 
 realms of science, and his miraculous activity in those 
 of literature, are all to be more or less ascribed to the 
 graceful comfort of his external circumstances. Had 
 he been cramped and tortured by the pressures of in 
 digence as poor dear Richter was this .impassive 
 Goethe, the delight of women and the admiration of 
 men, might have become a rude, double-fisted icono 
 clast, battering away at all established things, with the 
 fierce rage and revenge of a demon. It would have 
 been a sight, truly that, for men to look at and tremble ! 
 such sights being necessary, too, at times ; but we are 
 persuaded that Goethe has served us better in another 
 way. 
 
 Goethe s life at court was not in any hurtful degree 
 the life of a courtier. It was a life of universal activity, 
 and of broad intercourse with men. With a princely 
 family at its head, whose taste diffused a love of art and 
 letters, while its active beneficence cherished the best 
 affections of the people ; with the two most illustrious 
 of poets to give tone to its opinions and provide its 
 amusements ; with the excellent Herder and kindred 
 spirits for its preachers and models of virtue ; visited 
 all the year by Richters, and Humboldts, and De 
 Staels, by the most eminent in rank, and science, and 
 letters, of all lands ; the centre of thought and literary 
 productiveness to cultivated Germany it was just the 
 sphere for his peculiar taste. Yet he was not confined 
 to it. He often sought the refreshment of more rural 
 scenes now wandering away into the sublimities of 
 Switzerland, and then again losing himself amid the 
 beauties of Italy. Who, indeed, can estimate the in 
 fluences upon his growth of these journeyings? The 
 record of them is in his works in those conceptions of 
 the All-Fair, which, filling his soul, overflowed into 
 speech. What must Italy, always so enrapturing to 
 
352 Goethe. 
 
 the northern imagination, have been to the fancy of 
 Goethe ? A land of wonder, of magic, of glory. Its 
 monuments of the highest that man has achieved in 
 art its statues, its pictures, its architecture, and its 
 music its theatres of the grandest that man has achieved 
 in history its hills and vales, its waters and its skies so 
 early longed after, so passionately enjoyed, as the lover 
 longs for his mistress, and dissolves in the soft ecstasy 
 of her embrace these translate him into another and 
 heavenly world. "This day," said he, referring to his 
 first sight of the paradise of art, " this day I was born 
 anew." 
 
 Thus, in endless studies, in the freest interchanges 
 of friendship, in the creation of immortal forms, in 
 delicious visits to the most delicious climes, the years 
 of Goethe s manhood passed away. For eighty years 
 he "knew no rest and no haste/ like a star, keeping 
 on its " God-appointed way;" when death came it 
 met him busy with the pen the implement at once of 
 his pleasure and his power; and he sank, as a child 
 sinks to sleep, with the glow of the day s activity still on 
 his cheek, and looking forward to a morrow of hope 
 and joy. "Let the light enter," were his last words 
 answered, we trust, from a region where all is light. 
 
 Having seen the life of the man, let us next consider 
 some of the fruits of it ; and what strikes us first, is 
 their variety, in itself a proof of power, if not of merit. 
 He wrote elegies, epigrams, ballads, songs, odes, 
 satires, novels, biographies, translations, essays, trage 
 dies, and books of science, and most of them with a 
 peculiar and exquisite skill. His poems modulate 
 through all the keys. His prose is the most graceful 
 and transparent in German. His works of science, 
 though partly superseded by more recent labors, are yet 
 authorities in the closet. We read them all with de- 
 
Goethe. 353 
 
 light, and, while reading them, think the one imme 
 diately before us the best. It is only on mature critical 
 reflection that we learn to discriminate their comparative 
 values. A few are then seen to be inferior, like Stella 
 and his comedies generally ; others, again, like Clavigo, 
 not superior to average productions in that kind ; but 
 the greater part fix themselves in the memory as per 
 manent and indestructible forms. 
 
 Assuming the Iliad as a standard, the walk of art in 
 which he was least eminent was the epic. His Achil- 
 leis, it is true, seems like a fragment of the old Grecian 
 song, but only a fragment ; it has none of the breadth 
 of outline, and intensity, and weight of interest, which 
 give so much grandeur to the pages of Homer. Could 
 we call the Hermann and Dorothea an epic, instead of 
 an idyl, we should still have the same qualifications to 
 make ; for while it is perfect in its way, full of sweet 
 pastoral simplicity and artless grace, breathing the odor 
 of new-mown hay, and cheerful with the song of birds, 
 its interest is scarcely more than individual or private. 
 A dark burden of war gathers its gloomy folds tran 
 siently over the lovely scene ; but it soon rolls away into 
 the distance, leaving the landscape as gentle as ever, 
 and the men and children and cattle come forth to re 
 sume their labors in the fields. Nor can we estimate 
 the dramatic power of Goethe as highly as some have 
 done ; in which respect we agree with Mr. Lewes. His 
 dramas are wonderful poems ; but are rather dramatic 
 in their external form than in inward principle. Con 
 sidering them as poems, and not as dramas, they mostly 
 impress us by their richness and variety. Their very 
 names recall to the reader familiar with them a series of 
 beautiful images. There is old Goetz of Berlichingen 
 the burly robber-hero the iron-fisted self-helper" 
 with his robust earnestness, his heroic, tender af- 
 
Goethe. 
 
 fection, his violent, deep-rooted feudal hatreds perish 
 ing at last, like the era of which he was a type in a 
 calm, almost voiceless, despair. There is Egmont, 
 encircled by a mild splendor, like the glory which 
 wreathed the head of his own Clarchen in the vision, 
 walking through the distractions of a tumultuous, cor 
 rupt time, as the moon wades among the gathering 
 night-clouds. Noble, famous, rich, glowing with pur 
 pose and hope, yet too wise or too weak for his age, he 
 cannot yield and cannot conquer, and so exhales, from 
 a troubled, weary environment, amid sweet dreams of 
 love and glory, and the sound of muffled drums. There 
 is Tasso, in all his strength and weakness, surrounded 
 _by the splendors of a court and the applause of the 
 world, yet pining in hopeless love, in morbid self- 
 communings, lofty ideals alternating with miserable 
 jealousies, and the tenderest, noblest of minds going 
 out in darkness, till he seems like some grand ruin of 
 his own Italy, lifting its masses of foliage into the crystal 
 air and deep blue skies, when the sun retires behind 
 the purple mountains and leaves it alone with the 
 shadows and the stars. And, then, there is the Iphi- 
 genia that stately Grecian maiden translated to a 
 Christian clime as severe in her beauty as the creator 
 of Antigone would have chiselled her, and yet as 
 lovely, and tender, and sweet as our modern religion 
 renders the soul of woman. All these are inimitable 
 pictures ; but our space warns us not to dwell upon 
 them in detail. 
 
 The most original, and altogether wonderful of 
 Goethe s dramas, is the Faust, which stands alone in its 
 kind, as the Iliad and King Lear do in their kinds. 
 We know of no poem in any language to the writing of 
 which there was requisite a more various and exalted 
 combination of faculties. Other poems may be more 
 
Goethe. 36 5 
 
 organically perfect, and evince in the authors of them 
 a larger possession of certain high faculties, but none 
 show a possession of so many of the highest faculties. 
 It is epic, tragic, and lyric, all at once a complete 
 story, and a development of character, mingled with 
 gushes of song. Almost every feeling of the human 
 breast is expressed in it ; the grand, the pathetic, the 
 thoughtful, the capricious, and the supernatural alter 
 nate, as in a dream ; grotesque and scornful faces peer 
 on us from its mystic pages ; visions of baffled efforts, 
 and wasted hopes, and broken hearts break in among 
 choirs of angelic voices ; men, and monsters, and 
 seraphs, and the Supreme God even, take part in the 
 ever-shifting play. 
 
 Wild as the drama is, however, tumultuous and 
 many -voiced as are its sounds, from the harsh discords 
 of devils laughs, to the sweetest, tenderest human 
 utterances, it is singularly true in its delineations of 
 character. The personages, of the first part more 
 especially, are real living beings, as much so as Mac 
 beth or the Moor. Faust himself, with his far-reaching 
 thoughts and insatiate but baffled thirst for knowledge, 
 is as near to the mind of every thinking man as ever 
 was the reflective, unhappy Hamlet. His early yearn 
 ings for truth, his weariness at the stale, flat, and 
 unprofitable commonplaces of the world, his fond eager 
 ness to love, his great wrestlings with evil, and his sub 
 sequent self-abandonment and woe, reach the depths of 
 our hearts, and seem experiences that have been, or may 
 yet be, our own. We feel that we, too, have been borne 
 along by the same tempestuous waves of life. Has 
 not his companion, Mephisto, been our companion 
 also ? Do we not recognize him as a well-known indi 
 vidual, who has whispered many a temptation into our 
 ears, or, what is worse, has whispered many a conso- 
 
3^6 Goethe. 
 
 lation ? Ever true to the laws of his being, he is a hid 
 eous disguised consistency throughout ; and, as some 
 one has said, the identical devil of modern times. In 
 equal clearness, but strongly contrasted from him by 
 her innocence, and from Faust by her contented sim 
 plicity, stands the gentle Gretchen, whose story unseals 
 the deepest fountains of love and pity. We take to the 
 artless maiden, as a true product of nature, from the 
 first ; we grow happy with her in the brief spring of 
 affection that opens upon her young hopes ; our heart 
 breaks with hers, in her cruel betrayal ; and, when 
 she departs, during that horrid night in the dungeon, 
 her poor distressed brain, like Ophelia s, quite shat 
 tered, we listen to her expiring words as to a voice 
 from the spirit-land, summoning us all to judgment 
 on her account. It seems as if the whole world of 
 man were condemned by the sad issue of such a 
 fate. 
 
 The prose writings of Goethe manifest the same origi 
 nal and masterly genius as his poems. We might give 
 in evidence of this his Werther, which set all Europe 
 agog, and his Elective Affinities, which extorted from 
 all Christendom a howl (while all Europe and all 
 Christendom devoured both) ; but we shall confine 
 our remarks to Wilhelm Meister, which is, doubtless, 
 his masterpiece. As a narrative, it is generally pro 
 nounced destitute of interest ; for, like the needy knife- 
 grinder, " Story, God bless you, it has none to tell, sir ;" 
 and there is only the slightest development of plot in 
 it no highly-wrought or intense scenes, no grandilo 
 quent or morbid personages, who stamp and tear about 
 for nothing, and only events, for the most part common 
 place and unimportant, following each other in a lan 
 guid way that quite persuades the admiring reader to a 
 gentle sleep. Compared with the mobs of incident 
 
Goethe. 367 
 
 that dash and thunder through more modern tales, it is 
 tame even to an extreme of dulness. 
 
 Yet, by observing a little while, we find in it a clear 
 self-subsistent world, rilled with actual men and women, 
 whose actions, though not great or extraordinary, are 
 very much the actions of humans. They are characters 
 of real life ; their foibles and virtues alike drawn with 
 an unsparing hand, and presented as samples of this 
 very various world for our study, and not as heroes for 
 our worship. The author writes as though he had no 
 further interest in them than he would have in the same 
 number of indifferent individuals anywhere ; he merely 
 raises a curtain to let us see what they are at, and all 
 their sayings and doings, some of them fantastic enough, 
 he watches with imperturbable gravity. At times, we 
 should be inclined to think that he despises the whole 
 pack of them, if he did not go on parading them with 
 the utmost calmness, betraying not the slightest disap 
 proval or vexation at anything they do, and shrinking 
 from no untoward discovery. He writes their biography 
 with the most scrupulous fidelity a fidelity which has 
 this advantage for us, that we get gradually a deeper 
 interest in their proceedings. We come to watch their 
 movements, to listen to their long talks, and even to 
 suspect that, after all, they may possess some signifi 
 cance. The suspicion is helped out by certain general 
 remarks we happen upon quite too simple and obvious 
 as they seem at first but which cling to the memory, 
 and transform themselves, in some way or other, to 
 profound suggestions, as if the observation and insight 
 of a long, busy life were suddenly deposited there. 
 Then we are aroused at intervals by single passages 
 of a splendid and majestic eloquence ; criticisms of 
 art, brief but rare ; penetrating, comprehensive, far- 
 .reaching glances into practical life and the philosophy 
 
358 Goethe. 
 
 of trade, business, and human nature, accompanied by 
 a most provoking tolerance of all seeming human 
 weaknesses, and a most genial sympathy with all human 
 strivings. Sometimes we stumble on chance allusions 
 that open up wondrous depths ; obscure hints growing 
 every moment more palpable, till they stand forth as 
 luminous, world-embracing truths ; light sparkles of 
 wit, which at the outset merely flash upon the senses, 
 but, before the end of it, condense in the mind into 
 gems of wisdom ; manifest traces of an almost uni 
 versal culture in the author ; little outbreaks of song, 
 that make the whole heart ache, we know not why : to 
 say nothing of entire pages of poetry, in the shape, 
 perhaps, of a critique on Hamlet, or of lofty sentiments, 
 and noble original views of religion all flowing in a 
 language of liquid sweetness. The upshot of the mat 
 ter is, that our "dull-seeming, slow-moving Thespis 
 cart" changes itself, as if by enchantment, into an ideal 
 realm ; the theatrical life of the hero, with its trivialities 
 of all sorts, its high aspirings and slender realizings, is 
 seen as an illuminated picture of a much higher life, 
 where every incident has a higher end, and every charac 
 ter embodies higher phases in human development. 
 The vivacious Philena, the clear-minded Jarno, the 
 beneficent Natalia, the manly Lothario, the dignified 
 Abbe, the cultivated Uncle the mysterious, melancholy 
 Harper, and that singular child of enthusiasm and suf 
 fering, the wild boy-girl Mignon a beam from heaven 
 struggling through the dank vapors of earth all attach 
 us to them with a feeling of brotherhood, as elements 
 of that manifold rich life of which we, too, are a part as 
 notes and tones in that universal melody which nature 
 is ever sending up to her God. 
 
 If Goethe, who is everywhere great, is anywhere 
 greatest, it is in his songs and ballads. It was his habit 
 
Goethe. 359 
 
 through life to turn all his experiences into poetry, that 
 he might thereby work off the burden of his emotions, 
 whether joyful or sad. A writer in the British Review 
 lately, in a generally able article, describes his lyrics as 
 marked by " deliberativeness," comparing him in this 
 respect with Wordsworth. But, to us they seem the op 
 posite of deliberative ; the very outpourings of his mind 
 in all its moods ; a melodious diary of daily and almost 
 hourly changes of feeling ; simple breathings of the in 
 ward life; sparkling jets of momentary thought and 
 affection. We find a perpetual freshness and reality 
 about them, like the bloom of new spring-flowers. 
 Speaking of the present, the actual, the world around 
 and in us, they possess a hearty human interest. Even 
 when their meaning is insignificant, they ring through 
 us, to haunt the memory and imagination, like snatches 
 of Mozart s music. The correspondence of the form 
 with the substance is so perfect, yet simple, that the 
 charm defies all analysis. It is felt, but not detected. 
 As Carlyle says of Burns s songs, they sing themselves ; 
 they are favorites with composers as they are with the 
 people ; and once heard, cling to the brain like spells. 
 Then, again, how diversified these lyrics ! some as 
 simple as the whimperings of a child ; others grotesque, . 
 na ive, or full of a devil-may-care animal spirit ; others 
 tender, plaintive, thoughtful ; others wild and unearthly, 
 and others again, proud, lofty, defiant, like the words 
 of a Titan heaping his scorn upon the gods. 
 
 John Dwight, one of our finest critics of art, says 
 of these, that "they are as remarkable for their wild 
 grandeur of thought and language as they are for their 
 irregular, unrhymed, dithyrambic measure. There is 
 something in their Greek, chorus-like, mysterious style 
 and movement, which cannot be lost without losing 
 all their poetry. They breathe the old Greek atmos- 
 
360 Goethe. 
 
 phere of ^schylus. The soul s proud assertion of it 
 self in Prometheus; 5 the child-like, unquestioning awe 
 and wonder, and even admiration, with which the sub 
 limity of destiny is celebrated in the Limits of Man, 
 in such lofty unalterable language, as if destiny itself 
 had fitted each word in its place ; the delicious unrest 
 of the Spring feeling, the yearning to be taken up with 
 which nature s beauty overcomes the ravished soul, so 
 sweetly clothed in the fable of Ganymede ; the simple 
 majesty of the Godlike ; all have an air of unpre 
 meditated inspired beauty and grandeur, which defies 
 imitation ; and they lose much of their reality and 
 charm in any other language. What ballads, in any 
 literature, are comparable to the Bride of Corinth, the 
 Erl-King, and the God and the Bayadere ? " We are 
 happy to have our taste confirmed by such an authority. 
 Without dwelling, however, upon the mere literary 
 excellence of Goethe s performances, or even attempt 
 ing a general characterization of his literary genius, let 
 us proceed to explain why he is called so emphatically 
 the artist of his age. It is the more important because 
 his English biographer, true to the behests of an incom 
 petent philosophy, seems to ignore this as part of the 
 matter altogether, and stands dumbfoundered in the pres 
 ence of the pervading symbolism of Goethe s writings. 
 A work of art, like a product of nature, is to him a 
 simple fact, having relations to other facts, but no in 
 ward spiritual meaning. He is, therefore, perpetually 
 quarrelling with what he terms the mysticism of Goethe 
 (although he had already pronounced him a great 
 realist), and is pained at the obvious lapse of his facul 
 ties in the latter parts of Meister and Faust. But this 
 " mysticism" is as much a part of Goethe s being as his 
 clearness of vision, or his serene wisdom, and demands 
 as much the nicest study of the critics. 
 
Goethe. 361 
 
 The explanation of it is simply this : that Goethe, as 
 a man of genius and poet, was profoundly penetrated 
 and possessed by all the vague struggling influences and 
 aspirations of his time, and sought to give them melo 
 dious expression. The breath of the. Divine Provi 
 dence, which animated his century, only animated him 
 the more interiorly and strongly, and the task of his 
 genius was, to embody its suggestions in permanent 
 forms. He lived from the middle of the eighteenth 
 century (1749) to near the middle of the nineteenth 
 century (1832), through the most remarkable period 
 of crisis and transition that the world ever saw. An 
 old era was coming to an end, amid the decay and de 
 struction of many things, and a new era was endeavor 
 ing to get formed. There was agitation, confusion, 
 perplexity, everywhere ; "private life," as Varnhagen 
 von Ense says, in an Essay in which he arrives at the 
 same view of Goethe that we have formed, "full of suf 
 fering, and the world at variance with itself; old forms, 
 long diseased and baneful, unable to bind the fresh life 
 to their own death, and new unfolding forms yet with 
 out a sanction." 
 
 Now, these were the elements with which the poetry 
 of that epoch, or so much of it as was true and not a 
 reminiscence, had to deal. Accordingly, we find, in 
 the series of Goethe s works, a complete bodying forth 
 of the successive steps of progress in the mighty strug 
 gle. In the earliest, the Goetz, we take a look back 
 into the feudal time, and see it perish before us, in 
 the person of the tenacious, stalwart hero, with a cry of 
 woe to those that come after ! Wehe der Nachkommen- 
 schaft! Then follows the Werther, with its vapid senti- 
 mentalism, and passionate winnings, and morbid self- 
 love and sorrow, expressive of the chronic discontent of 
 society, full of skepticism and black despair, and which, 
 16 
 
362 Goethe. 
 
 unable to reconcile itself to its condition, or get extri 
 cated therefrom, goes off in explosive violence. In the 
 Elective Affinities, says Varnhagen, whom we merely 
 abridge, is a recurrence to the same theme, but with 
 greater depth of passion and less external vehemence. 
 Restlessness has subsided into impatience or suppressed 
 hope. The soul asserts its natural freedom, but sub 
 missively, and with a sad consciousness of its impotence 
 in the presence of inevitable circumstances. Without 
 revolting openly against existing forms, it postpones its 
 fruitions to another world, where hearts long severed may 
 unite again in the bonds of a free, spiritual attraction. 
 
 In Wilhelm Meister s Apprenticeship the view of life 
 has reached a higher plane. Doubt and distraction 
 have not wholly ceased, but the prospect of a free and 
 noble natural existence is not shut out from the present 
 earth. Casting aside all petty personal grievances, the 
 hero submits to all modes of living and doing, in the 
 hope of working off every disquietude by a placid and 
 perpetual activity. By the very exertion of his powers, 
 he is made conscious of new and potent charms in 
 life, so that its most commonplace details are set to a 
 music, not wholly divine, and yet more than earthly. 
 The moodiness and madness of the self-torturing spirit, 
 give place to tranquil, serious endeavors ; the clouds 
 fall away ; a mild effulgence reveals vistas of pleasant 
 fields, and, though we reach no great ethical height, no 
 broad Christian views of things, we still catch glimpses 
 of the infinitely rich and varied possibilities of life, 
 under a noble human culture. But it is only in the 
 Wanderings that the inadequacy of the previous view is 
 filled up, and work becomes worship, and the discord 
 ant elements of society are reconciled by a scheme of 
 co-operative and constructive freedom. What an antici 
 pation by the poet of St. Simon and Fourier ! 
 
Goethe 363 
 
 "In the Wander jahre," continues Varnhagen, "a 
 comprehensive view of a new order is drawn in firm, 
 not rigid characters, with poetical freedom. The 
 necessities of daily life take their rank by the side of 
 the highest elevation of mind ; Christianity works in 
 the form of mild piety ; education spreads out her 
 establishments, powerful and all-comprehensive ; the 
 taste for art, richly bestowed on individuals, becomes a 
 universal advantage ; the mechanical arts and trades, 
 led by wise arrangements from their destructive rivalry, 
 take their station without fear beside the higher arts, 
 certain of receiving from them due honor and appreci 
 ation ; natural disposition and capacity determine and 
 ennoble every occupation. The false and incongruous 
 position of woman disappears before rightly-assorted 
 marriages, which bring together unequal classes. They 
 are exalted into free ministers of a religion of love and 
 beneficence. A new estimate of things and of actions, 
 a new choice and distribution of the lots of life, a new 
 sense of the good and the beautiful, are disclosed, by 
 means of an Association, extending over the whole 
 earth, full of liberal activity, of respect for the highest 
 and for the least ; busied in extinguishing crime and 
 want, and affording the rich prospect of mankind 
 advancing in culture and in industry ; whose maxim 
 may be, in worldly things, a fair share in the possession 
 and enjoyment of the stock of good existing for every 
 member ; in what relates to the attractions of mind, the 
 liberation of the prohibited possible from all fetters that 
 can be broken/ It is evident from this, that if Goethe 
 had given us a third part of the Meister (necessary to 
 the completion of the original design), we should have 
 had, in Wilhelm s Meislerjahre, a wonderful fore 
 shadowing of the various socialistic experiments of this 
 age. But the time was not then ripe. 
 
364 Goethe. 
 
 For the full and condensed expression of his mystical 
 insight we must turn to the two parts of Faust, which, 
 begun in the author s earliest years, and completed only 
 near his death, runs parallel in its development with 
 that of his own being. It is the grand resume and con 
 summation of his thought and hope. Abysmal, wild, 
 and heterogeneous as it seems, there is yet a unity per 
 vading it which, though not wholly organic, gives to it 
 a certain consistency and life. All the spiritual worlds 
 are gathered to watch its issues ; all humanity is in 
 volved in them. As a legend, the fable had its origin 
 in the middle ages, but in its actual working out, the 
 century of Goethe is transfixed on every page. Faust 
 comes before us as one who has exhausted science in 
 the pursuit of individual and selfish ends ; as a repre 
 sentative of the age of "victorious analysis" and natural 
 research. Having worn away the golden days of youth 
 in the service of the intellect, his manhood is weary of 
 the result is saddened, disappointed, withered, and 
 would fain throw away its barren and empty life. A 
 nameless unrest surges through his soul, and no attain 
 ment in knowledge, no conquest of nature, is able to 
 speak the word of peace to the billows. All his selfish- 
 seeking turns to vanity in the fruition. It drives him 
 but further from his fellow-man and from God. A 
 chill isolation and solitude is the recompense of his toil. 
 Musty parchments get heaped about him, and skeletons 
 and grinning skulls, till, in the agony of baffled en 
 deavor, he curses life and all its fancied joys, and even 
 that patience which endures its woes. There is hence 
 forth for him only contempt, and mockery, and denial. 
 And it is out of this mood that Mephistophcles, his evil 
 spirit, his other and lower self, the incarnation of the 
 intellect and the senses, is born Mephistopheles, who 
 hurries him along, from moral indifference to sensual 
 
Goethe. 366 
 
 indulgence, from debauchery to seduction, and from 
 seduction to murder, till his soul, in its hideous riot 
 and self-abandonment, breeds the monstrous crew who 
 celebrate their triumph in the fearful witch-dances of 
 the Brocken. This principle of evil works itself out 
 still further, till the first part of the tragedy closes 
 in a scene of heart-rending dislocation and eternal 
 woe. 
 
 In the second part we are shown the social effects of 
 the same evil an incoherent society, which is but one 
 vast masquerade, where the spokesmen are fools and the 
 only recognized nexus money a stupendous paper 
 lie. Faust, as the representative of humanity, plunges 
 into the midst of the mad whirl, strives to penetrate the 
 mystery of its iniquity and errors, but in vain. He 
 summons the antiquated faiths, and finds them the chil 
 dren of chimera: he worships the spirit of ancient 
 beauty in the person of the rejuvenated Helen, and she 
 disappears as suddenly as she had appeared, leaving him 
 only her vesture : he engages in war and commerce, and 
 everywhere guilt, and care, and distress dog his steps 
 till at last, old, blinded, hopeless, rich, and miserable, he 
 deliberately abandons his quest, surrenders his purpose 
 of directing his own way, abjures his individual ends, 
 and gives himself up to work. "What ho ! ye myriads 
 of humans," he cries, "relinquish your empty search, 
 and go dig the earth ! Spread yourselves, in free crea 
 tive activity, over the globe lay fire to the snug little 
 private dwellings of the fond old couples fill in the 
 remorseless marshes and pools rescue the land from 
 the devouring ocean, till nature is brought into obe 
 dience to man, and ye all shall stand, finally, a free peo 
 ple upon a soil as free." But no sooner has Faust dis 
 charged himself of responsibility for himself, no sooner 
 has he resolved upon a life of spontaneous creative 
 
366 Goethe. 
 
 activity, than he finds, to his surprise, that the goal is 
 won. He calls upon the beautiful day to linger, be 
 cause his earth is now transformed into heaven. The 
 sin, and suffering, and sorrow of the past are forgotten 
 in the glories of a better consciousness ; legions of 
 angels drop roses from the celestial voids ; even the 
 rocks break forth into song ; and all who had ever 
 sinned and suffered reappear (among them the sweet, 
 but no longer heart-broken maiden, einsl Grelchen 
 genannt], as leaders of a heavenly throng who welcome 
 the spirit of Faust to the regions of the redeemed, in a 
 mystic sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and praise. 
 
RUSKIN S WRITINGS.* 
 
 |R. RUSKIN stands confessedly at the head of 
 all English writers on Art Despite his idio 
 syncrasies, which are often glaring enough, 
 his offensive conceit, and a want of philosophic genius, 
 remarkable in a person otherwise so well endowed, he 
 deserves his position. No Englishman, that we know, 
 is comparable to him, either for the extent of his 
 knowledge in this peculiar range, or for the vividness 
 and value of his critique. Lord Lindsay, who made 
 the history of art a specialty, is not more minutely 
 acquainted with it than Ruskin is ; nor is Mrs. Jami 
 son, though a woman more susceptible to all its finer 
 poetic feelings ; nor is Eastlake, though President of 
 the Royal Academy, a nicer judge of its technical ex 
 cellence. In fact, we might roll a great many critical 
 " single gentlemen into one," without forming a com 
 pound equal to Ruskin. 
 
 The appearance of " Modem Painters," by an " Ox 
 ford Graduate," protesting so vehemently against the 
 shallow pedantries of the magazine writers, and throw 
 ing down the gauntlet of critical combat to the entire 
 circle of onlookers, with such lusty disdain, was an era 
 
 *Modern Painters, vol. iii. Of Many Things. By JOHN RUSKIN. 
 London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1856. 
 From Putnam s Monthly, May, 1856. 
 
368 Ruskiris Writings. 
 
 in the history of British criticism. It will be well- 
 remembered with what goggle-eyes of surprise the ac 
 credited authorities watched the advent of this young 
 champion, as he bounced into the ring, and laying his 
 devoirs at the feet of one J. M. W. Turner, prepared 
 for a general joult. First unhorsing, in a most un- 
 gallant manner, the visored knight of Blackwood, and 
 then brandishing his lance, pell-mell, along the lists, 
 he seemed to fight wildly enough : but it soon became 
 clear from the numbers that lay dishonored upon the 
 field some with their casques broken only, but others 
 with head and limb disastrously shattered that he 
 fought surely as well as wildly ; those sturdy blows 
 brought down a foe at every stroke. Everybody ad 
 mired the dashing intrepidity and the confident skill of 
 the unknown combatant. What commended him, 
 perhaps, more than anything else to popular regard, 
 more than his acknowledged ability, his brilliant mas 
 tery of natural scenery, and his evident erudition, was 
 the honest, unblenching, almost truculent zeal, with 
 which he took up the cudgels for a great and unappre 
 ciated modern, in whose behalf he tore away the false 
 glory that had hidden the defects of the most venerated 
 painters of the past, tearing some of their flesh with it, 
 and thrashed about among his own contemporaries, 
 like a soldier of the Commonwealth among the be 
 dizened images of some old Jacobitic chapel. There is 
 scarcely on record another such instance of the fervent 
 espousal and defence of one man by another, on the 
 ground of pure intellectual sympathy, as that of Turner 
 by Ruskin ; and it is amusing to read, now that Turner s 
 fame is assured, the intense vehemence with which it 
 was supposed necessary to assail Claude and Poussin, 
 in order to enthrone the favorite. Nor does it appear, 
 from the preface to this latest volume, that he has yet 
 
Ruskin s Writings. 369 
 
 forgiven the slowness of his countrymen in recognizing 
 the great spirit among them ; with ill-concealed bitter 
 ness of irony, he speaks of the threefold honor heaped 
 upon Turner, now that he lies quiet at Chelsea, by 
 those who "bury his body in St. Paul s, his pictures at 
 Charing Cross, and his purposes in Chancery !" That 
 is the ring of the original Ruskin. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin s subsequent writings have shown that 
 his learning was equal to his confidence. Though he 
 has never been able to rescue his judgment from the 
 suspicions which his early impetuosity and continued 
 want of temperance have created, he has still succeeded 
 in increasing his reputation as a critic, and in acquiring 
 a new and solider hold of public respect. Not a few 
 men, now-a-days, artists as well as amateurs, allow his 
 thinking to color all their own : there are some, indeed, 
 who invest him with a species of infallibility, who 
 would fain believe, that when he has pronounced on 
 any point of artistic morals or doctrine, the thing is for 
 ever determined ; and it is worthy of note, that Mr. 
 Ruskin himself rather encourages this view of the mat 
 ter. In the preface to the volume before us, he gen 
 erously admits that, owing to the immense field of 
 study to be gone over, in order to qualify one to be 
 come a competent critic of art such as "optics, 
 geometry, geology, botany, and anatomy," with "the 
 works of all great artists, and the temper and history of 
 the times in which they lived, not forgetting "meta 
 physics," and "the phenomenon of natural scenery" 
 there is some "chance of occasionally making mis 
 takes." But, apart from transient slips, he is quite 
 impeccable. The laws of painting, he says, are as un 
 erring and obvious as those of music or of chemistry, 
 and anybody who will take the trouble to master them, 
 may pronounce opinions upon art, as unhesitatingly 
 1 6* 
 
37 Ruskiri s Writings. 
 
 as Faraday discourses of the affinity of gases, or as 
 Stephenson of the capacity of locomotives. 
 
 The "Modern Painters" has been scattered, in a 
 somewhat desultory way, over a period often years, and 
 though riot begun, and never intended, we imagine, to 
 be a regular or formal treatise, it has sufficient unity of 
 purpose in it to justify a common name for the several 
 volumes. One expects a great deal of rambling dis 
 cussion in a work issued so by piecemeal issued as the 
 external exigencies of opinion, rather than its own inter 
 nal law seemed to require not a little inconsistently, 
 perhaps the end often forgetting the beginning, and 
 the beginning often setting out vigorously, but reaching 
 nowhere and the lesser critics have an ample field for 
 the display of their malice therein yet these books have 
 a method, and a method which, with no great research, 
 one is able to dig out and set upon its feet. As the au 
 thor states his plan for himself, "his general object has 
 been to discuss the sources of those pleasures opened 
 to us by art" (meaning chiefly pictorial and structural 
 art) pleasures which he distributes into three groups, 
 consisting, first, of the pleasures derived from ideas of 
 truth, or from the perception of resemblances to nature ; 
 second, of the pleasures derived from ideas of beauty ; 
 and, lastly, of the pleasures furnished by the meaning 
 of these things, or ideas of relation. 
 
 His first volume, accordingly, as he tells us, treated 
 of the success with \vhich different artists had repre 
 sented the facts of nature ; his second inquired more 
 abstractly into the origin of our ideas of beauty, being 
 an attempt toward a philosophy of the theoretic or 
 imaginative faculties ; while the third volume charac 
 terizes the different degrees in which distinguished 
 artists, or schools of artists, have succeeded in attaining 
 true greatness in art. Another volume is to come, but 
 
Ruskin s Writings. 371 
 
 what precisely it will be about, we cannot anticipate; 
 for while it may be conceded that Mr. Ruskin is some 
 what methodical, it is no less clear that the method is 
 one entirely of his own make. He promises, at least, 
 that it will contain a formal analysis of all the great 
 labors of Turner. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin s leading question in this third volume 
 is what constitutes real greatness in art. Artists, as well 
 as critics, have always recognized a certain distinction 
 between high and low art, or between the grand ideal 
 style and the low realistic style, but they have never 
 succeeded, according to our author, in describing accu 
 rately what that distinction is. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in 
 some papers contributed to Dr. Johnson s Idler, in 1759, 
 made such an attempt, but without decided success. 
 He compares high art to poetry, in which the great, 
 general, and invariable ideas of human nature are ex 
 pressed, without regard, and even in contempt of nice 
 details ; and low art to history, which makes a formal 
 statement of every particular of facts or events, illus 
 trating the former by the Italian schools, excepting that 
 of Venice, and the latter by the Dutch schools, inclu 
 ding that of Venice, as a sort of Dutchified Italian. 
 But Mr. Ruskin shows, as well he might, that these 
 views of Sir Joshua are exceedingly superficial. In the 
 first place, he says that poetry does not concern itself 
 with minute details, and the faithful imitation of nature 
 is not an easy nor an undignified thing. Then, passing 
 to his own better views, he asserts that the difference 
 between great and mean art lies, not in definable meth 
 ods of handling, or styles of representation, but wholly 
 in the nobleness of the feeling with which the work is 
 prosecuted. "We cannot say," he remarks, "that a 
 painter is great because he paints boldly, or paints deli 
 cately ; because he generalizes or particularizes ; be- 
 
37 2 Ruskiri s Writings. 
 
 cause he loves detail, or because he disdains it. He is 
 great, if, by any of these means, he has laid open noble 
 truths or aroused noble emotions. It does not mat 
 ter whether he paints the petal of a rose or the chasms 
 of a precipice, so that love and admiration attend him as 
 he labors, and wait upon his work. It does not mat 
 ter whether he toil for months upon a few inches of his 
 canvas or cover a palace-front with color in a day, so 
 only that it be with a solemn purpose he has filled his 
 heart with patience or urged his hand to haste. And 
 it does not matter whether he seek for his subjects 
 among peasants or nobles, among the heroic or the sim 
 ple, in courts or in fields, so only that he behold all 
 things with a thirst for beauty, and a hatred of mean 
 ness and vice." 
 
 All which is very well, but not very definite. Now, 
 what we want is, a more specific description of the 
 characters which make up greatness of style. Mr. Rus- 
 kin, when he gets closer into his topic, states them to 
 be, in the order of their increasing importance, ist, the 
 habitual and sincere choice of noble subjects ; 2d. the 
 introduction of as much beauty as is consistent with 
 truth ; 3d, the largest possible quantity of truth in the 
 greatest possible harmony ; and, 4th, imaginative power. 
 By " choice of noble subjects," he means an inward 
 preference for subjects of thought which involve wide 
 interests and profound passion, as opposed to narrow 
 interest and slight passions. Leonardo, for example, 
 in the selection of the Last Supper for painting, evinced 
 himself a greater artist than Raphael in selecting the 
 School of Athens, or Teniers, a body of simple clowns. 
 Supposing the choice sincere, as it ought always to be, 
 it marks a larger and nobler range of sympathies in the 
 heart, and a disposition to dwell in the highest thoughts 
 of humanity. Again: by the "introduction of as 
 
Ruskin s Writings. 373 
 
 much beauty as is consistent with truth," Mr. Ruskin 
 means that the fairest forms must always be sought out 
 and dwelt upon, that the intensest beauty is to be wor 
 shipped, but not exclusively, or to the denial of the fact 
 that ugliness and decrepitude also exist. For beauty, 
 deprived of the proper foil furnished it by its opposites, 
 ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of 
 shadow ceases to be enjoyed as light ; while the ugliest 
 objects contain some element of beauty peculiar to 
 themselves, which cannot be separated from their ugli 
 ness. In other words, the perception of beauty, like 
 other human perceptions, is relative, and is best enjoyed 
 in the relations in which nature has discovered it to us. 
 Thus, the intense spiritual beauty of Angelico is fresh 
 ened and strengthened by his frank portraiture of ordi 
 nary brother-monks : Shakspeare places Caliban beside 
 Miranda, while a vulgar mind withdraws his beauty to 
 the safety of the saloon, and his innocence to the seclu 
 sion of the cloister. High art, therefore, neither alters 
 nor improves nature, but seeks for what is lovely in it, 
 just as it is, and displays this loveliness to the utmost 
 of its power. What further Mr. Ruskin means by 
 "putting as much harmonic truth as possible" in a 
 work, and by "imaginative power," we need not stop 
 to explain, as he has already dwelt upon these points in 
 his previous works. Stated without disguise, or rather, 
 without that wonderful richness of illustration and occa 
 sional eloquence of phrase in which Mr. Ruskin some 
 times imbeds his thoughts, his idea of the comparative 
 greatness of styles in art is, simply, of the degree in 
 which they combine goodness of purpose with love of 
 beauty and truth, and imaginative power. 
 
 No one can object to this view, which is not particu 
 larly novel, though so admirably illustrated ; but it 
 might have been more simply, and, at the same time, 
 
374 Ruskiri s Writings. 
 
 philosophically reached. It is true of every work of 
 art, as it is of every product of nature, that it is what 
 the strange old Swedenborg, in his way of phrasing it, 
 calls "a thing of trine dimensions." He means by 
 this, that things are things only as they are at once an 
 end, a means, and an effect, or as they possess a soul, 
 a mind, and a body. Stript of either, a thing is a most 
 imperfect thing, or rather, no thing at all, as any one 
 may see who will conceive of himself, or any creature, 
 if he can, destitute of either of them, though it should 
 be but for a moment. Every work of art, being a 
 most precious outgrowth of the human spirit, must also 
 have its soul, mind, and body. The first, is that great 
 purpose which gives birth to it ; the second, that organic 
 distribution of parts which makes it a form and the 
 last, that sensible embodiment which is called the exe 
 cution. Its substance, or soul, is the end which the 
 artist has in view ; its form, his mode of conceiving it 
 intellectually ; and its body, the actual sensible appear 
 ance. 
 
 We say the soul of it is its great end or purpose, by 
 which expression more is meant than by the simple 
 term, choice of subject." The most inveterate numb 
 skull, or the most abandoned rake, may choose the 
 most sacred theme for artistic treatment ; but he is only 
 so much the more the numbskull and the rake for ex 
 posing in this way his foolishness or his hypocrisy. His 
 real choice, his inward preference, is the internal de 
 light which animates his action, and not the ostensible 
 subject which gives name to it. This delight or love 
 may range from the lowest desire of gain or fame, up, 
 through various varieties of avidity and passion, to the 
 most disinterested sympathy, in every humane and noble 
 temper. A Caravaggio will paint you an Entombment 
 of Christ a subject in itself, certainly, full of tragic 
 
Ruskiris Writings. 376 
 
 pathos and spiritual significance, and which he handles, 
 in many ways, in a masterly manner, with carnations as 
 fine as Giorgione s, and a touch as vigorous, almost, as 
 Michael Angelo s, but there will be only so much soul 
 in it as may be implied in Caravaggio s desire to please 
 the reigning taste, joined to a display of his own wild 
 energy. His work, in spite of its subject, will be essen 
 tially a specimen of low art, quite as much so as a 
 charcoal sketch of the burial of one of our wandering 
 Indians by his tribe. On the other hand, there are 
 Dutch painters, who will paint you a festival of village- 
 boors, or an encounter of half-tipsy dragoons, in them 
 selves vulgar subjects enough, in a manner to raise them 
 to the highest sphere of art. Nearly the whole of 
 Dutch art is called low art ; yet, when we perceive, as 
 we often do, that the delight of these painters lay, not 
 in their boors and dragoons, but in the national life 
 which these represented in that sturdy burgher spirit 
 which had laboriously won a country from the sea, 
 which had heroically resisted the aggressions of Spanish 
 despotism, and which rejoiced in the free, honest, inde 
 pendent citizenship, achieved by its own valor of spade 
 and sword do we not recognize in it something vastly 
 superior to those low, superstitious reverences which 
 often prompted the Madonnas and Martyrdoms of Italy ? 
 We say it is this soul of a picture this inmost pur 
 pose this spiritual sympathy, which not only inspires 
 it, but determines its character, and assigns it its rank 
 in the different walks of art. Let the end of the artist 
 be mean, selfish, grovelling, and though his subject were 
 the Nativity or the Crucifixion the highest facts of 
 human history and though the effects were wrought 
 out with miraculous cunning of brain and hand, the 
 work cannot be elevated. On the other hand, let the 
 end be great, originating in any large and disinterested 
 
376 Ruskiris Writings. 
 
 affection, in any sincere passion of love, hope, venera 
 tion, joy, philanthropy, and the spiritual grandeur alone 
 will redeem it, in spite of much poverty of invention 
 and much feebleness of management. On this account 
 it is, that the genial yet serious student of art, wander 
 ing among the splendors of Italy, will often be arrested, 
 in the midst of their tropical gleams, by some infant 
 bud, some early flower, peering, it may be, from the 
 broken wall of a now abandoned and voiceless cloister, 
 in whose faded touches he will, with joy and thankful 
 ness, still descern the first warm kisses of God s heav 
 enly sun. Thus, the paintings of the monk Angelico 
 do not ravish us with a glory of color, as Titian s some 
 times do they do not overwhelm us with exuberance 
 of incident, as Tintoretto does nor charm us into 
 speechless admiration by graceful form, as Raphael 
 often will ; but the devotion of them, the intense spirit 
 ual sweetness, calm from the very fervor of its ecstasy, 
 transfixes us with awe and rapture. 
 
 But a work may belong to a great department of art 
 without being in itself a successful example of it as an 
 animal may belong to an exalted species without being 
 an exalted individual manifestation of that species or, 
 as Overbeck s paintings, for a more appropriate instance, 
 may aim nobly at the highest range of Christian art, 
 but not reach it perfectly. For to this there is required 
 a combination of excellences, or a union of spiritual, 
 intellectual,, and executive gifts, which enables the artist, 
 who is inspired by noble sympathies, to work them out 
 with the broadest wisdom, of both the rational and im 
 aginative functions of the intellect, and with consum 
 mate manipulation, or mastery of material elements. 
 Consulting any acknowledged masterpiece of the world 
 whether a poem, or a musical composition, or a paint 
 ing we see that feeling, thought, and skill, are blended 
 
Raskins Writings. 377 
 
 in it, so that while it touches the unsounded depths of 
 the heart, and stimulates the loftiest energies of the in 
 tellect, it also ravishes the eye or ear with delight. The 
 sum of the qualities necessary to the greatest art, there 
 fore, as Mr. Ruskin well says, is simply the sum of all 
 the best powers of man : "For, as the choice of the 
 high subject involves all the conditions of right moral 
 choice, as the love of beauty involves all the conditions 
 of right admiration, as the grasp of truth involves all 
 strength of sense and evenness of judgment, and as the 
 poetical power involves all swiftness of invention and 
 accuracy of historical memory, the sum of all these 
 powers is the sum of the human soul." 
 
 Enough ! perhaps the reader will exclaim with Ras- 
 selas "you have convinced me that no man can be a 
 poet !" Not always the greatest, but still great ; for the 
 good Providence, which has scattered along the line of 
 six thousand years only as many of the primal stars as 
 you may count on your fingers, reserving to them the 
 peerless dignity of perfection, to show that the highest 
 powers are not absolutely incommunicable, has yet dis 
 tributed many high gifts with a free and benignant 
 hand. To some God has given, in grander measure, 
 love, and to some, wisdom ; to some, power to some, 
 the heavenly vision, which looks with eyes undimmed 
 upon the transfigured glories and to others, the swift 
 sweeping wings, which fan away the dust of the centu 
 ries, or come and go from world to world, like flashing 
 sunbeams and to others, again, the forging hand, 
 which wrests the secrets of nature, and dissolves its rug- 
 ged rocks into gems ; but to all of us he has also given, 
 if we but use his gifts with humble heart and diligent 
 will, the power to appreciate these, to repeat, if we 
 please, in gentler echoes, the thunders of their voices 
 to build our chalets and flower-gardens on the sides of 
 
Ruskin s Writings. 
 
 their Alps ; or, what is better still, to catch with our 
 own ears, as we may from our inland homes, some 
 sound of distant seas, "rolling evermore;" and to be 
 hold with our eyes some downward sparkle of the inef 
 fable lustre of the Suns. 
 
 A right apprehension of true greatness in art in 
 volves an inquiry into the much-debated question, as to 
 the true ideal of art ; Mr. Ruskin, accordingly, expends 
 a great deal of characteristic energy on the determina 
 tion of the point. In order to arrive at the true ideal 
 of art, however, he conceives it necessary, first, to pro 
 pound his true idea of life. "The proper business of 
 men in this world," he says, "is first to know themselves 
 and the existing state of the things they have to do 
 with ; second, to be happy in themselves and the exist 
 ing state of things ; and, third, to mend themselves and 
 the existing state of things, as far as either is marred and 
 mendable. " If anybody is not disposed to this busi 
 ness, it is because he fears disagreeable facts, and 
 shrinks from self-examination acquiring, gradually, an 
 instinctive terror of truth and a love of glossy and dec 
 orative lies ; or, because of a general readiness to take 
 delight in things past, future, far-off, or somewhere else, 
 rather than in things now, near, and here thus beget 
 ting a satisfaction in mere imagination, or in things as 
 they are not. Hence, Mr. Ruskin infers that nearly all 
 artistic striving after the ideal is only a branch of this 
 base habit " the abuse of the imagination in allowing 
 it to find its whole delight in the impossible and the 
 untrue ; while the faithful pursuit of the ideal is an 
 honest use of the imagination, giving full power and 
 presence to the possible and true." 
 
 Now the uses of imagination are, first and noblest, 
 to enable us to bring sensibly to our sight the things 
 recorded of the invisible world ; then, secondarily, to 
 
Ruskiris Writings. 379 
 
 traverse the scenes of actual history, making them real 
 once more ; then, to invest the main incidents of life 
 with happy associations, in order to lighten present ills 
 and summon back past goods ; as, also, to give mental 
 truth some visible type in allegory, simile, or personifi 
 cation ; and, finally, when the mind is utterly outwea- 
 ried, to refresh it with such innocent play as shall be in 
 harmony with the suggestive voices of natural things, 
 permitting it to possess living companionship instead of 
 silent beauty, and create for itself fairies in the green 
 and naiads in the wave. On the other hand, the 
 abuses of the imagination consist either in creating, for 
 mere pleasure, false images, when we ought to create 
 true ones, or in turning what was intended for the mere 
 refreshment of the heart into its daily food, and chang 
 ing the innocent pastime of an hour into the guilty oc 
 cupation of a life.* As examples of the first abuse, 
 Mr. Ruskin, in a most masterly review of it, cites the re 
 ligious art (administering a rebuke to one of Raphael s 
 customs in the course of it), which asserted the most 
 fulsome and outrageous lies of the simple facts of 
 Scripture, thereby deadening their import to the souls 
 of men ; while of the second abuse, he cites the profane 
 art, chiefly after the sixteenth century, which, seeking 
 beauty first, and truth secondarily, soon lost sight of all 
 real beauty, as well as all real truth, and sunk into a 
 mesh of disgraceful sensualism. 
 
 Again : as to the true idealism, it has taken three 
 principal forms the purist, the naturalist, and the 
 grotesque all permissible, and all admirable within 
 their limits, but the best of them the naturalist. "The 
 things about us," our author says, "contain good and 
 evil promiscuously, and some men choosing the good 
 
 * See page 47, the sentences of which we merely abridge. 
 
380 Ruskiris Writings. 
 
 alone, they are called purists ; and some taking both 
 together, are called naturalist s ; while others have a ten 
 dency to the evil alone, and hence become grotesque." 
 The purist ideal, exhibited by Angelico and many 
 painters of the thirteenth century, results from the 
 unwillingness of men of holy and tender dispositions 
 to grapple with the definite evils of life, and is apt to 
 degenerate into a weak and childish form of art. The 
 grotesque ideal arises from a healthful but irrational 
 play of imagination in times of rest, or from the irregu 
 lar contemplation of terrible things, or from the con 
 fusion of the imagination by the presence of truths 
 which it cannot wholly grasp, but it must be held with 
 a firm hand to prevent its running into demonology and 
 wickedness ;* while the central ideal, the ideal of ideals, 
 as we may say, is that which, accepting both good and 
 evil, accepting all weaknesses, faults, and wrongnesses, 
 harmonizes them into a noble whole, in which the 
 imperfections of the parts become not only harmless, 
 but essential, while whatever is good in each part is 
 completely displayed. This has been the ideal of all 
 the really greatest masters of the world. On this prin 
 ciple, Homer, Dante, Tintoret, Shakspeare, and Turner 
 worked. And under the influence of this ideal alone 
 will modern art, if it is ever destined to achieve the most 
 glorious triumph, fulfil its mission. 
 
 We should like to extract largely from this part of the 
 book, of which we have given only the baldest outline, 
 to evince our admiration of much of it ; and we should 
 like to criticise largely, also, to tell in what respects we 
 disagree with it ; but as more interesting topics are at 
 
 * One of the most discriminating of criticisms Ruskin has ever 
 written, occurs in this chapter on the grotesque, where he compares a 
 griffin of the classical sort with a mediaeval griffin. It is in such pas 
 sages that he displays his finest critical power. 
 
Ruskiris Writings. 381 
 
 hand, we have only space to utter a word on one or two 
 points. In the midst of that medley of fine things 
 which Mr. Ruskin says, we do not perceive that he 
 strikes the key-note to a proper exhibition of the ideal. 
 His distinctions between the purist, naturalist, and 
 grotesque ideal carry a certain force with them, and are 
 beautifully elaborated ; but they are not philosophic 
 distinctions, because they are not founded on any real 
 relations of contrast. They are simply arbitrary divi 
 sions. Purism, as he interprets it, seeking to escape the 
 definite evils of the world, is a weakness, false to the 
 essential conditions of human life, and consequently, 
 as he seems to admit, no true ideal. His grotesquism, 
 again, is made to embrace quite too much. Our 
 blessed little friends, the fairies and elves, Titania and 
 Oberon, and even the spiteful Kobolds, spring from no 
 affinity for evil, and are romantic, rather than grotesque 
 creations ; while the art which arises from truths that 
 confuse and baffle the imagination, is simply symbolic 
 or allegorical, or, if more than that, sublime. Mr. 
 Ruskin, however, is unquestionably right in regarding 
 the naturalistic ideal as the true ideal; naturalistic, 
 because studied from nature, and ideal, because men 
 tally arranged in a certain manner ;" but, unfortunately, 
 the very point we want to know most about, namely, 
 what this "mentally arranged in a certain manner" 
 means, he covers with a cloud of talk on "inspiration," 
 "instinct," " imaginative vision," and what not, as misty 
 as any German philosophy* that we have lately read. 
 
 * Besides numerous flings in the text, Mr. Ruskin devotes an 
 appendix to a lusty tilt against " German Philosophy," and as this 
 includes every variety of human speculation, it is virtually a tilt 
 against all philosophy. It is amusingly absurd for its insular bigotry, but 
 particularly so in a man whose book (two-thirds of it) is occupied in 
 enforcing a philosophy of his own. In behalf of this decried " Ger- 
 
382 Ruskiris Writings. 
 
 This taking refuge in "inspiration," and the like, 
 after the exceedingly positive statement of Mr. Ruskin, 
 that the laws of art were as plain as the affinities of 
 chemistry, strikes us with as much disappointment as 
 surprise. After being led on through a hundred pages 
 by an expectation that, at last, a great light was to be 
 shed upon the mysterious realm of artistic creation, to 
 find it only a will-o -the-wisp, rather piques one into 
 some resentment against the guide. "The great man 
 knows nothing about rules," says Mr. Ruskin ; "the 
 rules of art cannot be taught. " They are instinctively 
 seen ;" "they are God-given ;" all which may be true, 
 and is ; but then, how is it that the laws of art may be 
 learned by labor," and demonstrated, as Faraday 
 demonstrates gases? We cannot but believe, if Mr. 
 Ruskin had studied that philosophy of which he 
 
 man Philosophy," let us add, much as we dislike some of its merely 
 metaphysical wranglings, that, as a whole, the cultivated mind of 
 Germany approaches all questions of human thought from a vastly 
 higher stand-point than either the practical English or the scientific 
 French. Mr. Ruskin confesses his profound obligations to Carlyle, 
 yet Carlyle is steeped in Germanism to the core. Besides, what an 
 enormous presumption it is, to arraign the philosophy of a whole 
 nation, and that nation the most cultivated extant, while acknowledg 
 ing a wilful ignorance of it ! What seems to have moved his special 
 ire against " German Philosophy," is a phrase of Chevalier Bunsen in 
 Hippolytus, about a " finite realization of the infinite," which he 
 ridicules as equivalent to a " black realization of white." We do not 
 know in what connection Bunsen applies the phrase, but we, old- 
 fashioned Christians, who believe literally in " God manifest in the 
 flesh," /. e. y the infinite God in the finite Man, can conceive a meaning 
 of it not so wholly ludicrous as Mr. Ruskin supposes. Again : he is 
 irate over the phrase, " God, man, and humanity," which, he says, is 
 a parallel to " Man, dog, and canineness," but no more so than the 
 phrase " God, man, and Mr. Ruskin," which is, probably, Bunsen s 
 meaning. 
 
Ruskiris Writings. 383 
 
 cherishes so violent a rabies, that he would have been 
 enabled to write more clearly and consecutively of this 
 " mental arrangement," which is the essential point of 
 his whole inquiry. We cannot but believe that Hegel, 
 for instance, in his profound analysis of the develop 
 ment of art, through its several forms of symbolic, clas 
 sic, and romantic art, in spite of the underlying meta 
 physics, easily separable in what is offensive in them 
 from the genuine substance of the thought, has cast a 
 great deal of light upon the proper sense of the ideal. 
 At any rate, we know that nearly all that is valuable in 
 Mr. Ruskin s own speculations was anticipated for us in 
 that writer, with much that Mr. Ruskin does not reach, 
 presented with a comprehensiveness of view, and a 
 freedom from petty partialities, which it would materially 
 assist Mr. Ruskin to cultivate. We do not mean to say, 
 by this, that we accept entirely Hegel s aesthetic theories, 
 which have the defects incident to his general scheme 
 of philosophy ; but what we wish to commend is, their 
 admirable method, the profound significance of certain 
 parts, and that elevation and breadth of view which 
 generalizes, not from any single form, or age, or mani 
 festation of art, but from a calm survey of the whole 
 field of artistic effort. But we cannot dwell on this 
 point. 
 
 The most labored, novel, and altogether characteristic 
 part of this work, is a review of ancient, mediaeval, 
 and modern landscape full of eloquent writing and 
 keen criticism illustrated by effective drawings, but 
 painfully diffuse, and vitiated by superficial learning as 
 well as superficial philosophy. It must be confessed, 
 in the outset, however, that in the execution of the 
 matter Mr. Ruskin had before him a somewhat embar 
 rassing problem, embarrassing, not so much in itself, 
 as in his position toward it. He had already, in 
 
384 Ruskins Writings. 
 
 numerous works, exhausted the vocabulary of his con 
 tempt for modern art, and the modern mind generally. 
 It was base, faithless, mechanical, and altogether given 
 over to the service of the flesh and the devil. At the 
 same time, he had undertaken the championship of Mr. 
 Turner, as the greatest landscape painter of all the world. 
 How to reconcile the two positions without confessing 
 either the inferiority of landscape, as a form of art, or the 
 insignificance of his pet "the mighty spirit," as he is 
 called in glorifying whom he had spent so much 
 labor, was the perplexity. If he admitted the greatness 
 of landscape art, he admitted the greatness of the 
 moderns, inasmuch as they are incontestably superior to 
 all their predecessors in this respect ; while, if he denied 
 the greatness of landscape, he must dismiss his favorite 
 to a subaltern place, in which case the world would nat 
 urally inquire, Why all this fuss about nothing and no 
 body ? 
 
 Mr. Ruskin hardly extricates himself from his diffi 
 culties, but plunges, rather as if he was not aware of 
 them, into more hopeless confusion. He confesses, 
 after some doubts, that landscape is "noble and useful," 
 and assigns reasons for the opinion (which, by the way, 
 seems to us quite inadequate.)* He admits, too, the 
 wonderful devotion of the moderns to the study and rep 
 resentation of his favorite "nature," which trait, in it 
 self, he regards as an advance upon the ancient or 
 mediaeval status ; and yet he tries to explain it away, so 
 far as he can partly on the ground that our seeming 
 love of nature is " pathetic fallacy/ arising from a weak 
 and morbid imputation of our own feelings to nature ; 
 and, partly, on the ground that we have so emptied 
 
 * See chapter on u The Use of Pictures," which is ingenious but 
 unsatisfactory. 
 
Ruskiris Writings. 385 
 
 nature of all divinity, as to approach her with a reckless 
 irreverence and freedom tearing her very bowels out 
 with our prying mechanical sciences, and slavering and 
 daubing the very face of her august countenance with 
 our sentimental poetry and paint. 
 
 Let us state the whole case. The historians, especial 
 ly of literature, have remarked a difference in the modes 
 with which nature is contemplated by the ancient, the 
 mediaeval, and the modern mind. Schiller, in one of 
 his works, expresses a surprise that the Greeks living 
 in a genial climate, amid the most picturesque scenery, 
 with all their susceptibility to beauty should nowhere 
 express, in their poetic writings, a sympathy with exter 
 nal nature. They often give faithful descriptions of it ; 
 but their hearts have no more share in their words, than 
 if they were treating of a garment, or a suit of armor. 
 Nature has no charm for them, to which they cling with 
 plaintive passion. Gervinus, in his History of Ger 
 man Literature, indulges in a similar strain of thought 
 in regard to the Minnesingers and popular poets of the 
 middle ages. They evince some feeling for nature, but 
 have left no independent delineation of it no loving, 
 tender, self-surrendering delight in it nothing more 
 than might be involved in it as an accessory to their 
 love-songs or their chivalric narratives. How different 
 our modern poetic compositions, which fairly welter in 
 sunsets, and flower-beds, and dews, and streams, and 
 mossy dells ! Our habitual thought even is crystallized 
 into the forms and suffused with the colors of the physi 
 cal world. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin adopting these hints, undertakes an elab 
 orate analysis of the differences indicated. Making 
 Homer, Dante, and Sir Walter Scott, respectively, 
 types of the ancient, mediaeval, and modern ages, he 
 deduces the characteristic feeling of each for landscape. 
 
386 Ruskiris Writings. 
 
 His results, stated in a few words, are these : (i) With 
 the Greek there was no sympathy with nature, as such ; 
 only a straightforward recognition of it as a more or 
 less agreeable fact ; no sense of what we call the pic 
 turesque ; an interest, mainly, in its available and use 
 ful properties, in the ploughed field, which gave him 
 com in the trellised vine, which gave him wine in 
 the nourishing rains and in the meadows, good for 
 feeding oxen and sheep. Mountains he rather de 
 tested, as he did all weeds and wildnesses. But he 
 cherished a keen delight in human beauty, and a kind, 
 familiar reverence for the deities who resided within 
 the various natural elements. (2) With the medieevals 
 there was a more sentimental contemplation of nature 
 more undisturbed companionship with wild nature a 
 love of the sense of divine presence in it consequently 
 a fallacious animation of it by demoniacal agency but 
 a continued delight in human beauty, including its 
 dresses and decorations, and particularly the beauty of 
 woman. Their landscape has a h igh sentiment of na 
 ture ; but is often feeble and inaccurate, and exhibits 
 curious traces of terror, superstition, piety, and rigid 
 formalism. (3) With the moderns we find an intense 
 sentimental love of nature particularly of clouds and 
 mists indicative of their fickleness and obscurity ; a 
 delight in mountains, with no sense of their solemnity ; 
 and in wild scenery, characteristic of an unbridled 
 fondness for liberty ; interest in science, but no sense 
 of human beauty, no relish for costume, an utter want 
 of faith in any divine presence in nature, insensi 
 bility to the sacredness of color, extreme despondency 
 of mind, and an eagerness to run away from the dreari 
 ness of the present, taking shelter in fictitious romances 
 of the past. 
 
 "A red Indian, or Otaheitan savage," says Mr. Rus- 
 
Ruskins Writings. 387 
 
 kin, "has more sense of a Divine Existence round him, 
 or government over him, than the plurality of refined 
 Londoners or Parisians." Again: " All, nearly, of the 
 powerful men of this age are unbelievers ; the best of 
 them in doubt and misery the worst in reckless de 
 fiance ; the plurality, in plodding hesitation, doing, as 
 well as they can, what practical work lies ready to their 
 hands. Most of our scientific men are in the last class ; 
 our popular authors set themselves definitely against all 
 religious form, pleading for simple truth and benevo 
 lence (Dickens and Thackeray), or give themselves up 
 to bitter and fruitless statement of facts (De Balzac), or 
 surface-painting (Scott), or careless blasphemy, sad or 
 smiling (Byron, Beranger). Our earnest poets and 
 deepest thinkers are doubtful or indignant (Tennyson, 
 Carlyle) ; one or two anchored, indeed, but anxious or 
 weeping (Wordsworth, Mrs. Browning) ; and, of these 
 two, the first is not so sure of his anchor, but that, now 
 and then, it drags with him, even to make him cry 
 out 
 
 " Great God ! I had rather be 
 
 A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn, 
 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lee, 
 
 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn." 
 
 The only exceptions to this universal doubt and cyni 
 cism, according to Mr. Ruskin, are Turner and the 
 pre-Raphaelites ! 
 
 This is no pleasant picture for us, but luckily is sur 
 charged. Notable differences, no doubt, exist between 
 different nations in respect to their feeling for nature. 
 Humboldt, in the second volume of the Cosmos, has 
 discussed the whole subject, with his usual discrimina 
 tion, and conceives that those differences can only be 
 accounted for as the complex result of the influences of 
 
388 Raskins Writing s. 
 
 race of the configuration of the soil of climate of 
 government, and of religious faith. He concedes the 
 comparative insensibility of the Greeks and Romans, 
 but then he claims a high degree of true feeling for 
 nature for the Indian races, the Persians, the Arabs, 
 and some of the early Christian Fathers, and for nearly 
 all the moderns since the time of Columbus, including 
 that noble mariner. His studies are more varied, and, 
 we think, more worthy of regard than those of Mr. 
 Ruskin, who has been led into some imperfect views by 
 the models he set up as guides. 
 
 Neither Homer nor Sir Walter Scott are proper types 
 of the periods they are chosen to represent, though 
 Dante may be. They were only epic, or narrative 
 poets, who deal with nature simply as the accessory, 
 or background of their pictures. They do not address 
 her at first hand. Homer was, it is true, a " Greek of 
 the Greeks," but he chanced to live some five hundred 
 years before the Greek mind attained any real artistic 
 development. Had Mr. Ruskin consulted the minor 
 poets, Simonides, Bion and Moschus, Meleager, Pin 
 dar, and Theocritus, he would have found innumerable 
 evidences that the Greeks cared much more for nature 
 than the corn and wine she brought them had, in 
 deed, a sincere admiration of her beauty and fell at 
 times even into "pathetic fallacy." Casting our eyes 
 over the dramatists, even while reading Mr. Ruskin s 
 book, they fell instantly upon several bits of land 
 scape-painting as fine as any one would care to bless 
 his eyes withal. Nevertheless, it must be confessed 
 that the main interest of the Greeks lay in their own 
 humanity. 
 
 Nor is Dante precisely the poet that, on first thoughts, 
 we should have selected for the illustration of mediaeval 
 feeling for landscape. He was the master of his age, 
 
Rusk iris Writings. 389 
 
 and his poem was a mirror of the Italy of that age, 
 imaging its principal personages and events with vivid 
 reality. But he was also a poet of peculiar, if not 
 exceptional, temperament ; intensely absorbed in politi 
 cal struggles ; distressed, depressed, wrapped in solitary 
 gloom, as he wandered an exile, eating the bitter bread 
 of others, so that in "his burning, troubled soul, arose 
 great thoughts and awful, like Farinati, from his burn 
 ing sepulchre." These gave tone, we suspect, to his 
 daily, as well as his immortal visions. But Dante shoots 
 up, so Etna-like, in those southern skies, that one feels 
 he must have carried all the flowers of the fields on his 
 sides, in spite of the hot fires at his heart. Mr. Ruskin s 
 able analysis persuades you so ; and yet,, almost coeval 
 with Dante was an English poet, not so great or uni 
 versal by any means, yet a very great poet, whose land 
 scape breathes of quite another air. We refer to 
 Chaucer the kindly, honest, old, laughing Chaucer, 
 whose sportive fancy, whose grand imagination, whose 
 subtle humor and homely wit and wisdom, found no 
 equal till Shakspeare, and whose pages come to us, 
 through five hundred years, still smelling of the fresh, 
 wholesome soil still dewy as the morning, lovely and 
 sweet with flowers, and vocal with the songs of birds 
 and the melody of streams. If Dante, then, expresses 
 the deeper religious and political life of his times if 
 his be a spirit framed in more heroic mould we must 
 claim high rank for our Chaucer, in all that relates to 
 the actual life of the people, and the popular sense of 
 nature ; for it is remarkable of Chaucer, that, chivalric 
 as he is, full of epic pageantry and pomp, living, as he 
 did, in the midst of a brilliantly romantic and elegant 
 court a court thronged with gallant knights, who, at 
 Cressy and Poictiers, had made Edward invincible, and 
 stately dames, only less beautiful than Philippa, whom 
 
39 Ruskiri s Writings. 
 
 the statuaries made their model for the Virgin still, 
 his pages glitter with none of their magnificence, his 
 song exults in none of their victories. He steals away 
 rather to the people at their firesides or their sports, or 
 wanders in "the blissful sunshine," among the dews 
 "more sweete than any baume," listening to the 
 "birde s song." 
 
 " a ravishing sweetnesse, 
 
 That God, that Maker is of all, and Lorde, 
 He heard never better, as I guesse." 
 
 A more cheery, gentle, enthusiastic lover of nature than 
 he, more utterly devoid of superstitious glooms and 
 fears, we find alone in modern times. 
 
 Against the inauguration of Scott as the type of this 
 age, we decidedly protest. He was scarcely of this age 
 at all, but an after-birth of former ages, sent to retrieve 
 the neglect into which they had fallen. Scott performed 
 an acceptable service for poetry, in sending forth 
 a gallant band of rugged knights and outlaws to put 
 the stiff old Greeks and Romans to death, and then 
 properly withdrew. A tory of tories, who valued the 
 smile of his prince almost as much as he did the fame 
 of Waverley ; who tasked his magnificent powers in 
 order to rear a baronial pile, that toppled down upon 
 his own head ; there was yet scarcely a movement in 
 modern art, science, or religion, with which he sympa 
 thized. His poems and most of his romances have 
 already no more than an antiquarian value. They are 
 excellent tapestries of times fast receding agreeable to 
 look at, instructive, picturesque, with a fine feeling for 
 the chivalric virtues, but rimy with the dust of time. 
 Strange to say, that all the while Mr. Ruskin is engaged 
 in this preposterous labor of setting Scott upon a pedes 
 tal where he cannot stand, there hovers around him 
 
Ruskiri s Writings. 391 
 
 another spirit the spirit of one of his hated Germans, 
 a poet, a man of science, a consummate literary artist, 
 loaded with the learning of all the schools, yet buoyant 
 as a child amid his new-found blisses of nature who 
 wrote a drama equal to Shakspeare s- whose songs are 
 in the mouths of the people and whose books reflect 
 all the grandeurs and glooms, all the strengths and 
 weaknesses, all the hopes and despairs, of the last half- 
 century ! Need we name Goethe, whom Mr. Ruskin 
 unceremoniously dismisses for his "jealousy, which is 
 never the characteristic of a really great man?" \Credall) 
 We do not believe that any single man can fully repre 
 sent this multitudinous, manifold age of ours ; but if 
 any man could, it would be Goethe. It is to him, 
 more than any one else, that Mr. Ruskin should have 
 gone for the modern idea of nature ; and had he done 
 so, he never would have given us that libellous carica 
 ture of the tendencies of the modern mind. 
 
 Reading the "signs of times," we are sure, is not 
 Mr. Ruskin s forte. His skill in pictures may be great, 
 but his skill in men and the movements of society is not 
 great. This very question of the change that has taken 
 place in men s modes of regarding nature, has a pro 
 found significance he has not reached. It is nothing 
 more nor less than the question, as to the difference be 
 tween Christianity and the pagan religions. Has 
 Christianity introduced any fundamental transformation 
 in the human mind ? If it has, the mind must stand 
 in a totally different relation to nature from what it did. 
 The common belief is, that it has introduced a marvel 
 lous change a change not merely of degree, but of 
 kind ; and that our modern activity is the outgrowth, 
 though feeble as yet, of that change. It were too large 
 a theme for us here to enter into an exposition of the 
 nature and value of that change ; but we may suggest 
 
39 2 Ruskiris Writings. 
 
 two things : first, that Christianity not only empties 
 nature of its fetiches, of its gods and goddesses, how 
 ever beautiful, but proclaims it to be in itself dead, 
 worthless, corrupt, even sinful or the opposite of 
 divine ; and, second, it proclaims that nature has been 
 redeemed, by the divine assumption of it, whereby man, 
 from being the slave, may become the master of it, so 
 that " the whole creation" will yet be glorified. This is 
 the mystical annunciation which every Christian de 
 voutly believes : but what does it mean practically? It 
 means that nature is not an end in itself, is not to 
 be loved for itself, but is unworthy and corrupt, except 
 in so far as it is made subservient to humanity, in 
 which case it is filled with a divine beauty and signifi 
 cance. 
 
 Now our modern Christian instincts have recognized 
 these truths, and hence our physical sciences, with their 
 immense activities, striving to reduce nature, which has 
 no longer any sanctity, to human uses. Hence, too, 
 the universality and fearlessness of our researches into 
 nature, which impresses us no more as a vast uncon 
 trollable power outside of us, but as a mere mechanism, 
 of whose movements we hold the key, whose malig 
 nities we may turn into benignities. Thus, too, the 
 universe a world of effects, whose causes lie in the 
 inner spiritual sphere, shines a vast hieroglyph of the 
 Eternal and Unseen, is a glorious analogue of the 
 Divine. We love nature, therefore, if we love it at all, 
 because in its every process we discern emblems of 
 our own human life ; because, along the endless multi 
 plicity of its forms, the angels of God ascend and 
 descend, as in the wonderful ladder of Jacob s dream. 
 
 We have dwelt so long upon this last volume, that we 
 have left ourselves little space for any general estimate 
 of Mr. Ruskin s merits, which we promised ourselves 
 
Ruskiri s Writings. 393 
 
 at the outset. But they may be summed up in few 
 words. He is the critic rather than the philosopher of 
 art. Endowed with the keenest sensibility to th influ 
 ences of nature, he has observed them with accuracy, 
 and, at the same time, with strong poetic feeling. Few 
 men, again, are more alive to the beauties of art, and 
 none have studied its actual manifestations with more 
 diligence. Applying his knowledge of nature to works 
 of art, he is able to judge their comparative merits with 
 a rare taste and profound sympathy. As a judge he is 
 positive and severe, but also enthusiastic. His praise 
 and his blame alike come from the heart. He sees 
 clearly and feels earnestly, and what he sees and feels he 
 describes with impetuous eloquence. There are whole 
 page* of rhetoric .in his books, which possess all the 
 magnificence of Milton or Taylor. But he is not always 
 equal in his style, nor always just in his opinions. He 
 has a fondness for extravagance, as well of thought as 
 of expression, and perpetually indulges his mere con 
 ceits. He is apt to utter decrees instead of criticisms, 
 and, uttering them often on the impulse of the moment, 
 they are not infallible decrees. His principles of art, 
 when they are correct, proceed more from instinct than 
 reason ; nor has he digested them into a complete and 
 systematic whole. They are drawn from the study of a 
 few arts, and not from the study of the whole field of 
 art. They are consequently wanting in the broadest 
 generalizations, and do not penetrate to the deepest 
 grounds. As an active and fearless thinker, however 
 as a patient scholar, as an energetic, warm-hearted liker 
 and hater, and as an eloquent expositor of refined tastes 
 and generous impulses, he stands unrivalled among the 
 English critics of art. 
 
CAUSES OF THE FRENCH 
 REVOLUTION.* 
 
 |HESE are translations of the same work, the 
 one, executed in England, and the other in the 
 United States. Both appear to be sufficiently 
 well done for the satisfaction of readers in general. In 
 both, we are glad to learn, the original French author 
 retains a certain per centage of interest. 
 
 Any book by De Tocqueville will be sure to find 
 readers in this country. He is so favorably known by 
 his Democracy in America, that every one, who is famil 
 iar with that able disquisition, will be glad to get anoth 
 er work from his hands. Not that he is, in any sense, 
 an entertaining writer ; for he is not : he is a slow and 
 somewhat laborious writer ; but he is profound and in 
 structive, and every sentence he utters is freighted with 
 golden thought. He is one of the few Frenchmen, or 
 rather, we should say, one of the few Europeans, who 
 understands and cherishes what approximates to a real 
 ly sound theory of human government. He is no be 
 liever in the favorite centralism of his countrymen, mo- 
 narchial and republican alike. Ask a legitimist in 
 France what his notion is of the true organization of 
 
 * The Old Regime and the Revolution. BY ALEXIS DE TOCOJJEVILLE. 
 Translated by JOHN BONNER. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1856. 
 
 On the State of Society in France before the Revolution of 1798, and 
 on the Causes which led to that event. BY ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE. 
 Translated by HENRY RKKVK. London: John Murray, 1856. 
 
 From Putnam" s Monthly , Nov., 1856. 
 
Causes of the French Revolution. 396 
 
 power, and he will sketch you out a scheme something 
 like the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV. ; ask a Na- 
 poleonist, and he will point you to the Empire ; and 
 ask a democrat, and he will begin to glorify Robespierre 
 or Ledru Rollin ; yet these are all fundamentally the 
 same the concentration of the whole national force in 
 a single focus, differing in name, but not differing much 
 in essence or end. De Tocqueville belongs to neither 
 of these classes. Though an aristocrat by affinity, his 
 study of our American townships, combined with his 
 own good sense, has taught him the value of local self- 
 government ; and his criticisms of institutions and his 
 torical events are modified by this perception. 
 
 In the large and imposing volume before us, he 
 undertakes an investigation of the condition of French 
 society in the eighteenth century, and of the causes 
 involved in that condition, which developed themselves 
 in the terrific popular outbreak of the year 1789. It is 
 a most important and a most interesting inquiry ; for 
 no event in human annals has more deeply impressed 
 the minds of men, or is more inexhaustible in its exhibi 
 tions of human character, or more significant in its re 
 sults for mankind. Much as it has been written of, both 
 as to its external phenomena and as to its internal phi 
 losophy, much more remains to be said. The product 
 of five hundred years of accumulating wrongs, the start 
 ing-point, as we believe, of many more hundred years 
 of nobler development, there were crowded into the 
 events of that brief decade a pith and moment, which 
 no one writer, and no one thousand writers, will readily 
 exhaust. We think we must have read in our time, 
 without an immoderate indulgence in that particular line, 
 at least fifty volumes relating to the French Revolution, 
 and yet our appetite for the memoirs and histories of it 
 is just as keen as it was, in fact is keener than it was, 
 
396 Causes of the 
 
 when the whole subject came up as a novelty. This is 
 true however of all other knowledge, and especially of 
 our knowledge of men ; the more we know, the more 
 we want to know ; curiosity is never satiated ; nor is that 
 better feeling than curiosity our deep sympathy in 
 the fortunes of our race, and our desire to penetrate 
 the mysterious processes by which, in the midst of so 
 much wickedness, and bloodshed, and suffering, the 
 progress of our humanity is evolved readily satis 
 fied. All events which seem to have greatly advanced 
 or greatly retarded the course of events, possess a peren 
 nial, living charm. 
 
 De Tocqueville s topic, therefore, though old in one 
 sense, is ever fresh in. interest, and is peculiarly new in 
 his treatment of it. He has not contented himself with 
 repeating the substance of former researches. He has 
 not gone over the comprehensive ground which Louis 
 Blan-c travels with so much erudition, in his most able 
 introduction to his history ; but he confines his remarks 
 to the period immediately preceding the Revolution, 
 and to the actual circumstances of the time, as they are 
 shown in the best historical monuments. He thinks 
 that the earlier ages of the French monarchy, the mid 
 dle ages, and the epoch of the Renaissance, have been 
 more studied and better comprehended than the eigh 
 teenth century, though the latter is so much nearer to 
 us. The laws, customs, and the spirit of the govern 
 ment, in those remoter ages, have been diligently illus 
 trated by the most skilful authors ; but the eighteenth 
 century has not been examined in the same minute and 
 careful manner. We have skimmed the glittering sur 
 face of its literature ; we have been charmed by its nu 
 merous lively biographies ; we have admired the inge 
 nious and eloquent criticisms of the great writers : but 
 we have not taken pains to learn the mode in which 
 
French Revolution. 397 
 
 business was then conducted ; to ascertain the real work 
 ing of its institutions ; to discover the relative position 
 of the various classes, the condition and feelings of 
 those classes which were neither heard nor seen, beneath 
 the prevailing opinions and customs of the day. 
 
 All this our author has assumed to do for us ; and, 
 in order to execute his purpose, has not only read over 
 again the famous books of the eighteenth century the 
 Voltaires and the Rousseaus, the Montesquieus and 
 Turgots, the Marmontels and Diderots but he has 
 thoroughly sifted obscure yet public documents, which 
 show the opinions and the tastes of the French, at the 
 approach of the Revolution. Among these, the most 
 important have been the regular reports of the meetings 
 of the States, and subsequently, of the provincial as 
 semblies, the cahiers or papers of instruction (petitions 
 of grievances, as we should call them), drawn up by 
 the Three Orders in 1789 ; and particularly the archives 
 of the larger Intendencies, as those districts or general- 
 lies were called which were presided over by an intend- 
 ant, and often comprised large circles of population. 
 As the administration was strongly centralized then, 
 grasping nearly every interest and hope of the people, 
 and the communication between the centre and the parts 
 active and minute, and withal secret, so that men were 
 not afraid to lay bare to it the wants of their hearts, and 
 even the secrets of their families, the records of these 
 offices are filled with the most valuable materials. De 
 Tocqueville had free access to these, though it was not 
 always an easy access. He says that a single brief chap 
 ter has sometimes cost him a year of labor. That he 
 was faithful, as well as patient, in these researches, that 
 he has concealed nothing and imagined nothing, it 
 would be needless to assure anybody who is acquainted 
 with his habitual and conscientious regard for truth. 
 
398 Causes of the 
 
 The result of his inquiries is a mass of useful knowl 
 edge, which, in itself, casts a broad light upon the sub 
 ject in hand, and which, it may be granted, we have 
 never before possessed in precisely the same shape ; but 
 we feel bound to add, that it does not appear to us to be 
 so entirely novel, in it contents, as the author asserts and 
 even boasts. As evidence, it is, no doubt, new ; but the 
 peculiar conclusions which it is brought to sustain, are 
 not new. We might take up almost any one of the 
 propositions advanced as the headings of the various 
 chapters, and urged in the text with a certain air of dis 
 covery, as if they had never been broached before, and 
 show that, in this country at least, they have long been 
 familiar to us, so that they are not now considered de 
 batable points of history at all. That "administrative 
 centralization," for instance, was an institution of 
 France, anterior to the Revolution, and not a product 
 of the Revolution or of the Empire; that "adminis 
 trative tutelage," as the education and discipline of the 
 people by the government is called, was an institution 
 in France anterior to the Revolution ; that "exceptional 
 administrative jurisdiction" (la justice administrative), 
 and the irresponsibility of public officers (garantie des 
 fondionnaires }, existed under the old regime; that the 
 metropolis of France had usurped a preponderating 
 control over the nation long before the Revolution ; 
 that the condition of the French peasantry, in spite of 
 the general progress of civilization, was in some re 
 spects worse in the eighteenth century than it had been 
 in the thirteenth ; that, toward the middle of the eigh 
 teenth century, men of letters had become the leading 
 political men of France ; that irreligion, at that time, 
 had reached an unusual and dominant influence in so 
 ciety ; and that, under Louis XVI., the French people 
 were encouraged to revolt, by the very means taken to 
 
French Revolution. 399 
 
 relieve them ; are surely not propositions which will 
 strike any intelligent American, nor, we suspect, any 
 intelligent English reader of French history, with any de 
 gree of surprise. We have been accustomed to regard 
 these propositions as facts, and our surprise is rather, that 
 they can be adduced and argued with so much gravity, 
 by De Tocqueville, as something of which the world 
 has not been before adequately aware. The condition 
 of opinion in France, and particularly the errors which 
 prevail among ill-informed persons, as to the precise 
 nature and achievements of the Revolution, together 
 with the tendency, almost universal in that country, to 
 overlook the defects of the national Constitution, may 
 render this tone of remark necessary ; but we cannot 
 suppose that these views have at all escaped genuine 
 historical students anywhere. At any rate, in this 
 country, it is rather an elementary proceeding, in spec 
 ulations on the philosophy of the Revolution, to refer 
 it to the phenomena above enumerated, and, most es 
 pecially, to that increase of "administrative centraliza 
 tion" which was at once both cause and effect of the 
 absolute dominion of the French monarchs. 
 
 This we may have occasion to dwell upon in another 
 aspect, hereafter, but in the mean time let us repeat that 
 our author s proofs are original and profoundly interest 
 ing, though his principles do not present themselves to 
 us in the same freshness of light. 
 
 We recognize De Tocqueville, in spite of certain 
 opinions widely divergent from our own, as belonging 
 to the legitimate school of historical philosophers. He 
 is neither a fanatic nor a fatalist ; he does not adopt too 
 exclusively the doctrine of necessary causation in his 
 tory, nor of absolute human freedom ; but admitting 
 fully the truth of an organic and continuous connection 
 of events, he also retains the other truth, of an over- 
 
400 Causes of the 
 
 ruling Providence. One class of thinkers, like the 
 rhetorical theologians (who can scarcely be called phi 
 losophers), see in the French Revolution only a tremen 
 dous and almost causeless outburst of human wicked 
 ness, and to these the splendid ravings of Burke are to 
 this day a kind of political gospel. Another class, like 
 Thiers and Mignet, and to a certain extent, though from 
 a higher plane of vision, Carlyle, see in it an inevitable 
 and mysterious destiny, which moved the men of the 
 times from its dark recesses, as puppets are moved by 
 wires from behind till they glide and gibber before us 
 like spectral figures., who are the sport of a mocking 
 and remorseless fate. But there is another, and, we 
 think, a better class, who, while they cherish a profound 
 and grateful faith, that the Lord God omnipotent 
 reigneth," yet believe that he reigns through the free in 
 strumentality of men. These maintain that the move 
 ments of society are organic and living developments ; 
 that all events are in some sort dependent upon preced 
 ing events ; that they are not wholly wanton and wilful, 
 but conditional, and that, while the sources of life, 
 social as well as individual, are in the infinite and eter 
 nal world, the forms of that life, the phenomenal mani 
 festations of it, are controlled by the whole complex of 
 what we denominate historical circumstances. It is to 
 this school, if we mistake not, that De Tocqueville 
 adheres, and therefore, while he exempts no class or 
 individual from the guilt of their misdeeds, nor with 
 holds from any the merit of their good actions, he seeks 
 the causes of the revolutionary phenomena in the vices 
 of the old regime. He discerns clearly that the stu 
 pendous insurrection at the close of the last century, 
 which filled the world with mingled admiration and 
 dismay, was no sudden or satanic impulse ; but that it 
 had been long preparing, and that much of the good 
 
French Revolution. 401 
 
 and nearly all the evil of it, sprang directly out of the 
 whole course of the monarchical civilization. 
 
 We cannot suppose, however, that the event was so 
 entirely unexpected as our author represents, because 
 that would argue a strange lack of sagacity and obser 
 vation on the part of its contemporaries. Undoubt 
 edly, it is true,. as he says, that no one perceived its 
 pressing imminence or anticipated its extent. The aris 
 tocratic classes were quite blind in regard to it ; the 
 neighboring sovereigns and princes themselves, as late 
 as 1791, though professing to see, in the danger which 
 threatened royalty in France, a danger common to all 
 the established powers of Europe, yet secretly imagined 
 that the outbreak was a local and temporary accident, 
 which they might turn to good account ; but there was 
 a positive presentiment of it among the masses, while 
 one not inconsiderable sect, the mystic revolutionists, 
 the disciples respectively of Weishaupt, Saint Martin, 
 and the arch-quack Cagliostro, seemed to have shaped 
 as distinct an apprehension of the coming time as it was 
 possible for their excited imaginations to frame on any 
 subject.* It was from among these cabalistic spirits that 
 Cazotte, the author of the Diable Amoureux, the (Euvres 
 badines el morales, and of that continuation of the Ara 
 bian Nights, forming the 37th and 4Oth volumes of the 
 Cabinet des fees, emerged, and of whom La Harpe re 
 lates the well-known and singularly impressive incident, 
 but now discredited, which is said to have occurred in 
 the saloon of one of the eminent academicians of the 
 time. 
 
 A gay company of courtiers and philosophes were 
 dining once, in 1778, when the conversation turned, as 
 usual, upon the promising prospects of the age, and 
 
 * LUCHET. Essai sur les Illumines. Paris, 1789. 
 
4O2 Caztses of the 
 
 the rapid approach of the era of intellectual emancipa 
 tion. During the animated dialogue, Cazotte was ob 
 served to remain sombre and silent. Being rallied by 
 Condorcet, he remarked that he saw terrible things 
 in the future, and, " as for you, Monsieur Condorcet," 
 he added, "you will take poison to escape the execu 
 tioner." This unexpected retort provoked peals of 
 laughter from the lively company. But Cazotte, noth 
 ing disconcerted, turned first to Chamfort, the cynical 
 poet and wit, and predicted that he would open his 
 veins ; and next to Bailly, the astronomer and first pres 
 ident of the National . Assembly, to Malesherbes, the 
 venerable parliamentarian and censor, and to Roucher, 
 translator of Adam Smith, saying that each would 
 perish on the scaffold. " Our sex, at least," interposed 
 the charming Duchess de Grammont, " will escape." 
 " Your sex, madam ?" replied Cazotte ; " no ! you, and 
 other ladies besides you, will be drawn upon a cart, with 
 your hands tied behind your backs, to a place of exe 
 cution." "Without even a confessor ?" she smilingly 
 asked. "Without even a confessor," he resumed; 
 "for the last confessor will be reserved" and here his 
 sad eyes filled with tears " for the King of France." 
 This announcement startled the assembly, when Ca 
 zotte arose to retire, but the Duchess caught hold of him, 
 exclaiming, "And pray, sir prophet, what is to be your 
 fate ?" He stood for some time lost in profound reve 
 rie, and finally narrated, that " during the siege of Je 
 rusalem, a man had paraded the ramparts seven days 
 in succession, crying out in mournful accents, Woe 
 unto thee, Jerusalem, and that, on the seventh day, a 
 stone, flung by the enemy, struck him, and crushed 
 him to death." Cazotte was afterward arrested, during 
 the massacre of September, and hung. Non e vero mat 
 bene irovaio. Indeed, it is impossible to read De 
 
French Revolution. 403 
 
 Tocqueville s own exposition of the state of opinion, 
 during the period he describes, without feeling that the 
 French mind must have been singularly obtuse not to 
 discern the multitudinous signs appearing on all sides, 
 of some new and tremendous overturn. 
 
 The solution of the problem of the French Revolu 
 tion implies the solution of several subordinate ques 
 tions, such as why that event took place at all ; why it 
 took place when it did, and not before ; why it occurred 
 among the French, rather than among the other people 
 of Europe ; and why, when it did come about, it was 
 characterized by such wholly new and peculiar features? 
 These solutions we shall not undertake, because it 
 would require a volume to treat them even superficially, 
 but we may remark, that it is obvious at a glance, that 
 a successful treatment of them would demand a far 
 more various and retrospective study than our author 
 has given merely to the eighteenth century. His re 
 sults possess a high degree of value, and they strongly 
 elucidate antecedent periods ; but, to arrive at an intel 
 ligent view of the origin and of the entire scope and 
 bearing of the French Revolution, we should begin at 
 least with the ministry of Richelieu, if not, indeed, with 
 the triumph of modern monarchy over feudalism in 
 the fifteenth century. 
 
 During the middle ages-, as it has often been re 
 marked by historians, there was a remarkable similarity 
 in the political and social institutions of nearly the 
 whole of Europe that is, of civilized Europe. There 
 were differences of detail and of name in different 
 countries, but very much the same spirit and form. 
 Society was divided into the same classes into princes, 
 nobles, clergy, burghers, and peasants, with similar 
 privileges or burdens the municipal constitutions 
 were alike the same maxims controlled the political 
 
404 Causes of the 
 
 assemblies and the land was owned, occupied, tilled, 
 and taxed after the same fashion. Everywhere there 
 existed the same seignories or lords estates, the same 
 manorial courts, and fiefs, and feudal services, and 
 quit-rents ; and in the towns, corporations and trading- 
 guilds. 
 
 But, during the fifteenth century, a general change 
 in this condition of things was effected a change which 
 undermined the ancient feudal constitution, and brought 
 in, in the place of it, the modern nationalities under 
 the vigorous reign of monarchs. In France, the house 
 of Valois, after a series of protracted and sanguinary 
 struggles, had triumphed over the great feudatories, 
 consolidated the territory of the realm, and introduced 
 new principles of administration, which gave at once 
 more unity and more permanence to the power of tax 
 ation, to the regular army, and to the parliaments or 
 courts of justice. In Spain, the fierce combat between 
 the Moors and Christians was brought to an end by the 
 conquest of Granada ; the marriage of Ferdinand and 
 Isabella had united the two principal kingdoms of Cas 
 tile and Aragon into a single state ; the great and tur 
 bulent vassals were suppressed or restrained, and the 
 power of the monarchy in various ways enlarged and 
 confirmed. In Germany, again, the imperial crown, 
 which had always been elective, and still remained so 
 nominally, became virtually hereditary in the family of 
 Maximilian. In England arose, out of the wars of the 
 Roses, in which so many of the nobles had perished, 
 the dynasty of the Tudors. The various Italian repub 
 lics, stormy and brilliant as they had been, fell under 
 the sway of powerful and wealthy houses Florence to 
 the Medici, Lombardy to the dukes of Milan, and 
 Genoa, Venice, and Naples to foreign sovereigns who 
 made their soil the battle-fields of their rival claims. 
 
French Revolution. 40 5 
 
 Everywhere the old feudal and anarchical system was 
 falling into decay, and a new system the system of 
 national royalties advanced to its place. 
 
 From this point, however, the subsequent develop 
 ments became exceedingly diverse. The political 
 liberties of Italy perished almost immediately, in con 
 sequence of the incessant wars of petty and rival sov 
 ereigns ; Spain grew into the magnificent empire of 
 Charles V. and of Philip II. , and then withered away ; 
 France achieved, under the successive administrations 
 of Sully, of Richelieu, of Mazarin, and Louis XIV., a 
 degree of splendor which dazzled all Europe, but was 
 then destined to flicker, and corrupt, and sink, until 
 the Revolution came to sweep away nearly every 
 trace of its specious glory ; while Germany fell apart 
 into numerous principalities, mostly insignificant, and 
 England alone, after rocking in the tempests of civil 
 commotion for a while, attained to a really secure, 
 stable, and free constitution. 
 
 Now, what were the causes of this difference ? The 
 aristocratic writers tell us (and De Tocqueville is of 
 their number) that it was mainly owing to the greater 
 or less destruction in each of the ancient nobility. 
 Aristocracy is assumed to be an indispensable check 
 upon the despotic powers of the kings, so that where 
 the former is removed the latter rise into absolutism ; 
 while it is only where the former retains an effective 
 existence, <iat the equipoise of a regulated and mod 
 erate monarchy is reached and preserved. How many 
 changes of eulogistic phrase are rung upon this theory 
 by our English friends ? But is it an adequate inter 
 pretation of the facts ? Does it not ascribe to the ser 
 vices of a class, results which properly belong to popular 
 institutions, which may have been identified, to some 
 extent, with that class, although the class was not es- 
 
406 Causes of the 
 
 sential to them ? In other words, are not the liberties 
 of England owing to its parliaments, its courts, and its 
 local meetings, as free assemblies in which the popular 
 heart can find some expression for itself, and the popu 
 lar mind obtain a true perception of the nature, end, 
 and right practice of government, rather than to the 
 ascendency of any class which may have had the cun 
 ning or the virtue to connect its own cause with that of 
 these institutions ? We confess that such is our opinion ; 
 we confess that our studies of history have left us little 
 respect for nobility anywhere ; and we are clear that, 
 though it may have been at times of transitional advan 
 tage to the growth of a higher civilization, it has been far 
 more frequently and permanently a serious detriment. 
 
 This view we have not the space to- unfold, in regard 
 to all the nations of Europe ; but it is apropos to our 
 text to consider it in reference to France, particularly 
 as a main object of De Tocqueville is to show that 
 despotism is an unavoidable outgrowth of those societies 
 in which the aristocracies have been swept away. His 
 argument runs as follows : "That when men are no 
 longer bound together by the ties of caste, of class, of 
 corporation, of family, they are but too prone to think 
 of nothing but their private interests, too ready to con 
 sider themselves only, and to sink into the narrow pre 
 cincts of self, in which all public virtue is extinguished. 
 Despotism, instead of combating this tendency, ren 
 ders it irresistible, for it deprives its subjects of every 
 common passion, of every mutual want, of all necessity 
 of combining together, of all occasions of acting to 
 gether. It immures them in private life ; they already 
 tended to separation, despotism isolates them ; they 
 were already chilled in their mutual regard, despotism 
 reduces them to ice." The doctrine is, that the emas 
 culation of the ancient nobility, by removing a prin- 
 
French Revolution. 407 
 
 cipal obstacle to the growth of absolute royalty, was 
 calamitous in its effects, and the inference from that 
 doctrine, that to restore the liberties of France, some 
 thing like the old aristocracy should be restored. We 
 oppose both the doctrine and the inference : we assert, 
 bad as the French monarchy became, that it was better 
 than the rapacious and turbulent rule of the classes it 
 supplanted ; and we hold that the issue from the tower 
 ing centralism into which it has congested, is not 
 through the revival of those classes, but by the estab 
 lishment of free local institutions. 
 
 In order to test the value of these conflicting posi 
 tions, we need only recall the actual history of the 
 French nobles, from the time of their appearance as 
 feudal sovereigns to the day in which they were so ef 
 fectively abased by Richelieu, or converted into mere 
 court lackeys by Louis XIV. No one, we presume, 
 will contend, that the enormous prerogatives enjoyed 
 by the French peers and barons, during the middle 
 ages and afterward, conduced greatly to the benefit of 
 society. Though nominally vassals of the crown, these 
 great feudatories were possessed of privileges which 
 conferred upon them an almost independent dominion. 
 They were the lords, and, to a large extent, the owners 
 of vast territories ; they coined money ; they waged 
 private war ; they exercised judicial powers, and they 
 were exempt from all public tributes, except the feudal 
 aids, and free of all legislative control. Nor were 
 they backward in the use of these powers. Their right 
 of coining money they often converted into a means of 
 debasing the standard. The most frivolous passion 
 served as a pretext for plunging them in destructive 
 hostilities, while the luxury of their courts, and the ex 
 penses incident to their frequent feuds, led to the most 
 oppressive exactions from the people. Spending their 
 
z|o3 Causes of the 
 
 lives in the chase, or in war, or in pillage, intent each 
 one on his interest, rather than upon the foundation of 
 order in the State, opposing the municipalities, where 
 the only germs of popular freedom were nourished, 
 harassing the trade of the citizen, and plundering the 
 labor of the peasant, it was impossible, while their 
 power lasted, that there should be either private security, 
 national consolidation, or general development. 
 
 It was partly the perception of these abuses, partly 
 their own selfish love of aggrandizement, and partly the 
 demands of the suffering burghers and people, which 
 led the French kings, one after another, to endeavor to 
 strip them of their overgrown resources. Sometimes 
 by the forcible seizure of their domains, as of the Ver- 
 mandois, by Philip Augustus ; sometimes by interposing 
 in behalf of the weaker clas ses, as was frequently done 
 by good St. Louis ; sometimes by perfidious declara 
 tions of forfeitures against extensive fiefs, as under Philip 
 the Fair, the privileges of the great vassals were under 
 mined and the authority of the crown extended. Yet, 
 in spite of these interferences, in spite of the reduction 
 of their numbers, effected by their own wasteful strife, 
 and by the distant expeditions of the crusades ; in 
 spite of their gradual loss of privileges, by the growth 
 of the cities, and the advent of the legists to judicial 
 honors, by which they were deprived of an important 
 means of distinction and influence ; and in spite of the 
 mercenary multiplication of their number, which de 
 stroyed, in a measure, unity of feeling and action, they 
 continued for centuries a strenuous though unequal 
 struggle against the supremacy of the monarchs. 
 
 As late as the time of the religious wars, which fol 
 lowed the Reformation, they were able to dictate to the 
 throne, then occupied by a weak and superstitious 
 prince, and to bring upon their nation the eternal dis- 
 
French Revolution. 409 
 
 grace of the massacre of Vassy and the horrors of St. 
 Bartholomew. One needs but to read the infamous 
 proceedings of the Guises and the League now con 
 ferring secretly with the bigoted Philip II., and now 
 openly with the scarcely less bigoted Pope, for the means 
 of more effectually assassinating their sovereigns or 
 butchering the Calvinists to see that the high nobility 
 were still an independent and pernicious power in the 
 state, and to find an ample justification for nearly every 
 stretch of authority which marked the policy of Riche 
 lieu. Neither Gaston nor Conde, neither Soissons nor 
 Vendome, any more than the Constable Bourbon of a 
 former day, or a Cinq-Mars of their own day, appear 
 to have cherished any sense of obligation toward France, 
 any patriotic sentiment, any thought of duty beyond 
 their duty to their own interests, any aspiration which 
 reached outside the objects of their avarice^ their am 
 bition, and their pride. For a moment, the impulses 
 of fear or hope might bring them to submission to the 
 royal standard ; but neither fear, nor hope, nor any other 
 motive could ever bend them to the cause of the peo 
 ple. No name was sacred, no law authoritative to their 
 insane selfishness ; they openly conspired with foreigners; 
 they betrayed their engagements ; and when they were 
 finally broken, by the masterly genius of the great Cardi 
 nal, the mind of the reader of French history, though 
 disapproving often his means, is relieved as from the 
 presence of banditti. 
 
 No, the growth of absolute royalty was evidenced, 
 not occasioned, by the destruction of the nobles. The 
 extensions of power in that direction were not an unmin- 
 gled, yet they were an undoubted good. They gave 
 union to a series of distracted states ; substituted great 
 general ends of policy for petty schemes of personal 
 gain ; raised merit, if not above rank and birth, at least 
 18 
 
Causes of the 
 
 to a level with them ; elevated justice and its tribunals, 
 and introduced to places of trust and honor, once the 
 exclusive possession of warlike nobles, lawyers and eccle 
 siastics, who were their superiors in everything but family. 
 
 At the same time, it must be admitted that the kings 
 and their ministers went much further than this that 
 in reducing society to this monarchical unity, which 
 was so largely personal, their action sacrificed also many 
 useful ancient institutions, that it trampled upon the just 
 rights of provinces and cities, that it violated what we 
 now consider to be, and, were always considered by ad 
 vanced minds, fundamental principles of justice and 
 law, and that the regime which it inaugurated could in 
 no sense become a definitive one, could in no sense 
 answer the demands of reason, or patriotism, or the 
 free human soul ; but it was not for these that the aris 
 tocracy had lived and labored, nor for these that their 
 prolonged existence, in the plenitude of their power, 
 would have been profitable. Greatly as they had been 
 despoiled by the monarchs, there was yet scarcely a period 
 in their career in which they might not, had they been 
 wise and generous, as they were mostly selfish and proud, 
 have done much to war.d arresting the rapid concentration 
 of power in a single hand; but, up to the very eve of 
 the Revolution, they were more anxious about their 
 own privileges than the welfare of the people, and, 
 while the nation was bound and paralyzed by the burden 
 of taxes, they vehemently maintained their traditional 
 exemptions. 
 
 The circumstances which really permitted the tower 
 ing uprise of the monarchy were, as we think, the es 
 sential weakness of all the municipal institutions of 
 France, combined with the absence of all free legislative as 
 semblies, provincial or supreme. In common with those 
 of the rest of Europe, the French towns and boroughs, 
 
French Revolution. 4 1 1 
 
 during the twelfth century, experienced that movement 
 toward communal independence which was among the 
 most remarkable phenomena of the age. Many of 
 them, known as the pays d Ltats, such as Languedoc, 
 Brittany, Provence, Artois, etc., either by stubborn te 
 nacity or purchase, retained the more important of their 
 privileges, especially elective magistrates and deliberative 
 assemblies, up to a late day ; but the greater part of 
 them, having none but a municipal existence, having 
 no political relation to a regular parliament, like the 
 English towns, were easily weakened by the rapacious 
 nobles, who were nearly always their enemies, to be at 
 last swallowed up by the kings, who were sometimes 
 their friends and sometimes their tyrants. 
 
 No doubt the rapid increase of wealth in the towns 
 helped to undermine their strength by relaxing their 
 heroism. At the outset, the communes had displayed 
 extraordinary virtue and vigor in the defence of their 
 citizen rights. The sturdy streams of artisans and 
 burghers which they poured from the Hotel de Ville, 
 were a drowning torrent for the pillaging barons of the 
 vicinage ; but as the gains of industry swelled up around 
 them, as the fruitful arts of peace caused them to dread 
 the storms of battle, they lost the joy of conflict, they 
 withdrew even from the lesser disputes of the council, 
 and the bell, which had summoned them to the assem 
 bly or the gate, ceased to sound. 
 
 And while this local spirit was undergoing decay, while 
 the rights of the cities and the states were being gradually 
 subtracted, there existed no great and disinterested cen 
 tral authority, to which the people could make their 
 wrongs known or appeal for redress. The States-Gen 
 eral, as the occasional assemblies of the clergy, the 
 nobles, and the third estate are called, make a con 
 spicuous figure in French history ; but they were 
 
412 Causes of the 
 
 always more remarkakle for high pretensions than ef 
 fective performance. They were not strictly legislative 
 assemblies the extent of their powers as a whole, as well 
 as the extent of the powers of each chamber, were always 
 in doubt ; and if we except a few scenes of memorable 
 resistance to the royal authority, in which they were 
 aided as much by external circumstances as by their 
 own spirit, they were no check upon the kings, and no 
 guaranty for the rights of the people. 
 
 A far more efficient organ, in both respects, were the 
 parliaments, as the affiliated courts of justice were de 
 nominated. Their veneration for forms, if not their 
 sense of justice or love of liberty, often interposed be 
 tween the interests of the community and the ambition 
 of the kings ; and some of the noblest scenes in the 
 annals of France are to be found in the struggles of 
 these grave and long-robed clerks against the overbear 
 ing tyranny of ministers and favorites. But, like the 
 States-General, they were badly constituted ; their ob 
 jects were confused between their judicial and their legis 
 lative functions, while, holding their places by a venal 
 tenure, they were not always raised above temptation, 
 either from the court or the populace. In short, we do 
 not discover that there existed anywhere in France, from 
 the beginning of its political existence as a nation, any of 
 those great and indelible maxims of justice which are 
 the glory of the common law of England any of those 
 local tribunals, which keep alive in the breasts of the 
 people the knowledge of their rights and the practice of 
 self-government, nor any of those larger central assem 
 blies, in which all classes meet, to state their grievances, 
 to compare their opinions, to unite against a common 
 oppression, and to adjust their conflicting claims. 
 
 Is it surprising, then, that the royal authority should 
 have inflamed into monstrous disproportions ; that the 
 
French Revolution. 413 
 
 kings legislators from the beginning commanders of 
 armies from the beginning dispensers of justice, with 
 the exception of some intervals, from the beginning 
 should also become the sole administrators? How was 
 it possible to resist their aggrandizement, except as it 
 was finally resisted, by popular revolution ? Or how, 
 on the other hand, was it possible for a structure so top- 
 heavy, so thoroughly without basis, as the old monarchy, 
 to continue its vertiginous career ? At the height of its 
 glory, which was during the first half of Louis XlVth s 
 reign, it was already crumbling. It made, for a century 
 nearly, convulsive efforts to retain an upright position ; 
 but they were in vain ; it only reeled and staggered the 
 more, till, under the amiable and helpless Louis Seize, 
 it fell to the ground. 
 
 After this brief historical reference, we are prepared 
 to estimate the political state of France under the 
 Louises, which is the proper subject of De Tocque- 
 ville s book. The government, as we have seen, was 
 entirely in the hands of the king : not the general 
 government alone that which conducts foreign affairs 
 and the national interests as a whole but the govern 
 ment down to its minutest offices in the districts and 
 towns, with few exceptions. All the parochial business, 
 even, was transacted by functionaries who were neither 
 the agents of the local lords or seigneurs, nor the chosen 
 representatives of the parish (though, in some cases, 
 they were elected by the peasants), but the appointees 
 of the royal Intendants. If a parish meeting were to 
 be held, or a road repaired, or a church or school-house 
 built, or taxes raised and expended, these officers, hold 
 ing from the central authority, were the persons charged 
 with the supervision. They were responsible, not to 
 the community, but to the Intendants, and these 
 Intendants were the creatures of the royal council, as 
 
414 Causes of the 
 
 that body immediately surrounding the king, and which 
 had gradually drawn within itself nearly all the supreme 
 judicial and administrative functions, was named. 
 Their powers were scarcely less than those of the council 
 itself, and were exercised by them, for the most part, 
 without much regard to any other end than the exigen 
 cies of the State. Thus all ranks of society were dis 
 pensed from those habitual interferences in public 
 affairs, which are their best education in the practice of 
 self-government. But while their own energies were 
 paralyzed, they were taught to rely upon those of the 
 government ; and the more ignorant soon came to 
 ascribe to it all the vicissitudes of fortune even the 
 inclemencies of the climate, or the failure of crops, no 
 less than the reverses of war. 
 
 M. De Tocqueville says : "The French government, 
 having thus assumed the place of Providence, it was 
 natural that every one should invoke its aid in his indi 
 vidual necessities. Accordingly, we find an immense 
 number of petitions which, while affecting to relate to 
 the public interest, really concern only small individual 
 interests. It is a melancholy task to read them : we 
 find peasants praying to be indemnified for the loss of 
 their cattle or their horses ; wealthy landowners asking 
 for assistance in rendering their estates more productive ; 
 manufacturers soliciting from the Intendant privileges, 
 by which they may be protected from a troublesome 
 competition ; and very frequently confiding the embar 
 rassed state of their affairs to him, and begging him to 
 obtain for them relief, or a loan from the comptroller- 
 general. Even the nobles were often very importunate 
 solicitors, the only mark of their condition being the 
 lofty tone in which they begged." " Every man already 
 blamed the government for all his sufferings. The 
 
French Revolution. 41 5 
 
 most inevitable privations were ascribed to it, and even 
 the inclemency of the seasons was made a subject of 
 reproach to it." 
 
 The nobles, though deprived of their powers, still 
 possessed many of their most oppressive privileges, and 
 much of their infatuated exclusiveness. The army was 
 still open to them, and, to a small .extent, the seats of 
 justice ; but they had almost ceased to display their 
 characteristic gallantry in the one, or to be qualified for 
 influence in the other. Drawn from their estates, on 
 which the old loyal retainer had become the defiant 
 tenant, by the superior attractions of the capital and the 
 court, the love of degenerate pleasure supplanted the 
 former passion for rule. They cultivated wit, grace, 
 agreeable conversation and manners the qualities 
 which amuse and fascinate in the saloon instead of 
 the sterner qualities which command in the forum, or 
 win immortal honor on the field. Many of them were 
 debauched many utterly neglectful of the duties of 
 religion and patriotism all ruinously extravagant. The 
 life of a court is always a life of expense ; and what 
 they were forced to squander on folly in Paris, they tried 
 to reimburse by extortions in the provinces. They could 
 still levy their cens and renles-foncieres on the poor 
 landed proprietors ; they could still raise their tolls 
 from fairs and markets ; they could still compel the 
 farmers to grind their corn at the manorial mill, and to 
 press their grapes at the manorial wine-press. But 
 along with the heavy contributions gathered from their 
 tenants, they reaped a bitter harvest of ill-will. Brilliant 
 and beautiful personages, indeed, they were. Not in 
 the world s history have there been more polished and 
 graceful men than the old French noblesse vivacious in 
 talk, seductive in manners ; but, alas ! they were nearly 
 
4i 6 Causes of the 
 
 as useless as they were polished, and as corrupt as they 
 were charming. It was not from them that either the 
 State or society could expect a regeneration. 
 
 As for the middle classes, the bourgeoisie, there were 
 some who imitating their superiors in respects in 
 which they were least worthy of imitation purchasing 
 offices that they might sport aristocratic titles and affect 
 aristocratic manners, yet despised by the aristocracy for 
 their want of blood, and hated by the people for their 
 aspirations to rank had been admirably painted by 
 Moliere, in his Dandin and Jourdain. But there were 
 others of a very different stamp, who cared little about 
 alliances with the "illustrious house of Sotenville," or 
 the "eminent line of the Prudroteries," and pushed their 
 fortune elsewhere with infinitely greater effect. Avail 
 ing themselves of the industrial spirit, which modern 
 science had awakened, they gathered about them the 
 most substantial tokens of success. They were traders, 
 manufacturers, bankers, and financiers. With wealth 
 also came offices not offices of high-sounding names, 
 but of the most comfortable emoluments. The richest 
 intendencies and comptrollerships, and farmings of the 
 revenue, were theirs ; while the grave dignities of the 
 law were showered upon them, and the schools opened 
 their doors to them, and the rising power of the literary 
 coteries paid them its court. For them Colbert and 
 Turgot administered, and Montesquieu wrote, and the 
 Destouches and the Beaumarchais, though they knew it 
 not, cracked their jokes. Royalty was glad to borrow 
 their money ; nobility condescended to marry their 
 daughters ; but, like royalty and like nobility, they had 
 no bowels for the people, whence they came. "Though 
 the career of the nobility," says De Tocqueville, "and 
 that of the middle classes, had differed widely, there was 
 one point of resemblance between them both had 
 
French Revolution. 417 
 
 kept themselves aloof from the people. Instead of 
 uniting with the peasantry, the middle classes had 
 shrunk from the contact ; instead of joining with them 
 to combat injustice, they had only sought to aggravate 
 injustice they had been as eager for exceptional rights 
 as the nobility for privileges. Themselves sprung from 
 the ranks of the peasantry, they had so lost all recol 
 lection and knowledge of their former character, that it 
 was not until they had armed the peasants, that they 
 perceived they had roused passions which they could 
 neither gauge, guide, nor restrain, and of which they 
 were destined to be the victims, as well as the authors." 
 Meanwhile, what was the condition of the people 
 that goose whom all the others plucked? What has 
 been, what is, the condition of the people everywhere, 
 except in the democracies, and sometimes in them ? 
 Ignorance, suffering, wrong, and despair ! But the 
 French peasant, alas ! was the most abused of all people. 
 He vegetated, without guidance, in his misery, save 
 from a Church, which, though adorned by the most 
 accomplished prelates, and the most laborious and 
 kind-hearted cures, was stained by remembrances of 
 St. Bartholomew and the dragonnades. Our author 
 has drawn a fearful picture of the various obstruc 
 tions by which the movements of the people were 
 resisted, and of the oppressions by which they were 
 overborne ; but fearful as it is, it is yet incomplete. 
 No passion was stronger in the heart of a rural French 
 man than his passion for land for some little corner 
 of the earth which he might call his own. But in 
 order to buy his land, supposing him to have inherited 
 or amassed money enough to do so, he must pay a tax 
 on the purchase not to the government, but to one of 
 his neighbors, who owned what was called the cens, or 
 perpetual rent. When he is about to put in the seed, 
 18* 
 
41 8 Causes of the 
 
 he may be summond to the corvee, or to enforced labor 
 upon his neighbor s land, or on the highway. If his 
 seed be put in, and the harvest come, his neighbor s 
 horses and hounds will trample it in pursuit of game, 
 which he himself has no right to take. The remnani 
 reaped, he carries it to market, paying a toll on the 
 road, a toll on the bridge, a toll at the barriers of his 
 province, and a toll at the market-place. He returns to 
 his home, where he would consume the "surplus of his 
 produce in his family ; but he finds that he must take 
 the grain to the mill of his neighbor to be ground, and 
 the flour to the oven of his neighbor to be baked ; and 
 then the tax-collectors will call upon him for a twentieth 
 or a tenth of it in value, for the dues of the govern 
 ment ; and the Church will exact its dues, and for every 
 moment that he withholds the amount, legal charges 
 attach and accumulate, till the land itself is scarcely 
 worth the claims against it. " Picture, if you can," says 
 De Tocqueville, " the condition, the wants, the charac 
 ter, the passions of such a man, and estimate the store 
 of env) and hatred he is laying up in his heart !" 
 
 What aggravated the sense of wrong under these mul 
 tiplied burdens, was the perception that the kings were 
 squandering millions upon idle wars, debauched favor 
 ites, and insolent courtezans. The conquests of the 
 Grand Monarque had ended in financial, embarrass 
 ments, which no subtlety of Mazarin, no skill of Col 
 bert could avert ; the orgies of the Regency had turned 
 the world of commerce into a gambling-house, and the 
 world of fashion into a bagnio : the reign of Louis XV. 
 was ridiculed by his fellow-monarchs even, as the reign 
 of the petticoats, under which the licentious atrocities 
 of the pare auoc cerfs surpassed the atrocities of the grot 
 toes of Capri. For more than half a century, the State 
 had writhed and tossed with disorders of finance, impos- 
 
French Revolution. 419 
 
 sible to heal. Neither exactions nor arbitrary taxes, 
 which only iritated the more nor secret bankruptcies 
 and confiscations, which only disaffected the more nor 
 yet the sale of offices and the substitution of paper for 
 gold, which only intoxicated the more, could stop the 
 ravages of the great cancerous deficit. All the wisest 
 doctors of the purse, from Sully to Necker, had been 
 employed on that disease, with partial reliefs ending in 
 permanent aggravations. What were the labors of the 
 Danaides, drawing water in sieves, to those of a French 
 minister? The problem was, out of nothing and less, 
 to extract much and desperate were the attempts at the 
 solution. Yet the gay creatures of the court repre 
 sented in the one sex by an Abbe Dubois, and in the 
 other by Pompadour went on singing, arid dancing, 
 and eating their "pleasant little suppers in pleasant little 
 mansions," as Rochefoucault names them, "conse 
 crated to Cupid and his mother, and more enchanting 
 than Paphos or Idalia," as carelessly as the Pompeians 
 may be supposed to have feasted on that sickly night, 
 when a sulphurous cloud suddenly enveloped the hill 
 side of Vesuvius. 
 
 All the while that French society was undergoing the 
 slow but certain process of decomposition, there was one 
 solid and enduring power growing up the power of 
 the Pen which was but another name for that of 
 Opinion. It is common to class the writers of that 
 age under the general term of philosophes, but they 
 were as multitudinous in their kinds almost as the stars 
 of the sky, and they agreed only in the determination 
 to reduce everything to its naked elementary principles. 
 Voltaire, the Mephistopheles, led on his glittering rab 
 ble of wits and epigrammatists ; Montesquieu command 
 ed the firmer cohorts of the publicists, and Rousseau, 
 from his solitude, swayed the pathetic bands of senti- 
 
420 Causes of the 
 
 mentalists and dreamers. Thw railed and scoffed, 
 they reasoned and declaimed, they cracked jokes and 
 enacted plays, laughing and weeping all to one end 
 the subversion of that world of complicated and stupid 
 traditional privileges which harassed society. As we 
 read it, at this day, the greater part of that motley litera 
 ture seems quite inadequate to the effects it produced ; 
 but that is because we read it without feeling the 
 deeper spirit out of which it sprang. Much of it is 
 shallow ; much of it wanton a mere windy and bril 
 liant schaum-wesen or foam ; and all of it skeptical ; yet 
 it is easy to see that the skepticism and wantonness, 
 like the shallowness and glitter, are on the surface, 
 while there is a soul within its soul, a depth beyond its 
 depth, in the whole spirit of the age which it represented. 
 Beneath the bubbles and froth of the stream, swept a 
 mighty under-current of earnest thought and passionate 
 enthusiasm. Voltaire was a scoffer and a trifler, but 
 any one who will read his letters on the cases of Galas 
 and others, will see that he could be, also, a fanatic 
 for liberty. Like him, the age scoffed and trifled, but 
 its heart was fearfully in earnest. What everybody felt, 
 what each one tried to express, in his way in puns 
 and plays, as in profound dissertations was, that right 
 was greater than might that nature was better than 
 convention that reason was superior to authority and 
 that institutions were made for man, and not man for 
 institutions. Superficial, quotha, but could there have 
 been grander or profounder thoughts than these ? Had 
 not the world travailed with them since the advent of 
 Christ ? Had not martyrs died, and heroes fought, and 
 all the wise, and good, and gentle souls of the earth 
 struggled for these, as of the very essence of the gospel ? 
 And now, after eighteen hundred years, in dim, con 
 fused shapes, but veritably, they had got possession of a 
 
French Revolution. 421 
 
 whole people of a people wretched, yet gallant, ex 
 citable by mere impulses to transports of ferocity 
 "more capable of heroism than of virtue, fuller of 
 genius than good sense" suspicious and generous, vain 
 and self-sacrificing alike, and thoroughly persuaded, as 
 Carlyle says, that nothing stood between them and a 
 golden age but a few traitors. That people arose, and 
 it was the Revolution ! It arose, not in its wrath at 
 first, but with a calm, sublime energy. All ranks, each 
 individual, appeared to be animated by a generous love 
 of reform ; but the obstructions were as inveterate as 
 they were numerous to fret it into impatience. The lead 
 ers of every party were incompetent, none knowing 
 what he wished, or how to accomplish it when he did 
 know. The king was amiable, but weak, the nobles bet 
 ter courtiers than chiefs, and the republicans rhetors 
 who had learned their phrases out of the annals of 
 Greece and Rome. Of the men that early assumed the 
 command, the best hearts among them, like Lafayette and 
 the Girondists, had very little head, and the best heads, 
 like Mirabeau and Danton, had corrupt hearts. They 
 could not act together, and there was no positive doc 
 trine capable of crystallizing the molten metal into form. 
 
 The Revolution came, and it came, as alone it could 
 come, after such antecedents, in anarchy and blood 
 shed, a hideous outbreak of vengeance ; a wild frenzy 
 of alternate hope and despair ; purging, consuming, 
 desolating ; but, like a tropical tornado, which, if it 
 sweeps everything before it, levels also the jungles in 
 which the wild beasts have taken refuge, and cleanses 
 the deadly pest-bearing air. 
 
 But of the conduct of the Revolution and its results, 
 we may, perhaps, have an opportunity to speak when 
 our author shall have presented the second volume 
 which he promises on this subject. 
 
MOTLEY S RISE OF THE DUTCH 
 REPUBLIC* 
 
 |R. MOTLEY has chosen, for his debut on the 
 historic stage, one of the most significant epi 
 sodes in the whole of the early struggles of the 
 modern era. The revolt of the Netherlands against 
 the political and ecclesiastical domination of Spain, was 
 a part of that great contest carried on throughout the 
 sixteenth century, between the Teutonic Protestant na 
 tions, with their decided tendency to intellectual free 
 dom and territorial division, and the Romanic Catholic 
 nations, with their no less decided bias toward intel 
 lectual acquiescence and the unity of government. We 
 may pronounce it the most pregnant part of this con 
 test. All the influences of race, politics, and religion, 
 which came in conflict in the general movements of the 
 age, were concentrated in these lesser conflicts. The 
 encounters that took place on the spongy sands and 
 amid the watery dykes of the Low Countries, rehearsed 
 in little that gigantic drama of war and bloodshed, 
 which, a few years later, convulsed the entire continent. 
 It is this fact which lends to the Dutch war its high 
 importance in world-history. Had it been simply the 
 wrestle of a few oppressed provinces against a power- 
 
 * The Rise of the Dutch Republic. A History. By JOHN LOTHROP 
 MOTLEY. 3 vols. Harper & Brothers, 1856. 
 From Putnam s Monthly , June, 1856. 
 
Motley s Rise of the Dutch Republic. 423 
 
 ful invader, we might find for it many a parallel. But 
 it was a great deal more than that : it was a direct and 
 desperate grapple between the fellest oppositions of 
 the time, animated by its profoundest animosities, 
 and big with magnificent or disastrous results, Ever 
 since the accession of Charles V. to the crowns of Spain 
 and the Empire, the real and pervading issue of Europe 
 lay in the necessary antagonism of the principles of 
 unity and absolutism in Church and State, and the prin 
 ciples of national independence, and civil and moral 
 freedom. The former were asserted by the splendid 
 monarchy of Spain, linked in with the religious hie 
 rarchy of Rome, while the latter found their chief ad 
 herents among the distracted northern States of Germany, 
 and the no less distracted commercial provinces of the 
 Netherlands. Charles V., and, subsequently, Philip 
 II., who inherited his policy, if not his wisdom, in 
 seeking the formation of a great State which should 
 possess a common government, and a common reli 
 gion, encountered their most formidable obstacles in 
 the spirit which had been growing for centuries, of na 
 tional independence, intellectual culture, commercial 
 activity, and religious freedom. In Germany, the in 
 tellectual and moral elements of this opposition were the 
 strongest, and came to a head earlier in the outbreak of 
 Luther ; but in the Netherlands, the national and com 
 mercial element prevailed, and was some time longer 
 in ripening. But wherever these principles clashed, 
 the shock was deadly and fearful, and nowhere more so 
 than in the Netherlands, because nowhere were the an 
 tagonisms more direct, universal, and inveterate. 
 
 The people of the Netherlands, mainly descended 
 from the old Batavian and Belgic races, who, overcome 
 by the superior forces of the Romans, had contributed, 
 for four centuries, the most effective arm to the legions 
 
424 Motley s Rise of the 
 
 of their conquerors, were earlier than the rest of Europe 
 emancipated from the serfdom of the middle ages. 
 Their favorable position on the north seas, and on the 
 shores of navigable streams, outlets to the continent, 
 gathering them into towns, had led them to a profitable 
 commerce, and to a most flourishing external and po 
 litical condition. The affluence flowing in upon them 
 from east and west, attracted population, fostered arts, 
 enlivened society, and developed, while it fortified, the 
 sense of individual dignity and worth. Along with 
 growing trade, a growing independence, intrenched be 
 hind municipal privileges, inured them to self-trust and 
 free exertion. As early as the eleventh and twelfth 
 centuries, the power of the sovereign in the Nether 
 lands was strictly limited by the power of the estates, 
 in which the trades, as well as the nobility, were repre 
 sented. Without their consent, no law could be en 
 acted, no war undertaken, no tax imposed, no change 
 in the currency effected, and no foreigner allowed to 
 take part in the government. Even under the rule of 
 the powerful Dukes of Burgundy, who sought to re 
 duce them to subjection, this substantial liberty had 
 been maintained. At a later day, when the Emperor 
 Maximilian, backed by all the might of the Roman 
 German empire, endeavored to inflict extraordinary 
 taxes upon them, and to quarter his troops in the prov 
 inces, they instantly flew to arms, and made no scruple 
 of seizing his person, and confining him until they had 
 extorted satisfactory assurances of future security. They 
 were republicans in spirit, if not in name. They 
 prized that sturdy burgher independence which had 
 made them what they were, and, at a time of almost 
 universal war and universal abjectness, had not only 
 raised their cities into cities of opulence, but had made 
 them, also, cities of refuge for the world. 
 
Dutch Republic. 426 
 
 Under these circumstances, the transition from civil 
 to religious freedom was not difficult. At the on 
 coming of the Reformation, the Netherlanders were 
 nominally Catholics ; but nowhere were the new doc 
 trines more gratefully welcomed than among them, 
 or more rapidly spread. Introduced through a thou 
 sand channels by the Protestant traders of Germany, 
 by the English and French fugitives from persecution, 
 by their own children educated at Geneva, by the Swiss 
 mercenaries of the Emperor, even they speedily dif 
 fused themselves over the land, like the waters of the 
 sea when one of their dykes had broken. A hard 
 working people, they had little respect for the luxurious 
 indolence of the monks ; and a plain, simple-hearted 
 people, they were more attracted by the intellectual 
 charms of doctrine than by the sensuous splendors of 
 ritual. 
 
 The Spanish nation, on the other hand, by nature 
 arrogant, and by training superstitious, was the willing 
 slave of a double despotism, of a mighty but oppres 
 sive monarchy, and of an imposing but subtle and self 
 ish ecclesiasticism. Its recent conquest of Granada 
 had rekindled its enthusiasm to the fiery pitch of the 
 crusades ; its discovery of the New World had given a 
 vent to the most romantic spirit of adventure, as well 
 as to the most ferocious cupidity ; while the magnifi 
 cent extent of its dominion filled it with unbounded 
 audacity and pride. Every incident in the events of 
 the time conspired to raise in the mind of the Spaniard 
 the dangerous consciousness of his greatness. Master 
 of half of Europe, and of nearly all America, with pos 
 sessions in Africa, in Asia, and among the rich Spice 
 Islands of the Indian seas, the favorite of the Holy 
 Pontiff, the assumed vicegerent of Christ, and the 
 spiritual guide of a hundred million souls, the Spaniard 
 
426 Motley s Rise of the 
 
 seemed to himself to hold the keys of all the treasures 
 of earth, and of all the glories of Heaven. ~" He was the 
 man of the Lord, and the lord of man ;" he had fused 
 the powerful kingdoms of the peninsula into a single 
 more powerful kingdom ; he had driven the Saracen 
 from Europe in the midst of a sanguinary resistance ; 
 he had been victorious over France ; he had ravaged 
 Italy ; and he had despoiled a new continent of its 
 wealth. His statesmen were the ablest that had ap 
 peared since the most flourishing days of Greece, and 
 his soldiers the bravest that had appeared since the 
 most flourishing days of Rome. His soldiers, indeed, 
 were brave with more than Roman bravery. To the 
 animal courage and national ambition of the Roman, 
 they added the romantic valor of chivalry and the im 
 pulsive zeal as well as the stoical endurance of religion. 
 It was not surprising, then, that the Spaniard should 
 pride himself on his superiority among the nations; 
 yet he valued the steadfastness which had distinguished 
 his faith, and rendered him its elected champion, more 
 than the triumph of his arms or the seductions of his 
 policy. At a time when the people everywhere were 
 falling away from the ancient Church, like leaves from 
 a smitten tree when Germany. Holland, England, 
 France, Sweden, and Switzerland were stirred to their 
 depths by religious schism, and even Italy was re 
 tained in the fold of the faithful only by the profound 
 craft of a milder and more liberal policy on the part of 
 Rome the Spaniard remained unaffected. The only 
 result of the agitation, so far as man could see, had been 
 to induce him to draw tighter the bands of intolerance, 
 and to heap fresh fuel upon the fires of the inquisition. 
 "Times of refreshing," says Macaulay, describing this 
 period, "came to all neighboring countries; but one 
 people alone remained, like the fleece of the Hebrew 
 
Dutch Republic. 427 
 
 warrior, dry in the midst of that benignant and fer 
 tilizing dew. Among the men of the sixteenth century, 
 the Spaniard was the man of the fifteenth century, or 
 of a still darker period delighted to behold an Auto da 
 Fe, or ready to volunteer on a crusade." 
 
 It was the mistake of Philip II., when he came to 
 reign over these two peoples, more remote from each 
 other in their spiritual affinities than in their local posi 
 tions, to suppose that he could transfer the institutions 
 of the one to the soil of the other, and change, by 
 a stroke of a pen the inwrought results of centuries. 
 Receiving the Provinces at the moment of their highest 
 bloom, when they contained more flourishing towns 
 than there were days in the year, when the revenues 
 exacted from them were more copious than all the 
 mines of South America, when the temper of the people, 
 made moderate by plenty and content, was remarkably 
 placable, nothing would have been easier for him than 
 to retain their allegiance. He had only, like a wise 
 statesman, to adapt his measures to the exigences of the 
 situation. But Philip was not a statesman. A Spaniard 
 of the Spaniards, with the worst traits of his nation 
 aggravated by the gloomy, monkish education he had 
 received dark, revengeful, and superstitious, without 
 one generous sentiment or a single noble ambition he 
 had conceived an ideal of government better fitted to 
 the satrapies of an oriental tyrant than to the court of a 
 Christian monarch. His father, Charles V., though 
 scarcely less a despot in action than he, was a despot 
 who had tempered his rule by friendly concessions, and 
 dazed the sense of his wrongs by a blaze of brilliant ex 
 ploits. Born among the Flemings, he had surrounded 
 his person with Flemings ; and the Flemings received 
 some of the reflected lustre of his glory. He was ar 
 bitrary, but arbitrary from policy, and not, as Philip 
 
428 Motley s Rise of the 
 
 was, from preference. Narrowness, bigotry, and hatred 
 were the inborn qualities of the son, who had achieved 
 no great deeds to awaken admiration, and exhibited 
 no tenderness to conciliate love. Distrusted and dis 
 liked by his northern subjects, from the very hour when, 
 a young man, he had showed himself reserved and 
 haughty amid the genial festivities of the celebrated ab 
 dication, he returned their aversion with a double 
 venom. He never comprehended the sturdy citizen- 
 independence of those prosperous burghers. He never 
 sympathized in their pursuits, nor admired their lowly 
 citizen-like virtues. He was impatient of their tradi 
 tional privileges ; he was piqued by their boasts of free 
 dom ; he was jealous of those among their nobles whom 
 he did not despise, and he scorned their seeming feeble 
 ness. Had they never aroused his deep religious enmi 
 ties, they would not have been his favorites ; but when 
 they gave an eager entrance to the Reformation, when, in 
 the natural over-action of a new movement, long sup 
 pressed, their rabble broke the images of his saints, and 
 scattered the sacred relics of his sanctuaries, they were, 
 from the instant, doomed to an unheard-of vengeance. 
 
 They were doomed, however, not in a frenzy of ex 
 asperation, not in the heat of outraged prejudices nor 
 in a sudden burst of unreasoning resentment, but 
 with slow, cold, calculating, subtle, and implacable 
 malignity. For with Philip the name of heretic was 
 a synonym of miscreant, wretch, criminal, outcast, or 
 whatever else is odious to man and abandoned of 
 God. The inhuman theology of the time he sincerely 
 believed, and he was prepared to enforce its remorseless 
 sanctions with all the cowled treacheries of the inqui 
 sition, and all the crushing energies of the first of States. 
 Active in brain, but inactive in body, his movements 
 were wily, rather than impetuous ; but whether slow or 
 
Dutch Republic. 429 
 
 swift, he contrived that they should be fatal If he 
 hastened his purposes, it was only to anticipate the 
 chances of possible escape ; and when he tarried in 
 them, it was only to render the means more sure, and 
 the execution final. They who read the memoirs 
 always think of him, as he sat amid the schemes of his 
 far-reaching empire, as of some sullen and gigantic 
 spider in the midst of his web, entrapping his poor vic 
 tims on every hand, and darting forth only when their 
 struggles threaten to break through his infernal meshes. 
 The agents whom Philip selected for the execution 
 of his vengeance upon the offending Netherlands, were 
 fit implements of his double nature, as a churchman 
 and a king. They were first the Cardinal Granville, and 
 afterward the Duke of Alva the one as subtle an 
 ecclesiastic as ever concealed the rancors of hell beneath 
 the smiles of heaven, and the other as inflexible a sol 
 dier as ever stalked through rivers of blood to do a 
 master s will. Granville, whose real name was Anthony 
 Peronet, was a Frenchman by birth, and had taken his 
 first lessons in state-craft under Charles V., as his deputy 
 at the Council of Trent. He had served the Emperor, 
 also, in subsequent negotiations, and had had the adroit 
 ness to get himself retained in the service of the son. 
 Secretary to Margaret of Parma, the nominal regent of 
 the Netherlands, he speedily made himself the real re 
 gent. To a mind of rare penetration and comprehen 
 siveness, he united great learning, great diligence, great 
 patience, and the most remarkable acuteness in devising 
 as well as unravelling plots. Always at his post, he was 
 always prepared for events. Penetrating the depth of 
 his master s mind, he apprehended his wishes almost be 
 fore they were formed. He carried them into effect with 
 a graceful audacity, which flattered the imperial self-love 
 without surprising his vanity. Devoted to the throne, 
 
430 Motley s Rise of the 
 
 more even than to the Church, fertile in expedients, in 
 defatigable in labor, and of polished and insinuating 
 manners, he grew the indispensable confidant of Philip. 
 But he was more solicitous in gaining the friendship 
 of his sovereign, than he was successful in appeasing 
 the discontents of the subject. All the acts of the gov 
 ernment being charged to him, he became an intoler 
 able offence to the nobles as well as to the people. It was 
 only after much delay, with great reluctance on the part 
 of the king, and not until he had sowed the seeds of 
 irreconcilable divisions, that he was compelled to retire 
 before the storm which they raised against him. As a 
 foreigner, his very existence as an official was a viola 
 tion of the ancient constitution. Surrounding himself 
 with foreigners, besides, he had repulsed the entire 
 body of the native aristocracy. Retaining an extraor 
 dinary force of Spanish troops in the country, he had 
 to bear the brunt of their repeated misconduct. Quar 
 tering a multitude of new bishops on the dioceses, he 
 had offended religious prejudices and increased the 
 taxes ; and favoring secretly the processes of the inqui 
 sition, he had alarmed the suspicions and fears of the 
 people, through whom the very name of that tribunal 
 sent a thrill of horror. Philip had dallied and equivo 
 cated in regard to his removal, until the discontents 
 were spread through all classes of the nobility, and 
 down even among the lowest ranks of the populace. A 
 timelier intervention might have relieved this state of 
 affairs ; but, on the recall of Granville, matters had 
 gone so far that the slight concessions announced but 
 whetted the rage for more. There remained no alternative 
 for Philip, but to yield to an extent which would have 
 damaged his supremacy, or to settle the difficulties at 
 once by the sword. True to his nature, he made 
 choice of a governor, to supersede the feeble and trem- 
 
Dutch Republic. 431 
 
 bling Margaret, whose character alone, apart from the 
 enormous power with which he was invested, would 
 have shown to which side of this alternative Philip in 
 clined. The Duke of Alya was sent into the Netherlands, 
 after a pompous preliminary parade, and at the head of 
 ten thousand men. A person better adapted to the execu 
 tion of Philip s designs did not then exist. He was the 
 foremost warrior of Europe, who had triumphed on 
 every field but one ; and he was as distinguished for 
 the asperity of his manners as he was for the intrepidity 
 of his valor. " As a man," says Mr. Motley, somewhat 
 naively, " his character was simple. He did not com 
 bine a great variety of vices, but those which he had 
 were colossal, and he possessed no virtues. He was 
 neither lustful nor intemperate, but his professed eulo 
 gists admitted his enormous avarice, while the world 
 has agreed that such an amount of stealth and ferocity, 
 of patient vindictiveness and universal bloodthirstiness, 
 were never found in a savage beast of the forest, and 
 but rarely in a human bosom." 
 
 Inexperienced as a statesman, and without talent, 
 save in his profession, this soulless, cast-iron man joined 
 to the methods of the soldier, which move "straight 
 forward, like a cannon-ball," the craftier methods of 
 the inquisitor. His administration, beginning with a 
 Judas-like betrayal of Counts Egmont and Horn, fol 
 lowed by their worse than Pilate-like trial and execution 
 murders almost unparalleled, for the pathetic interest 
 which clings to the victims, and for the reckless atrocity 
 in the perpetrators was marked throughout by every 
 vice of tyranny. Mr. Motley has summed up the re 
 sults in the following terrific, but not exaggerated pas 
 sage : 
 
 " The tens of thousands in those miserable provinces 
 who fell victims to the gallows, the sword, the stake, the 
 
43 2 Motley s Rise of the 
 
 living grave, or to living banishment, have never been 
 counted ; for those statistics of barbarity are often ef 
 faced from human record. Enough, however, is known, 
 and enough has been recited in the preceding pages. 
 No mode in which human beings have ever caused 
 their fellow-creatures to suffer, was omitted from daily 
 practice. Men, women, and children, old and young, 
 nobles and paupers, opulent burghers, hospital patients, 
 lunatics, dead bodies, all were indiscriminately made to 
 furnish food for the scaffold and the stake. Men were 
 tortured, beheaded, hanged by the neck and by the 
 legs, burned before slow fires, pinched to death with red 
 hot tongs, broken upon the wheel, starved and flayed 
 alive. Their skins stripped from the living body, were 
 stretched upon drums, to be beaten in the march of 
 their brethren to the gallows. The bodies of many who 
 had died a natural death were exhumed, and their fester 
 ing remains hanged upon the gibbet, on pretext that 
 they had died without receiving the sacrament, but in 
 reality that their property might become the legitimate prey 
 of the treasury. Marriages of long standing were dis 
 solved by order of government, that rich heiresses might 
 be married against their will to foreigners whom they 
 abhorred. Women and children were executed for the 
 crime of assisting their fugitive husbands and parents 
 with a penny in their utmost need, and even for consol 
 ing them with a letter in their exile. Such was the reg 
 ular course of affairs as administered by the Blood- 
 Council. The additional barbarities committed amid 
 the sack and ruin of those blazing and starving cities are 
 almost beyond belief; unborn infants were torn from 
 the living bodies of their mothers ; women and chil 
 dren were violated by thousands ; and whole populations 
 burned and hacked to pieces by soldiers in every mode 
 which cruelty, in its wanton ingenuity, could devise." 
 
Dutch Republic. 433 
 
 While we shudder at the contemplation of such a 
 character, and are oppressed with fears lest his ruthless 
 persecution should extinguish the innocent people of 
 the Netherlands, we are relieved by the appearance on 
 the scene of another personage. William, the Prince of 
 Orange, emerging brightly from the earlier clouds of 
 these gloomy troubles, grows more luminous and beau 
 tiful as the darkness thickens and disasters accumulate. 
 The heir of a noble house, opulent and sumptuous, 
 but refined and accomplished in all the humanities of the 
 time, he comes before us, first as the favorite of the 
 Emperor Charles, whose hands rested upon his shoulder 
 in that imperial display at Brussels, when, like Diocle 
 tian, he relinquished the glories of the crown. We 
 find him next among the band of stately nobles encom 
 passing the throne of Margaret, who sought to mollify 
 the harsher edicts of the king, and to guide her gov 
 ernment aright. A calm, observant, indomitable spirit 
 plastic enough to assume the impressions of the mo 
 ment, but never so weak as to sink under them friendly, 
 social, ambitious, but self-centred and equal to any des 
 tiny, "no o ergrowths of complexion breaking down 
 the pales and forts of reason," William was finally rec 
 ognized by all parties as the master of the epoch by 
 his friends, who put unlimited trust in him, and by his 
 enemies, who felt toward him a no less unlimited fear. 
 " He was bom," as Schiller says, " to command the re 
 spect and to win the hearts of men." Less enthusiastic 
 and wiser than either Egmont or Horn, he avoided the 
 complicities into which they fell, while his self-respect 
 restrained him from the orgies of Brederode, and his 
 early religious indifference from the fanaticism of the 
 sectaries. 
 
 But though he did not mingle in the turbulent assem 
 blages of the preachers, nor echo the wild war-cries of 
 19* 
 
434 Motley s Rise of the 
 
 the Gueux, he did not less keenly feel the sufferings of 
 his country, nor less energetically resist the wrongs 
 of her oppressor. By a singular reticence of temper, 
 which, in the wisdom of Polonius s advice, allowed 
 thought no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought 
 his act," he kept aloof from the popular ferments, and 
 yet was too impressible and generous to feel aloof from 
 the popular afflictions. With the unerring instinct of 
 the heart, the people everywhere felt him to be their 
 friend. They saw how his earnestness rose with the oc 
 casion, and how his piety awoke and grew as the woes 
 endured by others deepened before him. Thus, his 
 moderation at the outset had the double effect of gaining 
 him a universal confidence, and of preparing him, 
 while others retired from the combat exhausted and 
 broken, to enter it as if afresh. He protested and ap 
 pealed, so long as protests and appeals appeared to be 
 available ; but when it was seen that the hour for these 
 was past, he drew the sword and threw away the scab 
 bard. His rank, his fortune, his eloquence, his indus 
 try, his genius, his religion, all that he had, and all that 
 he was, were then given to the cause with a cheerful and 
 unflagging alacrity. The man to whom Philip, had he 
 been a wise and good king, as he was a bad and foolish 
 one, would have committed the government of his 
 provinces, was now become his unrelenting enemy. 
 The man whom he could not bribe, nor entrap, nor 
 quell, was now. by the simple force of principle, the 
 most formidable foe which his monarchy had yet en 
 countered. 
 
 It was, however, a long and weary way that Orange 
 had to tread before the world was destined to reap the 
 fruits of his patriotism and virtue a way all saturated 
 in blood, encompassed with difficulties, broken by vicis 
 situdes, and ending at last in his own death. The im- 
 
Dittch Republic. 436 
 
 agination looks almost in vain through history for a 
 sadder yet nobler figure than that which William 
 presented during the forlorner periods of his under 
 taking. We see the mate of emperors, the splendid and 
 wealthy noble, accustomed to the shows of rank and the 
 solaces of friendship, having sacrificed his fortune and 
 abandoned his home, stripped of his dignities, and 
 wandering alone, almost penniless, an outcast among 
 foreign nations, eagerly soliciting aid for his country, 
 and, by superhuman efforts, striving to organize an 
 army. As we follow his painful career at that crisis, we 
 think involuntarily of that noble exile of our own day, 
 who now weeps, deserted, in the streets of London, the 
 fallen fortunes of his dear Hungary, and the pitiless 
 revulsions of time. But the peculiarity of William s 
 position, unlike that of Kossuth, was, that he stood 
 almost entirely alone. Arrayed against the mightiest 
 monarchy of the earth, there were few who dared to 
 sympathize in his struggles, and none to comprehend 
 his designs. The reluctant allies, whom he gained by 
 his persuasions, fled like sheep on the first reverses. 
 The soldiers, whom he raised by promises, were merce 
 naries, whose demands he had no money to meet. The 
 patriots who acted with him, were headstrong, violent, 
 impatient of control; and too often animated by the 
 spirit of the freebooter, rather than by his own wise and 
 disinterested love of justice, they imitated the excesses 
 which had made the Spaniard hideous. His most 
 efficient helpers, the adherents of the new religion, were 
 the bitter partisans of sect, and not, like him, the cham 
 pions of universal tolerance. Time and time again was 
 he betrayed by the dissensions of Calvinist and Lu 
 theran ; and, time and time again, when his prospects 
 were at the highest, when fortune seemed to be about to 
 float him on the waves of success to the fullest fruition 
 
436 Motley s Rise of the 
 
 of his hopes, some rashness of a leader, or some insta 
 bility of the rabble, who were his troops, would plunge 
 him into the abysses of helplessness and despair. 
 
 It is remarkable, however, all through these most 
 desperate miscarriages and defeats even after that most 
 gigantic treachery which history records, when the king 
 of France, having lured him on by promises of assist 
 ance against the Catholics, consummated his plan on 
 the night of St. Bartholomew, in the blood of thirty 
 thousand Huguenots how his soul retained its elasti 
 city, its courage, and its confidence. In his hours of 
 deepest distress, he did not wholly despond ; looking 
 calmly to the issue of things, he estimated their tran 
 sient changes rightly ; and while the vast fabric of his 
 enterprises was tumbling in ruins around him, and 
 carrying with it, to the eyes of others, the fortunes of 
 his country, he trusted in the vitality of his cause, and 
 clung to his faith in God. In this far-seeing firmness, 
 this immovable constancy of purpose, this invincible 
 superiority to the smaller as well as larger persecutions of 
 fate, he stood a type of our own Washington, who was 
 never so great and triumphant as in those dark hours 
 when others would have been baffled and cast down. 
 
 United to this equanimity in adverse circumstances 
 was a rare and fertile power of combination, by which 
 he extracted success out of failure. Among the many 
 skirmishes, battles, and sieges between the Spaniards 
 and the Netherlanders, the former, owing to their su 
 periority in every point of discipline and effectiveness, 
 were invariably the victors, and yet as invariably they 
 gained little by success. . Scarcely had the echoes of 
 triumph died away, before they were called upon to 
 meet some new conjuncture, which the Prince had ar 
 ranged, seemingly more formidable than that which 
 they had just overcome. In political intrigue as in 
 
Dutch Republic. 437 
 
 military movements, he evinced this same marvellous 
 command of untoward events. When the romantic 
 Don John, the brilliant hero of Lepanto, was sent to the 
 Low Countries, to recover by smiles what Alva had lost 
 by the axe and the sword, nothing could have been more 
 promising than the prospects opened to him, by his gay 
 feastings of the men and his gallant flatteries of the 
 women. He had only to win the sombre William, to 
 render the nation all his own. He made the attempt ; 
 he cajoled, he coaxed, he wheedled, he presented the 
 most gorgeous pictures to the ambition and selfishness 
 of the Prince, and in a little while found himself hem 
 med in on every side, deprived of his armies, abhorred 
 by the nation, and heartily sick both of the Nether- 
 landers and William. Again, when the Catholic nobles, 
 jealous of the power of the Prince, invited the Arch 
 duke Matthias of Austria to come over and help them, 
 the silent William consented : Matthias was made the 
 Governor-General, and William his lieutenant ; but it 
 was soon remarked by everybody, that William was the 
 real ruler, and Matthias only his secretary. Then, 
 in order to retrieve this false move, the nobles invited 
 over the French Duke of Alenon, to which William 
 also consented. When Alengon came, he was glad to 
 accept the mere barren honors by which Orange neu 
 tralized his powers of mischief, without turning him 
 into an enemy. In fact, as a politician, \Villiam had 
 no equal in that day, and had he possessed but half the 
 force of his enemies, or had the people for whose weal 
 he labored been united, he might have easily attained 
 a complete and final success. But the materials with 
 which he wrought were of -the most perverse and re 
 fractory kind, and the good which might have been 
 achieved in five years, was spread over a lifetime. 
 
 We share with Mr. Motley his admiration of the 
 
43$ Motleys Rise of the 
 
 character of William ; we regard him as both a good 
 and great man ; in liberality and justice of sentiment 
 he was far in advance of his age ; his ability in the 
 management of affairs was amazing ; and he was rightly 
 called the Father of the People. But we think that he 
 sometimes carried his policy of reserve to the point of 
 dissimulation. He clung to the illusion of royalty long 
 after an abandonment of it would have been justified. 
 He deliberated when he ought to have struck, and 
 sometimes he finessed when he should have taken the 
 trick. We are aware of -the sinister and tortuous 
 policy with which he had to contend, and how difficult 
 it is at this day to estimate justly the complex and 
 counteracting influences of obscure events ; but we 
 still feel, in spite of the prepossessions excited by Mr. 
 Motley s splendid advocacy, that a more impulsive 
 quality of mind would have assisted his efforts, and 
 raised him to a loftier niche of greatness. It would 
 be unfair, however, on this account, to deny his exalted 
 merits as a statesman. Through prodigious difficulties, 
 and by unexampled sacrifices, he accomplished the 
 emancipation of the United Provinces, and laid the 
 foundation of a glorious national structure. At a time 
 when the colonies of North America were yet un 
 known, a half century before the Puritans had landed 
 at Plymouth, while Frobisher was making his second 
 voyage, and Gilbert and Raleigh were only beginning 
 to people the new world, the Dutch Republic, in an 
 ticipation of our own, had "bequeathed to the world 
 of thought the great idea of the toleration of all opin 
 ions, and, to the world of action, the prolific principle 
 of federal union. " It is the eternal honor of Holland, 
 and of those by whom her redemption was procured, 
 that she was the first among the modern nations to ex 
 emplify in practice a Christian State. 
 
Dutch Republic. 439 
 
 The story of the battles and sufferings by which 
 these events were brought about, is told by Mr. Motley 
 with remarkable animation and skill. Availing himself 
 of all the original authorities to be found in the various 
 archives of Belgium and Holland, he has constructed a 
 narrative full of interest and instruction. He paints the 
 confused scenes of the period he has chosen to de 
 scribe its great and little passions, its atrocious and its 
 noble men, its terrible sieges and picturesque festivals, 
 bridals in the midst of massacres, its fights upon the 
 sea and under the sea, its torture-fires and blood-baths 
 in vivid colors, with a bold, free hand, and with a mas 
 terly knowledge of effect. Whatever was dramatic in 
 those fierce conflicts he has seized ; whatever is peculiar 
 or striking in character, he has penetrated ; whatever is 
 significant of time or place, he appropriates : while he 
 has never forgotten the great purpose of history, which 
 is, the illustration of moral power. It is impossible to 
 read a page of his book without feeling that his mind 
 is one of unusual vigor, and that his heart beats with 
 generous blood. We gratefully welcome him, therefore, 
 to the number of our most successful historians. 
 
 Let us add, at the same time, that his work is dis 
 figured by certain defects, which it would be well to 
 correct in subsequent editions. The style is ambitiously 
 rhetorical, in many places, and throughout needs sim 
 plicity. The headings of the chapters are often offen 
 sively undignified and colloquial. His irony, too, some 
 times degenerates into mere sneering, and his attempts 
 at humor are almost always out of place. As a whole, 
 the narrative is too diffuse. A great many needless epi 
 sodes are introduced, and details are given of unimpor 
 tant incidents. Forgetting the impartiality of the histo 
 rian, our author pleads the cause of the Netherlands, in 
 certain cases, in which he should deliver their sentence. 
 
440 Motley s Rise of the Dutch Republic. 
 
 There were occasions, in the course of their struggle, 
 when they conducted themselves with extreme meanness, 
 as well as atrocity, and which sadly mar the effect of 
 the heroic picture which Mr. Motley seems anxious to 
 present. These he passes over rather hurriedly, al 
 though he omits no opportunity which is furnished him 
 for censuring the Spaniards. In a few historical allu 
 sions, also not falling directly within his course, we 
 notice that he is inaccurate. He speaks, for instance, 
 of Thomas Muncer as a leader of the anabaptists, and 
 denounces by implication his personal character. Now 
 Munzer (which is the real name) was a leader of the 
 peasants, during the peasants war in Germany ; was in 
 no wise connected with the anabaptists who came on 
 the scene ten years later than he and was a man of 
 lofty religious character. The least agreeable part of 
 these volumes is the historic introduction, which smacks 
 a little of the stilted style of Mr. Carlyle, the worst 
 model, perhaps, both grammatically and rhetorically, 
 that a young writer could adopt. Yet these are trivial 
 blemishes in a work of incomparable merit, and which 
 absorbs the reader s attention from the preface to the 
 close. 
 
EMERSON ON ENGLAND.* 
 
 |HE position of Mr. Emerson in our literature 
 is so well-defined and established, that it no 
 longer excites to controversy. His character 
 istics, as a thinker or writer, his peculiar points of view, 
 and his methods of stating them, his keen insight, his 
 utter want of logic, his limpid, racy style, his occasional 
 obscurities in short, his merits and defects, whatever 
 we may think of them, are known, and demand no 
 further comment. We say that he is Emerson, and 
 have described him. Now and then, a half-crazy dys 
 peptic, like Gilfillan, fires off a pop-gun at him, but no 
 one hears the report nor cares for it, and the unconscious 
 object of it still walks forward with his serene and lofty 
 smile. 
 
 This position, it is worthy of note, Emerson won soon 
 after his first appearance, and has steadily maintained, 
 without material increase or diminution, up to the pres 
 ent time. His little book on "Nature" revealed to 
 discerning minds all that he has since become. He is 
 to them no greater now than he was then. His last and 
 seventh volume is no better than his first. There is 
 more richness and mellowness of style in it, perhaps, 
 but otherwise it is the same. Nor does this seeming 
 
 English Traits. By R. W. EMERSON. Boston : Phillips, Sampson 
 & Co., 1856. 
 
 From Putnam 1 s Monthly, Oct., 1856. 
 
 IQ* 
 
44 2 Emerson on England. 
 
 want of growth argue any defect of genius. Goethe 
 used to say of Schiller that if you separated from him 
 for a week you would be astonished on meeting him 
 again, by the prodigious strides in advance that he had 
 made in the interval ; but the reason was that Schiller 
 did not begin as a master. He presented himself as a 
 pupil, and you afterward saw the steps of his progress. 
 Mr. Emerson, on the other hand, stepped into the arena 
 with a native control of his powers and resources. He 
 did not have to learn the use of his tools by using them, 
 but was born to their use. His intellect, from the out 
 set, appeared so clear, so penetrating, so fresh, so 
 capable, that it promised everything that it has since 
 performed. It prepared us by its immediate qualities 
 against future surprises. Of every new manifestation 
 of it, we feel that it is just what we expected. Some 
 minds suffer a kind of ebb and flow in their inspirations 
 are now dull and depressed, and then glowing with 
 life ; but there are others which possess a steady, per 
 manent action, like crystals which are brilliant in every 
 light, or like stars which shine forever. Our author s is 
 of the latter sort. 
 
 In this work on England, we see Mr. Emerson in a 
 new field and in a new atmosphere, but it is the same 
 Emerson. His theme is a much larger one than he has 
 before tried, but he treats it in the old vein. What he 
 has hitherto done in kitcat and cabinet sizes, he now 
 essays in the broader historical style. The old manner 
 is, however, retained. The practical, concrete life of 
 England is described, but it is described from the high 
 region of philosophy. It is painted (for Mr. Emerson 
 is artist as well as philosopher), but it is painted for the 
 thought rather than the eye. We do not mean that 
 there is any want of color or warmth in the picture in 
 fact, there is an intense reality jn it ; but it is a reality 
 
Emerson on England. 443 
 
 for the intellect more than for the senses, which the brain 
 touches more than the hand. 
 
 John Bull has often sat for his portrait, but never be 
 fore to a limner so coldly clairvoyant as this. Puckler 
 Muskau and Von Raumer, Philarete Chasles and 
 Bulwer, to say nothing of innumerable lesser artists 
 Italian, French, German, American, and native have 
 attempted likenesses of him, have given us sketches, 
 more or less exact, of his head, face, and looks ; but 
 here is one who dissects him in order to paint him; who 
 turns him inside out, exhibiting such bowels as he has, 
 and more than that, trepans his brain for him to show 
 what texture it is of, and thrusts his hand into his chest 
 to measure the power of the life-pulses. His country, 
 his origin, his achievements in enterprise and literature 
 his character and religion his greatnesses, which are 
 many, and his littlenesses, which are no less, are 
 daguerreotyped with a perfectly free hand, and yet with 
 the utmost sincerity. 
 
 Few men in this country were better qualified, in 
 many respects, to approach this subject than Mr. 
 Emerson. As a scholar of wide and various reading, 
 familiar with the results of all the older civilizations, he 
 was already furnished with standards for a wise com 
 parative judgment. Never having been engaged in 
 actual life, whether political or mercantile, he was free 
 from the prejudices which the details of affairs are apt 
 to engender. By habit and training accustomed to the 
 formation of general opinions, seeing things in their 
 broader relations by the pure light of the intellect, he 
 was not liable to be warped by his immediate obser 
 vation, nor to gaze through the discolored mediums of 
 passion. At the same time, a man eminent in his 
 sphere, he was eminently well received abroad. The 
 most secluded circles of cultivation were open to him, 
 
444 Emerson on England. 
 
 in their friendliest aspects ; he saw what he saw in its 
 best guise, but he saw it undazzled by accessory splen 
 dors ; while he was free to move, in lower every-day 
 walks, himself unobserved, yet observant of all that it 
 was pertinent to note. These were his advantages as an 
 observer ; but to opportunity, to sharpness and alacrity 
 of vision, to susceptibility and insight, he joined the 
 ability of utterance. A rare command of the subtler 
 forces of language a racy, idiomatic, sinewy, yet 
 polished and graceful style, render his execution as 
 charming as it is trenchant and impressive. 
 
 But, it should not be disguised that, in other respects, 
 Mr. Emerson was not precisely the man that the world 
 would have chosen to take the gauge and measure of 
 England s success. As an abstract philosopher, more 
 profoundly moved by the deeper relations of thought 
 and sentiment than by the practical every-day life of 
 men, it was to be doubted whether he would seize the 
 peculiar genius of the most practical of all the nations. 
 It was to be feared that he would dwell more upon 
 the inward springs and sources of its character than 
 upon its real achievements. The English people are 
 not so much a people of thoughts and sentiments as of 
 deeds. They are the most institutional people on earth, 
 and, to be comprehended rightly, they must be studied, 
 in their laws and governments as well as in their man 
 ners, literature, and religion. Whether Mr. Emerson 
 has studied them in this wise, we shall, perhaps, inquire 
 in the sequel. 
 
 The problem, which our author proposes to himself, 
 after a brief record of an early visit to England, in 
 1833 during which he saw Coleridge, Landor, Carlyle, 
 Wordsworth, etc. is, Why England is England? 
 What are the elements of that power which the English 
 hold over other nations ? If there be one test of 
 
Emerson on England. 446 
 
 national genius, universally accepted, it is success ; and 
 if there be one successful country in the universe, for 
 the last millennium, that country is England. What is 
 the secret of it ? 
 
 This is a broad question, and in proceeding to 
 answer it, Mr. Emerson first glances at the land itself, 
 in which there is a singular combination of favorable 
 conditions. The climate, neither hot nor cold, enables 
 you to work every hour in the year. The soil abounds 
 in every material for work, except wood with coal, 
 salt, tin, iron, potter s clay, stone, and good arable 
 earth. The perpetual rains keep the rivers full for float 
 ing productions everywhere. Game of every kind ani 
 mates the immense heaths, and the waters spawn with 
 fish. As an island, it occupies the best stand ; for it is 
 anchored just off the continent of Europe, and right in 
 the heart of the modern world. A better commercial 
 position is not on the planet, affording shelter for any 
 number of ships, and opening into the markets of 
 all the world. As a nation, conveniently small, it is 
 disjoined from others so as to breed a fierce nationality, 
 and still communicates with others, so that the people 
 cannot depress each other, as by glut, but flow out into 
 colonies and distant trade, This insular smallness has 
 influenced the internal culture. For more than a thou 
 sand years, the Englishman has been improving his 
 little comfortable farm. The fields have been combed 
 and rolled till they appear to have been finished "with 
 a pencil instead of a plough." Every rood of land 
 has been turned to its best uses. It is covered with 
 towns, cities, cathedrals, castl-es, and great and deco 
 rated estates. Every corner and crevice is stuffed full, 
 like a museum ; every structure is solid, with a look of 
 age, every equipage is rich : the trades are innumerable ; 
 and the whole country is a grand phalanstery, where 
 
446 Emerson on England. 
 
 all that man wants is provided within the precinct. 
 Only the skies are very dull, heavy with fog and coal- 
 smoke contaminating the air and corroding the monu 
 ments and buildings. 
 
 Next to locality, Mr. Emerson refers to the ques 
 tion of race. He does not give in to the modern 
 theory, so verbosely expounded by Knox, and Count 
 de Gobineau, of the superior energies of the pure races, 
 but inclines to think that composite, or mixed races, 
 are the best. "The simplest organizations are the 
 lowest a mere mouth, or jelly, or straight worm ; but 
 as organizations become complex, the scale mounts. As 
 water, lime, and sand make mortar, so certain tempera 
 ments marry well." The English, at any rate, derive 
 their pedigree from a wide range of nationalities. They 
 are of the oldest blood of the world of the Celtic, 
 which has an enduring productiveness, and gave to their 
 seas and mountains names which are poems ;* of the 
 German, which the Romans found it impossible to con 
 quer, strong of heart as of hand ; and of the fighting 
 predatory Norsemen, who impart to them animal vigor, 
 prompt action, steady sense, and wise speech, with a 
 turn for homicide the composite result being a hardy, 
 strenuous, enduring, and manly tribe. Having all 
 these antagonistic elements in its veins, this tribe is full 
 of blood and of brain ; full of fight and of affection ; 
 of contemplation and practical skill ; of aggressive 
 
 * Which is only true to a small extent. The Celts have had 
 about as much to do with the destiny of England as our Indian tribes 
 have had with that of America, A few of the names of the streams 
 and mountains in England are Celtic, but the large majority of all 
 the names are Saxon, at least nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a 
 thousand. Of ancient and pure Celtic words retained in our vocab 
 ulary, only thirty are enumerated, and these relate principally to female 
 and domestic uses. 
 
Emerson on England. 447 
 
 freedom and fixed law ; of enterprise and stolidity 
 with whom "nothing can be praised without damning 
 exceptions, and nothing denounced without salvos of 
 cordial praise." 
 
 The Englishman of the present day Mr. Emerson 
 found a capital animal, well preserved, ruddy in com 
 plexion, with voracious appetite, and excellent diges 
 tion ; handsome, when not bloated with over-feeding ; 
 combining decision and nerve in the expression of the 
 face ; devoted to bodily exercise, to boxing, running, 
 shooting, riding, and rowing ; living in the open air, 
 yet " putting a solid bar of sleep between day and day ;" 
 possessed of vast constitutional energy, yet domestic, 
 honest, and humane. "The island was renowned in 
 antiquity," he says, "for its breed of mastiffs; so fierce, 
 that when their teeth were set, you must cut their heads 
 off to part them. The man is like his dog. The peo 
 ple have that nervous bilious temperament which is 
 known by medical men to resist every means employed 
 to make its possessor subservient to the will of others. 
 The English game is main force to main force, the 
 planting of foot to foot, fair play and open field ; a 
 rough tug, without trick or dodging, till one or both 
 come to pieces." 
 
 From this brief study of their locality and origin, our 
 author turns, by a sudden transition, to a description 
 of the present characteristics of England. His prin 
 cipal chapters are so many essays on "Manners," 
 "Truth," "Character," "Wealth," "Aristocracy," 
 Religion, " Literature, " and the Times, " added to 
 which is one chapter of personal reminiscences. As 
 essays, they run over with nice observation, sagacious 
 remark, quaint yet pertinent quotation, the most telling 
 truths condensed in a phrase or a metaphor, dry humor, 
 and placid good -nature. Out of every page, we might 
 
448 Emerson on England. 
 
 extract, for the entertainment of our readers, some 
 novel and striking passage, that would contain either a 
 remarkable image, a pleasant fancy, a stroke of wit, or 
 a profound principle. But we shall not follow Mr. 
 Emerson through his kaleidoscopic gallery, where the 
 same materials are ever presenting some new wonder of 
 form or some new brilliancy of color, contenting our 
 selves with a few phrases descriptive of his general re 
 sults, which we glean as we read. 
 
 Speaking of the hard manner of the English, he says : 
 "A sea-shell should be the crest of England, not only 
 because it represents a power built on the waves, but 
 also the hard finish of the men. The Englishman 
 is finished like the cowry or the murex. After the spire 
 and the spines are formed, or with the formation, a 
 juice exudes, and a hard enamel varnishes every part. 
 The keeping of the proprieties is as indispensable as 
 clean linen. No merit quite countervails the want of 
 this, whilst this sometimes stands in lieu of all. Tis 
 in bad taste, is the most formidable word that an Eng 
 lishman can pronounce. But the japan costs them dear. 
 There is a prose in certain of them, which exceeds 
 in wooden deadness all rivalry with other countrymen. 
 There is a knell in the conceit and externality of their 
 voice, which seems to say, have all hope behind. In this 
 Gibraltar of propriety, mediocrity gets intrenched and 
 consolidated, and founded in adamant. An English 
 man of fashion is like those souvenirs bound in gold 
 vellum, enriched with delicate engravings, fit for the 
 hands of ladies and princes, but with nothing in it 
 worth reading and remembering." 
 
 The great vi rtue of Englishmen, in Mr. Emerson s 
 estimation, is veracity. They are blunt in saying what 
 they think, sparing of promises, and require plain 
 dealing of others. Of old time, Alfred, the typical 
 
Emerson on England. 449 
 
 Englishman of his day, was called by his friend Asser 
 Aluer edits Veridicus the truth-speaker. The mottoes 
 of the ancient families and monitory proverbs, as Fare 
 fac, say do, of the Fairfaxes ; say and seal, of the house 
 of Fiennes ; Vero nil verms, of the De Veres. The 
 phrase of the lowest people is " honor bright." Even 
 Lord Chesterfield, with his French breeding, declared 
 that truth was the distinction of the gentleman. They, 
 consequently, love reality in wealth, power, and hospi 
 tality ; they build of stone, and they have a horror of 
 adventurers. Connected with this love of truth is a cer 
 tain grave and heavy demeanor, which disinclines them 
 to light recreations. " //j s amusaient trisiemeni" said 
 old Froissart, selon le coulume de leur pays. " They 
 are very much steeped in their temperament, like men 
 just awakened from deep sleep. They are of the 
 earth, earthy ; and of the sea, as the sea-kinds ; at 
 tached to it for what it yields them, and not from any 
 sentiment. They are headstrong believers and defend 
 ers of their opinion, and not less resolute in maintain 
 ing their whim and perversity. Their looks bespeak an 
 invincible stoutness. They stoutly carry into every nook 
 and corner their turbulent sense, leaving no lie uncon- 
 tradicted, no pretension unexamined. The English 
 man is a churl, with a soft place, however, in his heart. 
 He says no, and serves you, and your thanks disgust 
 him. " Here was lately a cross-grained miser," adds 
 Mr. Emerson, drawing an illustration from Turner, 
 "old and ugly, resembling in countenance the portrait 
 of Punch, with the laugh left out, rich by his own in 
 dustry, skulking in a lonely house, who never gave a 
 dinner to any man, and disdained all courtesies, yet as 
 true a worshipper of beauty in form and color as ever 
 existed, and profusely pouring over the cold minds of 
 his countrymen creations of grace and truth, removing 
 
45o Emerson on England. 
 
 the reproach of sterility from English art, catching from 
 their savage climate every fine hint, and importing into 
 their galleries every tint and trait of summer cities and 
 skies, making an era in painting, and, when he saw 
 that the splendor of one of his pictures in the Exhibi 
 tion dimmed his rivals, that hung next to it, secretly 
 took a brush and blackened his own." 
 
 It is this love of reality, joined to an intense confi 
 dence in the power and performance of his own nation, 
 which makes him not only incurious about other 
 nations, but repulsive to them. He dislikes foreigners, 
 but he is no less disliked by them. An English lady 
 on the Rhine, hearing a German speaking of her party 
 as foreigners, exclaimed, "No, we are not foreigners 
 we are English ; it is you that are foreigners !" The 
 English have not only a high opinion of themselves 
 and a poor one of everybody else, but they are given 
 to brag, often unconsciously, of their own exploits. 
 " The habit of brag runs through all classes, from the 
 Times newspaper, through politicians and poets, through 
 Wordsworth, Carlyle, Mill, and Sydney Smith, down to 
 the boys at Eton. In the gravest treatise on political 
 economy, in books of science, one is surprised by the 
 innocent exhibition of unflinching nationality." In a 
 tract on Corn, an amiable and accomplished gentleman 
 (William Spence) writes thus : "Though Britain were 
 surrounded by a wall ten thousand cubits in height, 
 still she would as far excel the rest of the globe in 
 riches as she now does, both in this secondary quality, 
 and in the more important ones of freedom, virtue, and 
 science." Bull is apt to make his heavy fun over the 
 national vanity of Jonathan ; but Jonathan is only a 
 distant imitation of his father. 
 
 Meanwhile, one of the finer sides of their strong 
 nationality is that love of the domestic circle, which has 
 
Emerson on England. 461 
 
 rendered the English home proverbial for its sanctity, 
 its purity, its sweetness, and its comfort. "Bom in a 
 harsh and wet climate, which keeps man indoors when 
 ever he is at rest, and being of an affectionate arid loyal 
 temper, he dearly loves his home. If he be rich, he 
 buys a demesne and builds a hall ; if he be in middle 
 condition, he spares no expense on his house. With 
 out, it is all planted : within, it is wainscoted, carved, 
 painted, curtained, hung with pictures, and filled with 
 good furniture. Tis a passion, which survives all 
 others, to deck and improve it. Hither he brings all 
 that is rare and costly, and with the national tendency 
 to sit fast on the same spot for many generations, it 
 comes to be, in course of time, a museum of heirlooms, 
 gifts, and trophies of adventures and exploits of the 
 family. He is very fond of silver plate, and, though 
 he have no gallery of portraits of his ancestors, he has 
 of their punch-bowls and porringers." "England 
 produces, under favorable conditions of ease and cul 
 ture, the finest women in the world ; and as the men 
 are affectionate and true-hearted, the women inspire 
 and refine them. Nothing can be more delicate with 
 out being fantastical nothing more firm and based in 
 nature and sentiment, than the courtship and mutual 
 carriage of the sexes. The sentiment of Imogen, in 
 Cymbeline, is copied from English nature ; and not 
 less the Portia of Brutus, the Kate Percy, and the Des- 
 demona. The romance does not exceed the height of 
 noble passion in Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, or in Lady 
 Russell/ 
 
 Among other qualities of the English. on which Mr. 
 Emerson dilates, is the absolute homage they pay to 
 wealth, which they esteem a final certificate of all 
 worth. In exact proportion is the reproach of poverty. 
 Sydney Smith said poverty is infamous in England. 
 
452 Emerson on England. 
 
 The ground of this pride in wealth is the prodigious 
 labor by which it has been accumulated. The English 
 man sees in it whole centuries of invention, toil, and 
 economy. He derives from it an ideal perfection of 
 property the vastest social uses miracles of luxury 
 and enjoyment. Yet there is, also, an increasing dan 
 ger lest this servant should become his master. The 
 wealth of England has led to an intolerable despotism 
 of expense. Not the aims of a manly life, but the 
 means of meeting a ponderous outlay, is the end 
 placed before a youth emerging from his minority. A 
 large family is reckoned a misfortune. At the same 
 time there is a preposterous worship of aristocracy in 
 England, though the aristocracy, which has not been 
 without its uses in disciplining manners and fostering 
 the fine arts, is now decaying. The old Bohuns and 
 De Veres are gone; but "lawyers, farmers, and silk- 
 mercers lie perdu in their coronets, and wink to the an 
 tiquary to say nothing." As to the Established Church 
 of England, Mr. Emerson considers it pretty much of 
 a sham, having nothing left but possession, where 
 people attend as a matter of good-breeding, but with 
 no vital interest in its proceedings. 
 
 The literature of the nation, however, is stronger and 
 truer, showing the solidest sense, the most earnest 
 labor, the roughest vigor, and the readiest mechanical 
 skill. But, excepting the splendid age of Bacon and 
 Shakspeare, English literature has not attained the 
 loftiest heights. It is too direct, practical, hard, unro- 
 mantic, and unpoetic. It has accurate perceptions, 
 takes hold of things by the right ends, but it must 
 stand on a fact. A kind of mental materialism runs 
 through it. Plain strong speech it likes better than 
 soaring into the clouds. Even in its elevation, its 
 poetry is common sense inspired, or iron raised to a 
 
Emerson on England. 453 
 
 white heat. "The bias of Englishmen to practical 
 skill has reacted on the national mind. They are in 
 capable of an inutility, and respect the five mechanic 
 powers even in their song. The voice of their modern 
 muse has a slight hint of the steam-whistle, and the 
 poem is created as an ornament and finish of their 
 monarchy, and by no means as the bird of a new morn 
 ing, which forgets the past world in the full enjoyment 
 of that which is forming. They are with difficulty 
 ideal ; they are the most conditioned men, as if, having 
 the best conditions, they could not bring themselves to 
 forfeit them. Every one of them is a thousand years 
 old and lives by his memory ; and when you say this, 
 they accept it as praise. Nothing comes to the book 
 shops but politics, travels, statistics, tabulation, and 
 engineering, and even what is called philosophy and 
 letters is mechanical in its structure, as if inspiration 
 had ceased, as if no vast hope, no religion, no song of 
 joy, no analogy existed any more." "Squalid content 
 ment with conventions, satires at the names of philos 
 ophy and religion, parochial and shop-till politics, and 
 idolatry of usage betray the ebb of life and spirit. As 
 they trample on nationalities to reproduce London and 
 Londoners in Europe and Asia, so they fear the hos 
 tility of ideas, of poetry, of religion ghosts which they 
 cannot lay ; and having attempted to domesticate and 
 dress the blessed soul itself in English broadcloth and 
 gaiters, they are tormented with fear that herein lurks a 
 force that will sweep their system away." The artists 
 say "nature puts them out; the scholars have become 
 an ideal." Poetry is degraded and made ornamental. 
 Pope s verses were a kind of frosted cake ; Sir Walter 
 Scott wrote rhymed travellers guides to Scotland ; Ten 
 nyson is factitious, "climbing no mount of vision." 
 Hallam is a learned and elegant scholar, rich and wise, 
 
454 Emerson on England. 
 
 but retrospective ; Dickens prepares London tracts, 
 generous but local ; Thackeray thinks we must re 
 nounce ideals and accept London ; and the brilliant 
 Macaulay explicitly teaches that good means good to 
 eat or good to wear, material commodity. The ex 
 ceptions to this limitary tone of thought are Coleridge, 
 who was a catholic mind ; Wordsworth, whose verse 
 was a voice of sanity in a worldly and ambitious age ; 
 and Wilkinson, the editor of Swedenborg, in the action 
 of whose mind is a long Atlantic roll, not known except 
 in deepest waters. 
 
 We should like to go on thus, culling fine and sharp 
 things, though we do not think them always true, as 
 for example, much that is said above of literature ; but, 
 if we should, it would leave us no space for the few 
 words that it is necessary to say, in the way of a general 
 estimate of his performance. As a collection of apo 
 thegms on England, of which each one has a species 
 of diamond clearness and value, his book is exqui 
 sitely rich. Never in history have so many discrimi 
 nating sentences been uttered about any people. But, 
 as a whole, the book does not entirely satisfy us, for the 
 want of a certain gradation, or proportion in the parts, 
 which gives harmony. The author s mind, being essen 
 tially instinctive, and not discursive or logical, he sees 
 things absolutely rather than relatively, and in their 
 kinds and not in their degrees. This is evident in the 
 very form of his book, which has no organic structure, 
 but is a miscellany of remarks on one topic. Whether 
 you begin at the last chapter or the first at the bottom 
 of the page or the top, it is almost equally intelligible 
 and equally interesting. There is no progress or march 
 of thought in it no rising and falling of the flood no 
 grand or rapid modulations in a word, no growth 
 but an incessant succession of discharges as in a feu de 
 
Emerson on England. 455 
 
 joie. Each paragraph has its own independent validity, 
 and would be just as good elsewhere and in another 
 chapter. As in staccato passages of music, each note is 
 pointed, distinct, and of equal value, and when long 
 continued gives the ear a painful sense of a want of va 
 riety and contrast. Mr. Emerson tells us an infinity of 
 truths about John Bull ; but he does not furnish us what 
 the Frenchmen call an impression d 1 ensemble. He has 
 anatomized him, but forgotten to organize him afterward. 
 He is like a painter who should make a most careful study 
 of the several parts of his subject on different pieces of 
 canvas a head here, a leg there, and a torso in another 
 place and then fail to bring them together into one. 
 Each study may be perfect ; but what we want to see is 
 the complete man. We want to see* him as he moves 
 and breathes in his multiplied relations. 
 
 Mr. Emerson writes memoirs to serve, and not a 
 biography. He nowhere lays hold of the central idea 
 of English life. It is too vast, he confesses a myriad 
 personality. In the absence of this organic unity, not 
 a few of his representations seem to contradict each 
 other, because they are not qualified one by the other. 
 His Englishman is more than a compound of antago 
 nistic elements he is a bundle of confusions. He 
 loves truth above all things, and yet willingly immerses 
 himself in fictions. He is a pink of propriety and full 
 of freaks. His individuality is intense, and he cringes 
 to aristocracy. He detests humbug, while he gladly 
 worships a humbug church, a humbug nobility, hum 
 bug laws, and humbug newspapers ; and his mind is an 
 arrested development, though it sprouts into the great 
 est men that the world has seen for five hundred years. 
 It is difficult, we admit, to penetrate the spirit of a na 
 tion, as if it were a single hero ; but it is not impossible 
 to a mind which is able to generalize as well as discern. 
 
456 Emerson on England. 
 
 There are in every nation, as in every race, some traits 
 which are central, and others only circumferential ; some 
 which are leading and determinative ; and others which 
 are merely superficial, and these, we presume, may be 
 easily separated and combined into a living whole. In 
 this regard, we may say that, "English Traits answers 
 admirably to its name, but it does not so completely 
 answer the question of the opening chapter Why Eng 
 land is England ? It hints innumerable answers, but 
 leaves the reader undecided as to which one or which 
 dozen of them is the master-key of the problem. 
 
 What strikes the casual visitor to England most deep 
 ly, is the prodigious and compact activity of the nation, 
 and the wealth which it has thereby accumulated, in con 
 nection with the extreme brutality and degradation of 
 the more numerous classes. We remember, for our 
 selves, that a great deal of the anticipated pleasure of a 
 tour in the old country was dashed, on the evening of 
 our arrival in Liverpool, by the sight of the multitudes 
 of stolid and hopeless poor, who seemed to crowd every 
 alley. Nor was it otherwise in the manufacturing towns 
 or even in the agricultural districts. We were charmed 
 by the rural beauty, we were dazzled by the urban op 
 ulence but behind those trim hedges we could not 
 help seeing the pale and skulking forms of the wretched 
 cotters, and from beneath those magnificent piles of ma 
 sonry we heard the groans of the toiling millions. We 
 found afterward plenty of misery and indigence in the 
 cities of France plenty in Italy and plenty in Germa 
 ny but nowhere did it seem so utterly miserable, and 
 so imbruted in its misery, as in England. In the na 
 tions of the continent it is relieved by a gay vivacity of 
 temper, by a greater picturesqueness of costume and 
 custom ; but in England, it is a sombre, stolid, filthy 
 sub-animal debasement. Among these classes Mr. 
 
Emerson on England. 457 
 
 Emerson does not appear to have tarried. "Cushioned 
 and comforted in every manner," he says, "the traveller 
 rides as on a cannon-ball, high and low, over rivers and 
 towns, through mountains, in tunnels of three or four 
 miles -at near twice the speed of our trains reading 
 quietly the Times newspaper ;" and we can, from his 
 book, readily believe that such was his method of pro 
 gression. We doubt whether he laid his ear any 
 where to the great heart of the people, to hear what 
 they might have to .say of the greatness and glory that 
 was round about them. In fact, society as such, the 
 relation and conditions of its several components, did 
 not occupy much of his attention though the social 
 organization of England is one of the most peculiar 
 and profoundly interesting of human phenomena. 
 
 A larger experience of this society would have saved 
 him from some very singular misjudgments. When he 
 commends the personal independence and freedom of 
 Englishmen, for instance, when he says that each man 
 walks, eats, drinks, shaves, dresses, gesticulates, and in 
 every manner acts and suffers in his own fashion, he 
 must draw his inferences from a narrow circle of intel 
 lectual men, and not from the community at large. 
 Next to the extreme squalor and stupidity of the lower 
 classes in England, what impresses the stranger most 
 painfully is a certain despotism of opinion, which pro 
 duces the utmost conformity in manners and conduct. 
 In Paris, Vienna, Rome, and even New York, one feels 
 that he can do pretty much as he pleases, except to talk 
 against the peculiar despotism of each ; but in Lon 
 don wilderness as it is you must dress, walk, and talk 
 by the card, or you are either nobody or a notoriety. 
 A friend of ours, who in his continental and Egyptian 
 campaigns had sedulously avoided the barber, arrived 
 at Dover in hirsute condition, and, from the moment 
 
 20 
 
458 Emerson on England. 
 
 that he landed until he stepped on board the Pacific at 
 Liverpool, was as conspicuous an object as the bear of a 
 travelling menagerie. At the eating-houses he was stared 
 out of countenance (and it takes a great deal to make 
 John look up from his dinner); and in the streets he 
 was run after by the little boys, who called to their com 
 panions to come and see the Frencher. This was be 
 fore the Great Exhibition had made the beard somewhat 
 familiar, and a long agitation of the subject by the news 
 papers had modified the prevailing prejudice. An 
 other friend, a merchant who had long worn a mustache 
 in New York, having some business to transact in "the 
 city," was careful to remove every vestige of hair from 
 his lips, lest it might damage his credit with the plu 
 tocrats of the great metropolis. Such small incidents 
 show the utter intolerance of eccentricity in England. 
 Rich men and the privileged classes who step beyond 
 the prescribed limits of propriety are endured, but any 
 body else who should do so, would become instantly 
 an object of unpleasant remark. There are no greater 
 slaves to fashion in the world than the English. You 
 must live in a certain style, and dress in a certain mode, 
 and be acquainted with certain people (generally be 
 longing to the aristocracy), or you are neglected, if not 
 despised. It is this obsequious deference to a peculiar 
 standard which has given rise to that peculiar order 
 which the slang literature denominates snob. It is an 
 order so numerous and so powerful that much of the 
 best modern wit, from Thackeray and Jerrold down to 
 Punch, finds its chief nutriment in the exposure of it. 
 Of course there are snobs everywhere, but London 
 is their warren and city of refuge. Elsewhere they 
 are vagrant and exceptional instances ; but in London 
 they are quite the rule. They are bred in the highly artifi 
 cial structure of society there, and feed upon it like grubs. 
 
Emerson on England. 469 
 
 Whatever the defects of English character, however, 
 there is one thing to be said of the nation that it has 
 acquired a more durable and substantial civilization than 
 any other of the Old World. Composed essentially of 
 the same races as the northern continental nations, and 
 beginning in the middle ages with essentially the same 
 institutions, it has developed itself into a nobler strength. 
 We wish Mr. Emerson had gone more deeply into the 
 historical causes of this difference. There is no more 
 interesting speculation now attracting the study of philo 
 sophic genius. Any one who will recall the condition 
 of Germany, France, and England, during the great 
 transition period from ancient to modern society, from 
 the twelfth to the fifteenth century, inclusive, will be 
 struck by the remarkable similarity of their laws, cus 
 toms, maxims, and morals. There was, of course, a 
 vast diversity in details but the general arrangement, 
 the general spirit, the general tendency was the same. 
 Government was managed on the same principles so 
 ciety was divided by the same classes, and there were 
 kings, nobles, clergy, commons, people, and slaves, 
 everywhere with identical distinctions, as to privileges, 
 rights, and oppressions. In other words, feudalism was 
 the prevailing and organic law ; and, as De Tocqueville 
 has lately remarked, in the fifteenth century, the social, 
 political, administrative, judicial, economical, and lite 
 rary institutions were more nearly akin to each other 
 than at the present time, when civilization is supposed 
 to have opened all the channels of communication, and 
 to have levelled every obstacle. Even as late as the be 
 ginning of the sixteenth century, when Henry VIII. 
 was monarch of England, Francis I. of France, and 
 Charles II. of the German Empire, there was a marvel 
 lous analogy in the condition and prospects of these 
 several powers. But from that time, how diverse the 
 
460 Emerson on England. 
 
 development ? Germany, in which the great reforma 
 tion of thought opened with such signal glory, has at 
 tained to no more than a feeble political life ; France, 
 after swaying hither and thither between the shocks of 
 successive sanguinary revolutions, is still destitute of 
 any genuine constitutional freedom ; while England 
 alone, with few revolutions, and these neither protracted 
 nor bloody, has reached something like freedom and 
 prosperity. What have been the causes of this ? 
 
 It is not our intention to attempt the answer, merely 
 suggesting it as the life-task of some as yet unknown 
 Guizot or Hallam ; but we may remark, that none of 
 the English speculators themselves, who ascribe so much 
 influence to the mixed character of their government, 
 seem to us to have adequately stated or treated the 
 problem. The artificial equipoise, which it has main 
 tained between the several estates or orders, has been, 
 no doubt, a fact of prime importance ; but what is the 
 real ground of its importance ? Is it not the larger in 
 fusion of the democratic element in English institutions 
 than in those of the continent ? The popular life which 
 has ever and anon forced itself into the government, 
 has kept the political atmosphere sweet and wholesome. 
 It is owing to this that the absolutism of the monarch 
 has been restrained, the selfishness of the nobles with 
 held from an extremity of corruption, and the middle 
 classes lifted into wealth and intelligence. But it can 
 not be concealed, at the same time, that the lowest- 
 classes in England are so debased and forlorn, because 
 they have not yet been made partakers of the common 
 political life. England has prospered more than other 
 nations, because, more than they, she has recognized 
 the humanity of her people ; but in so far as she has 
 failed to recognize it, she has been smitten, like others, 
 with barrenness and misery. Her mixed constitution 
 
Emerson on England. 461 
 
 has proved itself a better device than despotism, not be 
 cause balances and counterpoises are the ultimate or 
 perfect form of government, as many Englishmen sup 
 pose, but because of the large element of freedom in it ; 
 and the true inference is, that a larger measure of that 
 element would produce still better effects. In the 
 transition from feudalism to freedom, a mixed govern 
 ment affords an easier and safer passage than any ab 
 solute form ; but a mixed government can never be 
 anything more than a transition, while democracy alone 
 is final. 
 

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