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 THE WOEKS 
 
 OF 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMEESON 
 
 VOL. V.

 
 V. ■ THE 
 
 CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 AND 
 
 SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE 
 
 BY 
 
 EALPH WALDO EMEESON 
 
 
 3L0U&01X 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1884
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Fate 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 II. Power . 
 
 
 
 41 
 
 III. "Wealth . 
 
 
 
 67 
 
 IV. Culture 
 
 
 
 103 
 
 V. Behaviour 
 
 
 
 135 
 
 VI. Worship 
 
 
 
 161 
 
 VII. Considerations by the Way 
 
 
 
 197 
 
 VIII. Beauty . 
 
 
 
 227 
 
 IX. Illusions 
 
 
 
 251 
 
 SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 
 
 Society and Solitude 
 
 267 
 
 Civilisation .... 
 
 281 
 
 Art ..... 
 
 295 
 
 Eloquence .... 
 
 313 
 
 Domestic Life 
 
 345 
 
 Farming .... 
 
 371
 
 VI 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Works and 
 
 Days 
 
 385 
 
 Books . 
 
 
 409 
 
 Clubs 
 
 . 
 
 435 
 
 Courage 
 
 . 
 
 457 
 
 Success . 
 
 . 
 
 479 
 
 Old Age 
 
 
 503
 
 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE
 
 L 
 FATE. 
 
 Delicate omens traced in air 
 To the lone bard true witness bare ; 
 Birds with auguries on their wings 
 Chanted undeceiving things 
 Him to beckon, him to warn ; 
 Well might then the poet scorn 
 To learn of scribe or courier 
 Hints writ in vaster character ; 
 And on his mind, at dawn of day, 
 Soft shadows of the evening lay. 
 For the prevision is allied 
 Unto the thing so signified ; 
 Or say, the foresight that awaits 
 Is the same Genius that creates. 
 
 VOL. V. £> B 
 
 » 7>
 
 FATE, 
 
 It chanced during one winter, a few years ago, that 
 our cities were bent on discussing the theory of the 
 Age. By an odd coincidence, four or five noted men 
 were each reading a discourse to the citizens of Boston 
 or New York, on the Spirit of the Times. It so 
 happened that the subject had the same prominence 
 in some remarkable pamphlets and journals issued in 
 London in the same season. To me, however, the 
 question of the times resolved itself into a practical 
 question of the conduct of life. How shall I live 1 ? 
 We are incompetent to solve the times. Our geo- 
 metry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing 
 ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposi- 
 tion. We can only obey our own polarity. 'Tis fine 
 for us to speculate and elect our course, if we must 
 accept an irresistible dictation. 
 
 In our first steps to gain our wishes, we come upon 
 immovable limitations. We are fired with the hope 
 to reform men. After many experiments, we find 
 that we must begin earlier, — at school. But the boys 
 and girls are not docile ; we can make nothing of 
 them. We decide that they are not of good stock.
 
 4 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 We must begin our reform earlier still, — at genera- 
 tion : that is to say, there is Fate, or laws of the 
 world. 
 
 But if there he irresistible dictation, this dictation 
 understands itself. If we must accept Fate, we are 
 not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance 
 of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of 
 character. This is true, and that other is true. But 
 our geometry cannot span these extreme points, and 
 reconcile them. What to do 1 By obeying each 
 thought frankly, by harping, or, if you will, pounding 
 on each string, we learn at last its power. By the 
 same obedience to other thoughts, we learn theirs, 
 and then comes some reasonable hope of harmonising 
 them. We are sure, that, though we know not how, 
 necessity does comport with liberty, the individual 
 with the world, my polarity with the spirit of the 
 times. The riddle of the age has for each a private 
 solution. If one would study his own time, it must 
 be by this method of taking up in turn each of the 
 leading topics which belong to our scheme of human 
 life, and, by firmly stating all that is agreeable to 
 experience on one, and doing the same justice to the 
 opposing facts in the others, the true limitations will 
 appear. Any excess of emphasis, on one part, would 
 be corrected, and a just balance would be made. 
 
 But let us honestly state the facts. Our America 
 has a bad name for superficialness. Great men, great 
 nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but 
 perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned 
 themselves to face it. The Spartan, embodying his
 
 i.] FATE. 5 
 
 religion in his country, dies before its majesty with- 
 out a question. The Turk, who believes his doom 
 is written on the iron leaf in the moment when he 
 entered the world, rushes on the enemy's sabre with 
 undivided will. The Turk, the Arab, the Persian, 
 accepts the foreordained fate. 
 
 " On two days, it steads not to run from thy grave, 
 The appointed, and the unappointed day ; 
 On the first, neither balm nor physician can save, 
 Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay." 
 
 The Hindoo, under the wheel, is as firm. Our 
 Calvinists, in the last generation, had something of 
 the same dignity. They felt that the weight of the 
 Universe held them down to their place. What could 
 they do 1 Wise men feel that there is something 
 which cannot be talked or voted away, — a strap or 
 belt which girds the world. 
 
 " The Destiny, minister general, 
 That executeth in the world o'er all, 
 The purveyance which God hath seen beforne, 
 So strong it is, that tho' the world had sworn 
 The contrary of a thing by yea or nay, 
 Yet sometime it shall fallen on a day 
 That falleth not oft in a thousand year ; 
 For, certainly, our appetites here, 
 Be it of war, or peace, or hate, or love, 
 All this is ruled by the sight above." 
 
 Chaucer : The Knighte's Tale. 
 
 The Greek Tragedy expressed the same sense : 
 "Whatever is fated, that will take place. The great 
 immense mind of Jove is not to be transgressed." 
 
 Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. 
 The broad ethics of Jesus were quickly narrowed to
 
 6 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 village theologies, which preach an election or favour- 
 itism. And, now and then, an amiable parson like 
 Jung Stilling, or Robert Huntington, believes in a 
 pistareen-Providence, which, whenever the good man 
 wants a dinner, makes that somebody shall knock at 
 his door, and leave a half-dollar. But Nature is no 
 sentimentalist,- — does not cosset or pamper us. We 
 must see that the world is rough and surly, and will 
 not mind drowning a man or a woman ; but swallows 
 your ship like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsider- 
 ate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, 
 freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the ele- 
 ments, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons. 
 The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit 
 of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other 
 leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones 
 of his prey in the coil of the anaconda, — these are in 
 the system, and our habits are like theirs. You have 
 just dined, and, however scrupulously the slaughter- 
 house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, 
 there is complicity, — expensive races, — race living at 
 the expense of race. The planet is liable to shocks 
 from comets, perturbations from planets, rendings 
 from earthquake and volcano, alterations of climate, 
 precessions of equinoxes. Rivers dry up by opening 
 of the forest. The sea changes its bed. Towns and 
 counties fall into it. At Lisbon, an earthquake killed 
 men like flies. At Naples, three years ago, ten 
 thousand persons were crushed in a few minutes. 
 The scurvy at sea ; the sword of the climate in the 
 west of Africa, at Cayenne, at Panama, at New
 
 I.] FATE. 7 
 
 Orleans, cut off men like a massacre. Our western 
 prairie shakes with fever and ague. The cholera, the 
 smallpox, have proved as mortal to some tribes as a 
 frost to the crickets, which, having filled the summer 
 with noise, are silenced by a fall of the temperature 
 of one night. Without uncovering what does not 
 concern us, or counting how many species of parasites 
 hang on a bombyx ; or groping after intestinal para- 
 sites, or inf usory biters, or the obscurities of alternate 
 generation ;— the forms of the shark, the labrus, the 
 jaw of the sea -wolf paved with crushing teeth, the 
 weapons of the grampus, and other warriors hidden 
 in the sea, — are hints of ferocity in the interiors of 
 nature. Let us not deny it up and down. Provi- 
 dence has a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, 
 and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge 
 mixed instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific 
 benefactor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a 
 student in divinity. 
 
 Will you say, the disasters which threaten man- 
 kind are exceptional, and one need not lay his account 
 for cataclysms every day 1 ? Ay, but what happens 
 once, may happen again, and so long as these strokes 
 are not to be parried by us, they must be feared. 
 
 But these shocks and ruins are less destructive to 
 us than the stealthy power of other laws which act 
 on us daily. An expense of ends to means is fate : — 
 organisation tyrannising over character. The men- 
 agerie, or forms and powers of the spine, is a book 
 of fate : the bill of the bird, the skull of the snake, 
 determines tyrannically its limits. So is the scale of
 
 8 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 races, of temperaments ; so is sex ; so is climate ; so 
 is the reaction of talents imprisoning the vital power 
 in certain directions. Every spirit makes its house ; 
 but afterwards the house confines the spirit. 
 
 The gross lines are legible to the dull : the cabman 
 is phrenologist so far : he looks in your face to see if 
 his shilling is sure. A dome of brow denotes one 
 thing ; a pot-belly another ; a squint, a pug-nose, 
 mats of hair, the pigment of the epidermis, betray 
 character. People seem sheathed in their tough 
 organisation. Ask Spurzheim, ask the doctors, ask 
 Quetelet, if temperaments decide nothing, or if there 
 be anything they do not decide. Eead the descrip- 
 tion in medical books of the four temperaments, and 
 you will think you are reading your own thoughts 
 which you had not yet told. Find the part which 
 black eyes, and which blue eyes, play severally in the 
 company. How shall a man escape from his ances- 
 tors, or draw off from his veins the black drop which 
 he drew from his father's or his mother's life? It 
 often appears in a family, as if all the qualities of the 
 progenitors were potted in several jars, — some ruling- 
 quality in each son or daughter of the house, — and 
 sometimes the unmixed temperament, the rank un- 
 mitigated elixir, the family vice, is drawn off in a 
 separate individual, and the others are proportionally 
 relieved. We sometimes see a change of expression 
 in our companion, and say, his father, or his mother, 
 comes to the windows of his eyes, and sometimes a 
 remote relative. In different hours, a man represents 
 each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven
 
 I.] FATE. 9 
 
 or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, — seven 
 or eight ancestors at least, — and they constitute the 
 variety of notes for that new piece of music which 
 his life is. At the corner of the street, you read the 
 possibility of each passenger, in the facial angle, in 
 the complexion, in the depth of his eye. His parent- 
 age determines it. Men are what their mothers made 
 them. You may as well ask a loom which weaves 
 huckaback, why it does not make cashmere, as expect 
 poetry from this engineer, or a chemical discovery 
 from that jobber. Ask the digger in the ditch to 
 explain Newton's laws : the fine organs of his brain 
 have been pinched by overwork and squalid poverty 
 from father to son, for a hundred years. When each 
 comes forth from his mother's womb, the gate of 
 gifts closes behind him. Let him value his hands 
 and feet, he has but one pair. So he has but one 
 future, and that is already predetermined in his lobes, 
 and described in that little fatty face, pig -eye, and 
 squat form. All the privilege and all the legislation 
 of the world cannot meddle or help to make a poet or 
 a prince of him. 
 
 Jesus said, " When he looketh on her, he hath 
 committed adultery." But he is an adulterer before 
 he has yet looked on the woman, by the superfluity 
 of animal and the defect of thought in his constitu- 
 tion. Who meets him, or who meets her, in the street, 
 sees that they are ripe to be each other's victim. 
 
 In certain men, digestion and sex absorb the vital 
 force, and the stronger these are, the individual is 
 so much weaker. The more of these drones perish,
 
 10 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 the better for the hive. If, later, they give birth to 
 some superior individual, with force enough to add 
 to this animal a new aim, and a complete apparatus 
 to work it out, all the ancestors are gladly forgotten. 
 Most men and most women are merely one couple 
 more. Now and then, one has a new cell or cama- 
 rilla opened in his brain, — an architectural, a musical, 
 or a philological knack, some stray taste or talent for 
 flowers, or chemistry, or pigments, or story-telling, a 
 good hand for drawing, a good foot for dancing, an 
 athletic frame for wide journeying, etc. — which skill 
 nowise alters rank in the scale of nature, but serves 
 to pass the time, the life of sensation going on as 
 before. At last, these hints and tendencies are fixed 
 in one, or in a succession. Each absorbs so much food 
 and force, as to become itself a new centre. The new 
 talent draws off so rapidly the vital force, that not 
 enough remains for the animal functions, hardly 
 enough for health ; so that, in the second generation, 
 if the like genius appear, the health is visibly deterio- 
 rated, and the generative force impaired. 
 
 People are born with the moral or with the ma- 
 terial bias; — uterine brothers with this diverging 
 destination : and I suppose, with high magnifiers, 
 Mr. Frauenhofer or Dr. Carpenter might come to 
 distinguish in the embryo at the fourth day, this is a 
 Whig, and that a Free-soiler. 
 
 It was a poetic attempt to lift this mountain of 
 Fate, to reconcile this despotism of race with liberty, 
 which led the Hindoos to say, " Fate is nothing but 
 the deeds committed in a prior state of existence."
 
 I.] FATE. 11 
 
 I find the coincidence of the extremes of eastern and 
 western speculation in the daring statement of Schel- 
 ling, " There is in every man a certain feeling, that he 
 has been what he is from all eternity, and by no 
 means became such in time." To say it less sublimely, 
 — in the history of the individual is always an account 
 of his condition, and he knows himself to be a party 
 to his present estate. 
 
 A good deal of our politics is physiological. Now 
 and then, a man of wealth in the heyday of youth 
 adopts the tenet of broadest freedom. In England, 
 there is always some man of wealth and large con- 
 nection planting himself, during all his years of health, 
 on the side of progress, who, as soon as he begins to 
 die, checks his forward play, calls in his troops, and 
 becomes conservative. All conservatives are such 
 from personal defects. They have been effeminated 
 by position or nature, born halt and blind, through 
 luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act 
 on the defensive. But strong natures, backwoodsmen, 
 New Hampshire giants, Napoleons, Burkes, Broughams, 
 Websters, Kossuths, are inevitable patriots, until 
 their life ebbs, and their defects and gout, palsy and 
 money, warp them. 
 
 The strongest idea incarnates itself in majorities 
 and nations, in the healthiest and strongest.' Prob- 
 ably, the election goes by avoirdupois weight, and, if 
 you could weigh bodily the tonnage of any hundred 
 of the Whig and the Democratic party in a town, on 
 the Dearborn balance, as they passed the hay-scales, 
 you could predict with certainty which party would
 
 12 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 carry it. On the whole, it would be rather the 
 speediest way of deciding the vote, to put the select- 
 men or the mayor and aldermen at the hay-scales. 
 
 In science, we have to consider two things : power 
 and circumstance. All we know of the egg, from 
 each successive discovery, is, another vesicle; and if, 
 after five hundred years, you get a better observer, 
 or a better glass, he finds within the last observed 
 another. In vegetable and animal tissue, it is just 
 alike, and all that the primary power or spasm 
 operates, is, still, vesicles, vesicles. Yes, — but the 
 tyrannical Circumstance ! A vesicle in new cir- 
 cumstances, a vesicle lodged in darkness, Oken 
 thought, became animal ; in light, a plant. Lodged 
 in the parent animal, it suffers changes, which 
 end is unsheathing miraculous capability in the un- 
 altered vesicle, and it unlocks itself to fish, bird, 
 or quadruped, head and foot, eye and claw. The 
 Circumstance is Nature. Nature is, what you may 
 do. There is much you may not. We have two 
 things, — the circumstance, and the life. Once we 
 thought, positive power was all. Now we learn, 
 that negative power, or circumstance, is half Nature, 
 is the tyrannous circumstance, the thick skull, the 
 sheathed snake, the ponderous, rock-like jaw ; necessi- 
 tated activity ; violent direction ; the conditions of a 
 tool, like the locomotive, strong enough on its track, but 
 which can do nothing but mischief off of it ; or skates, 
 which are wings on the ice, but fetters on the ground. 
 
 The book of Nature is the book of Fate. She 
 turns the gigantic pages, — leaf after leaf, — never re-
 
 I.] FATE. 13 
 
 turning one. One leaf she lays down, a floor of 
 granite ; then a thousand ages, and a bed of slate ; a 
 thousand ages, and a measure of coal; a thousand 
 ages, and a layer of marl and mud : vegetable forms 
 appear; her first misshapen animals, zoophyte, trilo- 
 bium, fish ; then, saurians, — rude forms, in which she 
 has only blocked her future statue, concealing under 
 these unwieldy monsters the fine type of her coming 
 king. The face of the planet cools and dries, the 
 races meliorate, and man is born. But when a race 
 has lived its term, it comes no more again. 
 
 The population of the world is a conditional popu- 
 lation; not the best, but the best that could live 
 now ; and the scale of tribes, and the steadiness with 
 which victory adheres to one tribe, and defeat to 
 another, is as uniform as the superposition of strata. 
 We know in history what weight belongs to race. 
 We see the English, French, and Germans planting 
 themselves on every shore and market of America and 
 Australia, and monopolising the commerce of these 
 countries. We like the nervous and victorious habit 
 of our own branch of the family. We follow the step 
 of the Jew, of the Indian, of the Negro. We see how 
 much will has been expended to extinguish the Jew, 
 in vain. Look at the unpalatable conclusions of Knox, 
 in his " Fragment of Races," — a rash and unsatisfactory 
 writer, but charged with pungent and unforgetable 
 truths. "Nature respects race, and not hybrids." 
 "Every race has its own habitat." "Detach a colony 
 from the race, and it deteriorates to the crab." See 
 the shades of the picture. The German and Irish
 
 14 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 millions, like the Negro, have a great deal of guano 
 in their destiny. They are ferried over the Atlantic, 
 and carted over America, to ditch and to drudge, to 
 make corn cheap, and then to he down prematurely 
 to make a spot of green grass on the prairie. 
 
 One more faggot of these adamantine bandages is 
 the new science of Statistics. It is a rule, that the 
 most casual and extraordinary events — if the basis of 
 population is broad enough — become matter of fixed 
 calculation. It would not be safe to say when a 
 captain like Bonaparte, a singer like Jenny Lind, or a 
 navigator like Bowditch, would be born in Boston : 
 but, on a population of twenty or two hundred 
 millions, something like accuracy may be had. 1 
 
 'Tis frivolous to fix pedantically the date of 
 particular inventions. They have all been invented 
 over and over fifty times. Man is the arch machine, 
 of which all these shifts drawn from himself are toy 
 models. He helps himself on each emergency by 
 copying or duplicating his own structure, just so far 
 as the need is. 'Tis hard to find the right Homer, 
 Zoroaster, or Menu ; harder still to find the Tubal 
 Cain, or Vulcan, or Cadmus, or Copernicus, or Fust, 
 or Fulton, the indisputable inventor. There are 
 scores and centuries of them. "The air is full of 
 men." This kind of talent so abounds, this construc- 
 
 1 ' ' Everythingwhichpertains to the humau species, considered 
 as a whole, belongs to the order of physical facts. The greater 
 the number of individuals, the more does the influence of the 
 individual will disappear, leaving predominance to a series of 
 general facts dependent on causes by which society exists, and 
 is preserved."— Quetelet.
 
 i.] FATE. 15 
 
 tive tool-making efficiency, as if it adhered to the 
 chemic atoms, as if the air he breathes were made of 
 Vaucansons, Franklins, and Watts. 
 
 Doubtless, in every million there will be an astro- 
 nomer, a mathematician, a comic poet, a mystic. No 
 one can read the history of astronomy, without per- 
 ceiving that Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, are not new 
 men, or a new kind of men, but that Thales, Anaxi- 
 menes, Hipparchus, Empedocles, Aristarchus, Pytha- 
 goras, GEnopides, had anticipated them ; each had the 
 same tense geometrical brain, apt for the same vigorous 
 computation and logic, a mind parallel to the move- 
 ment of the world. The Eoman mile probably rested 
 on a measure of a degree of the meridian. Mahometan 
 and Chinese know what we know of leap-year, of the 
 Gregorian calendar, and of the precession of the 
 equinoxes. As in every barrel of cowries brought to 
 New Bedford there shall be one organia, so there 
 will, in a dozen millions of Malays and Mahometans, 
 be one or two astronomical skulls. In a large city, 
 the most casual things, and things whose beauty lies in 
 their casuality, are produced as punctually and to order 
 as the baker's muffin for breakfast. Punch makes 
 exactly one capital joke a week ; and the journals 
 contrive to furnish one good piece of news every day. 
 
 And not less work the laws of repression, the 
 penalties of violated functions. Famine, typhus, 
 frost, war, suicide, and effete races, must be reckoned 
 calculable parts of the system of the world. 
 
 These are pebbles from the mountain, hints of the 
 terms by which our life is walled up, and which show
 
 16 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 a kind of mechanical exactness, as of a loom or mill, 
 in what we call casual or fortuitous events. 
 
 The force with which we resist these torrents of 
 tendency looks so ridiculously inadequate, that it 
 amounts to little more than a criticism or a protest 
 made by a minority of one, under compulsion of 
 millions. I seemed, in the height of a tempest, to 
 see men overboard struggling in the waves, and 
 driven about here and there. They glanced intelli- 
 gently at each other, but 'twas little they could do for 
 one another; 'twas much if each could keep afloat 
 alone. Well, they had a right to their eyebeams, 
 and all the rest was Fate. 
 
 "We cannot trifle with this reality, this cropping- 
 out in our planted gardens of the core of the world. 
 No picture of life can have any veracity that does 
 not admit the odious facts. A man's power is hooped 
 in by a necessity, which, by many experiments, he 
 touches on every side, until he learns its arc. 
 
 The element running through entire nature, which 
 we popularly call Fate, is known to us as limitation. 
 Whatever limits us, we call Fate. If we are brute 
 and barbarous, the fate takes a brute and dreadful 
 shape. As we refine, our checks become finer. If 
 we rise to spiritual culture, the antagonism takes a 
 spiritual form. In the Hindoo fables, Vishnu follows 
 Maya through all her ascending changes, from insect 
 and crawfish up to elephant; whatever form she 
 took, he took the male form of that kind, until 
 she became at last woman and goddess, and he a
 
 I.] FATE. 17 
 
 man and a god. The limitations refine as the soul 
 purifies, hut the ring of necessity is always perched 
 at the top. 
 
 When the gods in the Norse heaven were unable 
 to hind the Fenris Wolf with steel or with weight of 
 mountains, — the one he snapped and the other he 
 spurned with his heel, — they put round his foot a 
 limp hand softer than silk or cobweb, and this held 
 him : the more he spurned it, the staffer it drew. So 
 soft and so stanch is the ring of Fate. Neither 
 brandy, nor nectar, nor sulphuric ether, nor hell-fire, 
 nor ichor, nor poetry, nor genius, can get rid of this 
 limp band. For if we give it the high sense in which 
 the poets use it, even thought itself is not above Fate : 
 that too must act according to eternal laws, and all 
 that is wilful and fantastic in it is in opposition to 
 its fundamental essence. 
 
 And, last of all, high over thought, in the world 
 of morals, Fate appears as vindicator, levelling the 
 high, lifting the low, requiring justice in mau, and 
 always striking soon or late, when justice is not 
 done. What is useful will last ; what is hurtful will 
 sink. "The doer must suffer," said the Greeks: 
 "you would soothe a Deity not to be soothed." 
 " God himself cannot procure good for the wicked," 
 said the Welsh triad. " God may consent, but only 
 for a time," said the bard of Spain. The limitation 
 is impassable by any insight of man. In its last and 
 loftiest ascensions, insight itself, and the freedom of 
 the will, is one of its obedient members. But we 
 must not run into generalisations too large, but show 
 
 VOL. V. C
 
 18 CONDUCT OF LIFE. ti- 
 
 the natural bounds or essential distinctions, and seek 
 to do justice to the other elements as well. 
 
 Thus Ave trace Fate, in matter, mind, and morals, 
 —in race, in retardations of strata, and in thought 
 and character as well. It is everywhere bound or 
 limitation. But Fate has its lord; limitation its 
 limits ; is different seen from above and from below ; 
 from within and from without. For, though Fate is 
 immense, so is power, which is the other fact in the 
 dual world, immense. If Fate follows and limits 
 power, power attends and antagonises Fate. We 
 must respect Fate as natural history, but there is 
 more than natural history. For who and what is this 
 criticism that pries into the matter? Man is not 
 order of nature, sack and sack, belly and members, 
 link in a chain, nor any ignominious baggage, but a 
 stupendous antagonism, a dragging together of the 
 poles of the Universe. He betrays his relation to 
 what is below him, — thick-skulled, small -brained, 
 fishy, quadrumanous, — quadruped ill-disguised, hardly 
 escaped into biped, and has paid for the new powers 
 by loss of some of the old ones. But the lightning 
 which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets 
 and suns, is in him. On one side, elemental order, 
 sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, 
 sea and shore ; and, on the other part, thought, the 
 spirit which composes and decomposes nature, — here 
 they are, side by side, god and devil, mind and 
 matter, king and conspirator, belt and spasm, riding 
 peacefully together in the eye and brain of every man.
 
 i.J FATE. 19 
 
 Nor can he blink the freewill. To hazard the 
 contradiction, — freedom is necessary. If you please 
 to plant yourself on the side of Fate, and say, Fate 
 is all ; then we say, a part of Fate is the freedom of 
 man. For ever wells up the impulse of choosing and 
 acting in the soul. Intellect annuls Fate. So far as 
 a man thinks, he is free. And though nothing is 
 more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by 
 slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for 
 freedom of some paper preamble like a " Declaration 
 of Independence," or the statute right to vote, by those 
 who have never dared to think or to act, yet it is 
 wholesome to man to look not at Fate, but the other 
 way; the practical view is the other. His sound 
 relation to these facts is to use and command, not 
 to cringe to them. "Look not on nature, for her 
 name is fatal," said the oracle. The too much con- 
 templation of these limits induces meanness. They 
 who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, etc., are in 
 a lower dangerous plane, and invite the evils they 
 fear. 
 
 I cited the instinctive and heroic races as proud 
 believers in Destiny. They conspire with it; a 
 loving resignation is with the event. But the dogma 
 makes a different impression, when it is held by the 
 weak and lazj^. 'Tis weak and vicious people who 
 cast the blame on Fate. The right use of Fate is to 
 bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature. 
 Rude and invincible except by themselves are the 
 elements. So let man be. Let him empty his 
 breast of his windy conceits, and show his lordship by
 
 20 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 manners and deeds on the scale of nature. Let him 
 hold his purpose as with the tug of gravitation. No 
 power, no persuasion, no bribe, shall make him give 
 up his point. A man ought to compare advantage- 
 ously with a river, an oak, or a mountain. He shall 
 have not less the flow, the expansion, and the resist- 
 ance of these. 
 
 Tis the best use of Fate to teach a fatal courage. 
 Go face the fire at sea, or the cholera in your friend's 
 house, or the burglar in your oavii, or what danger 
 lies in the way of duty, knowing you are guarded by 
 the cherubim of Destiny. If you believe in Fate to 
 your harm, believe it, at least, for your good. 
 
 For, if Fate is so prevailing, man also is part of it, 
 and can confront fate with fate. If the Universe have 
 these savage accidents, our atoms are as savage in 
 resistance. We should be crushed by the atmosphere, 
 but for the reaction of the air within the body. A 
 tube made of a film of glass can resist the shock of 
 the ocean, if filled with the same water. If there be 
 omnipotence in the stroke, there is omnipotence of 
 recoil. 
 
 1. But Fate against Fate is only parrying and 
 defence : there are, also, the noble creative forces. 
 The revelation of Thought takes man out of servitude 
 into freedom. We rightly say of ourselves, we were 
 born, and afterward we were born again, and many 
 times. We have successive experiences so important, 
 that the new forgets the old, and hence the mythology 
 of the seven or the nine heavens. The day of days, 
 the great day of the feast of life, is that in which the
 
 i.] FATE. 21 
 
 inward eye opens to the Unity in things, to the omni- 
 presence of law : — sees that Avhat is must be, and 
 ought to be, or is the best. This beatitude dips from 
 on high down on us, and we see. It is not in us so 
 much as we are in it. If the air come to our lungs, 
 we breathe and live ; if not, we die. If the light 
 come to our eyes, Ave see; else not. And, if truth 
 come to our mind, we suddenly expand to its dimen- 
 sions, as if we grew to worlds. We are as lawgivers ; 
 we speak for Nature ; we prophesy and divine. 
 
 This insight throws us on the party and interest 
 of the Universe, against all and sundry ; against our- 
 selves, as much as others. A man speaking from 
 insight affirms of himself what is true of the mind : 
 seeing its immortality, he says, I am immortal ; see- 
 ing its invincibility, he says, I am strong. It is not 
 in us, but we are in it. It is of the maker, not of 
 what is made. All things are touched and changed 
 by it. This uses, and is not used. It distances those 
 who share it from those who share it not. Those 
 Avho share it not are flocks and herds. It dates from 
 itself ; — not from former men or better men,- — gospel, 
 or constitution, or college, or custom. Where it 
 shines, Nature is no longer intrusive, but all things 
 make a musical or pictorial impression. The Avorld 
 of men shoAV like a comedy without laughter : — popu- 
 lations, interests, government, history; — 'tis all toy 
 figures in a toy house. It does not overvalue par- 
 ticular truths. We hear eagerly every thought and 
 word quoted from an intellectual man. But, in his 
 presence, our oavii mind is roused to activity, and we
 
 22 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 forget very fast what he says, much more interested 
 in the new play of our own thought, than in any 
 thought of his. Tis the majesty into which we have 
 suddenly mounted, the impersonality, the scorn of 
 egotisms, the sphere of laws, that engage us. Once 
 we were stepping a little this way, and a little that 
 way ; now, we are as men in a balloon, and do not 
 think so much of the point we have left, or the point we 
 would make, as of the liberty and glory of the way. 
 
 Just as much intellect as you add, so much organic 
 power. He who sees through the design, presides 
 over it, and must will that which must be. We sit 
 and rule, and, though we sleep, our dreams will come 
 to pass. Our thought, though it were only an hour 
 old, affirms an oldest necessity, not to be separated 
 from thought, and not to be separated from will. 
 They must always have coexisted. It apprises us of 
 its sovereignty and godhead, which refuse to be severed 
 from it. It is not mine or thine, but the will of all 
 mind. It is poured into the souls of all men, as the 
 soul itself which constitutes them men. I know not 
 whether there be, as is alleged, in the upper region 
 of our atmosphere, a permanent westerly current, 
 which carries with it all atoms which rise to that 
 height, but I see, that when souls reach a certain 
 clearness of perception, they accept a knowledge and 
 motive above selfishness. A breath of will blows 
 eternally through the universe of souls in the direc- 
 tion of the Eight and Necessary. It is the air which 
 all intellects inhale and exhale, and it is the wind 
 which blows the worlds into order and orbit.
 
 I.] FATE. 23 
 
 Thought dissolves the material universe, by card- 
 ing the mind up into a sphere where all is plastic. 
 Of two men, each obeying his own thought, he Avhose 
 thought is deepest will be the strongest character. 
 Always one man more than another represents the 
 will of Divine Providence to the period. 
 
 2. If thought makes free, so does the moral senti- 
 ment. The mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse to 
 be analysed. Yet we can see that with the percep- 
 tion of truth is joined the desire that it shall prevail. 
 That affection is essential to will. Moreover, when a 
 strong will appears, it usually results from a certain 
 unity of organisation, as if the whole energy of body 
 and mind flowed in one direction. All great force is 
 real and elemental. There is no manufacturing a strong 
 will. There must be a pound to balance a pound. 
 Where power is shown in will, it must rest on the 
 universal force. Alaric and Bonaparte must believe 
 they rest on a truth, or their will can be bought or 
 bent. There is a bribe possible for any finite will. 
 But the pure sympathy with universal ends is an 
 infinite force, and cannot be bribed or bent. Who- 
 ever has had experience of the moral sentiment 
 cannot choose but believe in unlimited power. Each 
 pulse from that heart is an oath from the Most High. 
 I know not what the word sublime means, if it be not 
 the intimations in this infant of a terrific force. A 
 text of heroism, a name and anecdote of courage, are 
 not arguments, but sallies of freedom. One of these 
 is the verse of the Persian Hafiz, " 'Tis written on the 
 gate of Heaven, ' Woe unto him who suffers himself to
 
 24 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 be betrayed by Fate !' ' Does the reading of history 
 make us fatalists 1 What courage does not the oppo- 
 site opinion show ! A little whim of will to be free 
 gallantly contending against the universe of chemistry. 
 
 But insight is not will, nor is affection will. Per- 
 ception is cold, and goodness dies in wishes ; as Vol- 
 taire said, 'tis the misfortune of worthy people that 
 they are cowards ; " un des plus grands malheurs des 
 honnetes gens c'est qu'ils sont des laches." There must be 
 a fusion of these two to generate the energy of will. 
 There can be no driving force, except through the con- 
 version of the man into his will, making him the will, 
 and the will him. And one may say boldly, that no 
 man has a right perception of any truth, who has not 
 been reacted on by it, so as to be ready to be its martyr. 
 
 The one serious and formidable thing in nature 
 is a will. Society is servile from want of will, and 
 therefore the world wants saviours and religions. 
 One way is right to go : the hero sees it, and moves 
 on that aim, and has the world under him for root 
 and support. He is to others as the world. His 
 approbation is honour; his dissent, infamy. The 
 glance of his eye has the force of sunbeams. A 
 personal influence towers up in memory only worthy, 
 and we gladly forget numbers, money, climate, gravi- 
 tation, and the rest of Fate. 
 
 We can afford to allow the limitation, if we know 
 it is the meter of the growing man. We stand 
 against Fate, as children stand up against the wall in 
 their father's house, and notch their height from year
 
 I.j FATE. 25 
 
 to year. But when the boy grows to man, and is 
 master of the house, he pulls down that wall, and 
 builds a new and bigger. Tis only a question of 
 time. Everjr brave youth is in training to ride and 
 rule this dragon. His science is to make weapons 
 and wings of these passions and retarding forces. 
 Now whether, seeing these two things, fate and 
 power, we are permitted to believe in unity 1 ? The 
 bulk of mankind believe in two gods. They are 
 under one dominion here in the house, as friend and 
 parent, in social circles, in letters, in art, in love, in 
 religion : but in mechanics, in dealing with steam 
 and climate, in trade, in politics, they think they 
 come under another ; and that it would be a practical 
 blunder to transfer the method and way of working 
 of one sphere into the other. What good, honest, 
 generous men at home, will be wolves and foxes on 
 'Change ! What pious men in the parlour will vote 
 for what reprobates at the polls ! To a certain point, 
 they believe themselves the care of a Providence. 
 But, in a steamboat, in an epidemic, in war, they 
 believe a malignant energy rules. 
 
 But relation and connection are not somewhere 
 and sometimes, but everywhere and always. The 
 divine order does not stop where their sight stops. 
 The friendly power works on the same rules, in the 
 next farm, and the next planet. But, where they 
 have not experience, they run against it, and hurt 
 themselves. Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet 
 passed under the fire of thought : — for causes which 
 are impenetrated.
 
 26 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 But every jet of chaos which threatens to exter- 
 minate us, is convertible by intellect into wholesome 
 force. Fate is unpenetrated causes. The water 
 drowns ship and sailor, like a grain of dust. But 
 learn to swim, trim your bark, and the wave which 
 drowned it, will be cloven by it, and carry it, like its 
 own foam, a plume and a power. The cold is incon- 
 siderate of persons, tingles your blood, freezes a man 
 like a dew-drop. But learn to skate, and the ice will 
 give you a graceful, sweet, and poetic motion. The 
 cold will brace your limbs and brain to genius, and 
 make you foremost men of time. Cold and sea will 
 train an imperial Saxon race, which nature cannot 
 bear to lose, and, after cooping it up for a thousand 
 years in yonder England, gives a hundred Englands, 
 a hundred Mexicos. All the bloods it shall absorb 
 and domineer : and more than Mexicos, — the secrets 
 of water and steam, the spasms of electricity, the duc- 
 tility of metals, the chariot of the air, the ruddered 
 balloon are awaiting you. 
 
 The annual slaughter from typhus far exceeds that 
 of war ; but right drainage destroys typhus. The 
 plague in the sea -service from scurvy is healed by 
 lemon juice and other diets portable or procurable : 
 the depopulation by cholera and smallpox is ended 
 by drainage and vaccination ; and every other pest is 
 not less in the chain of cause and effect, and may be 
 fought off. And, whilst art draws out the venom, it 
 commonly extorts some benefit from the vanquished 
 enemy. The mischievous torrent is taught to drudge 
 for man ; the wild beasts he makes useful for food,
 
 I.] FATE. 27 
 
 or dress, or labour ; the chemic explosions are con- 
 trolled like his watch. These are now the steeds on 
 which he rides. Man moves in all modes, by legs of 
 horses, by wings of wind, by steam, by gas of balloons, 
 by electricity, and stands on tiptoe threatening to 
 hunt the eagle in his own element. There's nothing- 
 he will not make his carrier. 
 
 Steam was, till the other day, the devil which we 
 dreaded. Every pot made by any human potter or 
 brazier had a hole in its cover, to let off the enemy, 
 lest he should lift pot and roof, and carry the house 
 away. But the Marquis of Worcester, Watt, and 
 Fulton, bethought themselves, that, where was power, 
 was not devil, but was God ; that it must be availed 
 of, and not by any means let off and wasted. Could 
 he lift pots and roofs and houses so handily 1 he was 
 the workman they were in search of. He could be 
 used to lift away, chain, and compel other devils, far 
 more reluctant and dangerous, namely, cubic miles of 
 earth, mountains, weight or resistance of water, 
 machinery, and the labours of all men in the world ; 
 and time he shall lengthen, and shorten space. 
 
 It has not fared much otherwise with higher kinds 
 of steam. The opinion of the million was the terror 
 of the world, and it was attempted, either to dissipate 
 it, by amusing nations, or to pile it over with strata 
 of society, — a layer of soldiers ; over that, a layer of 
 lords ; and a king on the top ; with clamps and hoops 
 of castles, garrisons, and police. But, sometimes, the 
 religious principle would get in, and burst the hoops, 
 and rive every mountain laid on top of it. The Ful-
 
 28 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 tons and Watts of politics, believing in unity, saw 
 that it was a power, and, by satisfying it (as justice 
 satisfies everybody), through a different disposition 
 of society, — grouping it on a level, instead of piling it 
 into a mountain, — they have contrived to make of this 
 terror the most harmless and energetic form of a State. 
 
 Very odious, I confess, are the lessons of Fate. 
 Who likes to have a dapper phrenologist pronouncing 
 on his fortunes 1 Who likes to believe that he has 
 hidden in his skull, spine, and pelvis, all the vices of 
 a Saxon or Celtic race, which will be sure to pull him 
 down,- — -with what grandeur of hope and resolve he 
 is fired, — into a selfish, huckstering, servile, dodging 
 animal 1 A learned physician tells us, the fact is in- 
 variable with the Neapolitan, that, when mature, he 
 assumes the forms of the unmistakable scoundrel. 
 That is a little overstated, — but may pass. 
 
 But these are magazines and arsenals. A man 
 must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of 
 his talents. A transcendent talent draws so largely 
 on his forces, as to lame him ; a defect pays him 
 revenues on the other side. The sufferance, which is 
 the badge of the Jew, has made him, in these days, 
 the ruler of the rulers of the earth. If Fate is ore 
 and quarry, if evil is good in the making, if limitation 
 is power that shall be, if calamities, oppositions, and 
 weights are wings and means, — we are reconciled. 
 
 Fate involves the melioration. No statement of 
 the Universe can have any soundness which does 
 not admit its ascending effort. The direction of the 
 whole, and of the parts, is toward benefit, and in pro-
 
 i.] FATE. 29 
 
 portion to the health. Behind every individual 
 closes organisation : before him opens liberty, — the 
 Better, the Best. The first and worst races are dead. 
 The second and imperfect races are dying out, or re- 
 main for the maturing of higher. In the latest race, 
 in man, every generosity, every new perception, the 
 love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certifi- 
 cates of advance out of fate into freedom. Liberation 
 of the will from the sheaths and clogs of organisation 
 which he has outgrown, is the end and aim of this 
 world. Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint ; 
 and where his endeavours do not yet fully avail, they 
 tell as tendency. The whole circle of animal life, — 
 tooth against tooth, — devouring war, war for food, a 
 yelp of pain and a grunt of triumph, until, at last, the 
 whole menagerie, the whole chemical mass is mellowed 
 and refined for higher use, — pleases at a sufficient 
 perspective. 
 
 But to see how fate slides into freedom, and 
 freedom into fate, observe how far the roots of every 
 creature run, or find, if you can, a point where there 
 is no thread of connection. Our life is consentaneous 
 and far-related. This knot of nature is so well tied, 
 that nobody was ever cunning enough to find the 
 two ends. Nature is intricate, overlapped, inter- 
 weaved, and endless. Christopher Wren said of the 
 beautiful King's College chapel, "that, if anybody 
 would tell him where to lay the first stone, he would 
 build such another." But where shall we find the 
 first atom in this house of man, which is all consent, 
 inosculation, and balance of parts 1
 
 30 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 The web of relation is shown in habitat, shown in 
 hybernation. When hybernation was observed, it 
 was found, that, whilst some animals became torpid 
 in winter, others were torpid in summer; hyberna- 
 tion, then, was a false name. The long sleep is not an 
 effect of cold, but is regulated by the supply of food 
 proper to the animal. It becomes torpid when the 
 fruit or prey it lives on is not in season, and regains 
 its activity when its food is ready. 
 
 Eyes are found in light ; ears in auricular air ; 
 feet on land ; fins in water ; wings in air ; and each 
 creature where it was meant to be, with a mutual 
 fitness. Every zone has its own Fauna. There is 
 adjustment between the animal and its food, its 
 parasite, its enemy. Balances are kept. It is not 
 allowed to diminish in numbers, nor to exceed. The 
 like adjustments exist for man. His food is cooked, 
 when he arrives ; his coal in the pit ; the house 
 ventilated ; the mud of the deluge dried ; his com- 
 panions arrived at the same hour, and awaiting him 
 with love, concert, laughter, and tears. These are 
 coarse adjustments, but the invisible are not less. 
 There are more belongings to every creature than his 
 air and his food. His instincts must be met, and 
 he has predisposing power that bends and fits what 
 is near him to his use. He is not possible until the 
 invisible things are right for him, as well as the 
 visible. Of what changes, then, in sky and earth, 
 and in finer skies and earths, does the appearance of 
 some Dante or Columbus apprise us ! 
 
 How is this effected 1 Nature is no spendthrift,
 
 i.] FATE. 31 
 
 but takes the shortest way to her ends. As the 
 general says to his soldiers, "if you want a fort, 
 build a fort," so nature makes every creature do its 
 own work and get its living, — is it planet, animal, or 
 tree. The planet makes itself. The animal cell 
 makes itself ; — then, what it wants. Every creature, 
 — wren or dragon, — shall make its own lair. As 
 soon as there is life, there is self-direction, and 
 absorbing and using of material. Life is freedom, — 
 life in the direct ratio of its amount. You may be 
 sure the new-born man is not inert. Life works 
 both voluntarily and supernaturally in its neighbour- 
 hood. Do you suppose he can be estimated by his 
 weight in pounds, or, that he is contained in his 
 skin, — this reaching, radiating, jaculating fellow? 
 The smallest candle fills a mile with its rays, and 
 the papillae of a man run out to every star. 
 
 When there is something to be done, the world 
 knows how to get it done. The vegetable eye makes 
 leaf, pericarp, root, bark, or thorn, as the need is; 
 the first cell converts itself into stomach, mouth, nose, 
 or nail, according to the want : the world throws 
 its life into a hero or a shepherd; and puts him 
 where he is wanted. Dante and Columbus were 
 Italians, in their time : they would be Eussians or 
 Americans to-day. Things ripen, new men come. 
 The adaptation is not capricious. The ulterior aim, 
 the purpose beyond itself, the correlation by which 
 planets subside and crystallise, then animate beasts 
 and men, will not stop, but will work into finer 
 particulars, and from finer to finest.
 
 32 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 The secret of the world is, the tie between person 
 and event. Person makes event, and event person. 
 The "times," "the age," what is that, but a few pro- 
 found persons and a few active persons who epito- 
 mise the times 1 — Goethe, Hegel, Metternich, Adams, 
 Calhoun, Guizot, Peel, Cobden, Kossuth, Rothschild, 
 Astor, Brunei, and the rest. The same fitness must 
 be presumed between a man and the time and event, 
 as between the sexes, or between a race of animals 
 and the food it eats, or the inferior races it uses. 
 He thinks his fate alien, because the copula is hidden. 
 But the soul contains the event that shall befall it, 
 for the event is only the actualisation of its thoughts ; 
 and what we pray to ourselves for is always granted. 
 The event is the print of your form. It fits you 
 like your skin. What each does is proper to him. 
 Events are the children of his body and mind. We 
 learn that the soul of Fate is the soul of us, as Hafiz 
 
 sings, 
 
 " Alas ! till now I had not known, 
 My guide and fortune's guide are one. " 
 
 All the toys that infatuate men, and which they 
 play for, — houses, land, money, luxury, power, fame, 
 are the selfsame thing, with a new gauze or two of 
 illusion overlaid. And of all the drums and rattles 
 by which men are made willing to have their heads 
 broke, and are led out solemnly every morning to 
 parade, — the most admirable, is this by which we are 
 brought to believe that events are arbitrary, and 
 independent of actions. At the conjuror's, we detect 
 the hair by which he moves his puppet, but we have
 
 I.] FATE. 33 
 
 not eyes sharp enough to descry the thread that ties 
 cause and effect. 
 
 Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by 
 making these the fruit of his character. Ducks take 
 to the water, eagles to the sky, waders to the sea- 
 margin, hunters to the forest, clerks to counting- 
 rooms, soldiers to the frontier. Thus events grow 
 on the same stem with persons ; are sub -persons. 
 The pleasure of life is according to the man that 
 lives it, and not according to the work or the place. 
 Life is an ecstasy. We knoAv what madness belongs 
 to love, — what power to paint a vile object in hues 
 of heaven. As insane persons are indifferent to their 
 dress, diet, and other accommodations, and as we do 
 in dreams, with equanimity, the most absurd acts, so 
 a drop more of wine in our cup of life will reconcile 
 us to strange company and work. Each creature 
 puts forth from itself its own condition and sphere, 
 as the slug sweats out its slimy house on the pear- 
 leaf, and the woolly aphides on the apple perspire 
 their own bed, and the fish its shell. In youth, we 
 clothe ourselves with rainbows, and go as brave as 
 the zodiac. In age, we put out another sort of per- 
 spiration, — gout, fever, rheumatism, caprice, doubt, 
 fretting, and avarice. 
 
 A man's fortunes are the fruit of his character. 
 A man's friends are his magnetisms. We go to 
 Herodotus and Plutarch for examples of Fate ; but 
 we are examples. "Quisque saos patirnur manes." The 
 tendency of every man to enact all that is in his 
 constitution is expressed in the old belief, that the 
 
 VOL. V. D
 
 34 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 efforts which we make to escape from our destiny 
 only serve to lead us into it : and I have noticed, a 
 man likes better to be complimented on his position, 
 as the proof of the last or total excellence, than on 
 his merits. 
 
 A man will see his character emitted in the events 
 that seem to meet, but which exude from and accom- 
 pany him. Events expand with the character. As 
 once he found himself among toys, so now he plays 
 a part in colossal systems, and his growth is declared 
 in his ambition, his companions, and his performance. 
 He looks like a piece of luck, but is a piece of causa- 
 tion; — the mosaic, angulated and ground to fit into 
 the gap he fills. Hence in each town there is some 
 man who is, in his brain and performance, an ex- 
 planation of the tillage, production, factories, banks, 
 churches, ways of living, and society, of that town. 
 If you do not chance to meet him, all that you see 
 will leave you a little puzzled : if you see him, it will 
 become plain. We know in Massachusetts who built 
 New Bradford, who built Lynn, Lowell, Lawrence, 
 Clinton, Fitchburg, Holyoke, Portland, and many 
 another noisy mart. Each of these men, if they were 
 transparent, would seem to you not so much men, as 
 walking cities, and, wherever you put them, they 
 would build one. 
 
 History is the action and reaction of these two, — 
 Nature and Thought ; — two boys pushing each other 
 on the curb -stone of the pavement. Everything is 
 pusher or pushed : and matter and mind are in per- 
 petual tilt and balance, so. Whilst the man is weak,
 
 I.] FATE. 35 
 
 the earth takes up him. He plants his brain and 
 affections. By and by he will take up the earth, and 
 have his gardens and vineyards in the beautiful order 
 and productiveness of his thought. Every solid in the 
 universe is ready to become fluid on the approach of 
 the mind, and the power to flux it is the measure of 
 the mind. If the wall remain adamant, it accuses the 
 want of thought. To a subtler force it will stream 
 into new forms, expressive of the character of the 
 mind. What is the city in which we sit here but 
 an aggregate of incongruous materials, which have 
 obeyed the will of some man 1 The granite was 
 reluctant, but his hands were stronger, and it came. 
 Iron was deep in the ground, and well combined with 
 stone ; but could not hide from his fires. Wood, 
 lime, stuffs, fruits, gums, were dispersed over the earth 
 and sea, in vain. Here they are, within reach of 
 every man's day-labour, — what he wants of them. 
 The whole world is the flux of matter over the wires 
 of thought to the poles or points where it would build. 
 The races of men rise out of the ground preoccupied 
 with a thought which rules them, and divided into 
 parties ready armed and angry to fight for this meta- 
 physical abstraction. The quality of the thought dif- 
 ferences the Egyptian and the Eoman, the Austrian 
 and the American. The men who come on the stage 
 at one period are all found to be related to each 
 other. Certain ideas are in the air. We are all 
 impressionable, for we are made of them ; all impres- 
 sionable, but some more than others, and these first 
 express them. This explains the curious contempo-
 
 36 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 raneousness of inventions and discoveries. The truth 
 is in the air, and the most impressionable brain will 
 announce it first, but all will announce it a few 
 minutes later. So women, as most susceptible, are 
 the best index of the coming hour. So the great 
 man, that is, the man most imbued with the spirit 
 of the time, is the impressionable man, — of a fibre 
 irritable and delicate, like iodine to light. He 
 feels the infinitesimal attractions. His mind is 
 righter than others, because he yields to a current 
 so feeble as can be felt only by a needle delicately 
 poised. 
 
 The correlation is shown in defects. Moller, in 
 his Essay on Architecture, taught that the building 
 which was fitted accurately to answer its end would 
 turn out to be beautiful, though beauty had not been 
 intended. I find the like unity in human structures 
 rather virulent and pervasive ; that a crudity in the 
 blood will appear in the argument; a hump in the 
 shoulder will appear in the speech and handiwork. 
 If his mind could be seen, the hump would be seen. 
 If a man has a seesaw in his voice, it will run into 
 his sentences, into his poem, into the structure of his 
 fable, into his speculation, into his charity. And, as 
 every man is hunted by his own daemon, vexed by his 
 own disease, this checks all his activity. 
 
 So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A 
 strong, astringent, bilious nature has more truculent 
 enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my leaves. 
 Such an one has curculios, borers, knife -worms : a 
 swindler ate him first, then a client, then a quack,
 
 I.] 
 
 FATE. 37 
 
 then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as 
 Moloch. 
 
 This correlation really existing can be divined. If 
 the threads are there, thought can follow and show 
 them. Especially when a soul is quick and docile ; 
 as Chaucer sings, 
 
 ' ' Or if the soul of proper kind 
 Be so perfect as men find, 
 That it wot what is to come, 
 And that he warneth all and some 
 Of every of their aventures, 
 By previsions or figures ; 
 But that our flesh hath not might 
 It to understand aright 
 For it is warned too darkly." — 
 
 Some people are made up of rhyme, coincidence, omen, 
 periodicity, and presage : they meet the person they 
 seek ; what their companion prepares to say to them, 
 they first say to him ; and a hundred signs apprise 
 them of what is about to befall. 
 
 Wonderful intricacy in the web, wonderful con- 
 stancy in the design, this vagabond life admits. We 
 wonder how the fly finds its mate, and yet year after 
 year we find two men, two women, without legal or 
 carnal tie, spend a great part of their best time within 
 a few feet of each other. And the moral is, that 
 what we seek we shall find ; what we flee from flees 
 from us ; as Goethe said, " what we wish for in youth, 
 comes in heaps on us in old age," too often cursed 
 with the granting of our prayer : and hence the high 
 caution, that, since we are sure of having what we 
 Avish, we beware to ask only for high things.
 
 38 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 One key, one solution to the mysteries of human 
 condition, one solution to the old knots of fate, free- 
 dom, and foreknowledge, exists, the propounding, 
 namely, of the double consciousness. A man must 
 ride alternately on the horses of his private and his 
 public nature, as the equestrians in the circus throw 
 themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or plant one 
 foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the 
 back of the other. So when a man is the victim of 
 his fate, has sciatica in his loins, and cramp in his 
 mind ; a club-foot and a club in his wit ; a sour face, 
 and a selfish temper ; a strut in his gait, and a con- 
 ceit in his affection ; or is ground to powder by the 
 vice of his race ; he is to rally on his relation to the 
 Universe, which his ruin benefits. Leaving the daemon 
 who suffers, he is to take sides with the Deity who 
 secures universal benefit by his pain. 
 
 To offset the drag of temperament and race, which 
 pulls down, learn this lesson, namely, that by the 
 cunning co-presence of two elements, which is through- 
 out nature, whatever lames or paralyses you draws 
 in with it the divinity, in some form, to repay. A 
 good intention clothes itself with sudden power. 
 When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will 
 bud and shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a 
 horse. 
 
 Let us build altars to the Blessed Unity which 
 holds nature and souls in perfect solution, and com- 
 pels every atom to serve a universal end. I do not 
 wonder at a snow-flake, a shell, a summer landscape, 
 or the glory of the stars ; but at the necessity of
 
 I.] FATE. 39 
 
 beauty under which the universe lies ; that all is and 
 must be pictorial ; that the rainbow, and the curve of 
 the horizon, and the arch of the blue vault, are only 
 results from the organism of the eye. There is no 
 need for foolish amateurs to fetch me to admire a 
 garden of flowers, or a sun-gilt cloud, or a waterfall, 
 when I cannot look without seeing splendour and 
 grace. How idle to choose a random sparkle here 
 or there, when the indwelling necessity plants the 
 rose of beauty on the brow of chaos, and discloses the 
 central intention of Nature to be harmony and joy. 
 
 Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity. If 
 we thought men were free in the sense that, in a 
 single exception one fantastical will could prevail over 
 the law of things, it were all one as if a child's hand 
 could pull down the sun. If, in the least particular, 
 one could derange the order of nature, — who would 
 accept the gift of life 1 
 
 Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity, 
 which secures that all is made of one piece; that 
 plaintiff and defendant, friend and enemy, animal 
 aud planet, food and eater, are of one kind. In 
 astronomy is vast space, but no foreign system ; in 
 geology, vast time, but the same laws as to-day. Why 
 should we be afraid of Nature, which is no other than 
 " philosophy and theology embodied"? Why should 
 we fear to be crushed by savage elements, we who 
 are made up of the same elements? Let us build 
 to the Beautiful Necessity, which makes man brave 
 in believing that he cannot shun a danger that is 
 appointed, nor incur one that is not ; to the Neces-
 
 40 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [i. 
 
 sity which rudely or softly educates him to the per- 
 ception that there are no contingencies ; that Law 
 rules throughout existence, a Law which is not intelli- 
 gent, hut intelligence, — not personal nor impersonal, 
 — it disdains words and passes understanding ; it 
 dissolves persons ; it vivifies nature ; yet solicits the 
 pure in heart to draw on all its omnipotence.
 
 II. 
 
 POWER 
 
 His tongue was framed to music, 
 And his hand was armed with skill, 
 His face was the mould of heauty, 
 And his heart the throne of will.
 
 POWER. 
 
 There is not yet any inventory of a man's faculties, 
 any more than a bible of his opinions. Who shall 
 set a limit to the influence of a human being 1 There 
 are men, who, by their sympathetic attractions, carry 
 nations with them, and lead the activity of the human 
 race. And if there be such a tie, that, wherever the 
 mind of man goes, nature will accompany him, per- 
 haps there are men whose magnetisms are of that 
 force to draw material and elemental powers, and, 
 where they appear, immense instrumentalities organise 
 around them. Life is a search after power ; and this 
 is an element with which the world is so saturated,— 
 there is no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged, 
 — that no honest seeking goes unrewarded. A man 
 should prize events and possessions as the ore in 
 which this fine mineral is found; and he can well 
 afford to let events and possessions, and the breath of 
 the body go, if their value has been added to him in 
 the shape of power. If he have secured the elixir, he 
 can spare the wide gardens from which it was distilled. 
 A cultivated man, wise to know and bold to perform, 
 is the end to which nature works, and the education
 
 44 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [n. 
 
 of the will is the flowering and result of all this 
 geology and astronomy. 
 
 All successful men have agreed in one thing, — 
 they were causationists. They believed that things 
 went not by luck, but by law ; that there was not a 
 weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the 
 first and last of things. A belief in causality, or 
 strict connection between every trifle and the principle 
 of being, and, in consequence, belief in compensation, 
 or, that nothing is got for nothing, — characterises all 
 valuable minds, and must control every effort that is 
 made by an industrious one. The most valiant men 
 are the best believers in the tension of the laws. 
 "All the great captains," said Bonaparte, "have per- 
 formed vast achievements by conforming with the rules 
 of the art, — by adjusting efforts to obstacles." 
 
 The key to the age may be this, or that, or the 
 other, as the young orators describe ; — the key to all 
 ages is — Imbecility ; imbecility in the vast majority 
 of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but 
 certain eminent moments ; victims of gravity, custom, 
 and fear. This gives force to the strong, — that the 
 multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original 
 action. 
 
 We must reckon success a constitutional trait. 
 Courage, — the old physicians taught (and their mean- 
 ing holds, if their physiology is a little mythical), — 
 courage, or the degree of life, is as the degree of 
 circulation of the blood in the arteries. "During 
 passion, anger, fury, trials of strength, wrestling, 
 fighting, a large amount of blood is collected in the
 
 II.] POWER. 45 
 
 arteries, the maintenance of bodily strength requiring 
 it, and but little is sent into the veins. This condi 
 tion is constant with intrepid persons." Where the 
 arteries hold their blood, is courage and adventure 
 possible. Where they pour it unrestrained into the 
 veins, the spirit is low and feeble. For performance 
 of great mark, it needs extraordinary health. If Eric 
 is in robust health, and has slept well, and is at the 
 top of his condition, and thirty years old, at his 
 departure from Greenland, he will steer west, and his 
 ships will reach Newfoundland. But take out Eric, 
 and put in a stronger and bolder man — Biorn, or 
 Thorfin, — and the ships will, with just as much ease, 
 sail six hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred miles 
 farther, and reach Labrador and New England. There 
 is no chance in results. With adults, as with children, 
 one class enter cordially into the game, and whirl 
 with the whirling world ; the others have cold hands, 
 and remain bystanders ; or are only dragged in by 
 the humour and vivacity of those who can carry a dead 
 weight. The first wealth is health. Sickness is poor- 
 spirited, and cannot serve any one : it must husband 
 its resources to live. But health or fulness answers 
 its own ends, and has to spare, runs over, and inun- 
 dates the neighbourhoods and creeks of other men's 
 necessities. 
 
 All power is of one kind, a sharing of the nature 
 of the world. The mind that is parallel with the 
 laws of nature will be in the current of events, and 
 strong with their strength. One man is made of the 
 same stuff of which events are made ; is in sjanpathy
 
 46 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [u. 
 
 with the course of things ; can predict it. Whatever 
 befalls, befalls him first ; so that he is equal to what- 
 ever shall happen. A man who knows men, can talk 
 well on politics, trade, law, war, religion. For, every- 
 where, men are led in the same manners. 
 
 The advantage of a strong pulse is not to be sup- 
 plied by any labour, art, or concert. It is like the 
 climate, which easily rears a crop, which no glass, or 
 irrigation, or tillage, or manures, can elsewhere rival. 
 It is like the opportunity of a city like New York, or 
 Constantinople, which needs no diplomacy to force 
 capital or genius or labour to it. They come of them- 
 selves, as the waters flow to it. So a broad, healthy, 
 massive understanding seems to lie on the shore of 
 unseen rivers, of unseen oceans, which are covered 
 with barks that, night and day, are drifted to this 
 point. That is poured into its lap which other men 
 lie plotting for. It is in everybody's secret ; antici- 
 pates everybody's discovery; and if it do not command 
 every fact of the genius and the scholar, it is because 
 it is large and sluggish, and does not think them 
 worth the exertion which you do. 
 
 This affirmative force is in one, and is not in 
 another, as one horse has the spring in him, and 
 another in the whip. "On the neck of the young 
 man," said Hafiz, "sparkles no gem so gracious as 
 enterprise." Import into any stationary district, as 
 into an old Dutch population in New York or Penn- 
 sylvania, or among the planters of Virginia, a colony 
 of hardy Yankees, with seething brains, heads full of 
 steam-hammer, pulley, crank, and toothed wheel,—
 
 ii.] POWER. 47 
 
 and everything begins to shine with values. What 
 enhancement to all the water and land in England, 
 is' the arrival of James Watt or Brunei ! In every 
 company there is not only the active and passive sex, 
 but, in both men and women, a deeper and more im- 
 portant sex of mind, namely, the inventive or creative 
 class of both men and women, and the uninventive 
 or accepting class. Each^/ws man represents his set, 
 and, if he have the accidental advantage of personal 
 ascendency, — which implies neither more nor less of 
 talent, but merely the temperamental or taming eye 
 of a soldier or a schoolmaster (which one has, and 
 one has not, as one has a black moustache and one a 
 blonde), then quite easily, and without envy or resist- 
 ance, all his coadjutors and feeders will admit his 
 right to absorb them. The merchant works by book- 
 keeper and cashier ; the lawyer's authorities are hunted 
 up by clerks ; the geologist reports the surveys of his 
 subalterns : Commander Wilkes appropriates the re- 
 sults of all the naturalists attached to the Expedition ; 
 Thorwaldsen's statue is finished by stone-cutters; 
 Dumas has journeymen ; and Shakspeare was theatre- 
 manager, and used the labour of many young men, as 
 well as the playbooks. 
 
 There is always room for a man of force, and he 
 makes room for many. Society is a troop of thinkers, 
 and the best heads among them take the best places. 
 A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and 
 tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man 
 sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes 
 estates, as fast as the sun breeds clouds.
 
 48 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [a. 
 
 When a new boy comes into school, when a man 
 travels, and encounters strangers every day, or, when 
 into any old club a new comer is domesticated, that 
 happens which befalls when a strange ox is driven 
 into a pen or pasture where cattle are kept ; there is 
 at once a trial of strength between the best pair of 
 horns and the new comer, and it is settled thenceforth 
 which is the leader. So now, there is a measuring of 
 strength, very courteous, but decisive, and an acqui- 
 escence thenceforward when these two meet. Each 
 reads his fate in the other's eyes. The weaker party 
 finds that none of his information or wit quite fits 
 the occasion. He thought he knew this or that : he 
 finds that he omitted to learn the end of it. Nothing 
 that he knows will quite hit the mark, whilst all the 
 rival's arrows are good, and well thrown. But if he 
 knew all the facts in the encyclopaedia, it would not 
 help him : for this is an affair of presence of mind, of 
 attitude, of aplomb : the opponent has the sun and 
 wind, and, in every cast, the choice of weapon and 
 mark ; and, when he himself is matched with some 
 other antagonist, his own shafts fly well and hit. 
 'Tis a question of stomach and constitution. The 
 second man is as good as the first, — perhaps better ; 
 but has not stoutness or stomach, as the first has, and 
 so his wit seems over-fine or under-fine. 
 
 Health is good, — power, life, that resists disease, 
 poison, and all enemies, and is conservative as well 
 as creative. Here is question, every spring, whether 
 to graft with wax, or whether with clay ; whether to 
 whitewash, or to potash, or to prune; but the one
 
 II.] POWER. 49 
 
 point is the thrifty tree. A good tree, that agrees 
 with the soil, will grow in spite of blight, or bug, or 
 pruning, or neglect, by night and by day, in all 
 weathers and all treatments. Vivacity, leadership, 
 must be had, and we are not allowed to be nice in 
 choosing. We must fetch the pump with dirty 
 water, if clean cannot be had. If we will make bread, 
 we must have contagion, yeast, emptyings, or what 
 not, to induce fermentation into the dough : as the 
 torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue 
 or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by 
 wine. And we have a certain instinct, that where is 
 great amount of life, though gross and peccant, it has 
 its own checks and purifications, and will be found at 
 last in harmony with moral laws. 
 
 We watch in children with pathetic interest the 
 degree in which they possess recuperative force. 
 When they are hurt by us, or by each other, or go to 
 the bottom of the class, or miss the annual prizes, or 
 are beaten in the game, — if they lose heart, and re- 
 member the mischance in their chamber at home, 
 they have a serious check. But if they have the 
 buoyancy and resistance that preoccupies them with 
 new interest in the new moment, — the wounds cica- 
 trise, and the fibre is the tougher for the hurt. 
 
 One comes to value this plus health when he sees 
 that all difficulties vanish before it. A timid man 
 listening to the alarmists in Congress, and in the 
 newspapers, and observing the profligacy of party, — 
 sectional interests urged with a fury which shuts its 
 eyes to consequences, with a mind made up to 
 vol. v. E
 
 50 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [ir. 
 
 desperate extremities, ballot in one hand, and rifle in 
 the other, — might easily believe that he and his country 
 have seen their best days, and he hardens himself the 
 best he can against the coming ruin. But, after this 
 has been foretold with equal confidence fifty times, 
 and government six per cents have not declined a 
 quarter of a mill, he discovers that the enormous 
 elements of strength which are here in play make our 
 politics unimportant. Personal power, freedom, and 
 the resources of nature, strain every faculty of every 
 citizen. We prosper with such vigour, that, like 
 thrifty trees, which grow in spite of ice, lice, mice, 
 and borers, so we do not suffer from the profligate 
 swarms that fatten on the national treasury. The 
 huge animals nourish huge parasites, and the rancour 
 of the disease attests the strength of the constitution. 
 The same energy in the Greek Demos drew the 
 remark, that the evils of popular government appeal' 
 greater than they are ; there is compensation for them 
 in the spirit and energy it awakens. The rough and 
 ready style which belongs to a people of sailors, 
 foresters, farmers, and mechanics, has its advantages. 
 Power educates the potentate. As long as our people 
 quote English standards they dwarf their own pro- 
 portions. A Western lawyer of eminence said to me 
 he wished it were a penal offence to bring an English 
 law-book into a court in this country, so pernicious 
 had he found in his experience our deference to 
 English precedent. The very word " commerce " has 
 only an English meaning, and is pinched to the cramp 
 exigencies of English experience. The commerce of
 
 n.] POWER. 51 
 
 rivers, the commerce of railroads, and who knows but 
 the commerce of air-balloons, must add an American 
 extension to the pond-hole of admiralty. As long as 
 our people quote English standards, they will miss the 
 sovereignty of power ; but let these rough riders, — 
 legislators in shirt -sleeves, — Hoosier, Sucker, Wol- 
 verine, Badger, — or whatever hard head Arkansas, 
 Oregon, or Utah sends, half orator, half assassin, to 
 represent its wrath, and cupidity at Washington, — let 
 these drive as they may ; and the disposition of terri- 
 tories and public lands, the necessity of balancing and 
 keeping at bay the snarling majorities of German, 
 Irish, and of native millions, will bestow promptness, 
 address, and reason, at last, on our buffalo-hunter, 
 and authority and majesty of manners. The instinct 
 of the people is right. Men expect from good whigs, 
 put into office by the respectability of the country, 
 much less skill to deal with Mexico, Spain, Britain, or 
 with our own malcontent members, than from some 
 strong transgressor, like Jefferson or Jackson, who 
 first conquers his own government, and then uses the 
 same genius to conquer the foreigner. The senators 
 who dissented from Mr. Polk's Mexican war were 
 not those who knew better, but those who, from poli- 
 tical position, could afford it ; not Webster, but 
 Benton and Calhoun. 
 
 This power, to be sure, is not clothed in satin. 
 'Tis the power of Lynch law, of soldiers and pirates ; 
 and it bullies the peaceable and loyal. But it brings 
 its own antidote ; and here is my point, — that all 
 kinds of power usually emerge at the same time ;
 
 52 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [n. 
 
 good energy, and bad ; power of mind, with physical 
 health ; the ecstasies of devotion, with the exaspera- 
 tions of debauchery. The same elements are always 
 present, only sometimes these conspicuous, and some- 
 times those; what was yesterday foreground, being 
 to-day background, — what was surface, playing now 
 a not less effective part as basis. The longer the 
 drought lasts, the more is the atmosphere surcharged 
 with water. The faster the ball falls to the sun, the 
 force to fly off is by so much augmented. And, in 
 morals, wild liberty breeds iron conscience; natures 
 with great impulses have great resources, and return 
 from far. In politics, the sons of democrats will be 
 whigs; whilst red republicanism, in the father, is a 
 spasm of nature to engender an intolerable tyrant in 
 the next age. On the other hand, conservatism, ever 
 more timorous and narrow, disgusts the children, and 
 drives them for a mouthful of fresh air into radicalism. 
 Those who have most of this coarse energy, — the 
 "bruisers," who have run the gauntlet of caucus and 
 tavern through the county or the state, have their 
 own vices, but they have the good nature of strength 
 and courage. Fierce and unscrupulous, they are 
 usually frank and direct, and above falsehood. Our 
 politics fall into bad hands, and churchmen and men 
 of refinement, it seems agreed, are not fit persons to 
 send to Congress. Politics is a deleterious profession, 
 like some poisonous handicrafts. Men in power have 
 on opinions, but may be had cheap for any opinion, 
 for any purpose, — and if it be only a question between 
 the most civil and the most forcible, I lean to the
 
 ii.] tower. 53 
 
 last. These Hoosiers and Suckers are really better 
 than the snivelling opposition. Their wrath is at 
 least of a bold and manly cast. They see, against the 
 unanimous declarations of the people, how much crime 
 the people will bear ; they proceed from step to step, 
 and they have calculated but too justly upon their 
 Excellencies, the New England governors, and upon 
 their Honours, the New England legislators. The 
 messages of the governors and the resolutions of the 
 legislatures are a proverb for expressing a sham vir- 
 tuous indignation, which, in the course of events, is 
 sure to be belied. 
 
 In trade, also, this energy usually carries a trace 
 of ferocity. Philanthropic and religious bodies do 
 not commonly make their executive officers out of 
 saints. The communities hitherto founded by Soci- 
 alists, — the Jesuits, the Port-Koyalists, the American 
 communities at New Harmony, at Brook Farm, at 
 Zoar, are only possible, by installing Judas as steward. 
 The rest of the offices may be filled by good burgesses. 
 The pious and charitable proprietor has a foreman 
 not quite so pious and charitable. The most amiable 
 of country gentlemen has a certain pleasure in the 
 teeth of the bull-dog which guards his orchard. Of 
 the Shaker society, it was formerly a sort of proverb 
 in the country, that they always sent the devil to 
 market. And in representations of the Deity, paint- 
 ing, poetry, and popular religion have ever drawn the 
 wrath from Hell. It is an esoteric doctrine of society, 
 that a little wickedness is good to make muscle ; as 
 if conscience were not good for hands and legs, as if
 
 54 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [n. 
 
 poor decayed formalists of law and order cannot run 
 like wild goats, wolves, and conies ; that, as there is 
 a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot 
 move without rogues; that public spirit and the 
 ready hand are as well found among the malignants. 
 'Tis not very rare, the coincidence of sharp private 
 and political practice, with public spirit and good 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 I knew a burly Boniface who for many years kept 
 a public-house in one of our rural capitals. He was 
 a knave whom the town could ill spare. He was a 
 social, vascular creature, grasping and selfish. There 
 was no crime which he did not or could not commit. 
 But he made good friends of the selectmen, served 
 them with his best chop when they supped at his 
 house, and also with his honour the Judge he was 
 very cordial, grasping his hand. He introduced all 
 the fiends, male and female, into the town, and united 
 in his person the functions of bully, incendiary, 
 swindler, bar-keeper, and burglar. He girdled the 
 trees, and cut off the horses' tails of the temperance 
 people, in the night. He led the "rummies" and 
 radicals in town-meeting with a speech. Meantime, 
 he was civil, fat, and easy, in Ins house, and precisely 
 the most public-spirited citizen. He was active in 
 getting the roads repaired and planted with shade- 
 trees; he subscribed for the fountains, the gas, and 
 the telegraph ; he introduced the new horse-rake, the 
 new scraper, the baby-jumper, and what not, that Con- 
 necticut sends to the admiring citizens. He did this 
 the easier, that the pedlar stopped at his house, and
 
 II.] 
 
 POWER. 55 
 
 paid his keeping, by setting up his new trap on the 
 landlord's premises. 
 
 Whilst thus the energy for originating and execut- 
 ing work deforms itself by excess, and so our axe 
 chops off our own fingers, — this evil is not without 
 remedy. All the elements whose aid man calls in 
 will sometimes become his masters, especially those 
 of most subtle force. Shall he, then, renounce steam, 
 fire, and electricity, or shall he learn to deal with 
 them 1 The rule for this whole class of agencies is, 
 — all plus is good ; only put it in the right place. 
 
 Men of this surcharge of arterial blood cannot live 
 on nuts, herb-tea, and elegies; cannot read novels, 
 and play whist ; cannot satisfy all their wants at the 
 Thursday Lecture, or the Boston Athenaeum. They 
 pine for adventure, and must go to Pike's Peak ; had 
 rather die by the hatchet of a Pawnee, than sit all 
 day and every day at a counting-room desk. They 
 are made for war, for the sea, for mining, hunting, 
 and clearing ; for hairbreadth adventures, huge risks, 
 and the joy of eventful living. Some men cannot 
 endure an hour of calm at sea. I remember a poor 
 Malay cook, on board a Liverpool packet, who, when 
 the wind blew a gale, could not contain his joy; 
 "Blow!" he cried, "me do tell you, blow!" Their 
 friends and governors must see that some vent for 
 their explosive complexion is provided. The roisters 
 who are destined for infamy at home, if sent to 
 Mexico, will " cover you with glory," and come back 
 heroes and generals. There are Oregons, Californias, 
 and Exploring Expeditions enough appertaining to
 
 56 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [n. 
 
 America, to find them in files to gnaw, and in croco- 
 diles to eat. The young English are fine animals, 
 full of blood, and when they have no wars to breathe 
 their riotous valours in, they seek for travels as 
 dangerous as war, diving into Maelstroms; swim- 
 ming Hellesponts ; wading up the snowy Himmaleh ; 
 hunting lion, rhinoceros, elephant, in South Africa ; 
 gipsying with Borrow in Spain and Algiers; riding- 
 alligators in South America with Waterton ; utilising 
 Bedouin, Sheik, and Pacha, with Layard; yachting 
 among the icebergs of Lancaster Sound ; peeping into 
 craters on the equator ; or running on the creases of 
 Malays in Borneo. 
 
 The excess of virility has the same importance 
 in general history as in private and industrial life. 
 Strong race or strong individual rests at last on 
 natural forces, which are best in the savage, who, 
 like the beasts around him, is still in reception of the 
 milk from the teats of Nature. Cut off the connec- 
 tion between any of our works and this aboriginal 
 source, and the work is shallow. The people lean on 
 this, and the mob is not quite so bad an argument as 
 we sometimes say, for it has this good side. " March 
 without the people," said a French deputy from the 
 tribune, " and you march into night : their instincts 
 are a finger -pointing of Providence, always turned 
 toward real benefit. But when you espouse an 
 Orleans party, or a Bourbon, or a Montalembert 
 party, or any other but an organic party, though you 
 mean Avell, you have a personality instead of a prin- 
 ciple, which will inevitably drag you into a corner."
 
 II.] POWER. 57 
 
 The best anecdotes of this force are to be had 
 from savage life, in explorers, soldiers, and buccaneers. 
 But who cares for fallings-out of assassins, and fights 
 of bears, or grindings of icebergs? Physical force 
 has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in 
 snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. 
 The luxury of ice is in tropical countries and mid- 
 summer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little 
 on our hearth : and of electricity, not volleys of the 
 charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the 
 battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy ; the rests or 
 remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth 
 all the cannibals in the Pacific. 
 
 In history, the great moment is, when the savage 
 is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy 
 Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of 
 beauty: — and you have Pericles and Phidias, — not 
 yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Every- 
 thing good in nature and the world is in that 
 moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still 
 flow plentifully from nature, but their astringency or 
 acridity is got out by ethics and humanity. 
 
 The triumphs of peace have been in some prox- 
 imity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar 
 with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp 
 were still visible in the port and complexion of the 
 gentleman, his intellectual power culminated : the 
 compression and tension of these stern conditions is a 
 training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be 
 compensated in tranquil times, except by some analo- 
 gous vigour drawn from occupations as hardy as war.
 
 58 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [n. 
 
 We say that success is constitutional ; depends on 
 a plus condition of mind and body, on power of 
 work, on courage; that it is of main efficacy in 
 carrying on the world, and, though rarely found in 
 the right state for an article of commerce, but oftener 
 in the supersaturate or excess, which makes it danger- 
 ous and destructive, yet it cannot be spared, and 
 must be had in that form, and absorbents provided 
 to take off its edge. 
 
 The affirmative class monopolise the homage of 
 mankind. They originate and execute all the great 
 feats. What a force was coiled up in the skull of 
 Napoleon ! Of the sixty thousand men making his 
 army at Eylau, it seems some thirty thousand were 
 thieves and burglars. The men whom, in peaceful 
 communities, we hold if we can, with iron at their 
 legs, in prisons, under the muskets of sentinels, this 
 man dealt with, hand to hand, dragged them to 
 their duty, and won his victories by their bayonets. 
 
 This aboriginal might gives a surprising pleasure 
 when it appears under conditions of supreme refine- 
 ment, as in the proficients in high art. When 
 Michel Angelo was forced to paint the Sistine Chapel 
 in fresco, of which art he knew nothing, he went 
 down into the Pope's gardens behind the Vatican, 
 and with a shovel dug out ochres, red and yellow, 
 mixed them with glue and water with his own hands, 
 and having, after many trials, at last suited himself, 
 climbed his ladders, and painted away, week after 
 week, month after month, the sibyls and prophets. 
 He surpassed his successors in rough vigour, as much
 
 „.] POWEK. 59 
 
 as in purity of intellect and refinement. He was not 
 crushed by his one picture left unfinished at last. 
 Michel was wont to draw his figures first in skeleton, 
 then to clothe them with flesh, and lastly to drape 
 them. "Ah!" said a brave painter tome, thinking 
 on these things, " if a man has failed, you will find 
 he has dreamed instead of working. There is no 
 way to success in our art but to take off your coat, 
 grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, 
 all day and every day." 
 
 Success goes thus invariably with a certain plus 
 or positive power : an ounce of power must balance 
 an ounce of weight. And, though a man cannot 
 return into his mother's womb, and be born with 
 new amounts of vivacity, yet there are two economies, 
 which are the best succedanea which the case admits. 
 The first is, the stopping off decisively our miscel- 
 laneous activity, and concentrating our force on one 
 or a few points ; as the gardener, by severe pruning, 
 forces the sap of the tree into one or two vigorous 
 limbs, instead of suffering it to spindle into a sheaf 
 of twigs. 
 
 "Enlarge not thy destiny," said the oracle, "en- 
 deavour not to do more than is given thee in charge. " 
 The one prudence in life is concentration; the one 
 evil is dissipation : and it makes no difference whether 
 our dissipations are coarse or fine ; property and its 
 cares, friends, and a social habit, or politics, or music, 
 or feasting. Everything is good which takes away 
 one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home 
 to add one stroke of faithful work. Friends, books,
 
 60 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [n. 
 
 pictures, lower duties, talents, flatteries, hopes, — all 
 are distractions which cause oscillations in our giddy 
 balloon, and make a good poise and a straight course 
 impossible. You must elect your work ; you shall 
 take what your brain can, and drop all the rest. 
 Only so, can that amount of vital, force accumulate, 
 which can make the step from knowing to doing. 
 No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man 
 has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken. 
 Tis a step out of a chalk circle of imbecility into 
 fruitfulness. Many an artist lacking this, lacks all : 
 he sees the masculine Angelo or Cellini with despair. 
 He, too, is up to Nature and the First Cause in his 
 thought. But the spasm to collect and swing his 
 whole being into one act, he has not. The poet 
 Campbell said, that " a man accustomed to work 
 was equal to any achievement he resolved on, and 
 that, for himself, necessity not inspiration was the 
 prompter of his muse." 
 
 Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, 
 in war, in trade, in short in all management of 
 human affairs. One of the high anecdotes of the 
 world is the reply of Newton to the inquiry, "how 
 he had been able to achieve his discoveries 1 " — "By 
 always intending my mind." Or if you will have a 
 text from politics, take this from Plutarch : "There 
 was, in the whole city, but one street in which 
 Pericles was ever seen, the street which led to the 
 market-place and the council-house. He declined all 
 invitations to banquets, and all gay assemblies and 
 company. During the whole period of his adminis-
 
 II.] POWER. 61 
 
 tration, he never dined at the table of a friend." Or 
 if we seek an example from trade, — " I hope," said a 
 good man to Eothschild, " your children are not too 
 fond of money and business : I am sure you would 
 not wish that." — "I am sure I should wish that : I 
 wish them to give mind, soul, heart, and body to 
 business, — that is the way to be happy. It requires a 
 great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution, to 
 make a great fortune, and when you have got it, it 
 requires ten times as much wit to keep it. If I were 
 to listen to all the projects proposed to me, I should 
 ruin myself very soon. Stick to one business, young- 
 man. Stick to your brewery (he said this to young 
 Buxton), and you will be the great brewer of London. 
 Be brewer, and banker, and merchant, and manu- 
 facturer, and you will soon be in the Gazette." 
 
 Many men are knowing, many are apprehensive 
 and tenacious, but they do not rush to a decision. 
 But in our flowing affairs a decision must be made, 
 — the best, if you can ; but any is better than none. 
 There are twenty ways of going to a point, and one 
 is the shortest ; but set out at once on one. A man 
 who has that presence of mind which can bring to 
 him on the instant all he knows, is worth for action 
 a dozen men who know as much, but can only bring 
 it to light slowly. The good Speaker in the House 
 is not the man who knows the theory of parliamentary 
 tactics, but the man who decides off-hand. The good 
 judge is not he who does hair-splitting justice to every 
 allegation, but who, aiming at substantial justice, rules 
 something intelligible for the guidance of suitors. The
 
 62 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [ir. 
 
 good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every 
 side and angle of contingency, and qualifies all his 
 qualifications, but who throws himself on your part 
 so heartily that he can get you out of a scrape. Dr. 
 Johnson said, in one of his flowing sentences, "Miser- 
 able beyond all names of wretchedness is that un- 
 happy pair, who are doomed to reduce beforehand to 
 the principles of abstract reason all the details of each 
 domestic day. There are cases where little can be 
 said, and much must be done." 
 
 The second substitute for temperament is drill, 
 the power of use and routine. The hack is a better 
 roadster that the Arab barb. In chemistry, the 
 galvanic stream, slow, but continuous, is equal in 
 power to the electric spark, and is, in our arts, a 
 better agent. So in human action, against the spasm 
 of energy we offset the continuity of drill. We spread 
 the same amount of force over much time, instead of 
 condensing it into a moment. 'Tis the same ounce 
 of gold here in a ball, and there in a leaf. At West 
 Point, Colonel Buford, the chief engineer, pounded 
 with a hammer on the trunnions of a cannon, until he 
 broke them off. He fired a piece of ordnance some 
 hundred times in swift succession, until it burst. Now 
 which stroke broke the trunnion? Every stroke. 
 Which blast burst the piece? Every blast. "Dili- 
 gence passe sens," Henry VIII. was wont to say, or, 
 great is drill. John Kemble said, that the worst 
 provincial company of actors would go through a play 
 better than the best amateur company. Basil Hall 
 likes to show that the worst regular troops will beat
 
 II.] POWER. 63 
 
 the best volunteers. Practice is nine -tenths. A 
 course of mobs is good practice for orators. All the 
 great speakers were bad speakers at first. Stumping 
 it through England for seven years, made Cobden a 
 consummate debater. Stumping it through New 
 England for twice seven, trained Wendell Phillips. 
 The way to learn German is, to read the same dozen 
 pages over and over a hundred times, till you know 
 every word and particle in them, and can pronounce 
 and repeat them by heart. No genius can recite a 
 ballad at first reading, so well as mediocrity can at 
 the fifteenth or twentieth reading. The rule for 
 hospitality and Irish " help " is, to have the same 
 dinner every day throughout the year. At last, Mrs. 
 O'Shaughnessy learns to cook it to a nicety, the host 
 learns to carve it, and the guests are well served. A 
 humorous friend of mine thinks, that the reason why 
 Nature is so perfect in her art, and gets up such in- 
 conceivably fine sunsets, is, that she has learned how, 
 at last, by dint of doing the same thing so very often. 
 Cannot one converse better on a topic on which he 
 has experience, than on one which is new 1 ? Men 
 whose opinion is valued on 'Change are only such as 
 have a special experience, and off that ground their 
 opinion is not valuable. "More are made good by 
 exercitation than by nature," said Democritus. The 
 friction in nature is so enormous that we cannot spare 
 any power. It is not question to express our thought, 
 to elect our way, but to overcome resistances of the 
 medium and material in everything we do. Hence 
 the use of drill, and the worthlessness of amateurs to
 
 64 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [n. 
 
 cope with practitioners. Six hours every day at the 
 piano, only to give facility of touch ; six hours a day 
 at painting, only to give command of the odious 
 materials, oil, ochres, and brushes. The masters say, 
 that they know a master in music, only by seeing the 
 pose of the hands on the keys ; — so difficult and vital 
 an act is the command of the instrument. To have 
 learned the use of the tools, by thousands of manipula- 
 tions ; to have learned the arts of reckoning, by end- 
 less adding and dividing, is the power of the mechanic 
 and the clerk. 
 
 I remarked in England, in confirmation of a fre- 
 quent experience at home, that, in literary circles, the 
 men of trust and consideration, bookmakers, editors, 
 university deans and professors, bishops too, were by 
 no means men of the largest literary talent, but usually 
 of a low and ordinary intellectuality, with a sort of 
 mercantile activity and working talent. Indifferent 
 hacks and mediocrities tower, by pushing their forces 
 to a lucrative point, or by working power, over multi- 
 tudes of superior men, in Old as in New England. 
 
 I have not forgotten that there are sublime con- 
 siderations which limit the value of talent and super- 
 ficial success. We can easily overpraise the vulgar 
 hero. There are sources on which we have not 
 drawn. I know what I abstain from. I adjourn 
 what I have to say on this topic to the chapters on 
 Culture and Worship. But this force or spirit being 
 the means relied on by Nature for bringing the work 
 of the day about, — as far as we attach importance to 
 household life, and the prizes of the world, we must
 
 n.] POWEK. 65 
 
 respect that. And I hold that an economy may be 
 applied to it; it is as much a subject of exact law 
 and arithmetic as fluids and gases are ; it may be 
 husbanded, or wasted ; every man is efficient only as 
 he is a container or vessel of this force, and never 
 was any signal act or achievement in history, but 
 by this expenditure. This is not gold, but the gold- 
 maker ; not the fame, but the exploit. 
 
 If these forces and this husbandry are within 
 reach of our will, and the laws of them can be read, 
 we infer that all success, and all conceivable benefit 
 for man, is also, first or last, within his reach, and 
 has its own sublime economies by which it may be 
 attained. The world is mathematical, and has no 
 casualty, in all its vast and flowing curve. Success 
 has no more eccentricity than the gingham and 
 muslin we weave in our mills. I know no more 
 affecting lesson to our busy, plotting New England 
 brains, than to go into one of the factories with which 
 we have lined all the watercourses in the States. A 
 man hardly knows how much he is a machine, until 
 he begins to make telegraph, loom, press, and locomo- 
 tive, in his own image. But in these, he is forced to 
 leave out his follies and hindrances, so that when we 
 go to the mill, the machine is more moral than we. 
 Let a man dare go to a loom, and see if he be equal 
 to it. Let machine confront machine, and see how 
 they come out. The world-mill is more complex than 
 the calico-mill, and the architect stooped less. In the 
 gingham-mill, a broken thread or a shred spoils the 
 web through a piece of a hundred yards, and is traced 
 vol. v. F
 
 66 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [n. 
 
 back to the girl that wove it, and lessens her wages. 
 The stockholder, on being shown this, rubs his hands 
 with delight. Are you so cunning, Mr. Profitloss, and 
 do you expect to swindle your master and employer, 
 in the web you weave 1 A day is a more magnificent 
 cloth than any muslin, the mechanism that makes it 
 is infinitely cunninger, and you shall not conceal the 
 sleezj', fraudulent, rotten hours you have slipped into 
 the piece, nor fear that any honest thread, or straighter 
 steel, or more inflexible shaft, will not testify in the 
 web.
 
 III. 
 
 WEALTH. 
 
 Who shall tell what did befall, 
 Far away in time, when once, 
 Over the lifeless ball, 
 Hung idle stars and suns ? 
 "What god the element obeyed \ 
 Wings of what wind the lichen bore, 
 Wafting the puny seeds of power, 
 Which, lodged in rock, the rock abrade ; 
 And well the primal pioneer 
 Knew the strong task to it assigned 
 Tatient through Heaven's enormous year 
 To build in matter home for mind. 
 From air the creeping centuries drew 
 The matted thicket low and wide, 
 This must the leaves of ages strew 
 The granite slab to close and hide, 
 Ere wheat can wave its golden pride. 
 What smiths, and in what furnace, rolled 
 (In dizzy reons dim and mute 
 The reeling brain can ill compute) 
 Copper and iron, lead and gold ? 
 AVhat oldest star the fame can save 
 Of races perishing to pave
 
 68 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [m. 
 
 The planet with a floor of lime ? 
 
 Dust is their pyramid and mole : 
 
 Who saw what ferns and palms were pressed 
 
 Under the tumbling mountain's breast, 
 
 In the safe herbal of the coal ? 
 
 But when the quarried means were piled, 
 
 All is waste and worthless, till 
 
 Arrives the wise selecting will, 
 
 And, out of slime and chaos, Wit 
 
 Draws the threads of fair and fit. 
 
 Then temples rose, and towns, and marts, 
 
 The shop of toil, the hall of arts ; 
 
 Then flew the sail across the seas 
 
 To feed the North from tropic trees ; 
 
 The storm-wind wove, the torrent span, 
 
 Where they were bid the rivers ran ; 
 
 New slaves fulfilled the poet's dream, 
 
 Galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam. 
 
 Then docks were built, and crops were stored, 
 
 And ingots added to the hoard. 
 
 But, though light-headed man forget, 
 
 Remembering Matter pays her debt : 
 
 Still, through her motes and masses, draw 
 
 Electric thrills and ties of Law, 
 
 Which bind the strengths of Nature wild 
 
 To the conscience of a child.
 
 WEALTH. 
 
 As soon as a stranger is introduced into any company, 
 one of the first questions which all wish to have 
 answered is, How does that man get his living? And 
 with reason. He is no whole man until he knows 
 how to earn a blameless livelihood. Society is bar- 
 barous, until every industrious man can get his living 
 without dishonest customs. 
 
 Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a pro- 
 ducer. He fails to make his place good in the world, 
 unless he not only pays Ins debt, but also adds some- 
 thing to the common wealth. Nor can he do justice 
 to his genius without making some larger demand on 
 the world than a bare subsistence. He is by constitu- 
 tion expensive, and needs to be rich. 
 
 Wealth has its source in applications of the mind 
 to nature, from the rudest strokes of spade and axe, 
 up to the last secrets of art. Intimate ties subsist 
 between thought and all production; because a better 
 order is equivalent to vast amounts of brute labour. 
 The forces and the resistances are Nature's, but the 
 mind acts in bringing things from where they abound 
 to where they are wanted ; in wise combining ; in
 
 70 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [in. 
 
 directing the practice of the useful arts, and in the 
 creation of finer values, hy fine art, by eloquence, by 
 song, or the reproductions of memory. Wealth is in 
 applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting 
 rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but 
 in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right 
 spot. One man has stronger arms, or longer legs ; 
 another sees by the course of streams, and growth of 
 markets, where land will be wanted, makes a clearing 
 to the river, goes to sleep, and wakes up rich. Steam 
 is no stronger now than it was a hundred years 
 ago ; but is put to better use. A clever fellow was 
 acquainted with the expansive force of steam ; he 
 also saw the wealth of wheat and grass rotting in 
 Michigan. Then he cunningly screws on the steam- 
 pipe to the wheat -crop. Puff now, Steam ! The 
 steam puffs and expands as before, but this time it is 
 dragging all Michigan at its back to hungry New 
 York and hungry England. Coal lay in ledges under 
 the ground since the Flood, until a labourer with pick 
 and windlass brings it to the surface. We may Avell 
 call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and 
 civilisation. For coal is a portable climate. It carries 
 the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar 
 circle : and it is the means of transporting itself 
 whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson 
 whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a 
 lialf-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal 
 carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as 
 warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its 
 industrial power.
 
 III.] 
 
 WEALTH. 71 
 
 When the farmer's peaches are taken from under 
 the tree, and carried into town, they have a new look, 
 and a hundredfold value over the fruit which grew on 
 the same bough, and lies fulsomely on the ground. 
 The craft of the merchant is this bringing a thing 
 from where it abounds, to where it is costly. 
 
 Wealth begins in a tight roof that keeps the rain 
 and wind out ; in a good pump that yields you plenty 
 of sweet water ; in two suits of clothes, so to change 
 your dress when you are wet ; in dry sticks to burn • 
 in a good double-wick lamp ; and three meals ; in a 
 horse, or a locomotive, to cross the land ; in a boat 
 to cross the sea ; in tools to work with ; in books to 
 read; and so, in giving, on all sides, by tools and 
 auxiliaries, the greatest possible extension to our 
 powers, as if it added feet, and hands, and eyes, and 
 blood, length to the clay, and knowledge, and good- 
 will. 
 
 Wealth begins with these articles of necessity. 
 And here we must recite the iron law which Nature 
 thunders in these northern climates. First, she re- 
 quires that each man should feed himself. If, happily, 
 his fathers have left him no inheritance, he must go 
 to work, and by making his wants less, or his gains 
 more, he must draw himself out of that state of pain 
 and insult in which she forces the beggar to lie. She 
 gives him no rest until this is done : she starves, 
 taunts, and torments him, takes away warmth, 
 laughter, sleep, friends, and daylight, until he has 
 fought his way to his own loaf. Then, less peremp- 
 torily, but still with sting enough, she urges him to
 
 72 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [m. 
 
 the acquisition of such things as belong to him. 
 Every warehouse and shop-window, every fruit-tree, 
 every thought of every hour, opens a new want to 
 him, which it concerns his power and dignity to 
 gratify. It is of no use to argue the wants down : 
 the philosophers have laid the greatness of man in 
 making his wants few : but will a man content him- 
 self with a hut and a handful of dried peas ? He is 
 born to be rich. He is thoroughly related ; and is 
 tempted out by his appetites and fancies to the con- 
 quest of this and that piece of nature, until he finds 
 his well-being in the use of his planet, and of more 
 planets than his own. Wealth requires, besides the 
 crust of bread and the roof, — the freedom of the 
 city, the freedom of the earth, travelling, machinery, 
 the benefits of science, music, and fine arts, the best 
 culture, and the best company. He is the rich man 
 who can avail himself of all men's faculties. He is 
 the richest man who knows how to draw a benefit 
 from the labours of the greatest number of men, of men 
 in distant countries, and in past times. The same 
 correspondence that is between thirst in the stomach 
 and water in the spring, exists between the whole of 
 man and the whole of nature. The elements offer 
 their service to him. The sea, washing the equator 
 and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power 
 and empire that follow it, — day by day to his craft 
 and audacity. "Beware of me," it says, "but if you 
 can hold me, I am the key to all the lands." Fire 
 offers, on its side, an equal power. Fire, steam, light- 
 ning, gravity, ledges of rock, mines of iron, lead,
 
 ill.] WEALTH. 73 
 
 quicksilver, tin, and gold ; forests of all woods ; fruits 
 of all climates ; animals of all habits ; the powers of 
 tillage; the fabrics of his chemic laboratory; the 
 webs of his loom ; the masculine draught of his loco- 
 motive, the talismans of the machine-shop ; all grand 
 and subtile things, minerals, gases, ethers, passions, 
 war, trade, government, are his natural playmates, 
 and, according to the excellence of the machinery in 
 each human being, is his attraction for the instru- 
 ments he is to employ. The world is his tool-chest, 
 and he is successful, or his education is carried on 
 just so far, as is the marriage of his faculties with 
 nature, or, the degree in which he takes up things 
 into himself. 
 
 The strong race is strong on these terms. The 
 Saxons are the merchants of the world; now, for a 
 thousand years, the leading race, and by nothing 
 more than their quality of personal independence, and, 
 in its special modification, pecuniary independence. 
 No reliance for bread and games on the govern- 
 ment, no clanship, no patriarchal style of living by 
 the revenues of a chief, no marrying-on, — no system 
 of clientship suits them ; but every man must pay 
 his scot. The English are prosperous and peace- 
 able, with their habit of considering that every man 
 must take care of himself, and has himself to thank, 
 if he do not maintain and improve his position in 
 society. 
 
 The subject of economy mixes itself with morals, 
 inasmuch as it is a peremptory point of virtue that a 
 man's independence be secured. Poverty demoralises.
 
 74 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [in. 
 
 A man in debt is so far a slave ; and Wall Street 
 thinks it easy for a millionaire to be a man of his 
 word, a man of honour, but that, in failing circum- 
 stances, no man can be relied on to keep his integrity. 
 And when one observes in the hotels and palaces of 
 our Atlantic capitals the habit of expense, the riot of 
 the senses, the absence of bonds, clanship, fellow- 
 feeling of any kind, he feels that, when a man or a 
 woman is driven to the wall, the chances of integrity 
 are frightfully diminished, as if virtue were coming to 
 be a luxury which few could afford, or, as Burke said, 
 "at a market almost too high for humanity." He 
 may fix his inventory of necessities and of enjoyments 
 on what scale he pleases, but if he wishes the power 
 and privilege of thought, the chalking out his own 
 career, and having society on his own terms, he must 
 bring his wants within his proper power to satisfy. 
 
 The manly part is to do with might and main 
 what you can do. The world is full of fops who never 
 did anything, and who have persuaded beauties and 
 men of genius to wear their fop livery, and these .will 
 deliver the fop opinion, that it is not respectable 
 to be seen earning a living; that it is much more 
 respectable to spend without earning; and this 
 doctrine of the snake will come also from the elect 
 sons of light ; for wise men are not wise at all hours, 
 and will speak five times from their taste or their 
 humour, to once from their reason. The brave work- 
 man, who might betray his feeling of it in his manners, 
 if he do not succumb in his practice, must replace the 
 grace or elegance forfeited, by the merit of the work
 
 III.] WEALTH. 75 
 
 done. No matter whether he makes shoes, or statues, 
 or laws. It is the privilege of any human work which 
 is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughti- 
 ness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose 
 faithful work will answer for him. The mechanic at 
 his hench carries a quiet heart and assured manners, 
 and deals on even terms with men of any condition. 
 The artist has made his picture so true, that it dis- 
 concerts criticism. The statue is so beautiful, that 
 it contracts no stain from the market, but makes the 
 market a silent gallery for itself. The case of the 
 young lawyer was pitiful to disgust, — a paltry matter 
 of buttons or tweezer-cases ; but the determined youth 
 saw in it an aperture to insert his dangerous wedges, 
 made the insignificance of the thing forgotten, and 
 gave fame by his sense and energy to the name and 
 affairs of the Tittleton snuff-box factory. 
 
 Society in large towns is babyish, and wealth is 
 made a toy. The life of pleasure is so ostentatious, 
 that a shallow observer must believe that this is the 
 agreed best use of wealth, and, whatever is pretended, 
 it ends in cosseting. But, if this were the main use 
 of surplus capital, it would bring us to barricades, 
 burned towns, and tomahawks, presently. Men of 
 sense esteem wealth to be the assimilation of nature 
 to themselves, the converting of the sap and juices of 
 the planet to the incarnation and nutriment of their 
 design. Power is what they want, — not candy; — 
 power to execute their design, power to give legs and 
 feet, form and actuality to their thought, Avhich, to a 
 clear-sighted man, appears the end for which the
 
 76 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [ill. 
 
 Universe exists, and all its resources might be well 
 applied. Columbus thinks that the sphere is a prob- 
 lem for practical navigation, as well as for closet 
 geometry, and looks on all kings and peoples as 
 cowardly landsmen, until they dare fit him out. Few 
 men on the planet have more truly belonged to it. 
 But he was forced to leave much of his map blank. 
 His successors inherited his map, and inherited his 
 fury to complete it. 
 
 So the men of the mine, telegraph, mill, map, and 
 survey, — the monomaniacs, who talk up their project 
 in marts, and offices, and entreat men to subscribe : 
 — how did our factories get built? how did North 
 America get netted with iron rails, except by the 
 importunity of these orators, who dragged all the 
 prudent men in 1 Is party the madness of many for 
 the gain of a few? This speculative genius is the 
 madness of few for the gain of the world. The pro- 
 jectors are sacrificed, but the public is the gainer. 
 Each of these idealists, working after his thought, 
 would make it tyrannical, if he could. He is met 
 and antagonised by other speculators as hot as he. 
 The equilibrium is preserved by these counteractions, 
 as one tree keeps down another in the forest, that it 
 may not absorb all the sap in the ground. And the 
 supply in nature of railroad presidents, copper-miners, 
 grand-junctioners, smoke-burners, fire-annihilators, etc., 
 is limited by the same law which keeps the proportion 
 in the supply of carbon, of alum, and of hydrogen. 
 
 To be rich is to have a ticket of admission to the 
 master-works and chief men of each race. It is to
 
 in.] WEALTH. 77 
 
 have the sea, by voyaging; to visit the mountains, 
 Niagara, the Nile, the desert, Rome, Paris, Constanti- 
 nople : to see galleries, libraries, arsenals, manu- 
 factories. The reader of Humboldt's "Cosmos" 
 follows the marches of a man whose eyes, ears, and 
 mind are armed by all the science, arts, and imple- 
 ments which mankind have anywhere accumulated, 
 and who is using these to add to the stock. So is it 
 with Denon, Beckford, Belzoni, Wilkinson, Layard, 
 Kane, Lepsius, and Livingston. "The rich man," 
 says Saadi, "is everywhere expected and at home." 
 The rich take up something more of the world into 
 man's life. They include the country as well as the 
 town, the ocean-side, the White Hills, the Far West, 
 and the old European homesteads of man, in their 
 notion of available material. The world is his, who 
 has money to go over it. He arrives at the sea-shore, 
 and a sumptuous ship has floored and carpeted for 
 him the stormy Atlantic, and made it a luxurious 
 hotel, amid the horrors of tempests. The Persians 
 say, " 'Tis the same to him who wears a shoe, as if 
 the whole earth were covered with leather." 
 
 Kings are said to have long arms, but every man 
 should have long arms, and should pluck his living, 
 his instruments, his power, and his knowing, from 
 the sun, moon, and stars. Is not then the demand 
 to be rich legitimate ? Yet, I have never seen a rich 
 man. I have never seen a man as rich as all men 
 ought to be, or, with an adequate command of nature. 
 The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces 
 denouncing the thirst for wealth ; but if men should
 
 78 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [in. 
 
 take these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming 
 to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all 
 hazards this love of power in the people, lest civilisa- 
 tion should be undone. Men are urged by their ideas 
 to acquire the command over nature. Ages derive a 
 culture from the wealth of Roman Caesars, Leo Tenths, 
 magnificent Kings of France, Grand Dukes of Tuscany, 
 Dukes of Devonshire, Townleys, Vernons, and Peels, 
 in England ; or whatever great proprietors. It is the 
 interest of all men, that there should be Vaticans and 
 Louvres full of noble works of art ; British Museums, 
 and French Gardens of Plants, Philadelphia Academies 
 of Natural History, Bodleian, Ambrosian, Royal, Con- 
 gressional Libraries. It is the interest of all that 
 there should be Exploring Expeditions ; Captain 
 Cooks to voyage round the world, Rosses, Franklins, 
 Richardsons, and Kanes, to find the magnetic and the 
 geographic poles. "We are all richer for the measure- 
 ment of a degree of latitude on the earth's surface. 
 Our navigation is safer for the chart. How intimately 
 our knowledge of the system of the Universe rests on 
 that ! — and a true economy in a state or an individual 
 will forget its frugality in behalf of claims like these. 
 Whilst it is each man's interest, that not only ease 
 and convenience of living, but also wealth or surplus 
 product should exist somewhere, it need not be in his 
 hands. Often it is very undesirable to him. Goethe 
 said well, " nobody should be rich but those who 
 understand it." Some men are born to own, and can 
 animate all their possessions. Others cannot : their 
 owning is not graceful ; seems to be a compromise of
 
 in.] WEALTH. 79 
 
 their character; they seem to steal their own dividends. 
 They should own who can administer; not they 
 who hoard and conceal; not they who, the greater pro- 
 prietors they are, are only the greater beggars, but 
 they whose work carves out work for more, opens a 
 path for all. For he is the rich man in whom the 
 people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom the 
 people are poor : and how to give all access to the 
 masterpieces of art and nature, is the problem of 
 civilisation. The socialism of our day has done good 
 service in setting men on thinking how certain civilis- 
 ing benefits, now only enjoyed by the opulent, can be 
 enjoyed by all. For example, the providing to each 
 man the means and apparatus of science, and of the 
 arts. There are many articles good for occasional 
 use, which few men are able to own. Every man 
 wishes to see the ring of Saturn, the satellites and 
 belts of Jupiter and Mars ; the mountains and craters 
 in the moon : yet how few can buy a telescope ! and 
 of those, scarcely one would like the trouble of keep- 
 ing it in order, and exhibiting it. So of electrical and 
 chemical apparatus, and many the like things. Every 
 man may have occasion to consult books which he 
 does not care to possess, such as cyclopaedias, diction- 
 aries, tables, charts, maps, and public documents : 
 pictures also of birds, beasts, fishes, shells, trees, 
 flowers, whose names he desires to know. 
 
 There is a refining influence from the arts of Design 
 on a prepared mind, which is as positive as that of 
 music, and not to be supplied from any other source. 
 But pictures, engravings, statues, and casts, beside
 
 80 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [in. 
 
 their first cost, entail expenses, as of galleries and 
 keepers for the exhibition ; and the use which any 
 man can make of them is rare, and their value, too, 
 is much enhanced by the numbers of men who can 
 share their enjoyment. In the Greek cities, it was 
 reckoned profane that any person should pretend a 
 property in a work of art which belonged to all who 
 could behold it. I think sometimes, — could I only 
 have music on my own terms ; — could I live in a great 
 city, and know where I could go whenever I wished 
 the ablution and inundation of musical waves, — that 
 were a bath and a medicine. 
 
 If properties of this kind were owned by states, 
 towns, and lyceums, they would draw the bonds of 
 neighbourhood closer. A town would exist to an in- 
 tellectual purpose. In Europe, where the feudal forms 
 secure the permanence of wealth in certain families, 
 those families buy and preserve these things, and lay 
 them open to the public. But in America, where 
 democratic institutions divide every estate into small 
 portions, after a few years the public should step 
 into the place of these proprietors, and provide this 
 culture and inspiration for the citizen. 
 
 Man was born to be rich, or, inevitably grows rich 
 by the use of his faculties ; by the union of thought 
 with nature. Property is an intellectual production. 
 The game requires coolness, right reasoning, prompt- 
 ness, and patience in the players. Cultivated labour 
 drives out brute labour. An infinite number of shrewd 
 men, in infinite years, have arrived at certain best 
 and shortest ways of doing, and this accumulated
 
 ill.] WEALTH. 81 
 
 skill in arts, cultures, harvestings, curings, manufac- 
 tures, navigations, exchanges, constitutes the worth of 
 our world to-day. 
 
 Commerce is a game of skill, Avhich every man 
 cannot play, which few men can play well. The right 
 merchant is one who has the just average of faculties 
 we call common sense ; a man of a strong affinity for 
 facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. 
 He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. 
 There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or 
 bad fortune, and so, in making money. Men talk as 
 if there were some magic about this, and believe in 
 magic, in all parts of life. He knows, that all goes 
 on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent, — for 
 every effect a perfect cause, — and that good luck is 
 another name for tenacity of purpose. He insures 
 himself in every transaction, and likes small and sure 
 gains. Probity and closeness to the facts are the 
 basis, but the masters of the art add a certain long- 
 arithmetic. The problem is, to combine many and 
 remote operations, with the accuracy and adherence 
 to the facts, which is easy in near and small transac- 
 tions; so to arrive at gigantic results, without any 
 compromise of safety. Napoleon was fond of telling 
 the story of the Marseilles banker, who said to his 
 visitor, surprised at the contrast between the splendour 
 of the banker's chateau and hospitality, and the mean- 
 ness of the counting-room in which he had seen him, 
 — "Young man, you are too young to understand 
 how masses are formed, — the true and only power, — 
 whether composed of money, water, or men, it is all 
 vol. v. G
 
 82 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [in. 
 
 alike, — a mass is an immense centre of motion, but it 
 must be begun, it must be kept up :" — and he might 
 have added, that the way in which it must be begun 
 and kept up is, by obedience to the law of particles. 
 
 Success consists in close appliance to the laws of 
 the world, and, since those laws are intellectual and 
 moral, an intellectual and moral obedience. Political 
 Economy is as good a book wherein to read the life 
 of man, and the ascendency of laws over all private 
 and hostile influences, as any Bible which has come 
 down to us. 
 
 Money is representative, and follows the nature 
 and fortunes of the owner. The coin is a delicate 
 meter of civil, social, and moral changes. The farmer 
 is covetous of his dollar, and with reason. It is no 
 waif to him. He knows how many strokes of labour 
 it represents. His bones ache with the day's work 
 that earned it. He knows how much land it repre- 
 sents; — how much rain, frost, and sunshine. He 
 knows that, in the dollar, he gives you so much dis- 
 cretion and patience, so much hoeing and threshing. 
 Try to lift his dollar ; you must lift all that weight. 
 In the city, where money follows the skit of a pen, 
 or a lucky rise in exchange, it comes to be looked on 
 as light. I wish the farmer held it dearer, and would 
 spend it only for real bread ; force for force. 
 
 The farmer's dollar is heavy, and the clerk's is 
 light and nimble ; leaps out of his pocket ; jumps on 
 to cards and faro-tables : but still more curious is its 
 susceptibility to metaphysical changes. It is the finest 
 barometer of social storms, and announces revolutions.
 
 in.] WEALTH. 83 
 
 Every step of civil advancement makes every man's 
 dollar worth more. In California, the country where 
 it grew, — what would it buy ? A few years since, it 
 would buy a shanty, dysentery, hunger, bad company, 
 and crime. There are wide countries, like Siberia, 
 where it would buy little else to-day than some petty 
 mitigation of suffering. In Eome, it will buy beauty 
 and magnificence. Forty years ago, a dollar would 
 not buy much in Boston. Now it will buy a great 
 deal more in our old town, thanks to railroads, tele- 
 graphs, steamers, and the contemporaneous growth of 
 New York, and the whole country. Yet there are 
 many goods appertaining to a capital city, which are 
 not yet purchasable here, no, not with a mountain of 
 dollars. A dollar in Florida is not worth a dollar in 
 Massachusetts. A dollar is not value, but representa- 
 tive of value, and, at last, of moral values. A dollar 
 is rated for the corn it will buy, or, to speak strictly, 
 not for the corn or house-room, but for Athenian corn, 
 and Eoman house-room, — for the wit, probity, and 
 power, which we eat bread and dwell in houses to 
 share and exert. Wealth is mental ; wealth is moral. 
 The value of a dollar is, to buy just things : a dollar 
 goes on increasing in value with all the genius and 
 all the virtue of the world. A dollar in a university 
 is worth more than a dollar in a jail ; in a temperate, 
 schooled, law-abiding community, than in some sink 
 of crime, where dice, knives, and arsenic, are in con- 
 stant play. 
 
 The " Bank-Note Detector " is a useful publication. 
 But the current dollar, silver or paper, is itself the
 
 84 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [in. 
 
 detector of the right and wrong where it circulates. 
 Is it not instantly enhanced by the increase of equity? 
 If a trader refuses to sell his vote, or adheres to some 
 odious right, he makes so much more equity in Mas- 
 sachusetts ; and every acre in the State is more 
 worth, in the hour of his action. If you take out of 
 State Street the ten honestest merchants, and put in 
 ten roguish persons, controlling the same amount of 
 capital, — the rates of insurance will indicate it ; the 
 soundness of banks will show it : the highways will 
 be less secure : the schools will feel it ; the children 
 will bring home their little dose of the poison : the 
 judge will sit less firmly on the bench, and his 
 decisions be less upright; he has lost so much 
 support and constraint, — which all need ; and the 
 pulpit will betray it, in a laxer rule of life. An 
 apple-tree, if you take out every day for a number of 
 days a load of loam, and put in a load of sand about 
 its roots, — will find it out. An apple-tree is a stupid 
 kind of creature, but if this treatment be pursued 
 for a short time, I think it would begin to mistrust 
 something. And if you should take out of the 
 powerful class engaged in trade a hundred good men, 
 and put in a hundred bad, or, what is just the same 
 thing, introduce a demoralising institution, would 
 not the dollar, which is not much stupider than an 
 apple-tree, presently find it out? The value of a 
 dollar is social, as it is created by society. Every 
 man who removes into this city, with any purchasable 
 talent or skill in him, gives to every man's labour in 
 the city a new worth. If a talent is anywhere born
 
 III.] WEALTH. 85 
 
 into the world, the community of nations is enriched ; 
 and, much more, with a new degree of probity. The 
 expense of crime, one of the principal charges of 
 every nation, is so far stopped. In Europe, crime is 
 observed to increase or abate with the price of bread. 
 If the Eothschilds at Paris do not accept bills, the 
 people at Manchester, at Paisley, at Birmingham, are 
 forced into the highway, and landlords are shot down 
 in Ireland. The police records attest it. The vibra- 
 tions are presently felt in New York, New Orleans, 
 and Chicago. Not much otherwise, the economical 
 power touches the masses through the political lords. 
 Rothschild refuses the Russian loan, and there is 
 peace, and the harvests are saved. He takes it, and 
 there is war, and an agitation through a large portion 
 of mankind, with every hideous result, ending in 
 revolution, and a new order. 
 
 Wealth brings with it its own checks and balances. 
 The basis of political economy is non-interference. 
 The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting 
 meter of demand and supply. Do not legislate. 
 Meddle, and you snap the sinews with your sump- 
 tuary laws. Give no bounties : make equal laws : 
 secure life and property, and you need not give 
 alms. Open the doors of opportunity to talent and 
 virtue, and they will do themselves justice, and 
 property will not be in bad hands. In a free 
 and just commonwealth, property rushes from the 
 idle and imbecile, to the industrious, brave, and 
 persevering. 
 
 The laws of nature play through trade, as a toy-
 
 86 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [in. 
 
 battery exhibits the effects of electricity. The level 
 of the sea is not more surely kept, than is the 
 equilibrium of value in society, by the demand and 
 supply : and artifice or legislation punishes itself, 
 by reactions, gluts, and bankruptcies. The sublime 
 laws play indifferently through atoms and galaxies. 
 Whoever knows what happens in the getting and 
 spending of a loaf of bread and a pint of beer ; that 
 no wishing will change the rigorous limits of pints 
 and penny loaves ; that, for all that is consumed, so 
 much less remains in the basket and pot ; but what 
 is gone out of these is not wasted, but well spent, 
 if it nourish his body, and enable him to finish 
 his task; — knows all of political economy that the 
 budgets of empires can teach him. The interest of 
 petty economy is this symbolisation of the great 
 economy ; the way in which a house, and a private 
 man's methods, tally with the solar system, and the 
 laws of give and take, throughout nature ; and, 
 however wary we are of the falsehoods and petty 
 tricks which we suicidally play off on each other, 
 every man has a certain satisfaction, whenever his 
 dealing touches on the inevitable facts ; when he 
 sees that things themselves dictate the price, as they 
 always tend to do, and, in large manufactures, are 
 seen to do. Your paper is not fine or coarse enough, 
 — is too heavy, or too thin. The manufacturer says, 
 he will furnish you with just that thickness or thin- 
 ness you want ; the pattern is quite indifferent to 
 him ; here is his schedule ; — any variety of paper, as 
 cheaper or clearer, with the prices annexed. A pound
 
 III.] WEALTH. 87 
 
 of paper costs so much, and you may have it made 
 up in any pattern you fancy. 
 
 There is in all our dealings a self-regulation that 
 supersedes chaffering. You will rent a house, but 
 must have it cheap. The owner can reduce the rent, 
 but so he incapacitates himself from making proper 
 repairs, and the tenant gets not the house he would 
 have, but a worse one ; besides that, a relation a little 
 injurious is established between landlord and tenant. 
 You dismiss your labourer, saying : " Patrick, I shall 
 send for you as soon as I cannot do without you." 
 Patrick goes off contented, for he knows that the 
 weeds will grow with the potatoes, the vines must 
 be planted next week, and, however unwilling you 
 may be, the cantelopes, crook-necks, and cucumbers 
 will send for him. Who but must wish that all 
 labour and value should stand on the same simple 
 and surly market 1 If it is the best of its kind, it 
 will. We must have joiner, locksmith, planter, 
 priest, poet, doctor, cook, weaver, ostler; each in 
 turn, through the year. 
 
 If a St. Michael's pear sells for a shilling, it cost 
 a shilling to raise it. If, in Boston, the best securities 
 offer twelve per cent for money, they have just six 
 per cent of insecurity. You may not see that the fine 
 pear costs you a shilling, but it costs the community 
 so much. The shilling represents the number of 
 enemies the pear has, and the amount of risk in 
 ripening it. The price of coal shows the narrowness 
 of the coal-field, and a compulsory confinement of the 
 miners to a certain district. All salaries are reckoned
 
 88 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [in. 
 
 on contingent, as well as on actual services. " If the 
 wind were always south-west by west," said the 
 skipper, "women might take ships to sea." One might 
 say, that all things are of one price ; that nothing is 
 cheap or dear ; and that the apparent disparities that 
 strike us, are only a shopman's trick of concealing the 
 damage in your bargain. A youth coming into the 
 city from his native New Hampshire farm, with its 
 hard fare still fresh in his remembrance, boards at a 
 first-class hotel, and believes he must somehow have 
 outwitted Dr. Franklin and Malthus, for luxuries are 
 cheap. But he pays for the one convenience of a better 
 dinner, by the loss of some of the richest social and 
 educational advantages. He has lost what guards ! 
 what incentives ! He will perhaps find by and by, 
 that he left the Muses at the door of the hotel, and 
 found the Furies inside. Money often costs too much, 
 and power and pleasure are not cheap. The ancient 
 poet said : " The gods sell all things at a fair price." 
 
 There is an example of the compensations in the 
 commercial history of this country. When the 
 European wars threw the carrying-trade of the world, 
 from 1800 to 1812, into American bottoms, a seizure 
 was now and then made of an American ship. Of 
 course, the loss was serious to the owner, but the 
 country was indemnified ; for we charged threepence 
 a pound for carrying cotton, sixpence for tobacco, and 
 so on ; which paid for the risk and loss, and brought 
 into the country an immense prosperity, early mar- 
 riages, private wealth, the building of cities and 
 of states : and, after the war was over, we received
 
 in.] WEALTH. 89 
 
 compensation over and above, by treat}?-, for all the 
 seizures. Well, the Americans grew rich and great. 
 But the pay-day comes round. Britain, France, and 
 Germany, which our extraordinary profits had im- 
 poverished, send out, attracted by the fame of our 
 advantages, first their thousands, then their millions, 
 of poor people, to share the crop. At first, we employ 
 them, and increase our prosperity : but, in the 
 artificial system of society and of protected labour, 
 which we also have adopted and enlarged, there come 
 presently checks and stoppages. Then Ave refuse to 
 employ these poor men. But they will not so be 
 answered. They go into the poor rates, and, though 
 we refuse wages, we must now pay the same amount 
 in the form of taxes. Again, it turns out that the 
 largest proportion of crimes are committed by 
 foreigners. The cost of the crime, and the expense 
 of courts, and of prisons, we must bear, and the 
 standing army of preventive police we must pay. 
 The cost of education of the posterity of this great 
 colony I will not compute. But the gross amount 
 of these costs will begin to pay back what we thought 
 was a nett gain from our transatlantic customers of 
 1800. It is vain to refuse this payment. We can- 
 not get rid of these people, and we cannot get rid 
 of their will to be supported. That has become an 
 inevitable element of our politics ; and, for their 
 votes, each of the dominant parties courts and assists 
 them to get it executed. Moreover, we have to pay, 
 not what would have contented them at home, but 
 what they have learned to think necessary here ; so
 
 90 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [in. 
 
 that opinion, fancy, and all manner of moral con- 
 siderations complicate the problem. 
 
 There are a few measures of economy which will 
 bear to be named without disgust ; for the subject 
 is tender, and we may easily have too much of it ; and 
 therein resembles the hideous animalcules of which 
 our bodies are built up, — which, offensive in the 
 particular, yet compose valuable and effective masses. 
 Our nature and genius force us to respect ends, whilst 
 we use means. We must use the means, and yet, 
 in our most accurate using, somehow screen and cloak 
 them, as we can only give them any beauty, by a 
 reflection of the glory of the end. That is the good 
 head, which serves the end, and commands the means. 
 The rabble are corrupted by their means : the means 
 are too strong for them, and they desert their end. 
 
 1. The first of these measures is that each man's 
 expense must proceed from his character. As long 
 as your genius buys, the investment is safe, though 
 you spend like a monarch. Nature arms each man 
 with some faculty which enables him to do easily 
 some feat impossible to any other, and thus makes 
 him necessary to society. This native determination 
 guides his labour and his spending. He wants an 
 equipment of means and tools proper to his talent. 
 And to save on this point were to neutralise the 
 special strength and helpfulness of each mind. Do 
 your work, respecting the excellence of the work, 
 and not its acceptableness. This is so much economy, 
 that, rightly read, it is the sum of economy. Profli-
 
 in.] WEALTH. 91 
 
 gacy consists not in spending years of time or chests 
 of money, — but in spending them off the line of your 
 career. The crime which bankrupts men and states is, 
 job-work ; — declining from your main design, to serve 
 a turn here or there. Nothing is beneath you, if it is 
 in the direction of your life : nothing is great or de- 
 sirable, if it is off from that. I think we are entitled 
 here to draw a straight line, and say that society can 
 never prosper, but must always be bankrupt, until 
 every man does that which he was created to do. 
 
 Spend for your expense, and retrench the expense 
 which is not yours. Allston, the. painter, was wont 
 to say that he built a plain house, and filled it with 
 plain furniture, because he would hold out no bribe 
 to any to visit him, who had not similar tastes to his 
 own. We are sympathetic, and, like children, want 
 everything we see. But it is a large stride to inde- 
 pendence, — when a man, in the discovery of his proper 
 talent, has sunk the necessity for false expenses. As 
 the betrothed maiden, by one secure affection, is 
 relieved from a system of slaveries, — the daily incul- 
 cated necessity of pleasing all, — so the man who has 
 found what he can do, can spend on that, and leave 
 all other spending. Montaigne said, "When he was 
 a younger brother, he went brave in dress and equip- 
 age, but afterwards his chateau and farms might 
 answer for him." Let a man who belongs to the class 
 of nobles, those, namely, Avho have found out that 
 they can do something, relieve himself of all vague 
 squandering on objects not his. Let the realist not 
 mind appearances. Let him delegate to others the
 
 92 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [in. 
 
 costly courtesies and decorations of social life. The 
 virtues are economists, but some of the vices are also. 
 Thus, next to humility, I have noticed that pride is a 
 pretty good husband. A good pride is, as I reckon 
 it, worth from five hundred to fifteen hundred a year. 
 Pride is handsome, economical : pride eradicates so 
 many vices, letting none subsist but itself, that it 
 seems as if it were a great gain to exchange vanity 
 for pride. Pride can go without domestics, without 
 fine clothes, can live in a house with two rooms, can 
 eat potato, purslain, beans, lyed corn, can work on the 
 soil, can travel afoot, can talk with poor men, or sit 
 silent well contented in fine saloons. But vanity costs 
 money, labour, horses, men, Avomen, health, and peace, 
 and is still nothing at last, a long way leading nowhere. 
 — Only one drawback ; proud people are intolerably 
 selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving. 
 
 Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a 
 genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or 
 philosophy, he makes a bad husband, and an ill pro- 
 vider, and should be wise in season, and not fetter 
 himself with duties which will embitter his days, 
 and spoil him for his proper work. We had in this 
 region, twenty years ago, among our educated men, 
 a sort of Arcadian fanaticism, a passionate desire to 
 go upon the land, and unite farming to intellectual 
 pursuits. Many effected their purpose, and made the 
 experiment, and some became downright ploughmen ; 
 but all were cured of their faith that scholarship and 
 practical farming (I mean, with one's own hands) 
 could be united.
 
 in.] WEALTH. 93 
 
 With brow bent, with firm intent, the pale scholar 
 leaves his desk to draw a freer breath, and get a 
 j nster statement of his thought, in the garden- walk. 
 He stoops to pull up a purslain, or a dock, that is 
 choking the young corn, and finds there are two : 
 close behind the last is a third ; he reaches out his 
 hand to a fourth ; behind that are four thousand and 
 one. He is heated and untuned, and, by and by, 
 wakes up from his idiot dream of chickweek and red- 
 root, to remember his morning thought, and to find 
 that, with his adamantine purposes, he has been 
 duped by a dandelion. A garden is like those per- 
 nicious machineries we read of, every month, in the 
 newspapers, which catch a man's coat -skirt or his 
 hand, and draw in his arm, his leg, and his whole 
 body, to irresistible destruction. In an evil hour he 
 pulled down his wall, and added a field to his home- 
 stead. No land is bad, but land is worse. If a man 
 own land, the land owns him. Now let him leave 
 home, if he dare. Every tree and graft, every hill of 
 melons, row of corn, or quickset hedge, all he has 
 done, and all he means to do, stand in his way, like 
 duns, when he would go out of his gate. The devo- 
 tion to these vines and trees he finds poisonous. 
 Long free walks, a circuit of miles, free his brain and 
 serve his body. Long marches are no hardship to 
 him. He believes he composes easily on the hills. 
 But this pottering in a few square yards of garden is 
 dispiriting and drivelling. The smell of the plants 
 has drugged him, and robbed him of energy. He 
 finds a catalepsy in his bones. He grows peevish and
 
 94 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [rn. 
 
 poor-spirited. The genius of reading and of garden- 
 ing are antagonistic, like resinous and vitreous electri- 
 city. One is concentrative in sparks and shocks : the 
 other is diffuse strength ; so that each disqualifies its 
 workman for the other's duties. 
 
 An engraver whose hands must be of an exquisite 
 delicacy of stroke should not lay stone walls. Sir 
 David Brewster gives exact instructions for micro- 
 scopic observation : — " Lie down on your back, and 
 hold the single lens and object over your eye," etc. 
 etc. How much more the seeker of abstract truth, 
 who needs periods of isolation, and rapt concentration, 
 and almost a going out of the body to think ! 
 
 2. Spend after your genius, and by system. Nature 
 goes by rule, not by sallies and saltations. There 
 must be system in the economies. Saving and unex- 
 pensiveness will not keep the most pathetic family 
 from nun, nor will bigger incomes make free spending 
 safe. The secret of success lies never in the amount 
 of money, but in the relation of income to outgo ; as 
 if, after expense has been fixed at a certain point, 
 then new and steady rills of income, though never so 
 small, being added, wealth begins. But in ordinary, 
 as means increase, spending increases faster, so that 
 large incomes, in England and elsewhere, are found 
 not to help matters ; — the eating quality of debt does 
 not relax its voracity. When the cholera is in the 
 potato, what is the use of planting larger crops 1 In 
 England, the richest country in the universe, I was 
 assured by shrewd observers that great lords and 
 ladies had no more guineas to give away than other
 
 in.] WEALTH. 95 
 
 people ; that liberality with money is as rare, and as 
 immediately famous a virtue, as it is here. Want is 
 a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never 
 large enough to cover. I remember in Warwickshire, 
 to have been shown a fair manor, still in the same 
 name as in Shakspeare's time. The rent-roll, I was 
 told, is some fourteen thousand pounds a year : but, 
 when the second son of the late proprietor was born, 
 the father was perplexed how to provide for him. 
 The eldest son must inherit the manor ; what to do 
 with this supernumerary ? He was advised to breed 
 him for the Church, and to settle him in the rector- 
 ship, which was in the gift of the family ; which was 
 done. It is a general rule in that county, that bigger 
 incomes do not help anybody. It is commonly ob- 
 served, that a sudden wealth, like a prize drawn in a 
 lottery, or a large bequest to a poor family, does not 
 permanently enrich. They have served no appren- 
 ticeship to wealth, and, with the rapid wealth, come 
 rapid claims : which they do not know how to deny, 
 and the treasure is quickly dissipated. 
 
 A system must be in every economy, or the best 
 single expedients are of no avail. A farm is a good 
 thing, when it begins and ends with itself, and does 
 not need a salary, or a shop, to eke it out. Thus, the 
 cattle are a main link in the chain-ring. If the non- 
 conformist or aesthetic farmer leaves out the cattle, 
 and does not also leave out the want which the cattle 
 must supply, he must fill the gap by begging or 
 stealing. When men now alive were born, the farm 
 yielded everything that was consumed on it. The
 
 96 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [in. 
 
 farm yielded no money, and the farmer got on Avith- 
 out. If he fell sick, his neighbours came in to his 
 aid : each gave a day's work ; or a half day • or lent 
 Ms yoke of oxen, or his horse, and kept his work 
 even : hoed his potatoes, mowed his hay, reaped his 
 rye ; well knowing that no man could afford to hire 
 labour, without selling his land. In autumn, a farmer 
 could sell an ox or a hog, and get a little money to 
 pay taxes withal. Now, the farmer buys almost all 
 he consumes, — tin- ware, cloth, sugar, tea, coffee, fish, 
 coal, railroad-tickets, and newspapers. 
 
 A master in each art is required, because the 
 practice is never with still or dead subjects, but they 
 change in your hands. You think farm -buildings 
 and broad acres a solid property : but its value is 
 flowing like water. It requires as much watching as 
 if you were decanting wine from a cask. The farmer 
 knows what to do with it, stops every leak, turns all 
 the streamlets to one reservoir, and decants wine : 
 but a blunderhead comes out of Cornhill, tries his 
 hand, and it all leaks away. So is it with granite 
 streets, or timber townships, as with fruit or flowers. 
 Nor is any investment so permanent, that it can be 
 allowed to remain without incessant watching, as the 
 history of each attempt to lock up an inheritance 
 through two generations for an unborn inheritor 
 may show. 
 
 When Mr. Cockayne takes a cottage in the country, 
 and will keep his cow, he thinks a cow is a creature 
 that is fed on hay, and gives a pail of milk twice a 
 day. But the cow that he buys gives milk for three
 
 hi.] WEALTH. 9< 
 
 months ; then her bag dries up. What to do with a 
 dry cow? who will buy her? Perhaps he bought 
 also a yoke of oxen to do his work; but they get 
 blown and lame. What to do with blown and lame 
 oxen 1 The farmer fats his, after the spring work is 
 done, and kills them in the fall. But how can 
 Cockayne, who has no pastures, and leaves his 
 cottage daily in the cars, at business hours, be 
 pothered with fatting and killing oxen ? He plants 
 trees ; but there must be crops, to keep the trees in 
 ploughed land. What shall be the crops 1 He will 
 have nothing to do with trees, but will have grass. 
 After a year or two, the grass must be turned up and 
 ploughed : now what crops ? Credulous Cockayne ! 
 
 3. Help comes in the custom of the country, 
 and the rule of Impera parendo. The rule is not to 
 dictate, nor to insist on carrying out each of your 
 schemes by ignorant wilfulness, but to learn practi- 
 cally the secret spoken from all nature, that things 
 themselves refuse to be mismanaged, and will show 
 to the watchful their own law. Nobody need stir 
 hand or foot. The custom of the country will do it 
 all. I know not how to build or to plant ; neither 
 how to buy wood, nor what to do with the house-lot, 
 the field, or the wood -lot, when bought. Never 
 fear : it is all settled how it shall be, long beforehand, 
 in the custom of the country, whether to sand, or 
 whether to clay it, when to plough, and how to dress, 
 whether to grass, or to corn ; and you cannot help or 
 hinder it. Nature has her own best mode of doing 
 each thing, and she has somewhere told it plainly, if 
 vol. v. H
 
 98 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [in. 
 
 we will keep our eyes and ears open. If not, she will 
 not be slow in undeceiving us, when we prefer our 
 own way to hers. How often we must remember the 
 art of the surgeon, which, in replacing the broken 
 bone, contents itself with releasing the parts from 
 false position ; they fly into place by the action of 
 the muscles. On this art of nature all our arts rely. 
 
 Of the two eminent engineers in the recent con- 
 struction of railways in England, Mr. Brunei went 
 straight from terminus to terminus, through moun- 
 tains, over streams, crossing highways, cutting ducal 
 estates in two, and shooting through this man's 
 cellar, and that man's attic window, and so arriving at 
 his end, at great pleasure to geometers, but with cost 
 to his company. Mr. Stephenson, on the contrary, 
 believing that the river knows the way, followed his 
 valley, as implicitly as our Western Railroad follows 
 the Westfield River, and turned out to be the safest and 
 cheapest engineer. We say the cows laid out Boston. 
 Well, there are worse surveyors. Every pedestrian in 
 our pastures has frequent occasion to thank the cows 
 for cutting the best path through the thicket, and 
 over the hills : and travellers and Indians know the 
 value of a buffalo-trail, which is sure to be the easiest 
 possible pass through the ridge. 
 
 When a citizen, fresh from Dock Square, or Milk 
 Street, comes out and buys land in the country, his 
 first thought is to a fine outlook from his windows : 
 his library must command a western view : a sunset 
 every clay, bathing the shoulder of Blue Hills, Wachu- 
 sett, and the peaks of Monadnoc and Uncanoonuc.
 
 in.] WEALTH. 99 
 
 What, thirty acres and all this magnificence for 
 fifteen hundred dollars ! It would be cheap at fifty 
 thousand. He proceeds at once, his eyes dim with 
 tears of joy, to fix the spot for his corner-stone. But 
 the man who is to level the ground thinks it will 
 take many hundred loads of gravel to fill the hollow 
 to the road. The stone-mason who should build the 
 well thinks he shall have to dig forty feet : the baker 
 doubts he shall never like to drive up to the door : 
 the practical neighbour cavils at the position of the 
 barn ; and the citizen comes to know that his pre- 
 decessor the farmer built the house in the right spot 
 for the sun and wind, the spring, and water-drainage, 
 and the convenience to the pasture, the garden, the 
 field, and the road. So Dock Square yields the 
 point, and things have their own way. Use has 
 made the farmer wise, and the foolish citizen learns 
 to take his counsel. From step to step he comes 
 at last to surrender at discretion. The farmer affects 
 to take his orders ; but the citizen says, You may ask 
 me as often as you will, and in what ingenious forms, 
 for an opinion concerning the mode of building my 
 wall, or sinking my well, or laying out my acre, but 
 the balk will rebound to you. These are matters on 
 which I neither know, nor need to know anything. 
 These are questions which you and not I shall 
 answer. 
 
 Not less, within doors, a system settles itself 
 paramount and tyrannical over master and mistress, 
 servant and child, cousin and acquaintance. 'Tis in 
 vain that genius or virtue or energy of character strive
 
 100 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [in. 
 
 and cry against it. This is fate. And 'tis very well 
 that the poor husband reads in a book of a new way 
 of living, and resolves to adopt it at home : let him 
 go home and try it, if he dare. 
 
 4. Another point of economy is to look for seed of 
 the same kind as you sow : and not to hope to buy 
 one kind with another kind. Friendship buys friend- 
 ship ; justice, justice ; military merit, military success. 
 Good husbandry finds wife, children, and household. 
 The good merchant large gains, ships, stocks, and 
 money. The good poet fame, and literary credit; 
 but not either, the other. Yet there is commonly a 
 confusion of expectations on these points. Hotspur 
 lives for the moment; praises himself for it; and 
 despises Furlong, that he does not. Hotspur, of 
 course, is poor ; and Furlong a good provider. The 
 odd circumstance is, that Hotspur thinks it a superi- 
 ority in himself, this improvidence, which ought to 
 be rewarded with Furlong's lands. 
 
 I have not at all completed my design. But we 
 must not leave the topic, without casting one glance 
 into the interior recesses. It is a doctrine of philo- 
 sophy, that man is a being of degrees ; that there is 
 nothing in the world, which is not repeated in his 
 body ; his body being a sort of miniature or summary 
 of the world : then that there is nothing in his body, 
 which is not repeated as in a celestial sphere in his 
 mind : then, there is nothing in his brain, which is 
 not repeated in a higher sphere, in his moral system. 
 
 5. Now these things are so in Nature. All things 
 ascend, and the royal rule of economy is, that it
 
 in.] WEALTH. 101 
 
 should ascend also, or, whatever we do must always 
 have a higher aim. Thus it is a maxim, that money 
 is another kind of blood. Pecunia alter sanguis ; or, 
 the estate of a man is only a larger kind of body, and 
 admits of regimen analogous to his bodily circulations. 
 So there is no maxim of the merchant, e.g. "Best 
 use of money is to pay debts;" "Every business by 
 itself;" "Best time is present time;" "The right 
 investment is in tools of your trade;" or the like, 
 which does not admit of an extended sense. The 
 counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws 
 of the Universe. The merchant's economy is a coarse 
 symbol of the soul's economy. It is to spend for 
 power, and not for pleasure. It is to invest income ; 
 that is to say, to take up particulars into generals ; 
 days into integral eras, — literary, emotive, practical, 
 of its life, and still to ascend in its investment. The 
 merchant has but one rule, absorb and invest : he is to 
 be capitalist : the scraps and filings must be gathered 
 back into the crucible ; the gas and smoke must be 
 burned, and earnings must not go to increase expense, 
 but to capital again. Well, the man must be capitalist. 
 Will he spend his income, or will he invest? His 
 body and every organ is under the same law. His 
 body is a jar, in which the liquor of life is stored. 
 Will he spend for pleasure? The way to ruin is 
 short and facile. Will he not spend, but hoard for 
 power 1 It passes through the sacred fermentations, 
 by that law of Nature whereby everything climbs to 
 higher platforms, and bodily vigour becomes mental 
 and moral vigour. The bread he eats is first strength
 
 102 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [in. 
 
 and animal spirits ; it becomes, in higher laboratories, 
 imagery and thought ; and in still higher results, 
 courage and endurance. This is the right compound 
 interest; this is capital doubled, quadrupled, cen- 
 tupled ; man raised to his highest power. 
 
 The true thrift is always to spend on the higher 
 plane ; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that 
 he may spend in spiritual creation, and not in 
 augmenting animal existence. Nor is the man en- 
 riched, in repeating the old experiments of animal 
 sensation, nor unless, through new powers and ascend- 
 ing pleasures, he knows himself by the actual experi- 
 ence of higher good to be already on the way to the 
 highest.
 
 IV. 
 CULTURE. 
 
 Can rules or tutors educate 
 The semigod whom we await ? 
 He must he musical, 
 Tremulous, impressional, 
 Alive to gentle influence 
 Of landscape and of sky, 
 And tender to the spirit-touch 
 Of man's or maiden's eye : 
 But, to his native centre fast, 
 Shall into Future fuse the Past, 
 And the world's flowing fates in his own 
 mould recast.
 
 CULTURE. 
 
 The word of ambition at the present day is Culture. 
 Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, and of 
 wealth as a means of power, culture corrects the 
 theory of success. A man is the prisoner of his 
 power. A topical memory makes him an almanac ; 
 a talent for debate, a disputant ; skill to get money 
 makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture re- 
 duces these inflammations by invoking the aid of 
 other powers against the dominant talent, and by 
 appealing to the rank of powers. It watches success. 
 For performance, Nature has no mercy, and sacrifices 
 the performer to get it done ; makes a dropsy or a 
 tympany of him. If she wants a thumb, she makes 
 one at the cost of arms and legs, and any excess of 
 power in one part is usually paid for at once by some 
 defect in a contiguous part. 
 
 Our efficiency depends so much on our concentra- 
 tion, that Nature usually, in the instances where a 
 marked man is sent into the world, overloads him 
 with bias, sacrificing his symmetry to his working 
 power. It is said, no man can write but one book ; 
 and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its
 
 106 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [rv. 
 
 impression on all his performances. If she creates a 
 policeman like Fouche, he is made up of suspicions 
 and of plots to circumvent them. "The air," said 
 Fouche, " is full of poniards." The physician Sanc- 
 torius spent his life in a pair of scales, weighing his 
 food. Lord Coke valued Chaucer highly, because the 
 Canon Yeman's Tale illustrates the statute Hen. V. 
 Chap. 4, against alchemy. I saw a man who believed 
 the principal mischiefs in the English State were de- 
 rived from the devotion to musical concerts. A free- 
 mason, not long since, set out to explain to this country 
 that the principal cause of the success of General Wash- 
 ington was the aid he derived from the freemasons. 
 
 But worse than the harping on one string, Nature 
 has secured individualism, by giving the private 
 person a high conceit of his weight in the system. 
 The pest of society is egotists. There are dull and 
 bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. 
 'Tis a disease that, like influenza, falls on all consti- 
 tutions. In the distemper known to physicians as 
 chorea, the patient sometimes turns round, and con- 
 tinues to spin slowly on one spot. Is egotism a 
 metaphysical varioloid of this malady ? The man 
 runs round a ring formed by his own talent, falls into 
 an admiration of it, and loses relation to the world. 
 It is a tendency in all minds. One of its annoying 
 forms is a craving for sympathy. The sufferers 
 parade their miseries, tear the lint from their bruises, 
 reveal their indictable crimes, that you may pity 
 them. They like sickness, because physical pain will 
 extort some show of interest from the bystanders, as
 
 IV.] CULTUEE. 107 
 
 we have seen children, who, finding themselves of no 
 account when grown people come in, will cough till 
 they choke, to draw attention. 
 
 This distemper is the scourge of talent, — of artists, 
 inventors, and philosophers. Eminent spiritualists 
 shall have an incapacity of putting their act or word 
 aloof from them, and seeing it bravely for the nothing 
 it is. Beware of the man who says, "I am on the 
 eve of a revelation." It is speedily punished, inas- 
 much as this habit invites men to humour it, and by 
 treating the patient tenderly, to shut him up in a 
 narrower selfism, and exclude him from the great 
 world of God's cheerful fallible men and women. 
 Let us rather be insulted, whilst we are insultable. 
 Religious literature has eminent examples, and if we 
 run over our private list of poets, critics, philanthro- 
 pists, and philosophers, we shall find them infected 
 with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we ought to 
 have tapped. 
 
 This goitre of egotism is so frequent among notable 
 persons, that we must infer some strong necessity in 
 nature which it subserves ; such as we see in the 
 sexual attraction. The preservation of the species 
 was a point of such necessity, that Nature has secured 
 it at all hazards by immensely overloading the passion, 
 at the risk of perpetual crime and disorder. So ego- 
 tism has its root in the cardinal necessity by which 
 each individual persists to be what he is. 
 
 This individuality is not only not inconsistent with 
 culture, but is the basis of it. Every valuable nature 
 is there in its own right, and the student we speak to
 
 108 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [iv. 
 
 must have a motherwit invincible by his culture, 
 which uses all books, arts, facilities, and elegancies of 
 intercourse, but is never subdued and lost in them. 
 He only is a well-made man who has a good determina- 
 tion. And the end of culture is not to destroy this, 
 God forbid ! but to train away all impediment and 
 mixture, and leave nothing but pure power. Our 
 student must have a style and determination, and be 
 a master in his own specialty. But, having this, he 
 must put it behind him. He must have a catholicity, 
 a power to see with a free and disengaged look every 
 object. Yet is this private interest and self so over- 
 charged, that, if a man seeks a companion who can 
 look at objects for their own sake, and without affec- 
 tion or self-reference, he will find the fewest who will 
 give him that satisfaction; whilst most men are 
 afflicted with a coldness, an incuriosity, as soon as any 
 object does not connect with their self-love. Though 
 they talk of the object before them, they are thinking 
 of themselves, and their vanity is laying little traps 
 for your admiration. 
 
 But after a man has discovered that there are 
 limits to the interest which his private history has 
 for mankind, he still converses with his family, or a 
 few companions, — perhaps with half a dozen person- 
 alities that are famous in his neighbourhood. In 
 Boston, the question of life is the names of some 
 eight or ten men. Have you seen Mr. Allston, 
 Doctor Channing, Mr. Adams, Mr. Webster, Mr. 
 Greenough? Have you heard Everett, Garrison, 
 Father Taylor, Theodore Parker 1 Have you talked
 
 iv.] CULTURE. 109 
 
 with Messieurs Turbinewheel, Summitlevel, and Lacof- 
 rupees 1 Then you may as well die. In New York, 
 the question is of some other eight, or ten, or twenty. 
 Have you seen a few lawyers, merchants, and brokers, 
 — two or three scholars, two or three capitalists, two 
 or three editors of newspapers'? New York is a 
 sucked orange. All conversation is at an end, when 
 we have discharged ourselves of a dozen personalities, 
 domestic or imported, which make up our American 
 existence. Nor do we expect anybody to be other 
 than a faint copy of these heroes. 
 
 Life is very narrow. Bring any club or company 
 of intelligent men together again after ten years, and 
 if the presence of some penetrating and calming genius 
 could dispose them to frankness, what a confession of 
 insanities would come up ! The " causes " to which 
 we have sacrificed, Tariff or Democracy, Whigism or 
 Abolition, Temperance or Socialism, would show like 
 roots of bitterness and dragons of wrath : and our 
 talents are as mischievous as if each had been seized 
 upon by some bird of prey, which had whisked him 
 away from fortune, from truth, from the dear society 
 of the poets, some zeal, some bias, and only when he 
 was now gray and nerveless, was it relaxing its claws, 
 and he awaking to sober perceptions. 
 
 Culture is the suggestion from certain best thoughts, 
 that a man has a range of affinities, through which he 
 can modulate the violence of any master-tones that 
 have a droning preponderance in his scale, and succour 
 him against himself. Culture redresses his balance, 
 puts him among his equals and superiors, revives the
 
 110 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [rv. 
 
 delicious sense of sympathy, and warns him of the 
 dangers of solitude -and repulsion. 
 
 Tis not a compliment but a disparagement to con- 
 sult a man only on horses, or on steam, or on theatres, 
 or on eating, or on books, and, whenever he appears, 
 considerately to turn the conversation to the bantling 
 he is known to fondle. In the Norse heaven of our 
 forefathers, Thor's house had five hundred and forty 
 floors ; and man's house has five hundred and forty 
 floors. His excellence is facility of adaptation and of 
 transition through many related points, to wide con- 
 trasts and extremes. Culture kills his exaggeration, 
 his conceit of his village or his city. We must 
 leave our pets at home, when Ave go into the street, 
 and meet men on broad grounds of good meaning and 
 good sense. No performance is worth loss of geniality. 
 'Tis a cruel price we pay for certain fancy goods called 
 fine arts and philosophy. In the Norse legend, All- 
 fadir did not get a drink of Mimir's spring (the foun- 
 tain of wisdom) until he left his eye in pledge. And 
 here is a pedant that cannot unfold his wrinkles, nor 
 conceal his wrath at interruption by the best, if their 
 conversation do not fit his impertinency, — here is 
 he to afflict us with his personalities. 'Tis incident to 
 scholars, that each of them fancies he is pointedly 
 odious in his communitj^. Draw him out of this limbo 
 of irritability. Cleanse with healthy blood his parch- 
 ment skin. You restore to him his eyes which he left 
 in pledge at Mimir's spring. If you are the victim of 
 your doing, who cares what you do 1 We can spare 
 your opera, your gazetteer, your chemic analysis, your
 
 iv.] CULTUEE. Ill 
 
 history, your syllogisms. Your man of genius pays 
 dear for his distinction. His head runs up into a 
 spire, and instead of a healthy man, merry and wise, 
 he is some mad dominie. Nature is reckless of the 
 individual. When she has points to carry, she carries 
 them. To wade in marshes and sea-margins is the 
 destiny of certain birds, and they are so accurately 
 made for this, that they are imprisoned in those 
 places. Each animal out of its habitat would starve. 
 To the physician, each man, each woman, is an ampli- 
 fication of one organ. A soldier, a locksmith, a bank- 
 clerk, and a dancer, could not exchange functions. 
 And thus we are victims of adaptation. 
 
 The antidotes against this organic egotism are, 
 the range and variety of attractions, as gained by 
 acquaintance with the world, with men of merit, with 
 classes of society, with travel, with eminent persons, 
 and with the high resources of philosophy, art, and 
 religion : books, travel, society, solitude. 
 
 The hardiest sceptic who has seen a horse broken, 
 a pointer trained, or who has visited a menagerie, or 
 the exhibition of the Industrious Fleas, will not deny 
 the validity of education " A boy," says Plato, " is 
 the most vicious of all wild beasts ; " and, in the same 
 spirit, the old English poet Gascoigne says, " a boy 
 is better unborn than untaught." The city breeds 
 one land of speech and manners ; the back-country a 
 different style ; the sea, another ; the army, a fourth. 
 We know that an army which can be confided in 
 may be formed by discipline ; that by systematic dis- 
 cipline all men may be made heroes : Marshal Lannes
 
 112 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [iv. 
 
 said to a French officer, " Know, Colonel, that none 
 but a poltroon will boast that he never was afraid." 
 A great part of courage is the courage of having done 
 the thing before. And, in all human action, those 
 faculties will be strong which are used. Robert Owen 
 said, " Give me a tiger, and I will educate him." 
 'Tis inhuman to want faith in the power of education, 
 since to meliorate is the law of nature ; and men are 
 valued precisely as they exert onward or meliorat- 
 ing force. On the other hand, poltroonery is the 
 acknowledging an inferiority to be incurable. 
 
 Incapacity of melioration is the only mortal dis- 
 temper. There are people who can never understand 
 a trope, or any second or expanded sense given to 
 your words, or any humour; but remain literalists, 
 after hearing the music, and poetry, and rhetoric, and 
 wit, of seventy or eighty years. They are past the help 
 of surgeon or clergy. But even these can understand 
 pitchforks and the cry of fire ! and I have noticed in 
 some of this class a marked dislike of earthquakes. 
 
 Let us make our education brave and preventive. 
 Politics is an after-work, a poor patching. We are 
 always a little late. The evil is done, the law is 
 passed, and we begin the uphill agitation for repeal of 
 that of which we ought to have prevented the enact- 
 ing. We shall one day learn to supersede politics by 
 education. What we call our root-and-branch reforms 
 of slavery, war, gambling, intemperance, is only medi- 
 cating the symptoms. We must begin higher up, 
 namely, in Education. 
 
 Our arts and tools give to him who can handle
 
 iv.] CULTURE. 113 
 
 them much the same advantage over the novice, as if 
 you extended his life, ten, fifty, or a hundred years. 
 And I think it the part of good sense to provide every 
 fine soul with such culture, that it shall not, at thirty 
 or forty years, have to say, " This which I might do 
 is made hopeless through my want of weapons." 
 
 But it is conceded that much of our training fails 
 of effect ; that all success is hazardous and rare ; that 
 a large part of our cost and pains is thrown away. 
 Nature takes the matter into her own hands, and, 
 though we must not omit any jot of our system, we 
 can seldom be sure that it has availed much, or, that 
 as much good would not have accrued from a different 
 system. 
 
 Books, as containing the finest records of human 
 wit, must always enter into our notion of culture. 
 The best heads that ever existed, Pericles, Plato, 
 Julius Caesar, Shakspeare, Goethe, Milton, were well- 
 read, universally educated men, and quite too wise to 
 undervalue letters. Their opinion has weight, because 
 they had means of knowing the opposite opinion. We 
 look that a great man should be a good reader, or, in 
 proportion to the spontaneous power should be the 
 assimilating power. Good criticism is very rare, and 
 always precious. I am always happy to meet persons 
 who perceive the transcendent superiority of Shak- 
 speare over all other writers. I like people who like 
 Plato. Because this love does not consist with self- 
 conceit. 
 
 But books are good only as far as a boy is ready 
 for them. He sometimes gets read}' very slowly. 
 
 vol. v. I
 
 114 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [iv. 
 
 You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the 
 schoolboys who educate him. You send him to the 
 Latin class, but much of his tuition comes, on his 
 way to school, from the shop-windows. You like the 
 strict rules and the long terms ; and he finds his best 
 leading in a by-way of his own, and refuses any com- 
 panions but of his choosing. He hates the grammar 
 and Gh-adus, and loves guns, fishing-rods, horses, and 
 boats. Well, the boy is right ; and you are not fit to 
 direct his bringing up, if your theory leaves out his 
 gymnastic training. Archery, cricket, gun and fishing- 
 rod, horse and boat, are all educators, liberalisers ; 
 and so are dancing, dress, and the street talk ; and, 
 — provided only the boy has resources, and is of a 
 noble and ingenuous strain, — these will not serve him 
 less than the books. He learns chess, whist, dancing, 
 and theatricals. The father observes that another boy 
 has learned algebra and geometry in the same time. 
 But the first boy has acquired much more than these 
 poor games along with them. He is infatuated for 
 weeks with whist and chess ; but presently will find 
 out, as you did, that when he rises from the game too 
 long played, he is vacant and forlorn, and despises 
 himself. Thenceforward it takes place with other 
 things, and has its due weight in his experience. 
 These minor skills and accomplishments — for example, 
 dancing; — are tickets of admission to the dress-circle of 
 mankind, and the being master of them enables the 
 youth to judge intelligently of much on which, other- 
 wise, he would give a pedantic squint. Landor said, 
 "I have suffered more from my bad dancing than
 
 IV.] CULTUEE. 115 
 
 from all the misfortunes and miseries of my life put 
 together." Provided always the boy is teachable 
 (for we are not proposing to make a statue out of 
 punk), football, cricket, archery, swimming, skating, 
 climbing, fencing, riding, are lessons in the art of 
 power, which it is his main business to learn ; — riding, 
 specially, of which Lord Herbert of Cherbury said, 
 "A good rider on a good horse is as much above him- 
 self and others as the world can make him." Besides, 
 the gun, fishing-rod, boat, and horse, constitute, among 
 all who use them, secret freemasonries. They are as 
 if they belonged to one club. 
 
 There is also a negative value in these arts. Their 
 chief use to the youth is, not amusement, but to be 
 known for what they are, and not to remain to him 
 occasions of heartburn. We are full of superstitions. 
 Each class fixes its eyes on the advantages it has not ; 
 the refined, on rude strength ; the democrat, on birth 
 and breeding. One of the benefits of a college educa- 
 tion is, to show the boy its little avail. I knew a 
 leading man in a leading city, who, having set his 
 heart on an education at the university, and missed 
 it, could never quite feel himself the equal of his own 
 brothers who had gone thither. His easy superiority 
 to multitudes of professional men could never quite 
 countervail to him this imaginary defect. Balls, 
 riding, wine-parties, and billiards, pass to a poor boy 
 for something fine and romantic, which they are not ; 
 and a free admission to them on an equal footing, if 
 it were possible, only once or twice, would be worth 
 ten times its cost, by undeceiving him.
 
 116 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [rv. 
 
 I am not much an advocate for travelling, and I 
 observe that men run away to other countries because 
 they are not good in their own, and run back to their 
 own because they pass for nothing in the new places. 
 For the most part, only the light characters travel. 
 Who are you that have no task to keep you at home 1 
 I have been quoted as saying captious things about 
 travel ; but I mean to do justice. I think there is a 
 restlessness in our people, which argues want of char- 
 acter. All educated Americans, first or last, go to 
 Europe; — perhaps, because it is their mental home, 
 as the invalid habits of this country might suggest. 
 An eminent teacher of girls said, " The idea of a girl's 
 education is, whatever qualifies them for going to 
 Europe." Can we never extract this tape-worm of 
 Europe from the brain of our countrymen ? One sees 
 very well what their fate must be. He that does not 
 fill a place at home, cannot abroad. He only goes 
 there to hide his insignificance in a larger crowd. You 
 do not think you will find anything there which you 
 have not seen at home ? The stuff of all countries is 
 just the same. Do you suppose there is any country 
 where they do not scald milk-pans, and swaddle the 
 infants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish 1 
 What is true anywhere is true everywhere. And let 
 him go where he will, he can only find so much beauty 
 or worth as he carries. 
 
 Of course, for some men, travel may be useful. 
 Naturalists, discoverers, and sailors are born. Some 
 men are made for couriers, exchangers, envoys, mis- 
 sionaries, bearers of despatches, as others are for
 
 IV.] CULTURE. 117 
 
 farmers and working-men. And if the man is of a 
 light and social turn, and Nature has aimed to make 
 a legged and winged creature, framed for locomotion, 
 we must follow her hint, and furnish him with that 
 breeding which gives currency, as sedulously as with 
 that which gives worth. But let us not be pedantic, 
 but allow to travel its full effect. The boy grown up 
 on the farm, which he has never left, is said in the 
 country to have had no chance, and boys and men 
 of that condition look upon work on a railroad, or 
 drudgery in a city, as opportunity. Poor country 
 boys of Vermont and Connecticut formerly owed what 
 knowledge they had to their peddling trips to the 
 Southern States. California and the Pacific Coast 
 is now the university of this class, as Virginia was in 
 old times. " To have some chance " is their word. And 
 the phrase " to know the world," or to travel, is 
 synonymous with all men's ideas of advantage and 
 superiority. No doubt, to a man of sense, travel 
 offers advantages. As many languages as he has, as 
 many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times 
 is he a man. A foreign country is a point of com- 
 parison, wherefrom to judge his own. One use of 
 travel is, to recommend the books and works of home 
 [we go to Europe to be Americanised] ; and another, 
 to find men. For, as Nature has put fruits apart in 
 latitudes, a new fruit in every degree, so knowledge 
 and fine moral quality she lodges in distant men. And 
 thus, of the six or seven teachers whom each man 
 wants among his contemporaries, it often happens that 
 one or two of them live on the other side of the world.
 
 118 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [iv. 
 
 Moreover, there is in every constitution a certain 
 solstice, when the stars stand still in our inward 
 firmament, and when there is required some foreign 
 force, some diversion or alterative to prevent stagna- 
 tion. And, as a medical remedy, travel seems one of 
 the best. Just as a man witnessing the admirable 
 effect of ether to lull pain, and meditating on the 
 contingencies of wounds, cancers, lockjaws, rejoices in 
 Dr. Jackson's benign discovery, so a man who looks 
 at Paris, at Naples, or at London, says, " If I should 
 be driven from my own home, here, at least, my 
 thoughts can be consoled by the most prodigal amuse- 
 ment and occupation which the human race in ages 
 could contrive and accumulate." 
 
 Akin to the benefit of foreign travel, the aesthetic 
 value of railroads is to unite the advantages of town 
 and country life, neither of which we can spare. A 
 man should live in or near a large town, because, let 
 his own genius be what it may, it will repel quite as 
 much of agreeable and valuable talent as it draws, 
 and, in a city, the total attraction of all the citizens 
 is sure to conquer, first or last, every repulsion, and 
 drag the most improbable hermit within its walls 
 some day in the year. In town, he can find the 
 swimming-school, the gymnasium, the dancing-master, 
 the shooting-gallery, opera, theatre, and panorama; the 
 chemist's shop, the museum of natural history ; the 
 gallery of fine arts; the national orators, in their 
 turn ; foreign travellers, the libraries, and his club. 
 In the country, he can find solitude and reading, 
 manly labour, cheap living, and his old shoes ; moors
 
 IV.] CULTURE. 119 
 
 for game, hills for geology, and groves for devotion. 
 Aubrey writes, "I have heard Thomas Hobbes say, 
 that, in the Earl of Devon's house, in Derbyshire, 
 there was a good library and books enough for him, 
 and his lordship stored the library with what books 
 he thought fit to be bought. But the want of good 
 conversation was a very great inconvenience, and, 
 though he conceived he could order his thinking as 
 well as another, yet he found a great defect. In the 
 country, in long time, for want of good conversation, 
 one's understanding and invention contract a moss on 
 them, like an old paling in an orchard." 
 
 Cities give us collision. Tis said, London and 
 New York take the nonsense out of a man. A 
 great part of our education is sympathetic and social. 
 Boys and girls who have been brought up with well- 
 informed and superior people, show in their manners 
 an inestimable grace. Fuller says that "William, 
 Earl of Nassau, won a subject from the King of 
 Spain every time he put off his hat." You cannot 
 have one well-bred man, without a whole society 
 of such. They keep each other up to any high 
 point. Especially women ; — it requires a great many 
 cultivated women, — saloons of bright, elegant, read- 
 ing women, accustomed to ease and refinement, to 
 spectacles, pictures, sculpture, poetry, and to elegant 
 society, in order that you should have one Madame 
 de Stael. The head of a commercial house, or a 
 leading lawyer or politician, is brought into daily 
 contact with troops of men from all parts of the 
 country, and those too the driving-wheels, the busi-
 
 120 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [nr. 
 
 ness men of each section, and one can hardly suggest 
 for an apprehensive man a more searching culture. 
 Besides, we must remember the high social possi- 
 bilities of a million of men. The best bribe which 
 London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in 
 such a vast variety of people and conditions, one 
 can believe there is room for persons of romantic 
 character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and 
 the hero, may hope to confront their counterparts. 
 
 I wish cities could teach their best lesson, — of 
 quiet manners. It is the foible especially of American 
 youth, — pretension. The mark of the man of the 
 world is absence of pretension. He does not make 
 a speech ; he takes a low business -tone, avoids all 
 brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, 
 performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his 
 fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name, 
 and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon. 
 His conversation clings to the weather and the news, 
 yet he allows himself to be surprised into thought, 
 and the unlocking of his learning and philosophy. 
 How the imagination is piqued by anecdotes of some 
 great man passing incognito, as a king in gray 
 clothes, — of Napoleon affecting a plain suit at his 
 glittering levee ; of Burns, or Scott, or Beethoven, 
 or Wellington, or Goethe, or any container of tran- 
 scendent power, passing for nobody ; of Epaminondas, 
 "who never says anything, but will listen eternally;" 
 of Goethe, who preferred trifling subjects and com- 
 mon expressions in intercourse with strangers, worse 
 rather than better clothes, and to appear a little
 
 iv.] CULTURE. 121 
 
 more capricious than he was. There are advantages 
 in the old hat and box -coat. I have heard that, 
 throughout this country, a certain respect is paid to 
 good broadcloth ; but dress makes a little restraint : 
 men will not commit themselves. But the box-coat 
 is like wine; it unlocks the tongue, and men say 
 what they think. An old poet says, 
 
 " Go far and go sparing, 
 For you'll find it certain, 
 The poorer and the baser you appear, 
 The more you'll look through still." 1 
 
 Not much otherwise Milnes writes, in the "Lay of 
 
 the Humble," 
 
 ' ' To me men are for what they are, 
 They wear no masks with me. " 
 
 'Tis odd that our people should have — not water 
 on the brain — but a little gas there. A shrewd 
 foreigner said of the Americans, that, "whatever 
 they say has a little the air of a speech." Yet one 
 of the traits down in the books as distinguishing the 
 Anglo-Saxon, is a trick of self-disparagement. To 
 be sure, in old, dense countries, among a million of 
 good coats, a fine coat comes to be no distinction, 
 and you find humorists. In an English party, a 
 man with no marked manners or features, with a 
 face like red dough, unexpectedly discloses wit, learn- 
 ing, a wide range of topics, and personal familiarity 
 with good men in all parts of the world, until you 
 think you have fallen upon some illustrious personage. 
 Can it be that the American forest has refreshed some 
 
 1 Beaumont and Fletcher : The Tamer Tamed.
 
 122 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [iv. 
 
 weeds of old Pictish barbarism just ready to die out, 
 — the love of the scarlet feather, of beads and tinsel 1 
 The Italians are fond of red clothes, peacock plumes, 
 and embroidery ; and I remember one rainy morning 
 in the city of Palermo, the street was in a blaze with 
 scarlet umbrellas. The English have a plain taste. 
 The equipages of the grandees are plain. A gorgeous 
 livery indicates new and awkward city wealth. Mr. 
 Pitt, like Mr. Pym, thought the title of Mister good 
 against any king in Europe. They have piqued 
 themselves on governing the whole world in the 
 poor, plain, dark Committee-room which the House 
 of Commons sat in, before the fire. 
 
 Whilst we want cities as the centres where the 
 best things are found, cities degrade us by magnify- 
 ing trifles. The countryman finds the town a chop- 
 house, a barber's shop. He has lost the lines of 
 grandeur of the horizon, hills and plains, and with 
 them, sobriety and elevation. He has come among a 
 supple, glib-tongued tribe, who live for show, servile 
 to public opinion. Life is dragged down to a fracas 
 of pitiful cares and disasters. You say the gods 
 ought to respect a life whose objects are their own ; 
 but in cities they have betrayed you to a cloud of 
 insignificant annoyances : 
 
 " Mirmidons, race feconde, 
 Mirmidons, 
 
 Enfin nous commandons ; 
 Jupiter livre le monde 
 Aux mirmidons, aux mirmidons." 1 
 
 1 Beranger.
 
 IV.] CULTUEE. 123 
 
 "Pis heavy odds 
 
 Against the gods, 
 
 When they will match with myrmidons. 
 
 We spawning, spawning myrmidons, 
 
 Our turn to-day ! we take command, 
 
 Jove gives the globe into the hand 
 
 Of myrmidons, of myrmidons. 
 
 What is odious but noise, and people who scream 
 and bewail? people whose vane points always east, 
 who live to dine, who send for the doctor, who coddle 
 themselves, who toast their feet on the register, who 
 intrigue to secure a padded chair, and a corner out 
 of the draught. Suffer them once to begin the 
 enumeration of their infirmities, and the sun will go 
 down on the unfinished tale. Let these triflers put 
 us out of conceit with petty comforts. To a man at 
 work, the frost is but a colour : the rain, the wind, 
 he forgot them when he came in. Let us learn to 
 live coarsely, dress plainly, and lie hard. The least 
 habit of dominion over the palate has certain good 
 effects not easily estimated. Neither will we be 
 driven into a quiddling abstemiousness. 'Tis a super- 
 stition to iusist on a special diet. All is made at 
 last of the same chemical atoms. 
 
 A man in pursuit of greatness feels no little wants. 
 How can you mind diet, bed, dress, or salutes or 
 compliments, or the figure you make in company, or 
 wealth, or even the bringing things to pass, when 
 you think how paltry are the machinery and the 
 workers ? Wordsworth was praised to me, in West- 
 moreland, for having afforded to his country neigh- 
 bours an example of a modest household where
 
 124 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [iv. 
 
 comfort and culture were secured, without display. 
 And a tender boy who wears his rusty cap and out- 
 grown coat, that he may secure the coveted place in 
 college, and the right in the library, is educated to 
 some purpose. There is a great deal of self-denial 
 and manliness iu poor and middle-class houses, in town 
 and country, that has not got into literature, and 
 never will, but that keeps the earth sweet ; that saves 
 on superfluities, and spends on essentials ; that goes 
 rusty, and educates the boy ; that sells the horse, 
 but builds the school ; works early and late, takes 
 two looms in the factory, three looms, six looms, but 
 pays off the mortgage on the paternal farm, and then 
 goes back cheerfully to work again. 
 
 We can ill spare the commanding social benefits of 
 cities ; they must be used ; yet cautiously, and 
 haughtily, — and will yield their best values to him 
 who best can do without them. Keep the town for 
 occasions, but the habits should be formed to retire- 
 ment. Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to 
 genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter 
 where moult the wings which will bear it farther than 
 suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his 
 race must be defended from travelling with the souls 
 of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and 
 wiiting in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. 
 "In the morning, — solitude;" said Pythagoras; that 
 Nature may speak to the imagination, as she does 
 never in company, and that her favourite may make 
 acquaintance with those divine strengths which dis- 
 close themselves to serious and abstracted thought.
 
 IV.] 
 
 CULTURE. 125 
 
 Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, 
 Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live 
 in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time 
 as benefactors : and the wise instructor will press this 
 point of securing to the young soul in the disposition 
 of time and the arrangements of living, periods and 
 habits of solitude. The high advantage of university- 
 life is often the mere mechanical one, I may call it, 
 of a separate chamber and fire, — which parents will 
 allow the boy without hesitation at Cambridge, but 
 do not think needful at home. We say solitude, to 
 mark the character of the tone of thought \ but if it 
 can be shared between two or more than two, it is 
 happier, and not less noble. "We four," wrote 
 Neander to his sacred friends, "will enjoy at Halle 
 the inward blessedness of a civitas Dei, whose founda- 
 tions are for ever friendship. The more I know you, 
 the more I dissatisfy and must dissatisfy all my 
 wonted companions. Their very presence stupefies 
 me. The common understanding withdraws itself 
 from the one 'centre of all existence." 
 
 Solitude takes off the pressure of present impor- 
 tunities that more catholic and humane relations may 
 appear. The saint and poet seek privacy to ends the 
 most public and universal : and it is the secret of 
 culture, to interest the man more in his public than 
 in his private quality. Here is a new poem, which 
 elicits a good many comments in the journals, and in 
 conversation. From these it is easy, at last, to 
 eliminate the verdict which readers passed upon it ; 
 and that is, in the main, unfavourable. The poet, as
 
 126 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [iv. 
 
 a craftsman, is only interested in the praise accorded 
 to him, and not in the censure, though it be just. 
 And the poor little poet hearkens only to that, and 
 rejects the censure, as proving incapacity in the critic. 
 But the poet cultivated becomes a stockholder in both 
 companies, — say Mr. Curfew, — in the Curfew stock, 
 and in the humanity stock ; and, in the last, exults as 
 much in the demonstration of the unsoundness of 
 Curfew, as his interest in the former gives him 
 pleasure in the currency of Curfew. For, the de- 
 preciation of his Curfew stock only shows the immense 
 values of the humanity stock. As soon as he sides 
 with his critic against himself, with joy, he is a culti- 
 vated man. 
 
 We must have an intellectual quality in all pro- 
 perty and in all action, or they are nought. I must 
 have children, I must have events, I must have a 
 social state and history, or my thinking and speaking 
 want body or basis. But to give these accessories 
 any value, I must know them as contingent and 
 rather showy possessions, which pass for more to the 
 people than to me. We see this abstraction in 
 scholars, as a matter of course : but what a charm it 
 adds when observed in practical men. Bonaparte, 
 like Csesar, was intellectual, and could look at every 
 object for itself, without affection. Though an egotist 
 h Voutrance, he could criticise a play, a building, a 
 character, on universal grounds, and give a just 
 opinion. A man known to us only as a celebrity in 
 politics or in trade, gains largely in our esteem if we 
 discover that he has some intellectual taste or skill ;
 
 IV.] 
 
 CULTUKE. 127 
 
 as when we learn of Lord Fairfax, the Long Parlia- 
 ment's general, his passion for antiquarian studies ; or 
 of the French regicide Carnot, his sublime genius in 
 mathematics; or of a living banker, his success in 
 poetry ; or of a partisan journalist, his devotion to 
 ornithology. So, if in travelling in the dreary wilder- 
 nesses of Arkansas or Texas we should observe on 
 the next seat a man reading Horace, or Martial, or 
 Calderon, we should wish to hug him. In callings 
 that require roughest energy, soldiers, sea-captains, 
 and civil engineers sometimes betray a fine insight, if 
 only through a certain gentleness when off duty ; a 
 good-natured admission that there are illusions, and 
 who shall say that he is not their sport 1 We only 
 vary the phrase, not the doctrine, when we say that 
 culture opens the sense of beauty. A man is a beggar 
 who only lives to the useful, and, however he may 
 serve as a pin or rivet in the social machine, cannot 
 be said to have arrived at self-possession. I suffer 
 ever day from the want of perception of beauty in 
 people. They do not know the charm with which all 
 moments and objects can be embellished, the charm 
 of manners, of self-command, of benevolence. Repose 
 and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman, — 
 repose in energy. The Greek battle pieces are calm ; 
 the heroes, in whatever violent actions engaged, retain 
 a serene aspect ; as we say of Niagara, that it falls 
 without speed. A cheerful, intelligent face is the end 
 of culture, and success enough. For it indicates the 
 purpose of Nature and wisdom attained. 
 
 When our higher faculties are in activity, we are
 
 128 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [iv. 
 
 domesticated, and awkwardness and discomfort give 
 place to natural and agreeable movements. It is 
 noticed, that the consideration of the great periods 
 and spaces of astronomy induces a dignity of mind, 
 and an indifference to death. The influence of fine 
 scenery, the presence of mountains, appeases our irri- 
 tations and elevates our friendships. Even a high 
 dome, and the expansive interior of a cathedral, have 
 a sensible effect on manners. I have heard that stiff 
 people lose something of their awkwardness under 
 high ceilings, and in spacious halls. I think sculp- 
 ture and painting have an effect to teach us manners, 
 and abolish hurry. 
 
 But, over all, culture must reinforce from higher 
 influx the empirical skills of eloquence, or of politics, 
 or of trade, and the useful arts. There is a certain 
 loftiness of thought and power to marshal and adjust 
 particulars, which can only come from an insight of 
 their whole connection. The orator who has once 
 seen things in their divine order, will never quite 
 lose sight of this, and will come to affairs as from a 
 higher ground, and, though he will say nothing of 
 philosophy, he will have a certain mastery in dealing 
 with them, and an incapableness of being dazzled or 
 frighted, which will distinguish his handling from 
 that of attorneys and factors. A man who stands on 
 a good footing with the heads of parties at Wash- 
 ington, reads the rumours of the newspapers, and the 
 guesses of provincial politicians, with a key to the 
 right and wrong in each statement, and sees well 
 enough where all this will end. Archimedes will
 
 IV.] CULTUKE. 129 
 
 look through your Connecticut machine, at a glance, 
 and judge of its fitness. And much more, a wise 
 man who knows not only what Plato, but what Saint 
 John can show him, can easily raise the affair he deals 
 ■with to a certain majesty. Plato says, Pericles owed 
 this elevation to the lessons of Anaxagoras. Burke 
 descended from a higher sphere when he would 
 influence human affairs. Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, 
 Washington, stood on a fine humanity, before which 
 the brawls of modern senates are but pot-house 
 politics. 
 
 But there are higher secrets of culture, which are 
 not for the apprentices, but for proficients. These are 
 lessons only for the brave. We must know our friends 
 under ugly masks. The calamities are our friends. 
 Ben Jonson specifies in his address to the Muse : — 
 
 " Get him the time's long grudge, the court's ill-will, 
 And, reconciled, keep him suspected still, 
 Make him lose all his friends, and, what is worse, 
 Almost all ways to any better course ; 
 With me thou leav'st a better Muse than thee, 
 And which thou brought'st me, blessed Poverty. " 
 
 We wish to learn philosophy by rote, and play at 
 heroism. But the wiser God says, Take the shame, 
 the poverty, and the penal solitude, that belong to 
 truth-speaking. Try the rough water as well as the 
 smooth. Kough water can teach lessons worth know- 
 ing. When the state is unquiet, personal qualities 
 are more than ever decisive. Fear not a revolution 
 which will constrain you to live five years in one. 
 Don't be so tender at making an enemy now and 
 VOL. V. K
 
 130 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [iv. 
 
 then. Be willing to go to Coventry sometimes, and 
 let the populace bestow on you their coldest con- 
 tempts. The finished man of the world must eat of 
 every apple once. He must hold his hatreds also at 
 arm's length, and not remember spite. He has neither 
 friends nor enemies, but values men only as channels 
 of power. 
 
 He who aims high must dread an easy home and 
 popular manners. Heaven sometimes hedges a rare 
 character about with ungainliness and odium, as the 
 burr that protects the fruit. If there is any great 
 and good thing in store for you, it will not come at 
 the first or the second call, nor in the shape of 
 fashion, ease, and city drawing-rooms. Popularity is 
 for dolls, "Steep and craggy," said Porphyry, "is 
 the path of the gods." Open your Marcus Antoninus. 
 In the opinion of the ancients, he was the great man 
 who scorned to shine, and who contested the frowns 
 of fortune. They preferred the noble vessel too late 
 for the tide, contending with winds and waves, dis- 
 mantled and unrigged, to her companion borne into 
 harbour with colours flying and guns firing. There 
 is none of the social goods that may not be purchased 
 too dear, and mere amiableness must not take rank 
 with high aims and self-subsistency. 
 
 Bettine replies to Goethe's mother, who chides her 
 disregard of dress, — "If I cannot do as I have a mind, 
 in our poor Frankfort, I shall not carry things far." 
 And the youth must rate at its true mark the incon- 
 ceivable levity of local opinion. The longer we live, 
 the more we must endure the elementary existence of
 
 iv.] CULTURE. 131 
 
 men and women ; and every brave heart must treat 
 society as a child, and never allow it to dictate. 
 
 "All that class of the severe and restrictive 
 virtues," said Burke, " are almost too costly for 
 humanity." Who wishes to be severe ? Who wishes 
 to resist the eminent and polite, in behalf of the 
 poor, and low, and impolite 1 and who that dares do 
 it, can keep his temper sweet, his frolic spirits ? The 
 high virtues are not debonair, but have their redress 
 in being illustrious at last. What forests of laurel we 
 bring, and the tears of mankind, to those who stood 
 firm against the opinion of their contemporaries ! 
 The measure of a master is his success in bringing all 
 men round to his opinion twenty years later. 
 
 Let me say here, that culture cannot begin too 
 early. In talking with scholars, I observe that they 
 lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood 
 which alone could give imaginative literature a re- 
 ligious and infinite quality in their esteem. I find, 
 too, that the chance for appreciation is much increased 
 by being the son of an appreciator, and that these 
 boys who now grow up are caught not only years too 
 late, but two or three births too late, to make the 
 best scholars of. And I think it a presentable motive 
 to a scholar that, as, in an old community, a well- 
 born proprietor is usually found, after the first heats 
 of youth, to be a careful husband, and to feel a habit- 
 ual desire that the estate shall suffer no harm by his 
 administration, but shall be delivered down to the 
 next heir in as good condition as he received it ; — so, 
 a considerate man will reckon himself a subject of
 
 132 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [iv. 
 
 that secular melioration by which mankind is mollified, 
 cured, and refined, and will shun every expenditure 
 of his forces on pleasure or gain, which will jeopardise 
 this social and secular accumulation. 
 
 The fossil strata show us that Nature began with 
 rudimental forms, and rose to the more complex, as 
 fast as the earth was fit for their dwelling-place ; and 
 that the lower perish, as the higher appear. Very 
 few of our race can be said to be yet finished men. 
 We still carry sticking to us some remains of the 
 preceding inferior quadruped organisation. We call 
 these millions men ; but they are not yet men. Half- 
 engaged in the soil, pawing to get free, man needs all 
 the music that can be brought to disengage him. If 
 Love, red Love, with tears and joy; if Want with 
 his scourge ; if War with his cannonade ; if Christi- 
 anity with its charity ; if Trade with its money ; if 
 Art with its portfolios ; if Science with her telegraphs 
 through the deeps of space and time ; can set his dull 
 nerves throbbing, and by loud taps on the tough 
 chrysalis can break its walls, and let the new creature 
 emerge erect and free, — make way, and sing paean ! 
 The age of the quadruped is to go out, — the age of 
 the brain and of the heart is to come in. The time 
 will come when the evil forms we have known can 
 no more be organised. Man's culture can spare 
 nothing, wants all the material. He is to convert all 
 impediments into instruments, all enemies into power. 
 The formidable mischief will only make the more 
 useful slave. And if one shall read the future of the 
 race hinted in the organic effort of Nature to mount
 
 iv.] CULTURE. 133 
 
 and meliorate, and the corresponding impulse to the 
 Better in the human being, we shall dare affirm that 
 there is nothing he will not overcome and convert, 
 until at last culture shall absorb the chaos and gehenna. 
 He will convert the Furies into Muses, and the hells 
 into benefit.
 
 BEHAVIOUR. 
 
 Grace, Beauty, and Caprice 
 
 Build this golden portal ; 
 
 Graceful women, chosen men 
 
 Dazzle every mortal : 
 
 Their sweet and lofty countenance 
 
 His enchanting food ; 
 
 He need not go to them, their forms 
 
 Beset his solitude. 
 
 He looketh seldom in their face, 
 
 His eyes explore the ground, 
 
 The green grass is a looking-glass 
 
 "Whereon their traits are found. 
 
 Little he says to them, 
 
 So dances his heart in his breast, 
 
 Their tranquil mien bereaveth him 
 
 Of wit, of words, of rest. 
 
 Too weak to win, too fond to*shun 
 
 The tyrants of his doom, 
 
 The much-deceived Endymion 
 
 Slips behind a tomb.
 
 BEHAVIOUR 
 
 The soul which animates Nature is not less signifi- 
 cantly published in the figure, movement, and gesture 
 of animated bodies, than in its last vehicle of arti- 
 culate speech. This silent and subtile language is 
 Manners ; not what, but hoiv. Life expresses. A 
 statue has no tongue, and needs none. Good tableaux 
 do not need declamation. Nature tells every secret 
 once. Yes, but in man she tells it all the time, by 
 form, attitude, gesture, mien, face, and parts of the 
 face, and by the whole action of the machine. The 
 visible carriage or action of the individual, as result- 
 ing from his organisation and his will combined, we 
 call manners. What are they but thought entering 
 the hands and feet, controlling the movements of the 
 body, the speech and behaviour 1 
 
 There is always a best way of doing everything, if 
 it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways 
 of doing things ; each once a stroke of genius or of 
 love, — now repeated and hardened into usage. They 
 form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of 
 life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are 
 superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a
 
 138 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [v. 
 
 depth to the morning meadows. Manners are very 
 communicable : men catch them from each other. 
 Consuelo, in the romance, boasts of the lessons she 
 had given the nobles in manners, on the stage ; and, 
 in real life, Talma taught Napoleon the arts of 
 behaviour. Genius invents fine manners, which the 
 baron and the baroness copy very fast, and, by the 
 advantage of a palace, better the instruction. They 
 stereotype the lesson they have learned into a 
 mode. 
 
 The power of manners is incessant, — an element 
 as unconcealable as fire. The nobility cannot in any 
 country be disguised, and no more in a republic or a 
 democracy than in a kingdom. No man can resist 
 their influence. There are certain manners which 
 are learned in good society, of that force, that, if a 
 person have them, he or she must be considered, and 
 is everywhere welcome, though without beauty, or 
 wealth, or genius. Give a boy address and accom- 
 plishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces 
 and fortunes where he goes. He has not the trouble 
 of earning or owning them ; they solicit him to enter 
 and possess. We send girls of a timid, retreating- 
 disposition to the boarding-school, to the riding-school, 
 to the ball-room, or wheresoever they can come into 
 acquaintance and nearness of leading persons of their 
 own sex ; where they might learn address, and see it 
 near at hand. The power of a woman of fashion to 
 lead, and also to daunt and repel, derives from their 
 belief that she knows resources and behaviours not 
 known to them ; but when these have mastered her
 
 v.] BEHAVIOUR. 139 
 
 secret, they learn to confront her, and recover their 
 self-possession. 
 
 Every day bears witness to their gentle rule. 
 People who would obtrude, now do not obtrude. The 
 mediocre circle learns to demand that which belongs 
 to a high state of nature or of culture. Your manners 
 are always under examination, and by committees 
 little suspected, — a police in citizens' clothes, — but 
 are awarding or denying you very high prizes when 
 you least think of it. 
 
 We talk much of utilities, — but 'tis our manners 
 that associate us. In hours of business, we go to him 
 who knows, or has, or does this or that which we 
 want, and we do not let our taste or feeling stand in 
 the way. But this activity over, we return to the 
 indolent state, and wish for those we can be at ease 
 with ; those who will go where we go, whose manners 
 do not offend us, whose social tone chimes with ours. 
 When we reflect on their persuasive and cheering 
 force ; how they recommend, prepare, and draw 
 people together; how, in all clubs, manners make 
 the members ; how manners make the fortune of the 
 ambitious youth ; that, for the most part, his manners 
 marry him, and, for the most part, he marries 
 manners ; when we think what keys they are, and to 
 what secrets ; what high lessons and inspiring tokens 
 of character they convey; and what divination is 
 required in us for the reading of this fine telegraph, 
 we see what range the subject has, and what relations 
 to convenience, power, and beauty. 
 
 Their first service is very low, — when they are the
 
 140 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [v. 
 
 minor morals : but 'tis the beginning of civility, — to 
 make us, I mean, endurable to each other. We prize 
 them for their rough-plastic, abstergent force ; to get 
 people out of the quadruped state; to get them washed, 
 clothed, and set up on end; to slough their animal 
 husks and habits ; compel them to be clean ; overawe 
 their spite and meanness, teach them to stifle the base, 
 and choose the generous expression, and make them 
 know how much happier the generous behaviours are. 
 Bad behaviour the laws cannot reach. Society is 
 infested with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous 
 persons who prey upon the rest, and whom a public 
 opinion concentrated into good manners, forms ac- 
 cepted by the sense of all, can reach : — the contra- 
 dictors and railers at public and private tables, who 
 are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of 
 honour to growl at any passer-by, and do the honours 
 of the house by barking him out of sight : — I have 
 seen men who neigh like a horse when you contradict 
 them, or say something which they do not understand : 
 — then the overbold, who make their own invitation 
 to your hearth; the persevering talker, who gives 
 you his society in large, saturating doses ; the pitiers 
 of themselves, — a perilous class ; the frivolous Asmo- 
 deus, who relies on you to find him in ropes of sand 
 to twist; the monotones; in short, every stripe of 
 absurdity; — these are social inflictions which the 
 magistrate cannot cure or defend you from, and 
 which must be intrusted to the restraining force of 
 custom, and proverbs, and familiar rules of behaviour 
 impressed on young people in their school-days.
 
 v.] BEHAVIOUR. 141 
 
 In the hotels on the banks of the Mississippi, they 
 print, or used to print, among the rules of the house, 
 that " no gentleman can be permitted to come to the 
 public table without his coat;" and in the same 
 country, in the pews of the churches, little placards 
 plead with the worshipper against the fury of expec- 
 toration. Charles Dickens self-sacrificingly undertook 
 the reformation of our American manners in unspeak- 
 able particulars. I think the lesson was not quite 
 lost ; that it held bad manners up, so that the churls 
 could see the deformity. Unhappily, the book had 
 its own deformities. It ought not to need to print in 
 a reading-room a caution to strangers not to speak 
 loud ; nor to persons who look over fine engravings, 
 that they should be handled like cobwebs and butter- 
 flies' wings; nor to persons who look at marble 
 statues, that they shall not smite them with canes. 
 But, even in the perfect civilisation of this city, such 
 cautions are not quite needless in the Athenaeum and 
 City Library. 
 
 Manners are factitious, and grow out of circum- 
 stance as well as out of character. If you look at the 
 pictures of patricians, and of peasants, of different 
 periods and countries, you will see how well they 
 match the same classes in our towns. The modern 
 aristocrat not only is well drawn in Titian's Venetian 
 doges, and in Roman coins and statues, but also in 
 the pictures which Commodore Perry brought home 
 of dignitaries in Japan. Broad lands and great 
 interests not only arrive to such heads as can manage 
 them, but form manners of power. A keen eye, too,
 
 142 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [v. 
 
 will see nice gradations of rank, or see in the manners 
 the degree of homage the party is wont to receive. 
 A prince who is accustomed every day to be courted 
 and deferred to by the highest grandees, acquires a 
 corresponding expectation, and a becoming mode of 
 receiving and replying to this homage. 
 
 There are always exceptional people and modes. 
 English grandees affect to be farmers. Claverhouse 
 is a fop, and, under the finish of dress, and levity of 
 behaviour, hides the terror of his war. But Nature 
 and Destiny are honest, and never fail to leave their 
 mark, to hang out a sign for each and for every 
 quality. It is much to conquer one's face, and per- 
 haps the ambitious youth thinks he has got the whole 
 secret when he has learned that disengaged manners 
 are commanding. Don't be deceived by a facile 
 exterior. Tender men sometimes have strong wills. 
 We had, in Massachusetts, an old statesman, who had 
 sat all his life in courts and in chairs of state, without 
 overcoming an extreme irritability of face, voice, and 
 bearing : when he spoke, his voice would not serve 
 him ; it cracked, it broke, it wheezed, it piped ; — little 
 cared he ; he knew that it had got to pipe, or wheeze, 
 or screech his argument and his indignation. When 
 he sat down, after speaking, he seemed in a sort of 
 fit, and held on to his chair with both hands : but 
 underneath all this irritability was a puissant will, 
 firm, and advancing, and a memory in which lay in 
 order and method like geologic strata every fact of 
 his history, and under the control of his will. 
 
 Manners are partly factitious, but, mainly, there
 
 v.] BEHAVIOUE. 143 
 
 must be capacity for culture in the blood. Else all 
 culture is vain. The obstinate prejudice in favour of 
 blood, which lies at the base of the feudal and mon- 
 archical fabrics of the old world, has some reason in 
 common experience. Every man, — mathematician, 
 artist, soldier, or merchant, — looks with confidence 
 for some traits and talents in his own child, which he 
 would not dare to presume in the child of a stranger. 
 The Orientalists are very orthodox on this point. 
 "Take a thorn-bush," said the emir Abdel-Kader, 
 " and sprinkle it for a whole year with water ; — it will 
 yield nothing but thorns. Take a date-tree, leave it 
 without culture, and it will always produce dates. 
 Nobility is the date-tree, and the Arab populace is a 
 bush of thorns." 
 
 A main fact in the history of manners is the 
 wonderful expressiveness of the human body. If it 
 were made of glass, or of air, and the thoughts were 
 written on steel tablets within, it could not publish 
 more truly its meaning than now. Wise men read 
 very sharply all your private history in your look 
 and gait and behaviour. The whole economy of 
 nature is bent on expression. The tell-tale body is 
 all tongues. Men are like Geneva watches with 
 crystal faces which expose the whole movement. 
 They carry the liquor of life flowing up and down in 
 these beautiful bottles, and announcing to the curious 
 how it is with them. The face and eyes reveal what 
 the spirit is doing, how old it is, what aims it has. 
 The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul, or, through 
 how many forms it has already ascended. It almost
 
 144 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [v. 
 
 violates the proprieties, if we say above the breath 
 here what the confessing eyes do not hesitate to 
 utter to every street passenger. 
 
 Man cannot fix his eye on the sun, and so far 
 seems imperfect. In Siberia, a late traveller found 
 men who could see the satellites of Jupiter with their 
 unarmed eye. In some respects the animals excel us. 
 The birds have a longer sight, beside the advantage 
 by their wings of a higher observatory. A cow can 
 bid her calf, by secret signal, probably of the eye, to 
 run away, or to lie down and hide itself. The 
 jockeys say of certain horses, that "they look over 
 the whole ground." The out-door life, and hunting, 
 and labour, give equal vigour to the human eye. A 
 farmer looks out at you as strong as the horse ; his eye- 
 beam is like the stroke of a staff. An eye can threaten 
 like a loaded and levelled gun, or can insult like hiss- 
 ing or kicking ; or, in its altered mood, by beams of 
 kindness, it can make the heart dance with joy. 
 
 The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind. 
 When a thought strikes us, the eyes fix, and remain 
 gazing at a distance; in enumerating the names of 
 persons or of countries, as France, Germany, Spain, 
 Turkey, the eyes wink at each new name. There is 
 no nicety of learning sought by the mind Avhich the 
 eyes do not vie in acquiring. "An artist," said 
 Michel Angel o, " must have his measuring tools not 
 in the hand, but in the eye ; " and there is no end to 
 the catalogue of its performances, whether in indolent 
 vision (that of health and beauty) or in strained 
 vision (that of art and labour).
 
 v.] 
 
 BEHAVIOUR. 145 
 
 Eyes are bold as lions, — roving, running, leaping, 
 here and there, far and near. They speak all 
 languages. They wait for no introduction ; they are 
 no Englishmen ; ask no leave of age, or rank ; they 
 respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning 
 nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come 
 again, and go through and through you, in a moment 
 of time. What inundation of life and thought is 
 discharged from one soul into another, through them ! 
 The glance is natural magic. The mysterious com- 
 munication established across a house between two 
 entire strangers, moves all the springs of wonder. 
 The communication by the glance is in the greatest 
 part not subject to the control of the will. It is the 
 bodily symbol of identity of nature. We look into 
 the eyes to know if this other form is another self, 
 and the eyes will not lie, but make a faithful confession 
 what inhabitant is there. The revelations are some- 
 times terrific. The confession of a low, usurping 
 devil is there made, and the observer shall seem to 
 feel the stirring of owls, and bats, and horned hoofs, 
 where he looked for innocence and simplicity. 'Tis 
 remarkable, too, that the spirit that appears at the 
 windows of the house does at once invest himself in 
 a new form of his own, to the mind of the beholder. 
 
 The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, 
 with the advantage, that the ocular dialect needs no 
 dictionary, but is understood all the world over. 
 When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, 
 a practised man relies on the language of the first. 
 If the man is off his centre, the eyes show it. You 
 
 vol. v. l
 
 146 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [v. 
 
 can read in the eyes of your companion, whether your 
 argument hits him, though his tongue will not confess 
 it. There is a look by which a man shows he is 
 going to say a good thing, and a look when he has 
 said it. Vain and forgotten are all the fine offers and 
 offices of hospitality, if there is no holiday in the eye. 
 How many furtive inclinations avowed by the eye, 
 though dissembled by the lips ! One comes away 
 from a company, in which, it may easily happen, he 
 has said nothing, and no important remark has been 
 addressed to him, and yet, if in sympathy with the 
 society, he shall not have a sense of this fact, such a 
 stream of life has been flowing into him, and out from 
 him, through the eyes. There are eyes, to be sure, 
 that give no more admission into the man than blue- 
 berries. Others are liquid and deep, — wells that a man 
 might fall into ; — others are aggressive and devouring, 
 seem to call out the police, take all too much notice, 
 and require crowded Broadways, and the security of 
 millions, to protect individuals against them. The 
 military eye I meet, now darkly sparkling under 
 clerical, now under rustic brows. 'Tis the city of 
 Lacedsemon; 'tis a stack of bayonets. There are 
 asking eyes, asserting eyes, prowling eyes ; and eyes 
 full of fate, — some of good, and some of sinister omen. 
 The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity 
 in beasts, is a power behind the eye. It must be a 
 victory achieved in the will, before it can be signified 
 in the eye. 'Tis very certain that each man carries in 
 his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense 
 scale of men, and we are always learning to read it.
 
 v.] BEHAVIOUE. 147 
 
 A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his 
 personal presence. Whoever looked on him would 
 consent to his will, being certified that his aims were 
 generous and universal. The reason why men do not 
 obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of 
 our eye. 
 
 If the organ of sight is such a vehicle of power, the 
 other features have their own. A man finds room in 
 the few square inches of the face for the traits of all 
 his ancestors ; for the expression of all his history, 
 and his wants. The sculptor, and Winckelmann, and 
 Lavater, will tell you how significant a feature is the 
 nose ; how its forms express strength or weakness of 
 will, and good or bad temper. The nose of Julius 
 Csesar, of Dante, and of Pitt, suggest " the terrors of 
 the beak." What refinement, and what limitations, 
 the teeth betray! "Beware you don't laugh," said 
 the wise mother, "for then you show all your faults." 
 
 Balzac left in manuscript a chapter, which he called 
 "Thiorie de la d-marche" in which he says: "The 
 look, the voice, the respiration, and the attitude or 
 walk, are identical. But, as it has not been given to 
 man, the power to stand guard, at once, over these 
 four different simultaneous expressions of his thought, 
 watch that one which speaks out the truth, and you 
 will know the whole man." 
 
 Palaces interest us mainly in the exhibition of 
 manners, which, in the idle and expensive society 
 dwelling in them, are raised to a high art. The 
 maxim of courts is, that manner is power. A calm 
 and resolute bearing, a polished sj>eech, an embellish-
 
 148 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [v. 
 
 merit of trifles, and the art of hiding all uncomfortable 
 feeling, are essential to the courtier : and Saint Simon, 
 and Cardinal de Retz, and Eoederer, and an encyclo- 
 paedia of MSmoires, will instruct you, if you wish, in 
 those potent secrets. Thus, it is a point of pride 
 with kings to remember faces and names. It is re- 
 ported of one prince, that his head had the air of 
 leaning downwards, in order not to humble the crowd. 
 There are people who come in ever like a child with 
 a piece of good news. It was said of the late Lord 
 Holland, that he always came down to breakfast with 
 the air of a man who had just met with some signal 
 good fortune. In "Notre Dame," the grandee took 
 his place on the dais with the look of one who is 
 thinking of something else. But we must not peep 
 and eavesdrop at palace doors. 
 
 Fine manners need the support of fine manners in 
 others. A scholar may be a well-bred man, or he 
 may not. The enthusiast is introduced to polished 
 scholars in society, and is chilled and silenced by 
 finding himself not in their element. They all have 
 somewhat which he has not, and, it seems, ought to 
 have. But if he finds the scholar apart from his 
 companions, it is then the enthusiast's turn, and the 
 scholar has no defence, but must deal on his terms. 
 Now they must fight the battle out on their private 
 strengths. What is the talent of that character so 
 common, — the successful man of the world, — in all 
 marts, senates, and drawing - rooms 1 Manners : 
 manners of power; sense to see his advantage, and 
 manners up to it. See him approach his man. He
 
 v.] BEHAVIOUB. 149 
 
 knows that troops behave as they are handled at first ; 
 — that is his cheap secret ; just what happens to every 
 two persons who meet on any affair, — one instantly 
 perceives that he has the key of the situation, that his 
 will comprehends the other's will, as the cat does the 
 mouse ; and he has only to use courtesy, and furnish 
 good-natured reasons to his victim to cover up the 
 chain, lest he be shamed into resistance. 
 
 The theatre in which this science of manners has a 
 formal importance is not with us a court, but dress- 
 circles, wherein, after the close of the day's business, 
 men and women meet at leisure, for mutual entertain- 
 ment, in ornamented drawing-rooms. Of course, it 
 has every variety of attraction and merit; but, to 
 earnest persons, to youths or maidens who have great 
 objects at heart, we cannot extol it highly. A well- 
 dressed, talkative company, where each is bent to 
 amuse the other, — yet the high-born Turk who came 
 hither fancied that every woman seemed to be suffer- 
 ing for a chair ; that all the talkers were brained and 
 exhausted by the deoxygenated air : it spoiled the 
 best persons : it put all on stilts. Yet here are the 
 secret biographies written and read. The aspect of 
 that man is repulsive ; I do not wish to deal with him. 
 The other is irritable, shy, and on his guard. The 
 youth looks humble and manly : I choose him. Look 
 on this woman. There is not beauty, nor brilliant 
 sayings, nor distinguished power to serve you ; but 
 all see her gladly ; her whole air and impression are 
 healthful. Here come the sentimentalists, and the 
 invalids. Here is Elise, who caught cold in coming
 
 150 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [v. 
 
 into the world, and has always inci*eased it since. 
 Here are creep-mouse manners ; and thievish manners. 
 "Look at Northcote," said Fuseli; "he looks like a 
 rat that has seen a cat." In the shallow company, 
 easily excited, easily tired, here is the columnar 
 Bernard : the Alleghanies do not express more repose 
 than his behaviour. Here are the sweet following 
 eyes of Cecile ; it seemed always that she demanded 
 the heart. Nothing can be more excellent in kind 
 than the Corinthian grace of Gertrude's manners, and 
 yet Blanche, who has no manners, has better manners 
 than she ; for the movements of Blanche are the 
 sallies of a spirit which is sufficient for the moment, 
 and she can afford to express every thought by instant 
 action. 
 
 Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to 
 be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a dis- 
 tance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who do not 
 belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions. 
 Society is very swift in its instincts, and, if you do 
 not belong to it, resists and sneers at you ; or quietly 
 drops you. The first weapon enrages the party 
 attacked ; the second is still more effective, but is not 
 to be resisted, as the date of the transaction is not 
 easily found. People grow up and grow old under 
 this infliction, and never suspect the truth, ascribing 
 the solitude which acts on them very injuriously, to 
 any cause but the right one. 
 
 The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Neces- 
 sity is the law of all who are not self-possessed. Those 
 who are not self-possessed, obtrude, and pain us. Some
 
 v.] BEHAVIOUR. 151 
 
 men appear to feel that they belong to a Pariah caste. 
 They fear to offend, they bend and apologise, and 
 walk through life with a timid step. As we some- 
 times dream that we are in a well-dressed company 
 without any coat, so Godfrey acts ever as if he suffered 
 from some mortifying circumstance. The hero should 
 find himself at home, wherever he is ; should impart 
 comfort by his own security and good-nature to all 
 beholders. The hero is suffered to be himself. A 
 person of strong mind comes to perceive that for him 
 an immunity is secured so long as he renders to society 
 that service which is native and proper to him, — an 
 immunity from all the observances, yea, and duties, 
 which society so tyrannically imposes on the rank and 
 file of its members. "Euripides," says Aspasia, "has 
 not the fine manners of Sophocles ; but," — she adds 
 good-humouredly, "the movers and masters of our 
 souls have surely a right to throw out their limbs as 
 carelessly as they please, on the world that belongs to 
 them, and before the creatures they have animated." 1 
 Manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar 
 than haste. Friendship should be surrounded with 
 ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners. 
 Friendship requires more time than poor busy men 
 can usually command. Here comes to me Eoland, 
 with a delicacy of sentiment leading and inwrapping 
 him like a divine cloud or holy ghost. 'Tis a great 
 destitution to both that this should not be entertained 
 with large leisures, but contrariwise should be balked 
 by importunate affairs. 
 
 1 Laiidor : Pericles and Aspasia.
 
 152 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [v. 
 
 But through this lustrous varnish, the reality is 
 ever shining. 'Tis hard to keep the what from break- 
 ing through this pretty painting of the how. The 
 core will come to the surface. Strong will and keen 
 perception overpower old manners, and create new : 
 and the thought of the present moment has a greater 
 value than all the past. In persons of character, we 
 do not remark manners, because of their instan- 
 taneousness. We are surprised by the thing done, 
 out of all power to watch the way of it. Yet 
 nothing is more charming than to recognise the 
 great style which runs through the actions of such. 
 People masquerade before us in their fortunes, titles, 
 offices, and connections, as academic or civil presidents, 
 or senators, or professors, or great lawyers, and im- 
 pose on the frivolous, and a good deal on each other, 
 by these fames. At least, it is a point of prudent 
 good manners to treat these reputations tenderly, as 
 if they were merited. But the sad realist knows 
 these fellows at a glance, and they know him; as 
 when in Paris the chief of the police enters a ball- 
 room, so many diamonded pretenders shrink and 
 make themselves as inconspicuous as they can, or 
 give him a supplicating look as they pass. " I had 
 received," said a sibyl, " I had received at birth the 
 fatal gift of penetration:" — and these Cassandras 
 are always born. 
 
 Manners impress as they indicate real power. A 
 man who is sure of his point, carries a broad and 
 contented expression, which everybody reads. And 
 you cannot rightly train one to an air and manner,
 
 v.] BEHAVIOUR. 153 
 
 except by making him the kind of man of whom 
 that manner is the natural expression. Nature for 
 ever puts a premium on reality. What is done for 
 effect, is seen to he done for effect ; what is done for 
 love, is felt to be done for love. A man inspires 
 affection and honour, because he was not lying in 
 wait for these. The things of a man for which we 
 visit him, were done in the dark and the cold. A 
 little integrity is better than any career. So deep 
 are the sources of this surface-action, that even the 
 size of your companion seems to vary with his 
 freedom of thought. Not only is he larger, when 
 at ease, and his thoughts generous, but everything 
 around him becomes variable with expression. No 
 carpenter's rule, no rod and chain, will measure the 
 dimensions of any house or house -lot: go into the 
 house : if the proprietor is constrained and deferring, 
 'tis of no importance how large his house, how 
 beautiful his grounds, — you quickly come to the end 
 of all : but if the man is self-possessed, happy, and at 
 home, his house is deep -founded, indefinitely large 
 and interesting, the roof and dome buoyant as the 
 sky. Under the humblest roof, the commonest per- 
 son in plain clothes sits there massive, cheerful, yet 
 formidable like the Egyptian colossi. 
 
 Neither Aristotle, nor Leibnitz, nor Junius, nor 
 Champollion has set down the grammar rules of this 
 dialect, older than Sanscrit; but they who cannot 
 yet read English, can read this. Men take each 
 other's measure, when they meet for the first time, — 
 and every time they meet. How do they get this
 
 154 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [v. 
 
 rapid knowledge, even before they speak, of each 
 other's power and dispositions? One would say, 
 that the persuasion of their speech is not in what 
 they say, — or, that men do not convince by their 
 argument, — but by their personality, by who they 
 are, and what they said and did heretofore. A 
 man already strong is listened to, and everything 
 he says is applauded. Another opposes him with 
 sound argument, but the argument is scouted, until 
 by and by it gets into the mind of some weighty 
 person ; then it begins to tell on the community. 
 
 Self-reliance is the basis of behaviour, as it is the 
 guaranty that the powers are not squandered in too 
 much demonstration. In this country, where school 
 education is universal, we have a superficial culture, 
 and a profusion of reading and writing and expres- 
 sion. We parade our nobilities in poems and orations, 
 instead of working them up into happiness. There 
 is a whisper out of the ages to him who can under- 
 stand it, — " whatever is known to thyself alone, has 
 always very great value." There is some reason to 
 believe that, when a man does not write his poetry, 
 it escapes by other vents through him, instead of the 
 one vent of writing ; clings to his form and manners, 
 whilst poets have often nothing poetical about them 
 except their verses. Jacobi said that " when a man 
 has fully expressed his thought, he has somewhat less 
 possession of it." One would say, the rule is, — What 
 a man is irresistibly urged to say, helps him and us. In 
 explaining his thought to others, he explains it to him- 
 self : but when he opens it for show, it corrupts him.
 
 v.] BEHAVIOUE. 155 
 
 Society is the stage on which manners are shown j 
 novels are their literature. Novels are the journal or 
 record of manners ; and the new importance of these 
 books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins 
 to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life 
 more worthily. The novels used to be all alike, and 
 had a quite vulgar tone. The novels used to lead us 
 on to a foolish interest in the fortunes of the boy and 
 girl they described. The boy was to be raised from 
 a humble to a high position. He was in want of a 
 wife and a castle, and the object of the story was to 
 supply him with one or both. We watched sympa- 
 thetically, step by step, his climbing, until, at last, 
 the point is gained, the wedding day is fixed, and we 
 follow the gala procession home to the castle, when 
 the doors are slammed in our face, and the poor 
 reader is left outside in the cold, not enriched by so 
 much as an idea, or a virtuous impulse. 
 
 But the victories of character are instant, and 
 victories for all. Its greatness enlarges all. We are 
 fortified by every heroic anecdote. The novels are 
 as useful as Bibles, if they teach you the secret that 
 the best of life is conversation, and the greatest success 
 is confidence, or perfect understanding between sincere 
 people. 'Tis a French definition of friendship, rien 
 que s'entendre, good understanding. The highest com- 
 pact we can make with our fellow is, — "Let there be 
 truth between us two for evermore." That is the 
 charm in all good novels, as it is the charm in all 
 good histories, that the heroes mutually understand, 
 from the first, and deal loyally, and with a profound
 
 156 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [v. 
 
 trust in each other. It is sublime to feel and say of 
 another, I need never meet, or speak, or write to 
 him : we need not reinforce ourselves, or send tokens 
 of remembrance : I rely on him as on myself : if he 
 did thus or thus, I know it was right. 
 
 In all the superior people I have met, I notice 
 directness, truth spoken more truly, as if everything 
 of obstruction, of malformation, had been trained 
 away. What have they to conceal? What have 
 they to exhibit 1 Between simple and noble persons, 
 there is always a quick intelligence : they recognise 
 at sight, and meet on a better ground than the talents 
 and skills they may chance to possess, namely, on 
 sincerity and uprightness. For, it is not what talents 
 or genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, that 
 constitutes friendship and character. The man that 
 stands by himself, the universe stands by him also. 
 It is related of the monk Basle, that, being excom- 
 municated by the Pope, he was, at his death, sent in 
 charge of an angel to find a fit place of suffering in 
 hell ; but, such was the eloquence and good-humour 
 of the monk, that wherever he went he was received 
 gladly, and civilly treated, even by the most uncivil 
 angels : and, when he came to discourse with them, 
 instead of contradicting or forcing him, they took his 
 part, and adopted his manners : and even good angels 
 came from far, to see him, and take up their abode 
 with him. The angel that was sent to find a place of 
 torment for him, attempted to remove him to a worse 
 pit, but with no better success ; for such was the con- 
 tented spirit of the monk, that he found something to
 
 v.] 
 
 BEHAVIOUR. 157 
 
 praise in every place and company, though in hell, 
 and made a kind of heaven of it. At last the escort- 
 ing angel returned with his prisoner to them that 
 sent him, saying that no phlegethon could be found 
 that would burn him ; for that, in whatever condition, 
 Basle remained incorrigibly Basle. The legend says 
 his sentence was remitted, and he was allowed to go 
 into heaven, and was canonised as a saint. 
 
 There is a stroke of magnanimity in the corre- 
 spondence of Bonaparte with his brother Joseph, 
 when the latter was King of Spain, and complained 
 that he missed in Napoleon's letters the affectionate 
 tone which had marked their childish correspondence. 
 " I am sorry," replies Napoleon, " you think you shall 
 find your brother again only in the Elysian Fields. 
 It is natural, that at forty, he should not feel towards 
 you as he did at twelve. But his feelings towards 
 you have greater truth and strength. His friendship 
 has the features of his mind." 
 
 How much we forgive to those who yield us the 
 rare spectacle of heroic manners ! We will pardon 
 them the want of books, of arts, and even of the 
 gentler virtues. How tenaciously we remember them ! 
 Here is a lesson which I brought along with me in 
 boyhood from the Latin School, and which ranks 
 with the best of Boman anecdotes. Marcus Scaurus 
 was accused by Quintus Varius Hispanus, that he had 
 excited the allies to take arms against the Kepublic. 
 But he, full of firmness and gravity, defended himself 
 in this manner: "Quintus Varius Hispanus alleges 
 that Marcus Scaurus, President of the Senate, excited
 
 158 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [v. 
 
 the allies to arms : Marcus Scaurus, President of the 
 Senate, denies it. There is no witness. Which do 
 you believe, Eomans?" " Utri creditis, Quirites?" 
 When he had said these words, he was absolved 
 by the assembly of the people. 
 
 I have seen manners that make a similar impression 
 with personal beauty ; that give the like exhilaration, 
 and refine us like that; and, in memorable experi- 
 ences, they are suddenly better than beauty, and 
 make that superfluous and ugly. But they must be 
 marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real 
 beauty. They must always show self-control : you 
 shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over 
 your word ; and every gesture and action shall indicate 
 power at rest. Then they must be inspired by the 
 good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or 
 form, or behaviour, like the wish to scatter joy and 
 not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, 
 or a night's lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable 
 to his good meaning and thought, and give courage 
 to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man 
 as we are to a picture, which we are willing to 
 give the advantage of a good light. Special precepts 
 are not to be thought of : the talent of well-doing 
 contains them all. Every hour will show a duty as 
 paramount as that of my whim just now ; and yet I 
 will write it, — that there is one topic peremptorily 
 forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, 
 namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if 
 you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, 
 or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you by all
 
 v.] BEHAVIOUR. 159 
 
 angels to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning, 
 to which all the housemates bring serene and pleasant 
 thoughts, by corruption and groans. Come out of the 
 azure. Love the day. Do not leave the sky out of 
 your landscape. The oldest and the most deserving 
 person should come very modestly into any newly 
 aAvaked company, respecting the divine communica- 
 tions, out of which all must be presumed to have 
 newly come. An old man who added an elevating 
 culture to a large experience of life, said to me, 
 " When you come into the room, I think I will study 
 how to make humanity beautiful to you." 
 
 As respects the delicate question of culture, I do 
 not think that any other than negative rules can be 
 laid down. For positive rules, for suggestion, Nature 
 alone inspires it. Who dare assume to guide a youth, 
 a maid, to perfect manners 1 — the golden mean is so 
 delicate, difficult, — say frankly, unattainable. What 
 finest hands would not be clumsy to sketch the genial 
 precepts of the young girl's demeanour 1 The chances 
 seem infinite against success ; and yet success is con- 
 tinually attained. There must not be secondariness, 
 and 'tis a thousand to one that her air and manner 
 will at once betray that she is not primary, but that 
 there is some other one or many of her class, to whom 
 she habitually postpones herself. But Nature Kfts her 
 easily, and without knowing it, over these impossi- 
 bilities, and we are continually surprised with graces 
 and felicities not only unteachable, but undescribable.
 
 VI. 
 
 WORSHIP. 
 
 This is lie, who, felled by foes, 
 
 Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows. 
 
 He to captivity was sold, 
 
 But him no prison-bars would hold : 
 
 Though they sealed him in a rock, 
 
 Mountain chains he can unlock : 
 
 Thrown to lions for their meat, 
 
 The crouching lion kissed his feet : 
 
 Bound to the stake, no flames appalled, 
 
 But arched o'er him an honouring vault. 
 
 This is he men miscall Fate, 
 
 Threading dark ways, arriving late, 
 
 But ever coming in time to crown 
 
 The truth, and hurl wrongdoers down. 
 
 He is the oldest, and best known, 
 
 More near than aught thou call'st thy own, 
 
 Yet, greeted in another's eyes, 
 
 Disconcerts with glad surprise. 
 
 This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers, 
 
 Floods with blessings unawares. 
 
 Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, 
 
 Severing rightly his from thine, 
 
 "Which is human, which divine. 
 
 VOL. V. M
 
 WORSHIP. 
 
 Some of my friends have complained, when the pre- 
 ceding papers were read, that we discussed Fate, 
 Power, and Wealth, on too low a platform ; gave too 
 much line to the evil spirit of the times ; too many 
 cakes to Cerberus; that we ran Cudworth's risk of 
 making, by excess of candour, the argument of atheism 
 so strong, that he could not answer it. I have no 
 fears of being forced in my own despite to play, as 
 we say, the devil's attorney. I have no infirmity of 
 faith ; no belief that it is of much importance what I 
 or any man may say : I am sure that a certain truth 
 will be said through me, though I should be dumb, 
 or though I should try to say the reverse. Nor do 
 I fear scepticism for any good soul. A just thinker 
 will allow full swing to his scepticism. I dip my pen 
 in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling 
 into my ink-pot. I have no sympathy with a poor 
 man I knew, who, when suicides abounded, told me 
 he dared not look at his razor. We are of different 
 opinions at different hours, but we always may be said 
 to be at heart on the side of truth. 
 
 I see not why we should give ourselves such
 
 164 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vi. 
 
 sanctified airs. If the Divine Providence has hid 
 from men neither disease, nor deformity, nor corrupt 
 society, but has stated itself out in passions, in war, 
 in trade, in the love of power and pleasure, in hunger 
 and need, in tyrannies, literatures, and arts, — let us 
 not be so nice that we cannot write these facts down 
 coarsely as they stand, or doubt but there is a counter- 
 statement as ponderous, which we can arrive at, and 
 which, being put, will make all square. The solar 
 system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the 
 credit of truth and honesty is as safe ; nor have I any 
 fear that a sceptical bias can be given by leaning hard 
 on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, 
 which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh. The 
 strength of that principle is not measured in ounces 
 and pounds : it tyrannises at the centre of Nature. 
 We may well give scepticism as much line as we can. 
 The spirit will return, and fill us. It drives the 
 drivers. It counterbalances any accumulations of 
 power. 
 
 "Heaven kindly gave our blood a moral flow." 
 
 We are born loyal. The whole creation is made of 
 hooks and eyes, of bitumen, of sticking-plaster, and 
 whether your community is made in Jerusalem or in 
 California, of saints or of wreckers, it coheres in a 
 perfect ball. Men as naturally make a state, or a 
 church, as caterpillars a web. If they were more 
 refined, it would be less formal, it would be nervous, 
 like that of the Shakers, who, from long habit of 
 thinking and feeling together, it is said, are affected 
 in the same way, at the same time, to work and to
 
 vi.] WORSHir. 1G5 
 
 play, and as they go with perfect sympathy to their 
 tasks in the field or shop, so are they inclined for a 
 ride or a journey at the same instant, and the horses 
 come up with the family carriage unbespoken to the 
 door. 
 
 We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as 
 a tree bears apples. A self-poise belongs to every 
 particle ; and a rectitude to every mind, and is the 
 Nemesis and protector of every society. I and my 
 neighbours have been bred in the notion, that, unless 
 we came soon to some good church, — Calvinism, or 
 Behmenism, or Eomanism, or Mormonism, — there 
 would be a universal thaw and dissolution. No Isaiah 
 or Jeremy has arrived. Nothing can exceed the 
 anarchy that has followed in our skies. The stem 
 old faiths have all pulverised. Tis a whole popula- 
 tion of gentlemen and ladies out in search of religions. 
 'Tis as flat anarchy in our ecclesiastic realms, as 
 that which existed in Massachusetts, in the Revolu- 
 tion, or which prevails now on the slope of the Rocky 
 Mountains or Pike's Peak. Yet we make shift to 
 live. Men are loyal. Nature has self-poise in all her 
 works; certain proportions in which oxygen and 
 azote combine, and, not less a harmony in faculties, a 
 fitness in the spring and the regulator. 
 
 The decline of the influence of Calvin, or Fenelon, 
 or Wesley, or Channing, need give us no uneasiness. 
 The builder of heaven has not so ill constructed his 
 creature as that the religion, that is, the public nature, 
 should fall out : the public and the private element, 
 like north and south, like inside and outside, like
 
 1C6 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vi. 
 
 centrifugal and centripetal, adheres to every soul, and 
 cannot be subdued, except the soul is dissipated. 
 God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of 
 churches and religions. 
 
 In the last chapters we treated some particulars 
 of the question of culture. But the whole state of 
 man is a state of culture ; and its flowering and com- 
 pletion may be described as Eeligion, or Worship. 
 There is always some religion, some hope and fear 
 extended into the invisible, — from the blind boding 
 which nails a horse-shoe to the mast or the threshold, 
 up to the song of the Elders in the Apocalypse. But 
 the religion cannot rise above the state of the votary. 
 Heaven always bears some proportion to earth. The 
 god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders 
 a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant. In all 
 ages, souls out of time, extraordinary, prophetic, are 
 born, who are rather related to the system of the 
 world, than to their particular age and locality. 
 These announce absolute truths, which, with what- 
 ever reverence received, are speedily dragged down 
 into a savage interpretation. The interior tribes of 
 our Indians, and some of the Pacific islanders, flog 
 their gods when things take an unfavourable turn. 
 The Greek poets did not hesitate to let loose their 
 petulant wit on their deities also. Laomedon, in his 
 anger at Neptune and Apollo, who had built Troy 
 for him, and demanded their price, does not hesitate 
 to menace them that he will cut their ears off. 1 
 Among our Norse forefathers, King Olaf's mode of 
 
 1 Iliad, Book xxi. 1. 455.
 
 vi.] WORSHIP. 167 
 
 converting Eyvind to Christianity was to put a pan 
 of glowing coals on his belly, which burst asunder. 
 "Wilt thou now, Eyvind, believe in Christ 1" asks 
 Olaf, in excellent faith. Another argument was an 
 adder put into the mouth of the reluctant disciple 
 Band, who refused to believe. 
 
 Christianity, in the romantic ages, signified Euro- 
 pean culture, — the grafted or meliorated tree in a 
 crab forest. And to marry a pagan wife or husband, 
 was to marry Beast, and voluntarily to take a step 
 backwards towards the baboon. 
 
 ' ' Hengist had verament 
 A daughter both fair and gent, 
 But she was heathen Sarazine, 
 And Vortigern for love fine 
 Her took to fere and to wife, 
 And was cursed in all his life ; 
 For he let Christian wed heathen, 
 And mixed our blood as flesh and niathen." 1 
 
 What Gothic mixtures the Christian creed drew from 
 the pagan sources, Bichard of Devizes's chronicle of 
 Bichard I.'s crusade, in the twelfth century, may 
 show. King Bichard taunts God with forsaking him : 
 " fie ! how unwilling should I be to forsake 
 thee, in so forlorn and dreadful a position, were I thy 
 lord and advocate, as thou art mine. In sooth, my 
 standards will in future be despised, not through my 
 fault, but through thine ; in sooth, not through any 
 cowardice of my warfare, art thou thyself, my king 
 and my God, conquered, this day, and not Bichard 
 thy vassal." The religion of the early English poets 
 1 Moths or worms.
 
 168 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vi. 
 
 is anomalous, so devout and so blasphemous in the 
 same breath. Such is Chaucer's extraordinary con- 
 fusion of heaven and earth in the picture of Dido. 
 
 " She was so fair, 
 So young, so lusty, with her eyen glad, 
 That if that God that heaven and earthe made 
 Would have a love for beauty and goodness, 
 And womanhede, truth, and seemliness, 
 Whom should he loven but this lady sweet ? 
 There n' is no woman to him half so meet. " 
 
 With these grossnesses, we complacently compare 
 our own taste and decorum. We think and speak 
 with more temperance and gradation, — but is not 
 indifferentism as bad as superstition 1 
 
 We live in a transition period, when the old faiths 
 which comforted nations, and not only so, but made 
 nations, seem to have spent their force. I do not 
 find the religions of men at this moment very credit- 
 able to them, but either childish and insignificant, 
 or unmanly and effeminating. The fatal trait is the 
 divorce between religion and morality. Here are 
 know-nothing religions, or churches that proscribe 
 intellect ; scortatory religions ; slave -holding and 
 slave-trading religions ; and, even in the decent popu- 
 lations, idolatries wherein the whiteness of the ritual 
 covers scarlet indulgence. The lover of the old re- 
 ligion complains that our contemporaries, scholars as 
 well as merchants, succumb to a great despair, — have 
 corrupted into a timorous conservatism, and believe 
 in nothing. In our large cities the population is 
 godless, materialised, — no bond, no fellow-feeling, no 
 enthusiasm. These are not men, but hungers, thirsts,
 
 VI.] WORSHIP. 169 
 
 fevers, and appetites walking. How is it people 
 manage to live on, — so aimless as they are 1 ? After 
 their peppercorn aims are gained, it seems as if the 
 lime in their bones alone held them together, and not 
 any worthy purpose. There is no faith in the intel- 
 lectual, none in the moral universe. There is faith in 
 chemistry, in meat, and wine, in wealth, in machinery, 
 in the steam-engine, galvanic battery, turbine-wheels, 
 sewing-machines, and in public opinion, but not in 
 divine causes. A silent revolution has loosed the 
 tension of the old religious sects, and, in place of the 
 gravity and permanence of those societies of opinion, 
 they run into freak and extravagance. In creeds 
 never was such levity; witness the heathenisms in 
 Christianity, the periodic "revivals," the Millennium 
 mathematics, the peacock ritualism, the retrogression 
 to Popery, the maundering of Mormons, the squalor 
 of Mesmerism, the deliration of rappings, the rat 
 and mouse revelation, thumps in table-drawers, and 
 black art. The architecture, the music, the prayer, 
 partake of the madness : the arts sink into shift and 
 make-believe. Not knowing what to do, we ape our 
 ancestors; the churches stagger backward to the 
 mummeries of the dark ages. By the irresistible 
 maturing of the general mind, the Christian traditions 
 have lost their hold. The dogma of the mystic offices 
 of Christ being dropped, and he standing on his genius 
 as a moral teacher, 'tis impossible to maintain the old 
 emphasis of his personality; and it recedes, as all 
 persons must, before the sublimity of the moral laws. 
 From this change, and in the momentary absence of
 
 170 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vi. 
 
 any religious genius that could offset the immense 
 material activity, there is a feeling that religion is 
 gone. When Paul Leroux offered his article " Dieu" 
 to the conductor of a leading French journal, he 
 replied, "La question de Dieu manque d'actualite 1 ." In 
 Italy, Mr. Gladstone said of the late King of Naples, 
 "It has been a proverb, that he has erected the 
 negation of God into a system of government." In 
 this country, the like stupefaction was in the air, and 
 the phrase "higher law" became a political jibe. 
 What proof of infidelity, like the toleration and pro- 
 pagandism of slavery 1 ? What, like the direction of 
 education? What, like the facility of conversion 1 ? 
 What, like the externality of churches that once 
 sucked the roots of right and wrong, and now have 
 perished away till they are a speck of whitewash on 
 the wall? What proof of scepticism like the base 
 rate at which the highest mental and moral gifts are 
 held? Let a man attain the highest and broadest 
 culture that any American has possessed, then let him 
 die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other accident, 
 and all America will acquiesce that the best thing has 
 happened to him ; that, after the education has gone 
 far, such is the expensiveness of America, that the 
 best use to put a fine person to is to drown him to 
 save his board. 
 
 Another scar of this scepticism is the distrust in 
 human virtue. It is believed by well-dressed pro- 
 prietors that there is no more virtue than they pos- 
 sess ; that the solid portion of society exists for the 
 arts of comfort : that life is an affair to put somewhat
 
 VI.] WORSHIP. 171 
 
 between the upper and lower mandibles. How prompt 
 the suggestion of a low motive ! Certain patriots in 
 England devoted themselves for years to creating a 
 public opinion that should break down the corn-laws 
 and establish free trade. "Well," says the man in 
 the street, " Cobden got a stipend out of it." Kossuth 
 fled hither across the ocean to try if he could rouse 
 the New World to a sympathy with European liberty. 
 "Ay," says New York, "he made a handsome thing 
 of it, enough to make him comfortable for life." 
 
 See what allowance vice finds in the respectable 
 and well-conditioned class. If a pickpocket intrude 
 into the society of gentlemen, they exert what moral 
 force they have, and he finds himself uncomfortable, 
 and glad to get away. But if an adventurer go 
 through all the forms, procure himself to be elected 
 to a post of trust, as of senator, or president, — though 
 by the same arts as we detest in the house-thief,— the 
 same gentlemen who agree to discountenance the 
 private rogue, will be forward to show civilities and 
 marks of respect to the public one : and no amount 
 of evidence of his crimes will prevent them giving him 
 ovations, complimentary dinners, opening their own 
 houses to him, and priding themselves on his acquaint- 
 ance. We were not deceived by the professions of 
 the private adventurer, — the louder he talked of his 
 honour, the faster we counted our spoons; but we 
 appeal to the sanctified preamble of the messages and 
 proclamations of the public sinner, as the proof of 
 sincerity. It must be that they who pay this homage 
 have said to themselves, On the whole, we don't know
 
 172 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vi. 
 
 about this that you call honesty ; a bird in the hand 
 is better. 
 
 Even well-disposed, good sort of people are touched 
 with the same infidelity, and for brave, straight- 
 forward action, use half -measures and compromises. 
 Forgetful that a little measure is a great error, forget- 
 ful that a wise mechanic uses a sharp tool, they go on 
 choosing the dead men of routine. But the official 
 men can in nowise help you in any question of to-day, 
 they deriving entirely from the old dead things. Only 
 those can help in counsel or conduct who did not 
 make a party pledge to defend this or that, but who 
 were appointed by God Almighty, before they came 
 into the world, to stand for this which they uphold. 
 
 It has been charged that a want of sincerity in 
 the leading men is a vice general throughout American 
 society. But the multitude of the sick shall not make 
 us deny the existence of health. In spite of our im- 
 becility and terrors, and "universal decay of religion," 
 etc. etc., the moral sense reappears to-day with the 
 same morning newness that has been from of old the 
 fountain of beauty and strength. You say, there is 
 no religion now. 'Tis like saying in rainy weather, 
 there is no sun, when at that moment we are wit- 
 nessing one of his superlative effects. The religion 
 of the cultivated class now, to be sure, consists in an 
 avoidance of acts and engagements which it was once 
 their religion to assume. But this avoidance will 
 yield spontaneous forms in their due hour. There is 
 a principle which is the basis of things, which all 
 speech aims to say, and all action to evolve, a simple,
 
 vi.] WOKSIIIP. 173 
 
 quiet, undescribed, undescribable presence, dwelling 
 very peacefully in us, our rightful lord ; we are not 
 to do, but to let do ; not to work, but to be worked 
 upon ; and to this homage there is a consent of all 
 thoughtful and just men in all ages and conditions. 
 To this sentiment belong vast and sudden enlarge- 
 ments of power. Tis remarkable that our faith in 
 ecstasy consists with total inexperience of it. It is the 
 order of the world to educate with accuracy the senses 
 and the understanding ; and the enginery at work to 
 draw out these powers in priority, no doubt, has its 
 office. But we are never without a hint that these 
 powers are mediate and servile, and that we are one 
 day to deal with real being, — essences with essences. 
 Even the fury of material activity has some results 
 friendly to moral health. The energetic action of the 
 times develops individualism, and the religious appear 
 isolated. I esteem this a step in the right direction. 
 Heaven deals with us on no representative system. 
 Souls are not saved in bundles. The Spirit saith to 
 the man, " How is it with thee 1 thee personally 1 is 
 it well? is it ill 1 ?" For a great nature, it is a happi- 
 ness to escape a religious training, — religion of char- 
 acter is so apt to be invaded. Eeligion must always 
 be a crab fruit : it cannot be grafted and keep its 
 wild beauty. "I have seen," said a traveller who 
 had known the extremes of society, "I have seen 
 human nature in all its forms, it is everywhere the 
 same, but the wilder it is, the more virtuous." 
 
 We say, the old forms of religion decay, and that 
 a scepticism devastates the community. I do not
 
 174 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vi. 
 
 think it can be cured or stayed by any modification 
 of theologic creeds, much less by theologic discipline. 
 The cure for false theology is motherwit. Forget 
 your books and traditions, and obey your moral per- 
 ceptions at this hour. That which is signified by the 
 words "moral" and "spiritual," is a lasting essence, 
 and, with whatever illusions we have loaded them, 
 will certainly bring back the words, age after age, to 
 their ancient meaning. I know no words that mean 
 so much. In our definitions, we grope after the 
 spiritual by describing it as invisible. The true mean- 
 ing of spiritual is real ; that law which executes itself, 
 which works without means, and which cannot be 
 conceived as not existing. Men talk of "mere 
 morality," — which is much as if one should say, " poor 
 God, with nobody to help him." I find the omni- 
 presence and the almightiness in the reaction of every 
 atom in Nature. I can best indicate by examples 
 those reactions by which every part of Nature replies 
 to the purpose of the actor, — beneficently to the good, 
 penally to the bad. Let us replace sentimentalism 
 by realism, and dare to uncover those simple and 
 terrible laws which, be they seen or unseen, pervade 
 and govern. 
 
 Every man takes care that his neighbour shall not 
 cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care 
 that he do not cheat his neighbour. Then all goes 
 well. He has changed his market-cart into a chariot 
 of the sun. What a day dawns, when we have taken 
 to heart the doctrine of faith ! to prefer, as a better 
 investment, being to doing ; being to seeming ; logic
 
 VI.] WORSHIP. 175 
 
 to rhythm and to display ; the year to the day ; the 
 life to the year; character to performance; — and 
 have come to know that justice will be done us ; and, 
 if our geuius is slow, the term will he long. 
 
 'Tis certain that worship stands in some command- 
 ing relation to the health of man, and to his highest 
 powers, so as to be, in some manner, the source of 
 intellect. All the great ages have been ages of belief. 
 I mean, when there was any extraordinary power of 
 performance, when great national movements began, 
 Avhen arts appeared, when heroes existed, when poems 
 were made, the human soul was in earnest, and had 
 fixed its thoughts on spiritual verities, with as strict 
 a grasp as that of the hands on the sword, or the 
 pencil, or the trowel. It is true that genius takes its 
 rise out of the mountains of rectitude ; that all beauty 
 and power which men covet, are somehow born out 
 of that alpine district ; that any extraordinary degree 
 of beauty in man or woman involves a moral charm. 
 Thus, I think, we very slowly admit in another man 
 a higher degree of moral sentiment than our own, — 
 a finer conscience, more impressionable, or, which 
 marks minuter degrees ; an ear to hear acuter notes 
 of right and wrong, than we can. I think we listen 
 suspiciously and very slowly to any evidence to that 
 point. But, once satisfied of such superiority, we set 
 no limit to our expectation of his genius. For such 
 persons are nearer to the secret of God than others ; 
 are bathed by sweeter waters ; they hear notices, they 
 see visions, where others are vacant. We believe 
 that holiness confers a certain insight, because not by
 
 176 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vi. 
 
 our private, but by our public force, can we share and 
 know the nature of things. 
 
 There is an intimate interdependence of intellect 
 and morals. Given the equality of two intellects, — 
 which will form the most reliable judgments, the good, 
 or the bad hearted 1 " The heart has its arguments, 
 with which the understanding is not acquainted." 
 For the heart is at once aware of the state of health 
 or disease, which is the controlling state, that is, of 
 sanity or of insanity, prior, of course, to all question 
 of the ingenuity of arguments, the amount of facts, or 
 the elegance of rhetoric. So intimate is this alliance 
 of mind and heart, that talent uniformly sinks with 
 character. The bias of errors of principle carries away 
 men into perilous courses, as soon as their will does 
 not control their passion or talent. Hence the extra- 
 ordinary blunders, and final wrong head, into which 
 men spoiled by ambition usually fall. Hence the 
 remedy for all blunders, the cure of blindness, the 
 cure of crime, is love. "As much love, so much 
 mind," said the Latin proverb. The superiority that 
 has no superior ; the redeemer and instructor of souls, 
 as it is their primal essence, is love. 
 
 The moral must be the measure of health. If your 
 eye is on the eternal, your intellect will grow, and 
 your opinions and actions will have a beauty which 
 no learning or combined advantages of other men can 
 rival. The moment of your loss of faith, and accept- 
 ance of the lucrative standard, will be marked in the 
 pause, or solstice of genius, the sequent retrogression, 
 and the inevitable loss of attraction to other minds.
 
 vi.] WORSHIP. 177 
 
 The vulgar are sensible of the change in yon, and of 
 your descent, though they clap you on the hack, and 
 congratulate you on your increased common sense. 
 
 Our recent culture has been in natural science. 
 AVe have learned the manners of the sun and of the 
 moon, of the rivers and the rains, of the mineral and 
 elemental kingdoms, of plants and animals. Man has 
 learned to weigh the sun, and its weight neither loses 
 nor gains. The path of a star, the moment of an 
 eclipse, can be determined to the fraction of a second. 
 Well, to him the book of history, the book of love, 
 the lures of passion, and the commandments of duty 
 are opened : and the next lesson taught is the con- 
 tinuation of the inflexible law of matter into the 
 subtile kingdom of will, and of thought ; that if, in 
 sidereal ages, gravity and projection keep their craft, 
 and the ball never loses its way in its wild path through 
 space, — a secreter gravitation, a secreter projection, 
 rule not less tyrannically in human history, and keep 
 the balance of power from age to age unbroken. For, 
 though the new element of freedom and an individual 
 has been admitted, yet the primordial atoms are pre- 
 figured and predetermined to moral issues, are in 
 search of justice, and ultimate right is done. Eeligion 
 or worship is the attitude of those who see this unity, 
 intimacy, and sincerity ; Avho see that, against all 
 appearances, the nature of things works for truth and 
 right for ever. 
 
 'Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to 
 those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. 
 Those laws do not stop where our eyes lose them, but 
 
 vol. v. N
 
 178 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vi. 
 
 push the same geometry and chemistry up into the 
 invisible plane of social and rational life, so that, look 
 where we will, in a boy's game, or in the strifes of races, 
 a perfect reaction, a perpetual judgment, keeps watch 
 and ward. And this appears in a class of facts which 
 concerns all men, within and above their creeds. 
 
 Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circum- 
 stances : It was somebody's name, or he happened to 
 be there at the time, or it was so then, and another 
 day it would have been otherwise. Strong men be- 
 lieve in cause and effect. The man was born to do 
 it, and his father was born to be the father of him 
 and of this deed, and, by looking narrowly, you shall 
 see there was no luck in the matter, but it was all a 
 problem in arithmetic, or an experiment in chemistry. 
 The curve of the flight of the moth is preordained, 
 and all things go by number, rule, and weight. 
 
 Scepticism is unbelief in cause and effect. A man 
 does not see, that, as he eats, so he thinks : as he deals, 
 so he is, and so he appears ; he does not see that his 
 son is the son of his thoughts and of his actions ; that 
 fortunes are not exceptions but fruits ; that relation 
 and connection are not somewhere and sometimes, but 
 everywhere and always; no miscellany, no exemption, 
 no anomaly, — but method, and an even web ; and 
 what comes out, that was put in. As we are, so we 
 do; and as we do, so is it done to us; we are the 
 builders of our fortunes ; cant and lying and the 
 attempt to secure a good which does not belong to 
 us, are, once for all, balked and vain. But, in the 
 human mind, this tie of fate is made alive. The law
 
 vi.] WOESHIP. 179 
 
 is the basis of the human mind. In us it is inspira- 
 tion; out there in Nature we see its fatal strength. 
 We call it the moral sentiment. 
 
 We owe to the Hindoo Scriptures a definition of 
 Law, which compares well with any in our Western 
 books. " Law it is, which is without name, or colour, 
 or hands, or feet ; which is smallest of the least, and 
 largest of the large ; all, and knowing all things ; 
 which hears without ears, sees without eyes, moves 
 without feet, and seizes without hands." 
 
 If any reader tax me with using vague and 
 traditional phrases, let me suggest to him, by a few 
 examples, what kind of a trust this is, and how real. 
 Let me show him that the dice are loaded ; that the 
 colours are fast, because they are the native colours 
 of the fleece ; that the globe is a battery, because 
 every atom is a magnet ; and that the police and 
 sincerity of the Universe are secured by God's dele- 
 gating his divinity to every particle ; that there is no 
 room for hypocrisy, no margin for choice. 
 
 The countryman leaving his native village, for the 
 first time, and going abroad, finds all his habits 
 broken up. In a new nation and language, his sect, 
 as Quaker, or Lutheran, is lost. What ! it is not 
 then necessary to the order and existence of society ? 
 He misses this, and the commanding eye of his neigh- 
 bourhood, which held him to decorum. This is the 
 peril of New York, of New Orleans, of London, of 
 Paris, to young men. But after a little experience, 
 he makes the discovery that there are no large cities, 
 — none large enough to hide in ; that the censors of
 
 180 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vi. 
 
 action are as numerous and as near in Paris, as in 
 Littleton or Portland ; that the gossip is as prompt 
 and vengeful. There is no concealment, and, for each 
 offence, a several vengeance ; that reaction, or nothing 
 for nothing, or, things are as broad as they are long, is 
 not a rule for Littleton or Portland, but for the 
 Universe. 
 
 We cannot spare the coarsest muniment of virtue. 
 We are disgusted by gossip ; yet it is of importance 
 to keep the angels in their proprieties. The smallest 
 fly will draw blood, and gossip is a weapon impos- 
 sible to exclude from the privatest, highest, selectest. 
 Nature created a police of many ranks. God has 
 delegated himself to a million deputies. From these 
 low external penalties, the scale ascends. Next come 
 the resentments, the fears, which injustice calls out ; 
 then, the false relations in which the offender is put 
 to other men ; and the reaction of his fault on him- 
 self, in the solitude and devastation of his mind. 
 
 You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succour 
 his flagging spirits by opium or wine, his work will 
 characterise itself as the effect of opium or wine. If 
 you make a picture or a statue, it sets the beholder 
 in that state of mind you had when you made it. If 
 you spend for show, on building, or gardening, or on 
 pictures, or on equipages, it will so appear. We are 
 all physiognomists and penetrators of character, and 
 things themselves are detective. If you follow the 
 suburban fashion in building a sumptuous - looking 
 house for a little money, it will appear to all eyes as 
 a cheap dear house. There is no privacy that cannot
 
 VI.] WORSHIP. 181 
 
 be penetrated. No secret can be kept in the civilised 
 world. Society is a masked ball, where every one 
 hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding. If 
 a man wish to conceal anything he carries, those 
 whom he meets know that he conceals somewhat, and 
 usually know what he conceals. Is it otherwise if 
 there be some belief or some purpose he would bury 
 in his breast 1 Tis as hard to hide as fire. He is a 
 strong man who can hold down his opinion. A man 
 cannot utter two or three sentences, without disclos- 
 ing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in 
 life and thought, namely, whether in the kingdom of 
 the senses and the understanding, or, in that of ideas 
 and imagination, in the realm of intuitions and duty. 
 People seem not to see that their opinion of the world 
 is also a confession of character. We can only see 
 what we are, and if we misbehave we suspect others. 
 The fame of Shakspeare or of Voltaire, of Thomas 
 a Kempis, or of Bonaparte, characterises those who 
 give it. As gas-light is found to be the best noc- 
 turnal police, so the universe protects itself by pitiless 
 publicity. 
 
 Each must be armed — not necessarily with musket 
 and pike. Happy, if, seeing these, he can feel that 
 he has better muskets and pikes in his energy and 
 constancy. To every creature is his own weapon, 
 however skilfully concealed from himself, a good 
 while. His work is sword and shield. Let him 
 accuse none, let him injure none. The way to mend 
 the bad world, is to create the right world. Here is 
 a low political economy plotting to cut the throat of
 
 182 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vi. 
 
 foreign competition, and establish our own ; — exclud- 
 ing others by force, or making war on them ; or, by 
 cunning tariffs, giving preference to worse wares of 
 ours. But the real and lasting victories are those of 
 peace, and not of war. The way to conquer the 
 foreign artisan is, not to kill him, but to beat his 
 work. And the Crystal Palaces and World Fairs, 
 with their committees and prizes on all kinds of 
 industry, are the result of this feeling. The American 
 workman who strikes ten blows with his hammer, 
 whilst the foreign workman only strikes one, is as 
 really vanquishing that foreigner, as if the blows 
 were aimed at and told on his person. I look on that 
 man as happy, who, when there is question of success, 
 looks into his work for a reply, not into the market, 
 not into opinion, not into patronage. In every variety 
 of human employment, in the mechanical and in the 
 fine arts, in navigation, in farming, in legislating, 
 there are among the numbers who do their task per- 
 functorily, as we say, or just to pass, and as badly as 
 they dare, — there are the working-men, on whom the 
 burden of the business falls, — those who love work, 
 and love to see it rightly done, who finish their task 
 for its own sake; and the state and the world is 
 happy, that has the most of such finishers. The 
 world will always do justice at last to such finishers : 
 it cannot otherwise. He who has acquired the ability, 
 may wait securely the occasion of making it felt and 
 appreciated, and know that it will not loiter. Men 
 talk as if victory were something fortunate. Work 
 is victory. Wherever work is done, victory is
 
 VI.] WORSHIP. 183 
 
 obtained. There is no chance, and no blanks. Yon 
 want but one verdict : if you have your own, you are 
 secure of the rest. And yet, if witnesses are wanted, 
 witnesses are near. There was never a man born so 
 wise or good, but one or more companions came into 
 the world with him, who delight in his faculty, and 
 report it. I cannot see without awe, that no man 
 thinks alone, and no man acts alone, but the divine 
 assessors who came up with him into life, — now under 
 one disguise, now under another, — like a police in 
 citizens' clothes, walk with him, step for step, through 
 all the kingdom of time. 
 
 This reaction, this sincerity, is the property of all 
 things. To make our word or act sublime, we must 
 make it real. It is our system that counts, not the 
 single word or unsupported action. Use what lan- 
 guage you will, you can never say anything but what 
 you are. What I am, and what I think, is conveyed 
 to you, in spite of my efforts to hold it back. What 
 I am has been secretly conveyed from me to another, 
 whilst I was vainly making up my mind to tell him 
 it. He has heard from me what I never spoke. 
 
 As men get on in life, they acquire a love for sin- 
 cerity, and somewhat less solicitude to be lulled or 
 amused. In the progress of the character, there is an 
 increasing faith in the moral sentiment, and a decreas- 
 ing faith in propositions. Young people admire 
 talents, and particular excellences. As we grow older 
 we value total powers and effects, as the spirit, or 
 quality of the man. We have another sight, and a 
 new standard; an insight which disregards what is
 
 184 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vi. 
 
 done for the eye, and pierces to the doer; an ear 
 which hears not what men say, but hears Avhat they 
 do not say. 
 
 There was a wise devout man, who is called, in the 
 Catholic Church, St. Philip Neri, of whom many 
 anecdotes touching his discernment and benevolence 
 are told at Naples and Rome. Among the nuns in a 
 convent not far from Rome, one had appeared, who 
 laid claim to certain rare gifts of inspiration and pro- 
 phecy, and the abbess advised the Holy Father, at 
 Rome, of the wonderful powers shown by her novice. 
 The Pope did not well know what to make of these 
 new claims, and Philip coming in from a journey, one 
 day, he consulted him. Philip undertook to visit the 
 nun, and ascertain her character. He threw himself 
 on his mule, all travel-soiled as he was, and hastened 
 through the mud and mire to the distant convent. 
 He told the abbess the wishes of his Holiness, and 
 begged her to summon the nun without delay. The 
 nun was sent for, and, as soon as she came into the 
 apartment, Philip stretched out his leg all bespattered 
 with mud, and desired her to draw off his boots. 
 The young. nun, who had become the object of much 
 attention and respect, drew back with anger, and re- 
 fused the office : Philip ran out of doors, mounted 
 his mule, and returned instantly to the Pope ; " Give 
 yourself no uneasiness, Holy Father, any longer : 
 here is no miracle, for here is no humility." 
 
 We need not much mind what people please to say, 
 but what they must say ; what their natures say, 
 though their busy, artful, Yankee understandings try
 
 vr.] WOKSHIP. 185 
 
 to hold back, and choke that word, and to articulate 
 something different. If we will sit quietly, — what 
 they ought to say is said, with their will, or against 
 their will. We do not care for you, let us pretend 
 what we will : — we are always looking through you to 
 the dim dictator behind you. Whilst your habit or 
 whim chatters, we civilly and impatiently wait until 
 that wise superior shall speak again. Even children are 
 not deceived by the false reasons which their parents 
 give in answer to their questions, whether touching 
 natural facts, or religion, or persons. When the 
 parent, instead of thinking how it really is, puts them 
 off with a traditional or a hypocritical answer, the 
 children perceive that it is traditional or hypocritical. 
 To a sound constitution the defect of another is at 
 once manifest : and the marks of it are only concealed 
 from us by our own dislocation. An anatomical 
 observer remarks, that the sympathies of the chest, 
 abdomen, and pelvis, tell at last on the face, and on 
 all its features. Not only does our beauty waste, but 
 it leaves word how it went to waste. Physiognomy 
 and phrenology are not new sciences, but declarations 
 of the soul that it is aware of certain new sources of 
 information. And now sciences of broader scope are 
 starting up behind these. And so for ourselves, it is 
 really of little importance what blunders in statement 
 we make, so only we make no wilful departures from 
 the truth. How a man's truth comes to mind, long 
 after we have forgotten all his words ! How it 
 cumes to us in silent hours, that truth is our only 
 armour in all passages of life and death ! Wit is
 
 186 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vi. 
 
 cheap, and anger is cheap ; but if you cannot argue 
 or explain yourself to the other party, cleave to the 
 truth against me, against thee, and you gain a station 
 from which you cannot be dislodged. The other 
 party will forget the words that you spoke, but the 
 part you took continues to plead for you. 
 
 Why should I hasten to solve every riddle which 
 life offers me 1 I am well assured that the Questioner, 
 who brings me so many problems, will bring the 
 answers also in due time. Very rich, very potent, 
 very cheerful Giver that he is, he shall have it all his 
 own way, for me. Why should I give up my thought, 
 because I cannot answer an objection to it 1 Consider 
 only, whether it remains in my life the same it was. 
 That only which we have within, can we see without. 
 If we meet no gods, it is because we harbour none. 
 If there is grandeur in you, you will find grandeur in 
 porters and sweeps. He only is rightly immortal, to 
 whom all things are immortal. I have read some- 
 where, that none is accomplished, so long as any are 
 incomplete ; that the happiness of one cannot consist 
 with the misery of any other. 
 
 The Buddhists say, " No seed will die : " every 
 seed will grow. Where is the service which can 
 escape its remuneration? What is vulgar, and the 
 essence of all vulgarity, but the avarice of reward 1 
 'Tis the difference of artisan and artist, of talent and 
 genius, of sinner and saint. The man whose eyes are 
 nailed not on the nature of his act, but on the wages, 
 whether it be money, or office, or fame, — is almost 
 equally low. He is great, whose eyes are opened to
 
 VI.] WORSHIP. 187 
 
 see that the reward of actions cannot be escaped, 
 because he is transformed into his action, and taketh 
 its nature, which bears its own fruit, like every other 
 tree. A great man cannot be hindered of the effect 
 of his act, because it is immediate. The genius of 
 life is friendly to the noble, and in the dark brings 
 them friends from far. Fear God, and where you go, 
 men shall think they walk in hallowed cathedrals. 
 
 And so I look on those sentiments which make the 
 glory of the human being, love, humility, faith, as 
 being also the intimacy of Divinity in the atoms ; and 
 that, as soon as the man is right, assurances and pre- 
 visions emanate from the interior of his body and his 
 mind ; as, when flowers reach their ripeness, incense 
 exhales from them, and as a beautiful atmosphere is 
 generated from the planet by the averaged emanations 
 from all its rocks and soils. 
 
 Thus man is made equal to every event. He can 
 face danger for the right. A poor, tender, painful 
 body, he can run into flame or bullets or pestilence, 
 with duty for his guide. He feels the insurance of a 
 just employment. I am not afraid of accident, as long- 
 as I am in my place. It is strange that superior 
 persons should not feel that they have some better re- 
 sistance against cholera, than avoiding green peas and 
 salads. Life is hardly respectable, — is it 1 if it has no 
 generous, guaranteeing task, no duties or affections, 
 that constitute a necessity of existing. Every man's 
 task is his life-preserver. The conviction that his 
 work is dear to God and cannot be spared, defends 
 him. The lightning-rod that disarms the cloud of its
 
 188 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vi. 
 
 threat is his body in its duty. A high aim reacts on 
 the means, on the days, on the organs of the body. 
 A high aim is curative, as well as arnica. " Napoleon," 
 says Goethe, " visited those sick of the plague, in order 
 to prove that the man who could vanquish fear could 
 vanquish the plague also ; and he was right. Tis 
 incredible what force the will has in such cases : it 
 penetrates the body, and puts it in a state of activity, 
 which repels all hurtful influences ; whilst fear invites 
 them." 
 
 It is related of William of Orange, that, whilst he 
 was besieging a town on the Continent, a gentleman 
 sent to him on public business came to his camp, 
 and, learning that the King was before the walls he 
 ventured to go where he was. He found him directing 
 the operation of his gunners, and, having explained 
 his errand, and received his answer, the King said, 
 " Do you not know, sir, that every moment you spend 
 here is at the risk of your life V "I run no more risk," 
 replied the gentleman, " than your Majesty." "Yes," 
 said the King, "but my duty brings me here, and 
 yours does not." In a few minutes a cannon-ball fell 
 on the spot, and the gentleman was killed. 
 
 Thus can the faithful student reverse all the 
 warnings of his early instinct, under the guidance of 
 a deeper instinct. He learns to welcome misfortune, 
 learns that adversity is the prosperity of the great. 
 He learns the greatness of humility. He shall work 
 in the dark, work against failure, pain, and ill-will. 
 If he is insulted, he can be insulted ; all his affair is 
 not to insult. Hafiz writes —
 
 vi.] WORSHIP. 189 
 
 " At the last day, men shall wear 
 On their heads the dust, 
 As ensign and as ornament 
 Of their lowly trust. " 
 
 The moral equalises all ; enriches, empowers all. 
 It is the coin which buys all, and which all find in 
 their pocket. Under the whip of the driver, the 
 slave shall feel his equality with saints and heroes. 
 In the greatest destitution and calamity, it surprises 
 man with a feeling of elasticity which makes nothing 
 of loss. 
 
 I recall some traits of a remarkable person whose 
 life and discourse betrayed many inspirations of this 
 sentiment. Benedict was always great in the present 
 time. He had hoarded nothing from the past, 
 neither in his cabinets, neither in his memory. He 
 had no designs on the future, neither for what he 
 should do to men, nor for what men should do for 
 him. He said, " I am never beaten until I know 
 that I am beaten. I meet powerful brutal people to 
 whom I have no skill to reply. They think they 
 have defeated me. It is so published in society, 
 in the journals ; I am defeated in this fashion, in 
 all men's sight, perhaps on a dozen different lines. 
 My ledger may show that I am in debt, cannot yet 
 make my ends meet, and vanquish the enemy so. 
 My race may not be prospering : we are sick, ugly, 
 obscure, unpopular. My children may be worsted. 
 I seem to fail in my friends and clients, too. That 
 is to say, in all the encounters that have yet chanced, 
 I have not been weaponed for that particular occasion,
 
 190 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 [VI. 
 
 and have been historically beaten ; and yet, I know, 
 all the time, that I have never been beaten; have 
 never yet fought, shall certainly fight, when my 
 hour comes, and shall beat." "A man," says the 
 Vishnu Sarma, "who having well compared his own 
 strength or weakness with that of others, after all 
 doth not know the difference, is easily overcome by 
 his enemies." 
 
 "I spent," he said, "ten months in the country. 
 Thick-starred Orion was my only companion. Where- 
 ever a squirrel or a bee can go with security, I can 
 go. I ate whatever was set before me; I touched 
 ivy and dogwood. When I went abroad, I kept 
 company with every man on the road, for I knew 
 that my evil and my good did not come from these, 
 but from the Spirit, whose servant I was. For I 
 could not stoop to be a circumstance, as they did, 
 who put their life into their fortune and their 
 company. I would not degrade myself by casting 
 about in my memory for a thought, nor by waiting 
 for one. If the thought come, I would give it 
 entertainment. It should, as it ought, go into my 
 hands and feet ; but if it come not spontaneously, it 
 comes not rightly at all. If it can spare me, I am 
 sure I can spare it. It shall be the same with my 
 friends. I will never woo the loveliest. I will not 
 ask any friendship or favour. When I come to my 
 own, we shall both know it. Nothing will be to be 
 asked or to be granted." Benedict went out to 
 seek his friend, and met him on the way; but he 
 expressed no surprise at any coincidences. On the
 
 vi.] WORSHIP. 191 
 
 other hand, if he called at the door of his friend, and 
 he was not at home, he did not go again ; concluding 
 that he had misinterpreted the intimations. 
 
 He had the whim not to make an apology to the 
 same individual whom he had wronged. For this, he 
 said, was a piece of personal vanity ; but he would 
 correct his conduct in that respect in which he had 
 faulted, to the next person he should meet. Thus, 
 he said, universal justice was satisfied. 
 
 Mira came to ask what she should do with the 
 poor Genesee woman who had hired herself to work 
 for her, at a shilling a day, and, now sickening, was 
 like to be bedridden on her hands. Should she 
 keep her, or should she dismiss her 1 But Benedict 
 said, " "Why ask 1 One thing will clear itself as the 
 thing to be done, and not another, when the hour 
 comes. Is it a question, whether to put her into 
 the street? Just as much whether to thrust the 
 little Jenny on your arm into the street. The 
 milk and meal you give the beggar will fatten 
 Jenny. Thrust the woman out, and you thrust 
 your babe out of doors, whether it so seem to you 
 or not." 
 
 In the Shakers, so called, I find one piece of belief, 
 in the doctrine which they faithfully hold, that en- 
 courages them to open their doors to every wayfaring 
 man who proposes to come among them; for, they 
 say, the Spirit will presently manifest to the man 
 himself, and to the societj^, what manner of person 
 he is, and whether he belongs among them. They do 
 not receive him, they do not reject him. And not in
 
 192 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vi. 
 
 vain have they worn their clay coat, and drudged in 
 their fields, and shuffled in their Bruin dance, from 
 year to year, if they have truly learned thus much 
 wisdom. 
 
 Honour him whose life is perpetual victory ; him, 
 who, by sympathy with the invisible and real, finds 
 support in labour, instead of praise; who does not 
 shine, and would rather not. With eyes open, he 
 makes the choice of virtue, which outrages the 
 virtuous ; of religion, which churches stop their dis- 
 cords to burn and exterminate ; for the highest virtue 
 is always against the law. 
 
 Miracle comes to the miraculous, not to the 
 arithmetician. Talent and success interest me but 
 moderately. The great class, they who affect our 
 imagination, the men who could not make their 
 hands meet around their objects, the rapt, the lost, 
 the fools of ideas, — they suggest what they cannot 
 execute. They speak to the ages, and are heard from 
 afar. The Spirit does not love cripples and malfor- 
 mations. If there ever was a good man, be certain, 
 there was another, and will be more. 
 
 And so in relation to that future hour, that spectre 
 clothed with beauty at our curtain by night, at our 
 table by day, — the apprehension, the assurance of a 
 coming change. The race of mankind have always 
 offered at least this implied thanks for the gift of 
 existence, — namely, the terror of its being taken 
 away ; the insatiable curiosity and appetite for its 
 continuation. The whole revelation that is vouch- 
 safed us is, the gentle trust, which, in our experience
 
 vi.] WORSHIP. 193 
 
 we find, will cover also with flowers the slopes of this 
 chasm. 
 
 Of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is 
 incurious. It is so well, that it is sure it will be well. 
 It asks no questions of the Supreme Power. The 
 son of Antiochus asked his father when he would 
 join battle 1 ? "Dost thou fear," replied the King, 
 " that thou only in all the army wilt not hear the 
 trumpet?" Tis a higher thing to confide, that, if 
 it is best we should live, we shall live, — 'tis higher 
 to have this conviction, than to have the lease of 
 indefinite centuries and millenniums and seons. 
 Higher than the question of our duration is the 
 question of our deserving. Immortality will come to 
 such as are fit for it, and he who would be a great 
 soul in future, must be a great soul now. It is a 
 doctrine too great to rest on any legend, that is, on 
 any man's experience but our own. It must be 
 proved, if at all, from our own activity and designs, 
 which imply an interminable future for their play. 
 
 What is called religion effeminates and demoral- 
 ises. Such as you are, the gods themselves could 
 not help you. Men are too often unfit to live, from 
 their obvious inequality to their own necessities, or, 
 they suffer from politics, or bad neighbours, or from 
 sickness, and they would gladly know that they were 
 to be dismissed from the duties of life. But the 
 wise instinct asks, "How will death help them 1 ?" 
 These are not dismissed when they die. You shall 
 not wish for death out of pusillanimity. The weight 
 of the Universe is pressed down on the shoulders of 
 
 vol. v. o
 
 194 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vi. 
 
 each moral agent to hold him to his task. The only 
 path of escape known in all the worlds of God is per- 
 formance. You must do your work, before you shall 
 be released. And as far as it is a question of fact 
 respecting the government of the Universe, Marcus 
 Antoninus summed the whole in a word, "It is 
 pleasant to die, if there be gods ; and sad to live, if 
 there be none." 
 
 And so I think that the last lesson of life, the 
 choral song which rises from all elements and all angels, 
 is, a voluntary obedience, a necessitated freedom. 
 Man is made of the same atoms as the world is, 
 he shares the same impressions, predispositions, and 
 destiny. When his mind is illuminated, when his 
 heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the 
 sublime order, and does, with knoAvledge, what the 
 stones do by structure. 
 
 The religion which is to guide and fulfil the 
 present and coming ages, whatever else it be, must 
 be intellectual. The scientific mind must have a 
 faith which is science. " There are two things," said 
 Mahomet, " which I abhor, the learned in his infideli- 
 ties, and the fool in his devotions." Our times are 
 impatient of both, and specially of the last. Let us 
 have nothing now which is not its own evidence. 
 There is surely enough for the heart and imagination 
 in the religion itself. Let us not be pestered with 
 assertions and half-truths, with emotions and snuffle. 
 
 There will be a new church founded on moral 
 science, at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger 
 again, the algebra and mathematics of ethical law,
 
 vi.] WORSHIP. 195 
 
 the church of men to come, without shawms, or psal- 
 tery, or sackbut ; but it will have heaven and earth 
 for its beams and rafters; science for symbol and 
 illustration ; it will fast enough gather beauty, music, 
 picture, poetry. Was never stoicism so stern and 
 exigent as this shall be. It shall send man home to 
 his central solitude, shame these social, supplicating 
 manners, and make him know that much of the time 
 he must have himself to his friend. He shall expect 
 no co-operation, he shall walk with no companion. 
 The nameless Thought, the nameless Power, the 
 superpersonal Heart, — he shall repose alone on that. 
 He needs only his own verdict. No good fame can 
 help, no bad fame can hurt him. The Laws are his 
 consolers, the good Laws themselves are alive, they 
 know if he have kept them, they animate him with 
 the leading of great duty, and an endless horizon. 
 Honour and fortune exist to him who always recog- 
 nises the neighbourhood of the great, always feels 
 himself in the presence of high causes.
 
 VII. 
 CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 
 
 Hear what British Merlin sung, 
 
 Of keenest eye and truest tongue. 
 
 Say not, the chiefs who first arrive 
 
 Usurp the seats for which all strive ; 
 
 The forefathers this land who found 
 
 Failed to plant the vantage-ground ; 
 
 Ever from one who comes to-morrow 
 
 Men wait their good and truth to borrow. 
 
 But wilt thou measure all thy road, 
 
 See thou lift the lightest load. 
 
 Who has little, to him who has less, can spare, 
 
 And thou, Cyndyllan's son ! beware 
 
 Ponderous gold and stuffs to bear, 
 
 To falter ere thou thy task fulfil, — 
 
 Only the light-armed climb the hill. 
 
 The richest of all lords is Use, 
 
 And ruddy Health the loftiest Muse. 
 
 Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, 
 
 Drink the wild air's salubrity : 
 
 Where the star Canope shines in May, 
 
 Shepherds are thankful, and nations gay. 
 
 The music that can deepest reach, 
 
 And cure all ill, is cordial speech :
 
 198 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vil. 
 
 Mask thy wisdom with delight, 
 Toy with the bow, yet hit the white. 
 Of all wit's uses, the main one 
 Is to live well with who has none. 
 Cleave to thine acre ; the round year 
 Will fetch all fruits and virtues here : 
 Fool and foe may harmless roam, 
 Loved and lovers bide at home. 
 A day for toil, an hour for sport, 
 But for a friend is life too short.
 
 CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 
 
 Although this garrulity of advising is born -with us, 
 I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder than 
 of didactics. So much fate, so much irresistible 
 dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration 
 enters into it, that we doubt we can say anything out 
 of our own experience whereby to help each other. 
 All the professions are timid and expectant agencies. 
 The priest is glad if his prayers or his sermon meet 
 the condition of any soul ; if of two, if of ten, 'tis a 
 signal success. But he walked to the church without 
 any assurance that he knew the distemper, or could 
 heal it. The physician prescribes hesitatingly out of 
 his few resources, the same tonic or sedative to this 
 new and peculiar constitution, which he has applied 
 with various success to a hundred men before. If the 
 patient mends, he is glad and surprised. The lawyer 
 advises the client, and tells his story to the jury, and 
 leaves it with them, and is as gay and as much re- 
 lieved as the client, if it turns out that he has a 
 verdict. The judge weighs the arguments, and puts 
 a brave face on the matter, and, since there must be 
 a decision, decides as he can, and hopes he has done
 
 200 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vn. 
 
 justice, and given satisfaction to the community ; 
 but is only an advocate after all. And so is all life a 
 timid and unskilful spectator. We do what we must, 
 and call it by the best names. We like very well to 
 be praised for our action, but our conscience says, 
 "Not unto us." Tis little we can do for each other. 
 We accompany the youth with sympathy, and mani- 
 fold old sayings of the wise, to the gate of the arena, 
 but 'tis certain that not by strength of ours, or of the 
 old sayings, but only on strength of his own, unknown 
 to us or to any, he must stand or fall. That by 
 which a man conquers in any passage, is a profound 
 secret to every other being in the world, and it is 
 only as he turns his back on us and on all men, and 
 draws on this most private wisdom, that any good can 
 come to him. What we have, therefore, to say of 
 life, is rather description, or, if you please, celebra- 
 tion, than available rules. 
 
 Yet vigour is contagious, and whatever makes us 
 either think or feel strongly, adds to our power, and 
 enlarges our field of action. We have a debt to 
 every great heart, to every fine genius ; to those who 
 have put life and fortune on the cast of an act of 
 justice ; to those who have added new sciences ; to 
 those who have refined life by elegant pursuits. 'Tis 
 the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called 
 fine society. Fine society is only a self-protection 
 against the vulgarities of the street and the tavern. 
 Fine society, in the common acceptation, has neither 
 ideas nor aims. It renders the service of a perfumery, 
 or a laundry, not of a farm or factory. 'Tis an exclu-
 
 vii.] CONSIDEEATIONS BY THE WAY. 201 
 
 sion and a precinct. Sydney Smith said, "A few yards 
 in London cement or dissolve friendship." It is an 
 unprincipled decorum; an affair of clean linen and 
 coaches, of gloves, cards, and elegance in trifles. 
 There are other measures of self-respect for a man, 
 than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day. 
 Society wishes to be amused. I do not wish to be 
 amused. I wish that life should not be cheap, but 
 sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, 
 fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by 
 some debt which is to be paid us, or which we are to 
 pay, or some pleasure we are to taste. Is all we have 
 to do to draw the breath in, and blow it out again 1 
 Porphyry's definition is better ; " Life is that which 
 holds matter together." The babe in arms is a 
 channel through which the energies we call fate, love, 
 and reason, visibly stream. See what a cometary 
 train of auxiliaries man carries with him, of animals, 
 plants, stones, gases, and imponderable elements. Let 
 us infer his ends from this pomp of means. Mira- 
 beau said, "Why should we feel ourselves to be men, 
 unless it be to succeed in everything, everywhere 1 ? 
 You must say of nothing, That is beneath me, nor feel 
 that anything can be out of your power. Nothing is 
 impossible to the man who can will. 7s that neces- 
 sary ? That shall be : — this is the only law of success." 
 Whoever said it, this is in the right key. But this is 
 not the tone and genius of the men in the street. In 
 the streets Ave grow cynical. The men we meet are 
 coarse and torpid. The finest wits have their sedi- 
 ment. What quantities of fribbles, paupers, invalids,
 
 202 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vil. 
 
 epicures, antiquaries, politicians, thieves, and triflers 
 of both sexes, might he advantageously spared ! 
 Mankind divides itself into two classes, — benefactors 
 and malefactors. The second class is vast, the first a 
 handful. A person seldom falls sick, but the by- 
 standers are animated with a faint hope that he will 
 die ; — quantities of poor lives ; of distressing invalids ; 
 of cases for a gun. Franklin said, "Mankind are 
 very superficial and dastardly : they begin upon a 
 thing, but, meeting with a difficulty, they fly from it 
 discouraged : but they have capacities, if they would 
 employ them." Shall we then judge a country by 
 the majority, or by the minority 1 By the minority, 
 surely. Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the 
 census, or by square miles of land, or other than by 
 their importance to the mind of the time. 
 
 Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. 
 Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their 
 demands and influence, and need not to be flattered 
 but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything 
 to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them 
 up, and draw individuals out of them. The worst of 
 charity is, that the lives you are asked to preserve are 
 not worth preserving. Masses ! the calamity is the 
 masses. I do not wish any mass at all, but honest 
 men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only, 
 and no shovel -handed, narrow-brained, gin-drinking 
 million stockingers or lazzaroni at all. If government 
 knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, 
 the population. When it reaches its true law of action, 
 every man that is born will be hailed as essential.
 
 vii.] CONSIDEKATIONS BY THE WAY. 203 
 
 Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have 
 the considerate vote of single men spoken on their 
 honour and their conscience. In old Egypt, it was 
 established law, that the vote of a prophet be reckoned 
 equal to a hundred hands. I think it was much under- 
 estimated. " Clay and clay differ in dignity," as Ave 
 discover by our preferences every day. What a vicious 
 practice is this of our politicians at Washington pair- 
 ing off ! as if one man who votes wrong, going away, 
 could excuse you, who mean to vote right, for going 
 away; or, as if your presence did not tell in more 
 ways than in your vote. Suppose the three hundred 
 heroes at Thermopylae had paired off with three 
 hundred Persians : would it have been all the same 
 to Greece, and to history 1 Napoleon was called by 
 his men Cent Milk. Add honesty to him, and they 
 might have called him Hundred Million. 
 
 Nature makes fifty poor melons for one that is 
 good, and shakes down a tree full of gnarled, wormy, 
 unripe crabs, before you can find a dozen dessert 
 apples; and she scatters nations of naked Indians, 
 and nations of clothed Christians, with two or three 
 good heads among them. Nature works very hard, 
 and only hits the white once in a million throws. In 
 mankind, she is contented if she yields one master in 
 a century. The more difficulty there is in creating 
 good men, the more they are used when they come. 
 I once counted in a little neighbourhood, and found 
 that every able-bodied man had, say from twelve to 
 fifteen persons dependent on him for material aid,— 
 to whom he is to be for spoon and jug, for backer and
 
 204 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vn. 
 
 sponsor, for nursery and hospital, and many functions 
 beside : nor does it seem to make much difference 
 whether he is bachelor or patriarch : if he do not 
 violently decline the duties that fall to him, this 
 amount of helpfulness will in one way or another be 
 brought home to him. This is the tax which his 
 abilities pay. The good men are employed for private 
 centres of use, and for larger influence. All revela- 
 tions, whether of mechanical or intellectual or moral 
 science, are made not to communities, but to single 
 persons. All the marked events of our clay, all the 
 cities, all the colonisations, may be traced back to 
 their origin in a private brain. All the feats which 
 make our civility were the thoughts of a few good 
 heads. 
 
 Meantime, this spawning productivity is not nox- 
 ious or needless. You would say, this rabble of 
 nations might be spared. But no, they are all counted 
 and depended on. Fate keeps everything alive so 
 long as the smallest thread of public necessity holds 
 it on to the tree. The coxcomb and bully and thief 
 class are allowed as proletaries, every one of their 
 vices being the excess or acridity of a virtue. The 
 mass are animal, in pupilage, and near chimpanzee. 
 But the units, whereof this mass is composed, are 
 neuters, every one of which may be grown to a queen- 
 bee. The rule is, we are used as brute atoms, until 
 we think; then, we use all the rest. Nature turns 
 all malfaisance to good. Nature provided for real 
 needs. No sane man at last distrusts himself. His 
 existence is a perfect answer to all sentimental cavils.
 
 vii.] CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 205 
 
 If he is, he is wanted, and has the precise properties 
 that are required. That we are here, is proof we 
 ought to be here. We have as good right, and the 
 same sort of right to be here, as Cape Cod or Sandy 
 Hook has to be there. 
 
 To say then, the majority are wicked, means no 
 malice, no bad heart in the observer, but, simply, that 
 the majority are unripe, and have not yet come to 
 themselves, do not yet know their opinion. That, if 
 they knew it, is an oracle for them and for all. But 
 in the passing moment, the quadruped interest is very 
 prone to prevail : and this beast-force, whilst it makes 
 the discipline of the world, the school of heroes, the 
 glory of martyrs, has provoked, in every age, the 
 satire of wits, and the tears of good men. They find 
 the journals, the clubs, the governments, the churches, 
 to be in the interest and the pay of the devil. And 
 wise men have met this obstruction in their times, like 
 Socrates, with his famous irony ; like Bacon, with life- 
 long dissimulation ; like Erasmus, with his book " The 
 Praise of Folly;" like Eabelais, with his satire rend- 
 ing the nations. "They were the fools who cried 
 against me, you will say," wrote the Chevalier de 
 Boufflers to Grimm; "ay, but the fools have the 
 advantage of numbers, and 'tis that which decides. 
 'Tis of no use for us to make war with them ; we shall 
 not weaken them ; they will always be the masters. 
 There will not be a practice or a usage introduced, 
 of which they are not the authors." 
 
 In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of 
 history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor,
 
 206 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vn. 
 
 but Bad is sometimes a better. Tis the oppressions 
 of William the Norman, savage forest-laws, and crush- 
 ing despotism, that made possible the inspirations of 
 Magna Charta under John. Edward I. wanted money, 
 armies, castles, and as much as he could get. It was 
 necessary to call the people together by shorter, 
 swifter ways, — and the House of Commons arose. 
 To obtain subsidies, he paid in privileges. In the 
 twenty-fourth year of his reign, he decreed, " that no 
 tax should be levied without consent of Lords and 
 Commons;" — which is the basis of the English Con- 
 stitution. Plutarch affirms that the cruel wars which 
 followed the march of Alexander introduced the 
 civility, language, and arts of Greece into the savage 
 East ; introduced marriage ; built seventy cities ; and 
 united hostile nations under one government. The 
 barbarians who broke up the Roman empire did not 
 arrive a day too soon. Schiller says, the Thirty Years' 
 War made Germany a nation. Eough, selfish despots 
 serve men immensely, as Henry VIII. in the contest 
 with the Pope ; as the infatuations no less than the 
 wisdom of Cromwell ; as the ferocity of the Russian 
 czars; as the fanaticism of the French regicides of 
 1789. The frost which kills the harvest of a year 
 saves the harvests of a century, by destroying the 
 weevil or the locust. Wars, fires, plagues, break up 
 immovable routine, clear the ground of rotten races 
 and dens of distemper, and open a fair field to new 
 men. There is a tendency in things to right them- 
 selves, and the war or revolution or bankruptcy that 
 shatters a rotten system, allows things to take a new
 
 vii.] CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 207 
 
 and natural order. The sharpest evils are bent into 
 that periodicity which makes the errors of planets, 
 and the fevers and distempers of men, self-limiting. 
 Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, 
 danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we 
 have overcome. Without war, no soldier; without 
 enemies, no hero. The sun were insipid, if the uni- 
 verse were not opaque. And the glory of character 
 is in affronting the horrors of depravity, to draAV 
 thence new nobilities of power : as Art lives and 
 thrills in new use and combining of contrasts, and 
 mining into the dark evermore for blacker pits of 
 night. What would painter do, or what would poet 
 or saint, but for crucifixions and hells'? And ever- 
 more in the world is this marvellous balance of beauty 
 and disgust, magnificence and rats. Not Antoninus, 
 but a poor washerwoman said, "The more trouble, 
 the more lion; that's my principle." 
 
 I do not think very respectfully of the designs or 
 the doings of the people who went to California, in 
 1849. It was a rush and a scramble of needy adven- 
 turers, and, in the western country, a general jail- 
 delivery of all the rowdies of the rivers. Some of 
 them went with honest purposes, some with very bad 
 ones, and all of them with the very commonplace 
 wish to find a short way to wealth. But Nature 
 watches over all, and turns this malfaisance to good. 
 California gets peopled and subdued,— civilised in 
 this immoral way, — and, on this fiction, a real pros- 
 perity is rooted and grown. 'Tis a decoy-duck ; 'tis 
 tubs thrown to amuse the whale ; but real ducks, and
 
 208 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vn. 
 
 whales that yield oil, are caught. And out of Sabine 
 rapes, and out of robbers' forays, real Eomes and 
 their heroisms come in fulness of time. 
 
 In America the geography is sublime, but the men 
 are not : the inventions are excellent, but the invent- 
 ors one is sometimes ashamed of. The agencies, by 
 which events so grand as the opening of California, 
 of Texas, of Oregon, and the junction of the two 
 oceans, are effected, are paltry, — coarse selfishness, 
 fraud, and conspiracy : and most of the great results 
 of history are brought about by discreditable means. 
 
 The benefaction derived in Illinois, and the great 
 West, from railroads is inestimable, and vastly ex- 
 ceeding any intentional philanthropy on record. 
 What is the benefit done by a good King Alfred, or 
 by a Howard, or Pestalozzi, or Elizabeth Fry, or 
 Florence Nightingale, or any lover, less or larger, 
 compared with the involuntary blessing wrought on 
 nations by the selfish capitalists who built the Illinois, 
 Michigan, and the network of the Mississippi valley 
 roads, which have evoked not only all the wealth of 
 the soil, but the energy of millions of men ? 'Tis a 
 sentence of ancient wisdom, "that God hangs the 
 greatest weights on the smallest wires." 
 
 What happens thus to nations, befalls every day in 
 private houses. When the friends of a gentleman 
 brought to his notice the follies of his sons, with many 
 hints of their danger, he replied, that he knew so much 
 mischief when he was a boy, and had turned out on the 
 whole so successfully, that he was not alarmed by the 
 dissipation of boys; 'twas dangerous water, but he
 
 vii.] CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 209 
 
 thought they would soon touch bottom, and then 
 swim to the top. This is bold practice, and there are 
 many failures to a good escape. Yet one would say 
 that a good understanding would suffice as well as 
 moral sensibility to keep one erect ; the gratifications 
 of the passions are so quickly seen to be damaging, 
 an( ] j — what men like least, — seriously lowering them 
 in social rank. Then all talent sinks with character. 
 
 "Croyez moi, Verreur aussi a son mtrite," said Voltaire. 
 We see those who surmount, by dint of some egotism 
 or infatuation, obstacles from which the prudent 
 recoil. The right partisan is a heady narrow man, 
 who, because he does not see many things, sees some 
 one thing with heat and exaggeration, and, if he falls 
 among other narrow men, or on objects which have a 
 brief importance, as some trade or politics of the hour, 
 he prefers it to the universe, and seems inspired, and 
 a godsend to those who wish to magnify the matter, 
 and carry a point. Better, certainly, if we could 
 secure the strength and fire which rude, passionate 
 men bring into society, quite clear of their vices. 
 But who dares draw out the linchpin from the waggon 
 wheel? Tis so manifest, that there is no moral 
 deformity, but is a good passion out of place ; that 
 there is no man who is not indebted to his foibles ; 
 that, according to the old oracle, " the Furies are the 
 bonds of men;" that the poisons are our principal 
 medicines, which kill the disease, and save the life. 
 In the high prophetic phrase, He causes the wrath of 
 man to praise him, and twists and wrenches our evil to 
 our good. Shakspeare wrote, — 
 
 vol. v. P
 
 210 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [VII. 
 
 "Tis said, best men are moulded of their faults;" 
 and great educators and lawgivers, and especially 
 generals and leaders of colonies, mainly rely on this 
 stuff, and esteem men of irregular and passional force 
 the best timber. A man of sense and energy, the 
 late head of the Farm School in Boston harbour, said 
 to me, "I want none of your good boys, — give me 
 the bad ones." And this is the reason, I suppose, 
 why, as soon as the children are good, the mothers 
 are scared, and think they are going to die. Mira- 
 beau said, " There are none but men of strong passions 
 capable of going to greatness ; none but such capable 
 of meriting the public gratitude." Passion, though a 
 bad regulator, is a powerful spring. Any absorbing 
 passion has the effect to deliver from the little coils 
 and cares of every day : 'tis the heat which sets our 
 human atoms spinning, overcomes the friction of cross- 
 ing thresholds, and first addresses in society, and 
 gives us a good start and speed, easy to continue 
 when once it is begun. In short, there is no man 
 who is not at some time indebted to his vices, as no 
 plant that is not fed from manures. We only insist 
 that the man meliorate, and that the plant grow up 
 ward, and convert the base into the better nature. 
 
 The wise workman will not regret the poverty or 
 the solitude which brought out his working talents. 
 The youth is charmed with the fine air and accom- 
 plishments of the children of fortune. But all great 
 men come out of the middle classes. 'Tis better for 
 the head ; 'tis better for the heart. Marcus Antoninus 
 says, that Fronto told him " that the so-called high
 
 vii.] CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 211 
 
 born are for the most part heartless;" whilst nothing 
 is so indicative of deepest culture as a tender con- 
 sideration of the ignorant. Charles James Fox said 
 of England, " The history of this country proves, that 
 we are not to expect from men in affluent circum- 
 stances the vigilance, energy, and exertion without 
 which the House of Commons would lose its greatest 
 force and weight. Human nature is prone to indul- 
 gence, and the most meritorious public services have 
 always been performed by persons in a condition of 
 life removed from opulence." And yet what we ask 
 daily, is to be conventional. Supply, most kind gods ! 
 this defect in my address, in my form, in my fortunes, 
 which puts me a little out of the ring : supply it, and 
 let me be like the rest whom I admire, and on good 
 terms with them. But the wise gods say, No, we 
 have better things for thee. By humiliations, by 
 defeats, by loss of sympathy, by gulfs of disparity, 
 learn a wider truth and humanity than that of a fine 
 gentleman. A Fifth -Avenue .landlord, a West-End 
 householder, is not the highest style of man : and, 
 though good hearts and sound minds are of no condi- 
 tion, yet he who is to be wise for many must not be 
 protected. He must know the huts where poor men 
 lie, and the chores which poor men do. The first- 
 class minds, iEsop, Socrates, Cervantes, Shakspeare, 
 Franklin, had the poor man's feeling and mortifica- 
 tion. A rich man was never insulted in his life : but 
 this man must be stung. A rich man was never in 
 danger from cold, or hunger, or war, or ruffians, and 
 you can see he was not, from the moderation of his
 
 212 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vil. 
 
 ideas. Tis a fatal disadvantage to be cockered, and 
 to eat too much cake. What tests of manhood could 
 he stand ? Take him out of his protections. He is a 
 good book-keeper ; or he is a shrewd adviser in the 
 insurance office : perhaps he could pass a college ex- 
 amination, and take his degrees : perhaps he can give 
 wise counsel in a court of law. Now plant him down 
 among farmers, firemen, Indians, and emigrants. Set 
 a dog on him : set a highwayman on him : try him 
 with a course of mobs : send him to Kansas, to Pike's 
 Peak, to Oregon : and, if he have true faculty, this 
 may be the element he wants, and he will come out 
 of it with broader wisdom and manly power. iEsop, 
 Saadi, Cervantes, Eegnard, have been taken by cor- 
 sairs, left for dead, sold for slaves, and know the 
 realities of human life. 
 
 Bad times have a scientific value. These are occa- 
 sions a good learner would not miss. As we go gladly 
 to Faneuil Hall, to be played upon by the stormy 
 winds and strong fingers of enraged patriotism, so is 
 a fanatical persecution, civil war, national bankruptcy, 
 or revolution, more rich in the central tones than 
 languid years of prosperity. What had been, ever 
 since our memory, solid continent, yawns apart, and 
 discloses its composition and genesis. We learn 
 geology the morning after the earthquake, on ghastly 
 diagrams of cloven mountains, upheaved plains, and 
 the dry bed of the sea. 
 
 In our life and culture, everything is worked up, 
 and comes in use, — passion, war, revolt, bankruptcy, 
 and not less, folly and blunders, insult, ennui, and bad
 
 vii.] CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 213 
 
 company. Nature is a rag-merchant, who works up 
 every shred and ort and end into new creations ; like 
 a good chemist, whom I found, the other day, in his 
 laboratory, converting his old shirts into pure white 
 sugar. Life is a boundless privilege, and when you pay 
 for your ticket, and get into the car, you have no guess 
 what good company you shall find there. You buy 
 much that is not rendered in the bill. Men achieve a cer- 
 tain greatness unawares, when working to another aim. 
 If now in this connection of discourse we should 
 venture on laying down the first obvious rules of life, 
 I will not here repeat the first rule of economy, 
 already propounded once and again, that every man 
 shall maintain himself, — but I will say, get health. 
 No labour, pains," temperance, poverty, nor exercise, 
 that can gain it, must be grudged. For sickness is a 
 cannibal which eats up all the life and youth it can 
 lay hold of, and absorbs its own sons and daughters. 
 I figure it as a pale, wailing, distracted phantom, 
 absolutely selfish, heedless of what is good and great, 
 attentive to its sensations, losing its soul, and afflict- 
 ing other souls with meanness and mopings, and with 
 ministration to its voracity of trifles. Dr. Johnson 
 said severely, " Every man is a rascal as soon as he is 
 sick." Drop the cant, and treat it sanely. In dealing 
 with the drunken, we do not affect to be drunk. We 
 must treat the sick with the same firmness, giving 
 them, of course, every aid, — but withholding ourselves. 
 I once asked a clergyman in a retired town, who were 
 his companions 1 what men of ability he saw ? he 
 replied, that he spent his time with the sick and the
 
 214 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vn. 
 
 dying. I said, he seemed to me to need quite other 
 company, and all the more that he had this : for if 
 people were sick and dying to any purpose, we would 
 leave all and go to them, but, as far as I had observed, 
 they were as frivolous as the rest, and sometimes 
 much more frivolous. Let us engage our companions 
 not to spare us. I knew a wise woman who said to 
 her friends, " When I am old, rule me." And the best 
 part of health is fine disposition. It is more essential 
 than talent, even in the works of talent. Nothing 
 will supply the want of sunshine to peaches, and, 
 to make knowledge valuable, you must have the 
 cheerfulness of wisdom. Whenever you are sincerely 
 pleased, you are nourished. The joy of the spirit 
 indicates its strength. All healthy things are sweet- 
 tempered. Genius works in sport, and goodness 
 smiles to the last ; and for the reason, that whoever 
 sees the law which distributes things, does not despond, 
 but is animated to great desires and endeavours. He 
 who desponds betrays that he has not seen it. 
 
 'Tis a Dutch proverb, that "paint costs nothing," 
 such are its preserving qualities in damp climates. 
 Well, sunshine costs less, yet is finer pigment. And 
 so of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is 
 spent, the more of it remains. The latent heat of an 
 ounce of wood or stone is inexhaustible. You may 
 rub the same chip of pine to the point of kindling, a 
 hundred times; and the power of happiness of any 
 soul is not to be computed or drained. It is observed 
 that a depression of spirits develops the germs of a 
 plague in individuals and nations.
 
 vii.] CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 215 
 
 It is an old commendation of right behaviour, 
 " Aliis Icetus, sapiens sibi," which our English proverb 
 translates, " Be merry and wise." I know hoAv easy 
 it is to men of the world to look grave and sneer at 
 your sanguine youth, and its glittering dreams. But 
 I find the gayest castles in the air that were ever 
 piled, far better for comfort and for use than the 
 dungeons in the air that are daily dug and caverned 
 out by grumbling, discontented people. I know those 
 miserable fellows, and I hate them, who see a black 
 star always riding through the light and coloured 
 clouds in the sky overhead : waves of light pass over 
 and hide it for a moment, but the black star keeps 
 fast in the zenith. But power dwells with cheerful- 
 ness ; hope puts us in a working mood, whilst despair 
 is no muse, and untunes the active powers. A man 
 should make life and Nature happier to us, or he had 
 better never been born. When the political economist 
 reckons up the unproductive classes, he should put at 
 the head this class of pitiers of themselves, cravers of 
 sympathy, bewailing imaginary disasters. An old 
 French verse runs, in my translation : — 
 
 " Some of your griefs you have cured, 
 
 And the sharpest you still have survived ; 
 But what torments of pain you endured 
 From evils that never arrived ! " 
 
 There are three wants which never can be satisfied : 
 that of the rich, who wants something more ; that of 
 the sick, who wants something different ; and that of 
 the traveller, who says, " Anywhere but here." The 
 Turkish cadi said to Layard, "After the fashion of
 
 216 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vn. 
 
 thy people, thou hast wandered from one place to 
 another, until thou art happy and content in none." 
 My countrymen are not less infatuated with the rococo 
 toy of Italy. All America seems on the point of em- 
 barking for Europe. But we shall not always traverse 
 seas and lands with light purposes, and for pleasure, 
 as we say. One day we shall cast out the passion for 
 Europe, by the passion for America. Culture will 
 give gravity and domestic rest to those who now 
 travel only as not knowing how else to spend money. 
 Already, who provoke pity like that excellent family 
 party just arriving in their well-appointed carriage, as 
 far from home and any honest end as ever? Each 
 nation has asked successively, "What are they here 
 for?" until at last the party are shamefaced, and 
 anticipate the question at the gates of each town. 
 
 Genial manners are good, and power of accommo- 
 dation to any circumstance, but the high prize of life, 
 the crowning fortune of a man, is to be born with a 
 bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment 
 and happiness, — whether it be to make baskets, or 
 broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or songs. I doubt 
 not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he pro- 
 nounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, 
 not apparently so. 
 
 In childhood, we fancied ourselves walled in by 
 the horizon, as by a glass bell, and doubted not, by 
 distant travel, we should reach the baths of the de- 
 scending sun and stars. On experiment, the horizon 
 flies before us, and leaves us on an endless common, 
 sheltered by no glass bell. Yet 'tis strange how tena-
 
 mi. I CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 217 
 
 ciously we cling to that bell-astronomy, of a protect- 
 ing domestic horizon. I find the same illusion in 
 the search after happiness, which I observe, every 
 summer, recommenced in this neighbourhood, soon 
 after the pairing of the birds. The young people do 
 not like the town, do not like the sea-shore, they will 
 go inland ; find a dear cottage deep in the mountains, 
 secret as their hearts. They set forth on their travels 
 in search of a home : they reach Berkshire ; they 
 reach Vermont; they look at the farms; — good farms, 
 high mountain- sides : but where is the seclusion 1 
 The farm is near this ; 'tis near that ; they have got far 
 from Boston, but 'tis near Albany, or near Burlington, 
 or near Montreal. They explore a farm, but the house 
 is small, old, thin; discontented people lived there, and 
 are gone : — there's too much sky, too much out-doors; 
 too public. The youth aches for solitude. When he 
 comes to the house, he passes through the house. 
 That does not make the deep recess he sought. " Ah ! 
 now, I perceive," he says, "it must be deep with 
 persons ; friends only can give depth." Yes, but 
 there is a great dearth, this year, of friends ; hard to 
 find, and hard to have when found : they are just 
 going away : they too are in the whirl of the flitting 
 world, and have engagements and necessities. They 
 are just starting for Wisconsin ; have letters from 
 Bremen : — see you again soon. Slow, slow to learn 
 the lesson, that there is but one depth, but one in- 
 terior, and that is — his purpose. When joy or cala- 
 mity or genius shall show him it, then woods, then 
 farms, then city shopmen and cab -drivers, indiffer-
 
 218 CONDUCT OP LIFE. [ V n. 
 
 entry with prophet or friend, will mirror back to him 
 its unfathomable heaven, its populous solitude. 
 
 The uses of travel are occasional, and short; but 
 the best fruit it finds, when it finds it, is conversa- 
 tion; and this is a main function of life. What a 
 difference in the hospitality of minds ! Inestimable 
 is he to whom we can say what we cannot say to 
 ourselves. Others are involuntarily hurtful to us, 
 and bereave us of the power of thought, impound 
 and imprison us. As, when there is sympathy, there 
 needs but one wise man in a company, and all are 
 wise, — so, a blockhead makes a blockhead of his com- 
 panion. Wonderful power to benumb possesses this 
 brother. When he comes into the office or public 
 room, the society dissolves ; one after another slips 
 out, and the apartment is at his disposal. What is 
 incurable but a frivolous habit 1 A fly is as untam- 
 able as a hyena. Yet folly in the sense of fun, fool- 
 ing, or dawdling, can easily be borne ; as Talleyrand 
 said, "I find nonsense singularly refreshing;" but a 
 virulent, aggressive fool taints the reason of a house- 
 hold. I have seen a whole family of quiet, sensible 
 people unhinged and beside themselves, victims of 
 such a rogue. For the steady wrongheadedness of 
 one perverse person irritates the best : since we must 
 withstand absurdity. But resistance only exasperates 
 the acrid fool, who believes that Nature and gravita- 
 tion are quite wrong, and he only is right. Hence 
 all the dozen inmates are soon perverted, with what- 
 ever virtues and industries they have, into contra- 
 dictors, accusers, explainers, and repairers of this one
 
 vii.] CONSIDEEATIONS BY THE WAY. 219 
 
 malefactor ; like a boat about to be overset, or a 
 carriage run away with, — not only the foolish pilot 
 or driver, but everybody on board is forced to assume 
 strange and ridiculous attitudes, to balance the vehicle 
 and prevent the upsetting. For remedy, whilst the 
 case is yet mild, I recommend phlegm and truth : 
 let all the truth that is spoken or done be at the zero 
 of indifferency, or truth itself will be folly. But, 
 when the case is seated and malignant, the only safety 
 is in amputation ; as seamen say, you shall cut and 
 run. How to live with unfit companions 1 — for, with 
 such, life is for the most part spent : and experience 
 teaches little better than our earliest instinct of self- 
 defence, namely, not to engage, not to mix yourself 
 in any manner with them; but let their madness 
 spend itself unopposed ; — you are you, and I am I. 
 
 Conversation is an art in which a man has all 
 mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all 
 are practising every day while they live. Our habit 
 of thought, — take men as they rise, — is not satisfy- 
 ing ; in the common experience, I fear, it is poor and 
 squalid. The success which will content them, is a 
 bargain, a lucrative employment, an advantage gained 
 over a competitor, a marriage, a patrimony, a legacy, 
 and the like. With these objects, their conversation 
 deals with surfaces : politics, trade, personal defects, 
 exaggerated bad news, and the rain. This is forlorn, 
 and they feel sore and sensitive. Now, if one comes 
 who can illuminate this dark house with thoughts, 
 show them their native riches, what gifts they have, 
 how indispensable each is, what magical powers over
 
 220 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vu. 
 
 nature and men ; what access to poetry, religion, and 
 the powers which constitute character ; he wakes in 
 them the feeling of worth, his suggestions require 
 new ways of living, new hooks, new men, new arts 
 and sciences, — then we come out of our egg-shell 
 existence into the great dome, and see the zenith 
 over and the nadir under us. Instead of the tanks 
 and buckets of knowledge to which we are daily con- 
 fined, we come down to the shore of the sea, and dip 
 our hands in its miraculous waves. Tis wonderful 
 the effect on the company. They are not the men 
 they were. They have all been to California, and all 
 have come back millionaires. There is no book and 
 no pleasure in life comparable to it. Ask what is 
 best in our experience, and we shall say, a few pieces 
 of plain dealing with wise people. Our conversation 
 once and again has apprised us that we belong to 
 better circles than we have yet beheld; that a mental 
 power invites us, whose generalisations are more worth 
 for joy and for effect than anything that is now called 
 philosophy or literature. In excited conversation, we 
 have glimpses of the Universe, hints of power native 
 to the soul, far- darting lights and shadows of an 
 Andes landscape, such as we can hardly attain in lone 
 meditation. Here are oracles sometimes profusely 
 given, to which the memory goes back in barren 
 hours. 
 
 Add the consent of will and temperament, and 
 there exists the covenant of friendship. Our chief 
 want in life is, somebody who shall make us do 
 what we can. This is the service of a friend. With
 
 vii.] CONSIDEKATIONS BY THE WAY. 221 
 
 him we are easily great. There is a sublime attraction 
 
 in him to whatever virtue is in us. How he flings 
 
 wide the doors of existence ! What questions we ask 
 
 of him ! what an understanding we have ! how few 
 
 words are needed ! It is the only real society. An 
 
 Eastern poet, Ali Ben Abu Taleb, writes with sad 
 
 truth, — 
 
 " He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, 
 And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere." 
 
 But few writers have said anything better to this 
 point than Hafiz, who indicates this relation as the 
 test of mental health : " Thou learnest no secret until 
 thou knowest friendship, since to the unsound no 
 heavenly knowledge enters." Neither is life long 
 enough for friendship. That is a serious and majestic 
 affair, like a royal presence, or a religion, and not a 
 postilion's dinner to be eaten on the run. There is a 
 pudency about friendship, as about love, and though 
 fine souls never lose sight of it, yet they do not name 
 it. With the first class of men our friendship or good 
 understanding goes quite behind all accidents of 
 estrangement, of condition, of reputation. And yet 
 we do not provide for the greatest good of life. We 
 take care of our health ; we lay up money ; we make 
 our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient; but who 
 provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the 
 best property of all, — friends 1 We know that all our 
 training is to fit us for this, and we do not take 
 the step towards it. How long shall we sit and wait 
 for these benefactors ! 
 
 It makes no difference, in looking back five years,
 
 222 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vn. 
 
 how you have been dieted or dressed ; whether you 
 have been lodged on the first floor or the attic ; 
 whether you have had gardens and baths, good cattle 
 and horses, have been carried in a neat equipage, or 
 in a ridiculous truck : these things are forgotten so 
 quickly, and leave no effect. But it counts much 
 whether we have had good companions, in that time : 
 — almost as much as what we have been doing. And 
 see the overpowering importance of neighbourhood in 
 all association. As it is marriage, fit or unfit, that 
 makes our home, so it is who lives near us of equal 
 social degree, — a few people at convenient distance, 
 no matter how bad company, — these, and these only, 
 shall be your life's companions : and all those who are 
 native, congenial, and by many an oath of the heart 
 sacramented to you, are gradually and totally lost. 
 You cannot deal systematically with this fine element 
 of society, and one may take a good deal of pains to 
 bring people together, and to organise clubs and 
 debatmg societies, and yet no result come of it. But 
 it is certain that there is a great deal of good in us 
 that does not know itself, and that a habit of union 
 and competition brings people up and keeps them up 
 to their highest point ; that life would be twice or ten 
 times life, if spent with wise and fruitful companions. 
 The obvious inference is, a little useful deliberation and 
 pre-concert, when one goes to buy house and land. 
 
 But we live with people on other platforms ; we 
 live with dependants, not only with the young whom 
 we are to teach all we know, and clothe Avith the 
 advantages we have earned, but also with those who
 
 Vii.] CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 223 
 
 serve us directly, and for money. Yet the old rules 
 hold good. Let not the tie be mercenary, though the 
 service is measured by money. Make yourself neces- 
 sary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any. 
 This point is acquiring new importance in American 
 social life. Our domestic service is usually a foolish 
 fracas of unreasonable demand on one side, and 
 shirking on the other. A man of wit was asked, in 
 the train, what was his errand in the city. He 
 replied, " I have been sent to procure an angel to do 
 cooking." A lady complained to me, that, of her two 
 maidens, one was absent-minded, and the other was 
 absent-bodied. And the evil increases from the 
 ignorance and hostility of every ship -load of the 
 immigrant population swarming into houses and 
 farms. Few people discern that it rests with the 
 master or the mistress what service comes from the 
 man or the maid; that this identical hussy was a 
 tutelar spirit in one house, and a haridan in the other. 
 All sensible people are selfish, and nature is tugging 
 at every contract to make the terms of it fair. If 
 you are proposing only your own, the other party 
 must deal a little hardly by you. If you deal 
 generously, the other, though selfish and unjust, will 
 make an exception in your favour, and deal truly with 
 you. When I asked an ironmaster about the slag 
 and cinder in railroad iron, — " 0," he said, " there's 
 always good iron to be had : if there's cinder in the 
 iron, 'tis because there was cinder in the pay." 
 
 But why multiply these topics, and their illustra- 
 tions, which are endless 1 Life brings to each his task,
 
 224 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vn. 
 
 and, whatever art you select, algebra, planting, archi- 
 tecture, poems, commerce, politics, — all are attainable, 
 even to the miraculous triumphs, on the same terms, 
 of selecting that for which you are apt ; — begin at the 
 beginning, proceed in order, step by step. Tis as 
 easy to twist iron anchors, and braid cannons, as to 
 braid straw, to boil granite as to boil water, if you 
 take all the steps in order. Wherever there is failure, 
 there is some giddiness, some superstition about luck, 
 some step omitted, which Nature never pardons. The 
 happy conditions of life may be had on the same terms. 
 Their attraction for you is the pledge that they are 
 within your reach. Our prayers are prophets. There 
 must be fidelity, and there must be adherence. How 
 respectable the life that clings to its objects ! Youth- 
 ful aspirations are fine things, your theories and plans 
 of life are fair and commendable : — but will you stick ? 
 Not one, I fear, in that Common full of people, or, in 
 a thousand, but one : and, when you tax them with 
 treachery, and remind them of their high resolutions, 
 they have forgotten that they made a vow. The 
 individuals are fugitive, and in the act of becoming 
 something else, and irresponsible. The race is great, 
 the ideal fair, but the men whiffling and unsure. The 
 hero is he who is immovably centred. The main 
 difference between people seems to be, that one man 
 can come under obligations on which you can rely, — 
 is obligable ; and another is not. As he has not a law 
 within him, there's nothing to tie him to. 
 
 'Tis inevitable to name particulars of virtue, and 
 of condition, and to exaggerate them. But all rests at
 
 vii.] CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 225 
 
 last on that integrity which dwarfs talent, and can 
 spare it. Sanity consists in not being subdued by 
 your means. Fancy prices are paid for position, and 
 for the culture of talent, but to the grand interests, 
 superficial success is of no account. The man, — it is 
 his attitude, — not feats, but forces, — not on set days 
 and public occasions, but, at all hours, and in repose 
 alike as in energy, still formidable, and not to be dis- 
 posed of. The populace says, with Home Tooke, " If 
 you would be powerful, pretend to be powerful." I 
 prefer to say with the old prophet, "Seekest thou 
 great things 1 seek them not : " — or, what was said of 
 a Spanish prince, " The more you took from him, the 
 greater he looked." Plus on lui ote, plus il est grand. 
 
 The secret of culture is to learn that a few great 
 points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the 
 obscurest farm, and in the miscellany of metropolitan 
 life, and that these few are alone to be regarded, — the 
 escape from all false ties ; courage to be what we are ; 
 and love of what is simple and beautiful ; independ- 
 ence, and cheerful relation, these are the essentials, — 
 these, and the wish to serve, — to add somewhat to 
 the well-being of men. 
 
 vol. v. q
 
 VIII. 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 Was never form and never face 
 So sweet to Seyd as only grace 
 Which did not slumber like a stone 
 But hovered gleaming and was gone. 
 Beauty chased he everywhere, 
 In flame, in storm, in clouds of air. 
 He smote the lake to feed his eye 
 
 With the beryl beam of the broken wave ; 
 He flung in pebbles well to hear 
 
 The moment's music which they gave. 
 Oft pealed for him a lofty tone 
 From nodding pole and belting zone. 
 He heard a voice none else could hear 
 From centred and from errant sphere. 
 The quaking earth did quake in rhyme, 
 Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime. 
 In dens of passion, and pits of woe, 
 He saw strong Eros struggling through, 
 To sun the dark and solve the curse, 
 And beam to the bounds of the universe. 
 While thus to love he gave his days 
 In loyal worship, scorning praise, 
 How spread their lures for him, in vain, 
 Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain ! 
 He thought it happier to be dead, 
 To die for Beauty, than live for bread.
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 The spiral tendency of vegetation infects education 
 also. Our books approach very slowly the things we 
 most wish to know. What a parade we make of our 
 science, and how far off, and at arm's length, it is from 
 its objects ! Our botany is all names, not powers : 
 poets and romancers talk of herbs of grace and heal- 
 ins ; but what does the botanist know of the virtues 
 of his weeds 1 The geologist lays bare the strata, and 
 can tell them all on his fingers : but does he know 
 what effect passes into the man who builds his house 
 in them 1 ? what effect on the race that inhabits a 
 oranite shelf 1 what on the inhabitants of marl and of 
 alluvium 1 
 
 We should go to the ornithologist with a new feel- 
 ing, if he could teach us what the social birds say, 
 when they sit in the autumn council, talking together 
 in the trees. The want of sympathy makes his record 
 a dull dictionary. His result is a dead bird. The 
 bird is not in its ounces and inches, but in its relations 
 to Nature ; and the skin or skeleton you show me is 
 no more a heron, than a heap of ashes or a bottle of 
 gases into which his body has been reduced is Dante
 
 230 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [viii. 
 
 or Washington. The naturalist is led from the road 
 by the whole distance of his fancied advance. The 
 boy had juster views when he gazed at the shells on 
 the beach, or the flowers in the meadow, unable to 
 call them by their names, than the man in the pride 
 of his nomenclature. Astrology interested us, for it 
 tied man to the system. Instead of an isolated beggar, 
 the farthest star felt him, and he felt the star. How- 
 ever rash and however falsified by pretenders and 
 traders in it, the hint was true and divine, the soul's 
 avowal of its large relations, and that climate, century, 
 remote natures, as well as near, are part of its bio- 
 graphy. Chemistry takes to pieces, but it does not 
 construct. Alchemy, which sought to transmute one 
 element into another, to prolong life, to arm with 
 power, — that was in the right direction. All our 
 science lacks a human side. The tenant is more than 
 the house. Bugs and stamens and spores, on which 
 we lavish so many years, are not finalities, and man, 
 when his powers unfold in order, will take Nature 
 along with him, and emit light into all her recesses. 
 The human heart concerns us more than the poring 
 into microscopes, and is larger than can be measured 
 by the pompous figures of the astronomer. 
 
 We are just so frivolous and sceptical. Men hold 
 themselves cheap and vile : and yet a man is a faggot 
 of thunderbolts. All the elements pour through his 
 system : he is the flood of the flood, and fire of the fire; 
 he feels the antipodes and the pole, as drops of his 
 blood : they are the extension of his personality. His 
 duties are measured by that instrument he is ; and a
 
 viii.] BEAUTY. 231 
 
 right and perfect man would be felt to the centre of 
 the Copernican system. Tis curious that we only 
 believe as deep as we live. We do not think heroes 
 can exert any more awful power than that surface-play 
 which amuses us. A deep man believes in miracles ; 
 waits for them, believes in magic, believes that the 
 orator will decompose his adversary ; believes that the 
 evil eye can wither, that the heart's blessing can heal : 
 that love can exalt talent; can overcome all odds. 
 From a great heart secret magnetisms flow incessantly 
 to draw great events. But we prize very humble 
 utilities, a prudent husband, a good son, a voter, a 
 citizen, and deprecate any romance of character ; and 
 perhaps reckon only his money value, — his intellect, 
 his affection, as a sort of bill of exchange, easily con- 
 vertible into fine chambers, pictures, music, and wine. 
 The motive of science was the extension of man, 
 on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch 
 the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears 
 understand the language of beast and bird, and the 
 sense of the wind ; and, through his sympathy, heaven 
 and earth should talk with him. But that is not our 
 science. These geologies, chemistries, astronomies, 
 seem to make wise, but they leave us where they 
 found us. The invention is of use to the inventor, 
 of questionable help to any other. The formulas of 
 science are like the papers in your pocket-book, of no 
 value to any but the owner. Science in England, in 
 America, is jealous of theory, hates the name of love 
 and moral purpose. There's a revenge for this in- 
 humanity. What manner of man does science make 1
 
 232 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vni. 
 
 The boy is not attracted. He says, I do not wish to 
 be such a kind of man as my professor is. The col- 
 lector has dried all the plants in his herbal, but he 
 has lost weight and humour. He has got all snakes 
 and lizards in his phials, but science has done for him 
 also, and has put the man into a bottle. Our reliance 
 on the physician is a kind of despair of ourselves. 
 The clergy have bronchitis, which does not seem a 
 certificate of spiritual health. Macready thought it 
 came of the falsetto of their voicing. An Indian 
 prince, Tisso, one day riding in the forest, saw a herd 
 of elk sporting. "See how happy," he said, "these 
 browsing elks are ! Why should not priests, lodged 
 and fed comfortably in the temples, also amuse them- 
 selves ?" Eeturning home, he imparted this reflection 
 to the king. The king, on the next day, conferred 
 the sovereignty on him, saying, "Prince, administer 
 this empire for seven days : at the termination of 
 that period, I shall put thee to death." At the end 
 of the seventh day, the king inquired, "From what 
 cause hast thou become so emaciated ?" He answered, 
 "From the horror of death." The monarch rejoined: 
 " Live, my child, and be wise. Thou hast ceased to 
 take recreation, saying to thyself, in seven days I 
 shall be put to death. These priests in the temple 
 incessantly meditate on death ; how can they enter 
 into healthful diversions V But the men of science 
 or the doctors or the clergy are not victims of their 
 pursuits, more than others. The miller, the lawyer, 
 and the merchant, dedicate themselves to their own 
 details, and do not come out men of more force.
 
 nn.] beauty. 233 
 
 Have they divination, grand aims, hospitality of soul, 
 and the equality to any event, which we demand in 
 man, or only the reactions of the mill, of the wares, 
 of the chicane 1 
 
 No object really interests us but man, and in man 
 only his superiorities ; and, though we are aware of a 
 perfect law in Nature, it has fascination for us only 
 through its relation to him, or, as it is rooted in the 
 mind. At the birth of Winckelmann, more than a 
 hundred years ago, side by side with this arid, depart- 
 mental, post mortem science, rose an enthusiasm in the 
 study of Beauty; and perhaps some sparks from it 
 may yet light a conflagration in the other. Know- 
 ledge of men, knowledge of manners, the power of 
 form, and our sensibility to personal influence, never 
 go out of fashion. These are facts of a science which 
 we study without book, whose teachers and subjects 
 are always near us. 
 
 So inveterate is our habit of criticism, that much 
 of our knowledge in this direction belongs to the 
 chapter of pathology. The crowd in the street 
 oftener furnishes degradations than angels or re- 
 deemers : but they all prove the transparency. Every 
 spirit makes its house; and we can give a shrewd 
 guess from the house to the inhabitant. But not less 
 does Nature furnish us with every sign of grace and 
 goodness. The delicious faces of children, the beauty 
 of school-girls, " the sweet seriousness of sixteen," the 
 lofty air of well-born, well-bred boys, the passionate 
 histories in the looks and manners of youth and early 
 manhood, and the varied power in all that well-known
 
 234 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vill. 
 
 company that escort us through life, — we know how 
 these forms thrill, paralyse, provoke, inspire, and 
 enlarge us. 
 
 Beauty is the form under which the intellect pre- 
 fers to study the world. All privilege is that of 
 beauty ; for there are many beauties ; as, of general 
 nature, of the human face and form, of manners, of 
 brain, or method, moral beauty, or beauty of the 
 soul. 
 
 The ancients believed that a genius or demon took 
 possession at birth of each mortal, to guide him ; that 
 these genii were sometimes seen as a flame of fire 
 partly immersed in the bodies which they governed ; 
 — on an evil man, resting on his head ; in a good 
 man, mixed with his substance. They thought the 
 same genius, at the death of its ward, entered a new- 
 born child, and they pretended to guess the pilot by 
 the sailing of the ship. We recognise obscurely the 
 same fact, though we give it our own names. We 
 say, that every man is entitled to be valued by his 
 best moment. We measure our friends so. We 
 know, they have intervals of folly, whereof we take 
 no heed, but wait the reappearings of the genius, 
 which are sure and beautiful. On the other side, 
 everybody knows people who appear beridden, and 
 who, with all degrees of ability, never impress us with 
 the air of free agency. They know it too, and peep 
 with their eyes to see if you detect their sad plight. 
 We fancy, could we pronounce the solving word, and 
 disenchant them, the cloud would roll up, the little 
 rider would be discovered and unseated, and they
 
 vin.] BEAUTY. 235 
 
 would regain their freedom. The remedy seems 
 never to be far off, since the first step into thought 
 lifts this mountain of necessity. Thought is the pent 
 air-ball which can rive the planet, and the beauty 
 which certain objects have for him, is the friendly 
 fire which expands the thought, and acquaints the 
 prisoner that liberty and power await him. 
 
 The question of Beauty takes us out of surfaces, 
 to thinking of the foundations of things. Goethe 
 said, " The beautiful is a manifestation of secret laws 
 of Nature, which, but for this appearance, had been 
 for ever concealed from us." And the working of this 
 deep instinct makes all the excitement — much of it 
 superficial and absurd enough— about works of art, 
 which leads armies of vain travellers every year to 
 Italy, Greece, and Egypt. Every man values every 
 acquisition he makes in the science of beauty above 
 his possessions. The most useful man in the most 
 useful world, so long as only commodity was served, 
 would remain unsatisfied. But, as fast as he sees 
 beauty, life acquires a very high value. 
 
 I am warned by the ill fate of many philosophers 
 not to attempt a definition of Beauty. I will rather 
 enumerate a few of its qualities. We ascribe beauty 
 to that which is simple ; which has no superfluous 
 parts ; which exactly answers its end ; which stands 
 related to all things ; which is the mean of many 
 extremes. It is the most enduring quality, and the 
 most ascending quality. We say, love is blind, and 
 the figure of Cupid is drawn with a bandage round 
 his eyes. Blind : — yes, because he does not see what
 
 236 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vm. 
 
 he does not like ; but the sharpest-sighted hunter in 
 the universe is Love, for finding what he seeks, and 
 only that ; and the mythologists tell us, that Vulcan 
 was painted lame, and Cupid blind, to call attention 
 to the fact, that one was all limbs, and the other all 
 eyes. In the true mythology, Love is an immortal 
 child, and Beauty leads him as a guide : nor can we 
 express a deeper sense than when we say, Beauty is 
 the pilot of the young soul. 
 
 Beyond their sensuous delight, the forms and 
 colours of Nature have a new charm for us in our 
 ' perception, that not one ornament was added for 
 ornament, but is a sign of some better health, or more 
 excellent action. Elegance of form in bird or beast, 
 or in the human figure, marks some excellence of 
 structure : or beauty is only an invitation from what 
 belongs to us. 'Tis a law of botany, that in plants, 
 the same virtues follow the same forms. It is a rule 
 of largest application, true in a plant, true in a loaf 
 of bread, that in the construction of any fabric or 
 organism, any real increase of fitness to its end is an 
 increase of beauty. 
 
 The lesson taught by the study of Greek and of 
 Gothic art, of antique and of Pre-Raphaelite painting, 
 was worth all the research, — namely, that all beauty 
 must be organic; that outside embellishment is de- 
 formity. It is the soundness of the bones that ulti- 
 mates itself in a peach-bloom complexion : health of 
 constitution that makes the sparkle and the power of 
 the eye. 'Tis the adjustment of the size and of the 
 joining of the sockets of the skeleton, that gives grace
 
 VIII.] 
 
 BEAUTY. 237 
 
 of outline and the finer grace of movement. The cat 
 and the deer cannot move or sit inelegantly. The 
 dancing-master can never teach a badly-built man to 
 walk well. The tint of the flower proceeds from its 
 root, and the lustres of the sea-shell begin with its 
 existence. Hence our taste in building rejects paint, 
 and all shifts, and shows the original grain of the 
 wood : refuses pilasters and columns that support 
 nothing, and allows the real supporters of the house 
 honestly to show themselves. Every necessary or 
 organic action pleases the beholder. A man leading 
 a horse to water, a farmer sowing seed, the labours 
 of haymakers in the field, the carpenter building a 
 ship, the smith at his forge, or whatever useful labour, 
 is becoming to the wise eye. But if it is done to be 
 seen, it is mean. How beautiful are ships on the sea ! 
 but ships in the theatre, — or ships kept for picturesque 
 effect on Virginia Water, by George IV., and men 
 hired to stand in fitting costumes at a penny an hour ! 
 — What a difference in effect between a battalion of 
 troops marching to action, and one of our independent 
 companies on a holiday ! In the midst of a military 
 show and a festal procession gay with banners, I saw 
 a boy seize an old tin pan that lay rusting under a 
 wall, and poising it on the top of a stick, he set it 
 turning, and made it describe the most elegant im- 
 aginable curves, and drew away attention from the 
 decorated procession by this startling beauty. 
 
 Another text from the mythologists. The Greeks 
 fabled that Venus was born of the foam of the sea. 
 Nothing interests us which is stark or bounded, but
 
 238 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vm. 
 
 only what streams with life, what is in act or endea- 
 vour to reach somewhat beyond. The pleasure a 
 palace or a temple gives the eye, is, that an order and 
 method has been communicated to stones, so that they 
 speak and geometrise, become tender or sublime with 
 expression. Beauty is the moment of transition, as 
 if the form were just ready to flow into other forms. 
 Any fixedness, heaping, or concentration on one 
 feature, — a long nose, a sharp chin, a hump-back, — is 
 the reverse of the flowing, and therefore deformed. 
 Beautiful as is the symmetry of any form, if the form 
 can move, we seek a more excellent symmetry. The 
 interruption of equilibrium stimulates the eye to desire 
 the restoration of symmetry, and to watch the steps 
 through which it is attained. This is the charm of 
 running water, sea-waves, the flight of birds, and the 
 locomotion of animals. This is the theory of dancing, 
 to recover continually in changes the lost equilibrium, 
 not by abrupt and angular, but by gradual and curv- 
 ing movements. I have been told by persons of ex- 
 perience in matters of taste, that the fashions follow 
 a law of gradation, and are never arbitrary. The new 
 mode is always only a step onward in the same direc- 
 tion as the last mode ; and a cultivated eye is prepared 
 for and predicts the new fashion. This fact suggests 
 the reason of all mistakes and offence in our own 
 modes. It is necessary in music, when you strike a 
 discord, to let down the ear by an intermediate note 
 or two to the accord again : and many a good experi- 
 ment, born of good sense, and destined to succeed, 
 fails, only because it is offensively sudden. I suppose,
 
 VIII.] BEAUTY. 239 
 
 the Parisian milliner who dresses the world from her 
 imperious boudoir will know how to reconcile the 
 Bloomer costume to the eye of mankind, and make it 
 triumphant over Punch himself, by interposing the 
 just gradations. I need not say, how wide the same 
 law ranges ; and how much it can be hoped to effect. 
 All that is a little harshly claimed by progressive 
 parties, may easily come to be conceded without 
 question, if this rule be observed. Thus the circum- 
 stances may be easily imagined, in which woman may 
 speak, vote, argue causes, legislate, and drive a coach, 
 and all the most naturally in the world, if only it 
 come by degrees. To this streaming or flowing be- 
 longs the beauty that all circular movement has ; as, 
 the circulation of waters, the circulation of the blood, 
 the periodical motion of planets, the annual wave of 
 vegetation, the action and reaction of Nature : and, 
 if we follow it out, this demand in our thought for 
 an ever- onward action is the argument for the 
 immortality. 
 
 One more text from the mythologists is to the same 
 purpose, — Beauty rides on a lion. Beauty rests on 
 necessities. The line of beauty is the result of perfect 
 economy. The cell of the bee is built at that angle 
 which gives the most strength with the least wax; 
 the bone or the quill of the bird gives the most alar 
 strength with the least weight. " It is the purgation 
 of superfluities," said Michel Angelo. There is not a 
 particle to spare in natural structures. There is a 
 compelling reason in the uses of the plant, for every 
 novelty of colour or form : and our art saves material,
 
 240 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vin. 
 
 by more skilful arrangement, and reaches beauty by 
 taking every superfluous ounce that can be spared 
 from a wall, and keeping all its strength in the poetry 
 of columns. In rhetoric, this art of omission is a 
 chief secret of power, and, in general, it is proof of 
 high culture, to say the greatest matters in the sim- 
 plest way. 
 
 Veracity first of all, and for ever. Rien de beau que 
 le vrai. In all design, art lies in making your object 
 prominent, but there is a prior art in choosing objects 
 that are prominent. The fine arts have nothing 
 casual, but spring from the instincts of the nations 
 that created them. 
 
 Beauty is the quality which makes to endure. In 
 a house that I know, I have noticed a block of sper- 
 maceti lying about closets and mantel -pieces, for 
 twenty years together, simply because the tallowman 
 gave it the form of a rabbit ; and, I suppose, it may 
 continue to be lugged about unchanged for a century. 
 Let an artist scrawl a few lines or figures on the back 
 of a letter, and that scrap of paper is rescued from 
 danger, is put in portfolio, is framed and glazed, 
 and, in proportion to the beauty of the lines drawn, 
 will be kept for centuries. Burns writes a copy of 
 verses, and sends them to a newspaper, and the 
 human race take charge of them that they shall not 
 perish. 
 
 As the flute is heard farther than the cart, see 
 how surely a beautiful form strikes the fancy of men, 
 and is copied and reproduced without end. How 
 many copies are there of the Belvedere Apollo, the
 
 viii.] BEAUTY. 241 
 
 Venus, the Psyche, the Warwick Vase, the Parthenon, 
 and the Temple of Vesta 1 ? These are objects of 
 tenderness to all. In our cities, an ugly building is 
 soon removed, and is never repeated, but any beauti- 
 ful building is copied and improved upon, so that all 
 masons and carpenters work to repeat and preserve 
 the agreeable forms, whilst the ugly ones die out. 
 
 The felicities of design in art, or in works of 
 Nature, are shadows or forerunners of that beauty 
 which reaches its perfection in the human form. All 
 men are its lovers. Wherever it goes, it creates joy 
 and hilarity, and everything is permitted to it. It 
 reaches its height in woman. "To Eve," say the 
 Mahometans, "God gave two-thirds of all beauty." 
 A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her 
 savage mate, planting tenderness, hope, and eloquence, 
 in all whom she approaches. Some favours of condi- 
 tion must go with it, since a certain serenity is essen- 
 tial, but we love its reproofs and superiorities. Nature 
 wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often 
 cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which 
 seems to say, "Yes, I am willing to attract, but to 
 attract a little better kind of a man than any I yet 
 behold." French mSmoires of the fifteenth century 
 celebrate the name of Pauline de Viguiere, a virtuous 
 and accomplished maiden, who so fired the enthusiasm 
 of her contemporaries by her enchanting form, that 
 the citizens of her native city of Toulouse obtained 
 the aid of the civil authorities to compel her to 
 appear publicly on the balcony at least twice a week, 
 and, as often as she showed herself, the crowd was 
 
 vol. v. R
 
 242 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vin. 
 
 dangerous to life. Not less, in England, in the last 
 century, was the fame of the Gunnings, of whom, 
 Elizabeth married the Duke of Hamilton ; and Maria, 
 the Earl of Coventry. Walpole says, " The concourse 
 was so great, when the Duchess of Hamilton was 
 presented at court, on Friday, that even the noble 
 crowd in the drawing-room clambered on chairs and 
 tables to look at her. There are mobs at their doors 
 to see them get into their chairs, and people go. early 
 to get places at the theatres, when it is known they 
 will be there." " Such crowds," he adds, elsewhere, 
 "flock to see the Duchess of Hamilton, that seven 
 hundred people sat up all night, in and about an inn, 
 in Yorkshire, to see her get into her post-chaise next 
 morning." 
 
 But why need we console ourselves with the fames 
 of Helen of Argos, or Corinna, or Pauline of Toulouse, 
 or the Duchess of Hamilton? We all know this 
 magic very well, or can divine it. It does not hurt 
 weak eyes to look into beautiful eyes never so long. 
 Women stand related to beautiful Nature around us, 
 and the enamoured youth mixes their form with 
 moon and stars, with woods and waters, and the 
 pomp of summer. They heal us of awkwardness by 
 their words and looks. We observe their intellectual 
 influence on the most serious student. They refine 
 and clear his mind ; teach him to put a pleasing 
 method into what is dry and difficult. We talk to 
 them, and wish to be listened to ; we fear to fatigue 
 them, and acquire a facility of expression which passes 
 from conversation into habit of style.
 
 vni.] BEA.UTY. 243 
 
 That Beauty is the normal state, is shown by the 
 perpetual effort of Nature to attain it. Mirabeau had 
 an ugly face on a handsome ground ; and we see faces 
 every day which have a good type, but have been 
 marred in the casting : a proof that we are all entitled 
 to beauty, should have been beautiful, if our ancestors 
 had kept the laws, — as every lily and every rose is 
 well. But our bodies do not fit us, but caricature 
 and satirise us. Thus, short legs, which constrain us 
 to short mincing steps, are a kind of personal insult 
 and contumely to the owner ; and long stilts, again, 
 put him at perpetual disadvantage, and force him 
 to stoop to the general level of mankind. Martial 
 ridicules a gentleman of his day whose countenance 
 resembled the face of a swimmer seen under water. 
 Saadi describes a schoolmaster " so ugly and crabbed, 
 that a sight of him would derange the ecstasies of the 
 orthodox." Faces are rarely true to any ideal type, 
 but are a record in sculpture of a thousand anecdotes 
 of whim and folly. Portrait painters say that most 
 faces and forms are irregular and unsymmetrical ; 
 have one eye blue, and one gray; the nose not 
 straight ; and one shoulder higher than another ; the 
 hair unequally distributed, etc. The man is physi- 
 cally as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and 
 patches borrowed unequally from good and bad 
 ancestors, and a misfit from the start. 
 
 A beautiful person, among the Greeks, was thought 
 to betray by this sign some secret favour of the im- 
 mortal gods : and we can pardon pride, when a 
 woman possesses such a figure, that wherever she
 
 244 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vin. 
 
 stands, or moves, or leaves a shadow on the wall, or 
 sits for a portrait to the artist, she confers a favour 
 on the world. And yet — it is not beauty that 
 inspires the deepest passion. Beauty without grace 
 is the hook without the bait. Beauty, without ex- 
 pression, tires. Abbe Manage said of the President 
 Le Bailleul, " that he was fit for nothing but to sit 
 for his portrait." A Greek epigram intimates that 
 the force of love is not shown by the courting of 
 beauty, but when the like desire is inflamed for 
 one who is ill-favoured. And petulant old gentle- 
 men, who have chanced to suffer some intolerable 
 weariness from pretty people, or who have seen cut 
 flowers to some profusion, or who see, after a world 
 of pains has been successfully taken for the cos- 
 tume, how the least mistake in sentiment takes all 
 the beauty out of your clothes, — affirm, that the 
 secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in 
 being uninteresting. 
 
 We love any forms, however ugly, from which 
 great qulaities shine. If command, eloquence, art, 
 or invention, exist in the most deformed person, all 
 the accidents that usually displease, please, and raise 
 esteem and wonder higher. The great orator was an 
 emaciated, insignificant person, but he was all brain. 
 Cardinal De Betz says of De Bouillon, " With the 
 physiognomy of an ox, he had the perspicacity of an 
 eagle." It was said of Hooke, the friend of Newton, 
 " he is the most, and promises the least, of any 
 man in England." "Since I am so ugly," said Du 
 Guesclin, "it behoves that I be bold." Sir Philip
 
 viii.] BEAUTY. 245 
 
 Sidney, the darling of mankind, Ben Jonson tells us, 
 " was no pleasant man in countenance, his face being- 
 spoiled with pimples, and of high blood, and long." 
 Those who have ruled human destinies, like planets, for 
 thousands of years, were not handsome men. If a 
 man can raise a small city to be a great kingdom, 
 can make bread cheap, can irrigate deserts, can join 
 oceans by canals, can subdue steam, can organise 
 victory, can lead the opinions of mankind, can 
 enlarge knowledge, 'tis no matter whether his nose 
 is parallel to his spine, as it ought to be, or whether 
 he has a nose at all ; whether his legs are straight, 
 or whether his legs are amputated; his deformities 
 will come to be reckoned ornamental, and advan- 
 tageous on the whole. This is the triumph of 
 expression, degrading beauty, charming us with a 
 power so fine and friendly and intoxicating, that it 
 makes admired persons insipid, and the thought of 
 passing our lives with them insupportable. There 
 are faces so fluid with expression, so flushed and 
 rippled by the play of thought, that we can hardly 
 find what the mere features really are. When the 
 delicious beauty of lineaments loses its power, it is 
 because a more delicious beauty has appeared ; that 
 an interior and durable form has been disclosed. 
 Still, Beauty rides on her lion, as before. Still, "it 
 was for beauty that the world was made." The lives 
 of the Italian artists, who established a despotism of 
 genius amidst the dukes and kings and mobs of their 
 stormy epoch, prove how loyal men in all times are 
 to a finer brain, a finer method, than their own. If
 
 246 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vni. 
 
 a man can cut such a head on his stone gate-post 
 as shall draw and keep a crowd about it all day, 
 by its beauty, good-nature, and inscrutable meaning ; 
 — if a man can build a plain cottage with such 
 symmetry, as to make all the fine palaces look 
 cheap and vulgar; can take such advantage of 
 Nature, that all her powers serve him : making use 
 of geometry, instead of expense; tapping a mountain 
 for his water-jet ; causing the sun and moon to seem 
 only the decorations of his estate; this is still the 
 legitimate dominion of beauty. 
 
 The radiance of the human form, though some- 
 times astonishing, is only a burst of beauty for a few 
 years or a few months, at the perfection of youth, 
 and in most, rapidly declines. But we remain lovers 
 of it, only transferring our interest to interior excel- 
 lence. And it is not only admirable in singular and 
 salient talents, but also in the world of manners. 
 
 But the sovereign attribute remains to be noted. 
 Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, 
 but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet 
 beautiful. This is the reason why beauty is still 
 escaping out of all analysis. It is not yet possessed, 
 it cannot be handled. Proclus says, "it swims on 
 the light of forms." It is properly not in the form, 
 but in the mind. It instantly deserts possession, 
 and flies to an object in the horizon. If I could put 
 my hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful 1 
 The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it, the beauty 
 forsakes all the near water. For the imagination 
 and senses cannot be gratified at the same time.
 
 viii.] BEAUTY. 247 
 
 Wordsworth rightly speaks of "a light that never 
 was on sea or land," meaning, that it was supplied 
 by the observer, and the Welsh bard warns his 
 countrywomen that 
 
 — " half of their charms with Cadwallon shall die." 
 
 The new virtue which constitutes a thing beautiful 
 is a certain cosmical quality, or, a power to suggest 
 relation to the whole world, and so lift the object 
 out of a pitiful individuality. Every natural feature, 
 — sea, sky, rainbow, flowers, musical tone, — has in it 
 somewhat which is not private, but universal, speaks 
 of that central benefit which is the soul of Nature, 
 and thereby is beautiful. And, in chosen men and 
 women, I find somewhat in form, speech, and man- 
 ners, which is not of their person and family, but 
 of a humane, catholic, and spiritual character, and 
 we love them as the sky. They have a largeness of 
 suggestion, and their face and manners carry a certain 
 grandeur, like time and justice. 
 
 The feat of the imagination is in showing the 
 convertibility of every thing into every other thing. 
 Facts which had never before left their stark common 
 sense, suddenly figure as Eleusinian mysteries. My 
 boots and chair and candlestick are fairies in disguise, 
 meteors and constellations. All the facts in Nature 
 are nouns of the intellect, and make the grammar 
 of the eternal language. Every word has a double, 
 treble, or centuple use and meaning. What ! have my 
 stove and pepper-pot a false bottom ! I cry you 
 mercy, good shoe-box ! I did not know you were a
 
 248 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [vm. 
 
 jewel-case. Chaff and dust begin to sparkle, and are 
 clothed about with immortality. And there is a joy 
 in perceiving the representative or symbolic character 
 of a fact, which no bare fact or event can ever give. 
 There are no days in life so memorable as those which 
 vibrated to some stroke of the imagination. 
 
 The poets are quite right in decking their mistresses 
 with the spoils of the landscape, flower-gardens, gems, 
 rainbows, flushes of morning, and stars of night, since 
 all beauty points at identity, and whatsoever thing 
 does not express to me the sea and sky, day and 
 night, is somewhat forbidden and wrong. Into every 
 beautiful object there enters somewhat immeasurable 
 and divine, and just as much into form bounded by 
 outlines, like mountains on the horizon, as into tones 
 of music, or depths of space. Polarised light showed 
 the secret architecture of bodies ; and when the second- 
 sight of the mind is opened, now one colour or form 
 or gesture, and now another, has a pungency, as if a 
 more interior ray had been emitted, disclosing its deep 
 holdings in the frame of things. 
 
 The laws of this translation we do not know, or 
 why one feature or gesture enchants, why one word 
 or syllable intoxicates, but the fact is familiar that 
 the fine touch of the eye, or a grace of manners, or a 
 phrase of poetry, plants wings at our shoulders ; as if 
 the Divinity, in his approaches, lifts away mountains 
 of obstruction, and deigns to draw a truer line, which 
 the mind knows and owns. This is that haughty 
 force of beauty, " vis swperba formce," which the poets 
 praise, — under calm and precise outline, the immeasur-
 
 viii.] BEAUTY. 249 
 
 able and divine : Beauty hiding all wisdom and power 
 in its calm sky. 
 
 All high beauty has a moral element in it, and 
 I find the antique sculpture as ethical as Marcus 
 Antoninus : and the beauty ever in proportion to the 
 depth of thought. Gross and obscure natures, how- 
 ever decorated, seem impure shambles ; but character 
 gives splendour to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin 
 and gray hairs. An adorer of truth we cannot choose 
 but obey, and the woman who has shared with us 
 the moral sentiment, — her locks must appear to us 
 sublime. Thus there is a climbing scale of culture, 
 from the first agreeable sensation which a sparkling 
 gem or a scarlet stain affords the eye, up through fair 
 outlines and details of the landscape, features of the 
 human face and form, signs and tokens of thought and 
 character in manners, up to the ineffable mysteries of 
 the intellect. Wherever we begin, thither our steps 
 tend : an ascent from the joy of a horse in his trap- 
 pings, up to the perception of Newton, that the globe 
 on which we ride is only a larger apple falling from 
 a larger tree ; up to the perception of Plato, that 
 globe and universe are rude and early expressions of 
 an all-dissolving Unity, — the first stair on the scale 
 to the temple of the Mind.
 
 IX. 
 ILLUSIONS. 
 
 Flow, flow the waves hated, 
 
 Accursed, adored, 
 
 The waves of mutation : 
 
 No anchorage is. 
 
 Sleep is not, death is not ; 
 
 Who seem to die live. 
 
 House you were born in, 
 
 Friends of your spring-time, 
 
 Old man and young maid, 
 
 Day's toil and its guerdon, 
 
 They are all vanishing, 
 
 Fleeing to fables, 
 
 Cannot be moored. 
 
 See the stars through them, 
 
 Through treacherous marbles. 
 
 Know, the stars yonder, 
 
 The stars everlasting, 
 
 Are fugitive also, 
 
 And emulate, vaulted, 
 
 The lambent heat-lightning, 
 
 And fire-fly's flight. 
 
 "When thou dost return 
 On the wave's circulation,
 
 252 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [ix. 
 
 Beholding the shimmer, 
 The wild dissipation, 
 And, out of endeavour 
 To change and to flow, 
 The gas become solid, 
 And phantoms and nothings 
 Return to be things, 
 And endless imbroglio 
 Is law and the world, — 
 Then first shalt thou know, 
 That in the wild turmoil, 
 Horsed on the Proteus, 
 Thou ridest to power, 
 And to endurance.
 
 ILLUSIONS. 
 
 Some years ago, in company with an agreeable party, 
 I spent a long summer day in exploring the Mammoth 
 Cave in Kentucky. We traversed, through spacious 
 galleries affording a solid masonry foundation for the 
 town and county overhead, the six or eight black 
 miles from the mouth of the cavern to the innermost 
 recess which tourists visit, — a niche or grotto made 
 of one seamless stalactite, and called, I believe, Serena's 
 Bower. I lost the light of one day. I saw high 
 domes, and bottomless pits; heard the voice of un- 
 seen waterfalls ; paddled three-quarters of a mile in 
 the deep Echo River, whose waters are peopled with 
 the blind fish; crossed the streams "Lethe" and 
 "Styx;" plied with music and guns the echoes in 
 these alarming galleries ; saw every form of stalagmite 
 and stalactite in the sculptured and fretted chambers, 
 — icicle, orange-flower, acanthus, grapes, and snow- 
 ball. We shot Bengal lights into the vaults and 
 groins of the sparry cathedrals, and examined all the 
 masterpieces which the four combined engineers- — 
 water, limestone, gravitation, and time — could make 
 in the dark.
 
 254 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [ix. 
 
 The mysteries and scenery of the cave had the 
 same dignity that belongs to all natural objects, and 
 which shames the fine things to which we foppishly 
 compare them. I remarked, especially, the mimetic 
 habit, with which Nature, on new instruments, hums 
 her old tunes, making night to mimic day, and chem- 
 istry to ape vegetation. But I then took notice, and 
 still chiefly remember, that the best thing which the 
 cave had to offer was an illusion. On arriving at 
 what is called the " Star-Chamber," our lamps were 
 taken from us by the guide, and extinguished or put 
 aside, and, on looking upwards, I saw, or seemed to 
 see, the night heaven thick with stars glimmering 
 more or less brightly over our heads, and even what 
 seemed a comet flaming among them. All the party 
 were touched with astonishment and pleasure. Our 
 musical friends sang with much feeling a pretty song, 
 "The stars are in the quiet sky," etc., and I sat down 
 on the rocky floor to enjoy the serene picture. Some 
 crystal specks in the black ceiling high overhead, 
 reflecting the light of a half-hid lamp, yielded this 
 magnificent effect. 
 
 I own, I did not like the cave so well for eking 
 out its sublimities with this theatrical trick. But I 
 have had many experiences like it, before and since ; 
 and we must be content to be pleased without too 
 curiously analysing the occasions. Our conversation 
 with Nature is not just what it seems. The cloud- 
 rack, the sunrise and sunset glories, rainbows, and 
 northern lights, are not quite so spheral as our child- 
 hood thought them; and the part our organisation
 
 ix.]« ILLUSIONS. 255 
 
 plays in them is too large. The senses interfere 
 everywhere, and mix their own structure with all 
 they report of. Once, we fancied the earth a plane, 
 and stationary. In admiring the sunset, we do not 
 deduct the rounding, co-ordinating, pictorial powers 
 of the eye. 
 
 The same interference from our organisation creates 
 the most of our pleasure and pain. Our first mistake 
 is the belief that the circumstance gives the joy which 
 we give to the circumstance. Life is an ecstasy. 
 Life is sweet as nitrous oxide; and the fisherman 
 dripping all day over a cold pond, the switchman at 
 the railway intersection, the farmer in the field, the 
 negro in the rice swamp, the fop in the street, the 
 hunter in the woods, the barrister with the jury, the 
 belle at the ball, all ascribe a certain pleasure to their 
 employment, which they themselves give it. Health 
 and appetite impart the sweetness to sugar, bread, 
 and meat. We fancy that our civilisation has got on 
 far, but we still come back to our primers. 
 
 We live by our imaginations, by our admirations, 
 by our sentiments. The child walks amid heaps of 
 illusions, which he does not like to have disturbed. 
 The boy, how sweet to him is his fancy ! how dear 
 the story of barons and battles ! What a hero he is, 
 whilst he feeds on his heroes ! What a debt is his to 
 imaginative books ! He has no better friend or in- 
 fluence than Scott, Shakspeare, Plutarch, and Homer. 
 The man lives to other objects, but who dare affirm 
 that they are more real 1 ? Even the prose of the 
 streets is full of refractions. In the life of the
 
 256 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [ix. 
 
 dreariest alderman, fancy enters into all details, and 
 colours them with rosy hue. He imitates the air and 
 actions of people whom he admires, and is raised in 
 his own eyes. He pays a debt quicker to a rich man 
 than to a poor man. He wishes the bow and com- 
 pliment of some leader in the state, or in society ; 
 weighs what he says ; perhaps he never comes nearer 
 to him for that, but dies at last better contented for 
 this amusement of his eyes and his fancy. 
 
 The world rolls, the din of life is never hushed. 
 In London, in Paris, in Boston, in San Francisco, the 
 carnival, the masquerade is at its height. Nobody 
 drops his domino. The unities, the fictions of the 
 piece it would be an impertinence to break. The 
 chapter of fascinations is very long. Great is paint ; 
 nay, God is the painter ; and we rightly accuse the 
 critic who destroys too many illusions. Society does 
 not love its unmaskers. It was wittily, if somewhat 
 bitterly, said by D'Alembert, "qu'un Mat de vapeur 
 Mait un Mat trh fdcheux, parceqvJil nous faisait voir les 
 choses comme elles sont." I find men victims of illusion 
 in all parts of life. Children, youths, adults, and old 
 men, all are led by one bauble or another. Yogan- 
 idra, the goddess of illusion, Proteus, or Momus, or 
 Gylfi's Mocking, — for the Power has many names, — 
 is stronger than the Titans, stronger than Apollo. 
 Few have overheard the gods or surprised their 
 secret. Life is a succession of lessons which must be 
 lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to 
 a riddle is another riddle. There are as many pillows 
 of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from
 
 ix.] ILLUSIONS. 257 
 
 one dream into another dream. The toys, to be sure, 
 are various, and are graduated in refinement to the 
 quality of the dupe. The intellectual man requires a 
 fine bait ; the sots are easily amused. But everybody 
 is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant 
 marches at all hours, with music and banner and 
 badge. 
 
 Amid the joyous troop who give in to the chari- 
 vari, comes now and then a sad-eyed boy, whose eyes 
 lack the requisite refractions to clothe the show in 
 due glory, and who is afflicted with a tendency to 
 trace home the glittering miscellany of fruits and 
 flowers to one root. Science is a search after identity, 
 and the scientific whim is lurking in all corners. At 
 the State Fair, a friend of mine complained that all 
 the varieties of fancy pears in our orchards seem to 
 have been selected by somebody who had a whim for 
 a particular kind of pear, and only cultivated such 
 as had that perfume ; they were all alike. And I 
 remember the quarrel of another youth with the con- 
 fectioners, that, when he racked his wit to choose the 
 best comfits in the shops, in all the endless varieties 
 of sweetmeat he could only find three flavours, or two. 
 What then 1 Pears and cakes are good for something ; 
 and because you, unluckily, have an eye or nose too 
 keen, why need you spoil the comfort which the rest 
 of us find in them 1 I knew a humorist, who, in a 
 good deal of rattle, had a grain or two of sense. He 
 shocked the company by maintaining that the attri- 
 butes of God were two, — power and risibility ; and 
 that it was the duty of every pious man to keep up 
 
 VOL. v. S
 
 258 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [ix. 
 
 the comedy. And I have known gentlemen of great 
 stake in the community, but whose sympathies were 
 cold, — presidents of colleges, and governors, and 
 senators, — who held themselves bound to sign every 
 temperance pledge, and act with Bible societies, and 
 missions, and peacemakers, and cry Hist-a-boij ! to 
 every good dog. We must not carry comity too far, 
 but we all have kind impulses in this direction. When 
 the boys come into my yard for leave to gather 
 horse-chestnuts, I own I enter into Nature's game, 
 and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing 
 that any moment they will find out the imposture of 
 that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite un- 
 necessary ; the enchantments are laid on very thick. 
 Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and 
 grim to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I 
 saw yesterday ; yet not the less they hung it round 
 with frippery romance, like the children of the 
 happiest fortune, and talked of "the dear cottage 
 where so many joyful hours had flown." Well, this 
 thatching of hovels is the custom of the country. 
 Women, more than all, are the element and kingdom 
 of illusion. Being fascinated, they fascinate. They 
 see through Claude-Lorraines. And how dare any 
 one, if he could, pluck away the coulisses, stage effects, 
 and ceremonies, by which they live 1 Too pathetic, 
 too pitiable, is the region of affection, and its atmo- 
 sphere always liable to mirage. 
 
 We are not very much to blame for our bad 
 marriages. We live amid hallucinations; and this 
 especial trap is laid to trip up our feet with, and all
 
 ix.] ILLUSIONS. 259 
 
 are tripped up first or last. But the mighty Mother 
 who had been so sly with us, as if she felt that she 
 owed us some indemnity, insinuates into the Pandora- 
 box of marriage some deep and serious benefits, and 
 some great joys. We find a delight in the beauty and 
 happiness of children, that makes the heart too big 
 for the body. In the worst-assorted connections there 
 is ever some mixture of true marriage. Teague and 
 his jade get some just relations of mutual respect, 
 kindly observation, and fostering of each other, learn 
 something, and would carry themselves wiselier, if 
 they were now to begin. 
 
 "lis fine for us to point at one or another fine 
 madman, as if there were any exempts. The scholar 
 in his library is none. I, who have all my life heard 
 any number of orations and debates, read poems and 
 miscellaneous books, conversed with many geniuses, 
 am still the victim of any new page ; and, if Marma- 
 duke, or Hugh, or Moosehead, or any other, invent a 
 new style or mythology, I fancy that the world will 
 be all brave and right, if dressed in these colours, 
 which I had not thought of. Then at once I will 
 daub with this new paint ; but it will not stick. 'Tis 
 like the cement which the pedlar sells at the door ; 
 he makes broken crockery hold with it, but you can 
 never buy of him a bit of the cement which will make 
 it hold when he is gone. 
 
 Men who make themselves felt in the world avail 
 themselves of a certain fate in their constitution, 
 which they know how to use. But they never deeply 
 interest us unless they lift a corner of the curtain, or
 
 260 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [ix. 
 
 betray never so slightly their penetration of what is 
 behind it. Tis the charm of practical men, that out- 
 side of their practicality are a certain poetry and play, 
 as if they led the good horse Power by the bridle, 
 and preferred to walk, though they can ride so fiercely. 
 Bonaparte is intellectual, as well as Caesar ; and the 
 best soldiers, sea-captains, and railway men have a 
 gentleness, when off duty ; a good-natured admission 
 that there are illusions, and who shall say that he is 
 not their sport ? We stigmatise the cast-iron fellows, 
 who cannot so detach themselves, as " dragon-ridden," 
 " thunder-stricken," and fools of fate, with whatever 
 powers endowed. 
 
 Since our tuition is through emblems and indirec- 
 tions, 'tis well to know that there is method in it, a 
 fixed scale, and rank above rank in the phantasms. 
 We begin low with coarse masks, and rise to the most 
 subtle and beautiful. The red men told Columbus, 
 " they had an herb which took away fatigue ; " but he 
 found the illusion of " arriving from the east at the 
 Indies " more composing to his lofty spirit than any 
 tobacco. Is not our faith in the impenetrability of 
 matter more sedative than narcotics 1 You play with 
 jackstraws, balls, bowls, horse and gun, estates and 
 politics ; but there are finer games before you. Is 
 not time a pretty toy 1 Life will show you masks that 
 are worth all your carnivals. Yonder mountain must 
 migrate into your mind. The fine star-dust and 
 nebulous blur in Orion, "the portentous year of 
 Mizar and Alcor," must come down and be dealt with 
 in your household thought. What if you shall come
 
 IX.] 
 
 ILLUSIONS. 261 
 
 to discern that the play and playground of all this 
 pompous history are radiations from yourself, and 
 that the sun borrows his beams? What terrible 
 questions we are learning to ask ! The former men 
 believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men 
 were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We 
 are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out 
 of men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which 
 they and their fathers held and were framed upon. 
 
 There are deceptions of the senses, deceptions of 
 the passions, and the structural, beneficent illusions 
 of sentiment and of the intellect. There is the 
 illusion of love, which attributes to the beloved person 
 all which that person shares with his or her family, 
 sex, age, or condition, nay, with the human mind 
 itself. 'Tis these which the lover loves, and Anna 
 Matilda gets the credit of them. As if one shut up 
 always in a tower, with one window, through which 
 the face of heaven and earth could be seen, should 
 fancy that all the marvels he beheld belonged to that 
 window. There is the illusion of time, which is very 
 deep ; who has disposed of it 1 or come to the con- 
 viction that what seems the succession of thought is 
 only the distribution of wholes into causal series? 
 The intellect sees that every atom carries the whole 
 of Nature; that the mind opens to omnipotence; 
 that, in the endless striving and ascents, the meta- 
 morphosis is entire, so that the soul doth not know 
 itself in its own act, when that act is perfected. There 
 is illusion that shall deceive even the elect. There is 
 illusion that shall deceive even the pei^former of the
 
 262 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [ix. 
 
 miracle. Though he make his body, he denies that 
 he makes it. Though the world exist from thought, 
 thought is daunted in presence of the world. One 
 after the other we accept the mental laws, still resisting 
 those which follow, which hoAvever must be accepted. 
 But all our concessions only compel us to new pro- 
 fusion. And what avails it that science has come 
 to treat space and time as simply forms of thought, 
 and the material world as hypothetical, and withal 
 our pretension of property and even of self-hood is 
 fading with the rest, if, at last, even our thoughts 
 are not finalities ; but the incessant flowing and 
 ascension reach these also, and each thought which 
 yesterday was a finality, to-day is yielding to a larger 
 generalisation 1 
 
 With such volatile elements to work in, 'tis no 
 wonder if our estimates are loose and floating. We 
 must work and affirm, but we have no guess of the 
 value of what we say or do. The cloud is now as big 
 as your hand, and now it covers a county. That 
 story of Thor, who was set to drain the drinking-horn 
 in Asgard, and to wrestle with the old woman, and to 
 run with the runner Lok, and presently found that 
 he had been drinking up the sea, and wrestling with 
 Time, and racing with Thought, describes us who are 
 contending, amid these seeming trifles, with the 
 supreme energies of Nature. We fancy we have 
 fallen into bad company and squalid condition, low 
 debts, shoe-bills, broken glass to pay for, pots to buy, 
 butcher's meat, sugar, milk, and coal. " Set me some 
 great task, ye gods ! and I will show my spirit."
 
 ix.] ILLUSIONS. 263 
 
 " Not so," says the good Heaven ; "plod and plough, 
 vamp your old coats and hats, weave a shoestring; 
 great affairs and the best wine by and by." Well, 
 'tis all phantasm ; and if we weave a yard of tape in 
 all humility, and as well as we can, long hereafter we 
 shall see it was no cotton tape at all, but some galaxy 
 which we braided, and that the threads were Time 
 and Nature. 
 
 We cannot write the order of the variable winds. 
 How can we penetrate the law of our shifting moods 
 and susceptibility ? Yet they differ as all and nothing. 
 Instead of the firmament of yesterday, which our eyes 
 require, it is to-day an eggshell which coops us in; 
 we cannot even see what or where our stars of destiny 
 are. From day to day, the capital facts of human 
 life are hidden from our eyes. Suddenly the mist 
 rolls up, and reveals them, and we think how much 
 good time is gone, that might have been saved, had 
 any hint of these things been shown. A sudden rise 
 in the road shows us the system of mountains, and all 
 the summits, which have been just as near us all the 
 year, but quite out of mind. But these alterations 
 are not without their order, and we are parties to our 
 various fortune. If life seem a succession of dreams, 
 yet poetic justice is done in dreams also. The visions 
 of good men are good; it is the undisciplined will 
 that is whipped with bad thoughts and bad fortunes. 
 When we break the laws, Ave lose our hold on the 
 central reality. Like sick men in hospitals, we 
 change only from bed to bed, from one folly to an- 
 other ; and it cannot signify much what becomes of
 
 264 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [ix. 
 
 such castaways, — wailing, stupid, comatose creatures, 
 — lifted from bed to bed, from the nothing of life to 
 the nothing of death. 
 
 In this kingdom of illusions we grope eagerly for 
 stays and foundations. There is none but a strict 
 and faithful dealing at home, and a severe barring 
 out of all duplicity or illusion there. Whatever 
 games are played with us, we must play no games 
 with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last 
 honesty and truth. I look upon the simple and 
 childish virtues of veracity and honesty as the root 
 of all that is sublime in character. Speak as you 
 think, be what you are, pay your debts of all kinds. 
 I prefer to be owned as sound and solvent, and my 
 word as good as my bond, and to be what cannot be 
 skipped, or dissipated, or undermined, to all the 4dat 
 in the universe. This reality is the foundation of 
 friendship, religion, poetry, and art. At the top or 
 at the bottom of all illusions, I set the cheat which 
 still leads us to work and live for appearances, in 
 spite of our conviction, in all sane hours, that it is 
 what we really are that avails with friends, with 
 strangers, and with fate or fortune. 
 
 One would think from the talk of men that riches 
 and poverty were a great matter ; and our civilisation 
 mainly respects it. But the Indians say that they 
 do not think the white man with his brow of care, 
 always toiling, afraid of heat and cold, and keeping 
 within doors, has any advantage of them. The per- 
 manent interest of every man is, never to be in a 
 false position, but to have the weight of Nature to
 
 a.] 
 
 ILLUSIONS. 265 
 
 back him in all that he does. Riches and poverty are 
 a thick or thin costume ; and our life — the life of all 
 of us — identical. For we transcend the circumstance 
 continually, and taste the real quality of existence; 
 as in our employments, which only differ in the 
 manipulations, but express the same laws ; or in our 
 thoughts, which wear no silks, and taste no ice-creams. 
 We see God face to face every hour, and know the 
 savour of Nature. 
 
 The early Greek philosophers Heraclitus and 
 Xenophanes measured their force on this problem of 
 identity. Diogenes of Apollonia said, that unless the 
 atoms were made of one stuff they could never blend 
 and act with one another. But the Hindoos, in their 
 sacred writings, express the liveliest feeling, both of 
 the essential identity, and of that illusion which they 
 conceive variety to be. "The notions, l I am,' and 
 ' 77ms is mine,' which influence mankind, are but de- 
 lusions of the mother of the world. Dispel, O Lord 
 of all creatures ! the conceit of knowledge which 
 proceeds from ignorance." And the beatitude of man 
 they hold to lie in being freed from fascination. 
 
 The intellect is stimulated by the statement of 
 truth in a trope, and the will by clothing the laws 
 of life in illusions. But the unities of Truth and of 
 Right are not broken by the disguise. There need 
 never be any confusion in these. In a croAvded life 
 of many parts and performers, on a stage of nations, 
 or in the obscurest hamlet in Maine or California, the 
 same elements offer the same choices to each new 
 comer, and, according to his election, he fixes his
 
 266 CONDUCT OF LIFE. [ix. 
 
 fortune in absolute Nature. It would be hard to put 
 more mental and moral philosophy than the Persians 
 have thrown into a sentence : — 
 
 " Fooled thou must be, though wisest of the wise : 
 Then be the fool of virtue, not of vice." 
 
 There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the uni- 
 verse. All is system and gradation. Every god is 
 there sitting in his sphere. The young mortal enters 
 the hall of the firmament : there is he alone with 
 them alone, they pouring on him benedictions and 
 gifts, and beckoning him up to their thrones. On 
 the instant, and incessantly, fall snow-storms of illu- 
 sions. He fancies himself in a vast crowd which 
 sways this way and that, and whose movement and 
 doings he must obey : he fancies himself poor, 
 orphaned, insignificant. The mad crowd drives hither 
 and thither, now furiously commanding this thing to 
 be done, now that. What is he that he should resist 
 their will, and think or act for himself? Every 
 moment, new changes, and new showers of deceptions, 
 to baffle and distract him. And when, by and by, 
 for an instant, the air clears, and the cloud lifts a little, 
 there are the gods still sitting around him on their 
 thrones, — they alone with hint alone.
 
 SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE 
 
 TWELVE CHAPTERS
 
 SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 1 
 
 I FELL in with a humorist, on my travels, who had 
 in his chamber a cast of the Rondanini Medusa, and 
 who assured me that the name which that fine work 
 of art bore in the catalogues was a misnomer, as he 
 was convinced that the sculptor who carved it in- 
 tended it for Memory, the mother of the Muses. In the 
 conversation that followed, my new friend made some 
 extraordinary confessions. " Do you not see," he said, 
 "the penalty of learning, and that each of these 
 
 scholars Avhom you have met at S , though he 
 
 were to be the last man, would, like the executioner 
 in Hood's poem, guillotine the last but one ?" He 
 added many lively remarks, but his evident earnest- 
 ness engaged my attention, and, in the weeks that 
 followed, we became better acquainted. He had good 
 abilities, a genial temper, and no vices; but he had 
 one defect,— he could not speak in the tone of the 
 people. There was some paralysis on his will, such 
 that, when he met men on common terms, he spoke 
 weakly, and from the point, like a flighty girl. His 
 consciousness of the fault made it worse. He envied 
 every drover and lumberman in the tavern their manly 
 
 i Published by arrangement with Messrs. Boutledge & Sons.
 
 270 SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. [i. 
 
 speech. He coveted Mirabeau's don terrible de la 
 familiarite, believing that he whose sympathy goes 
 lowest is the man from whom kings have the most to 
 fear. For himself, he declared that he could not get 
 enough alone to write a letter to a friend. He left 
 the city; he hid himself in pastures. The solitary 
 river was not solitary enough ; the sun and moon put 
 him out. When he bought a house, the first thing 
 he did was to plant trees. He could not enough con- 
 ceal himself. Set a hedge here; set oaks there, — 
 trees behind trees; above all, set evergreens, for 
 they will keep a secret all the year round. The 
 most agreeable compliment you could pay him was, 
 to imply that you had not observed him in a house 
 or a street where you had met him. Whilst he 
 suffered at being seen where he was, he consoled him- 
 self with the delicious thought of the inconceivable 
 number of places where he was not. All he wished 
 of his tailor was to provide that sober mean of colour 
 and cut which would never detain the eye for a 
 moment. He went to Vienna, to Smyrna, to London. 
 In all the variety of costumes, a carnival, a kaleido- 
 scope of clothes, to his horror he could never discover 
 a man in the street who wore anything like his own 
 dress. He would have given his soul for the ring of 
 Gyges. His dismay at his visibility had blunted the 
 fears of mortality. "Do you think," he said, "I am 
 in such great terror of being shot, — I, who am only 
 waiting to shuffle off my corporeal jacket, to slip away 
 into the back stars, and put diameters of the solar 
 system and sidereal orbits between me and all souls,
 
 i.] SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 271 
 
 — there to wear out ages in solitude, and forget 
 memory itself, if it be possible 1" He had a remorse 
 running to despair, of his social gaucheries, and walked 
 miles and miles to get the twitchings out of his face, 
 the starts and shrugs out of his arms and shoulders. 
 God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has 
 no forgiveness in heaven or earth. He admired in 
 Newton, not so much his theory of the moon, as his 
 letter to Collins, in which he forbade him to insert 
 his name with the solution of the problem in the 
 " Philosophical Transactions " : " It would perhaps 
 increase my acquaintance, the thing which I chiefly 
 study to decline." 
 
 These conversations led me somewhat later to the 
 knowledge of similar cases, and to the discovery that 
 they are not of very infrequent occurrence. Few sub- 
 stances are found pure in nature. Those constitutions 
 which can bear in open day the rough dealing of the 
 world must be of that mean and average structure, — 
 such as iron and salt, atmospheric air, and water. But 
 there are metals, like potassium and sodium, which, 
 to be kept pure, must be kept under naphtha. Such 
 are the talents determined on some specialty, which 
 a culminating civilisation fosters in the heart of great 
 cities and in royal chambers. Nature protects her 
 own work. To the culture of the world, an Archi- 
 medes, a Newton is indispensable ; so she guards them 
 by a certain aridity. If these had been good fellows, 
 fond of dancing, port, and clubs, we should have had 
 no "Theory of the Sphere," and no "Principia." 
 They had that necessity of isolation which genius feels.
 
 272 SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. [i. 
 
 Each must stand on his glass tripod, if he would keep 
 his electricity. Even Swedenborg, whose theory of 
 the universe is based on affection, and who reprobates 
 to weariness the danger and vice of pure intellect, is 
 constrained to make an extraordinary exception : 
 " There are also angels who do not live consociated, 
 but separate, house and house; these dwell in the 
 midst of heaven, because they are the best of angels." 
 
 We have known many fine geniuses with that 
 imperfection that they cannot do anything useful, not 
 so much as write one clean sentence. "lis worse, and 
 tragic, that no man is fit for society who has fine traits. 
 At a distance, he is admired ; but bring him hand to 
 hand, he is a cripple. One protects himself by soli- 
 tude, and one by courtesy, and one by an acid, worldly 
 manner, — each concealing how he can the thinness of 
 his skin and his incapacity for strict association. But 
 there is no remedy that can reach the heart of the 
 disease, but either habits of self-reliance that should 
 go in practice to making the man independent of the 
 human race, or else a religion of love. Now he hardly 
 seems entitled to marry ; for how can he protect a 
 woman, who cannot protect himself 1 
 
 We pray to be conventional. But the wary 
 Heaven takes care you shall not be, if there is any- 
 thing good in you. Dante was very bad company, 
 and was never invited to dinner. Michel Angelo 
 had a sad, sour time of it. The ministers of beauty 
 are rarely beautiful in coaches and saloons. Columbus 
 discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself. Yet 
 each of these potentates saw well the reason of his
 
 I.] SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 273 
 
 exclusion. Solitary was he'? Why, yes; but his 
 society was limited only by the amount of brain 
 Nature appropriated in that age to carry on the 
 government of the world. "If I stay," said Dante, 
 when there was question of going to Eome, "who 
 will go 1 and if I go, who will stay 1 " 
 
 But the necessity of solitude is deeper than we 
 have said, and is organic. I have seen many a 
 philosopher whose world is large enough for only one 
 person. He affects to be a good companion ; but we 
 are still surprising his secret, that he means and needs 
 to impose his system on all the rest. The determina- 
 tion of each is from all the others, like that of each 
 tree up into free space. Tis no wonder, when each 
 has his whole head, our societies should be so small. 
 Like President Tyler, our party falls from us every 
 day, and we must ride in a sulky at last. Dear 
 heart ! take it sadly home to thee, — there is no 
 co-operation. We begin with friendships, and all our 
 youth is a reconnoitring and recruiting of the holy 
 fraternity they shall combine for the salvation of 
 men. But so the remoter stars seem a nebula of 
 united light ; yet there is no group which a telescope 
 will not resolve, and the dearest friends are separated 
 by impassable gulfs. The co-operation is involuntary, 
 and is put upon us by the Genius of Life, who reserves 
 this as a part of his prerogative. 'Tis fine for us to 
 talk, we sit and muse, and are serene, and complete ; 
 but the moment we meet with anybody, each becomes 
 a fraction. 
 
 Though the stuff of tragedy and of romances is in 
 VOL. v. T
 
 274 SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. [i. 
 
 a moral union of two superior persons, whose con- 
 fidence in each other for long years, out of sight, and 
 in sight, and against all appearances, is at last justi- 
 fied by victorious proof of probity to gods and men, 
 causing joyful emotions, tears and glory, — though 
 there be for heroes this moral union, yet they too 
 are as far off as ever from an intellectual union, and 
 the moral union is for comparatively low and external 
 purposes, like the co-operation of a ship's company 
 or of a fire-club. But how insular and pathetically 
 solitary are all the people we know ! Nor dare they 
 tell what they think of each other, when they meet 
 in the street. We have a fine right, to be sure, to 
 taunt men of the world with superficial and treach- 
 erous courtesies ! 
 
 Such is the tragic necessity which strict science 
 finds underneath our domestic and neighbourly life, 
 irresistibly driving each adult soul as with whips into 
 the desert, and making our warm covenants senti- 
 mental and momentary. We must infer that the 
 ends of thought were peremptory, if they were to be 
 secured at such ruinous cost. They are deeper than 
 can be told, and belong to the immensities and eter- 
 nities. They reach down to that depth where society 
 itself originates and disappears, — where the question 
 is, Which is first, man or men ? — where the individual 
 is lost in his source. 
 
 But this banishment to the rocks and echoes no 
 metaphysics can make right or tolerable. This result 
 is so against nature, such a half-view, that it must be 
 corrected by a common sense and experience. "A
 
 I.] SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 275 
 
 man is born by the side of his father, and there he 
 remains." A man must be clothed with society, or 
 we shall feel a certain bareness and poverty, as of a 
 displaced and unfurnished member. He is to be 
 dressed in arts and institutions, as well as in body- 
 garments. Now and then a man exquisitely made 
 can live alone, and must ; but coop up most men, and 
 you undo them. " The king lived and ate in his hall 
 with men, and understood men," said Selden. When 
 a young barrister said to the late Mr. Mason, " I keep 
 my chamber to read law," — " Read law ! " replied the 
 veteran, " 'tis in the court-room you must read law." 
 Nor is the rule otherwise for literature. If you Avould 
 learn to write, 'tis in the street you must learn it. 
 Both for the vehicle and for the aims of fine arts, you 
 must frequent the public square. The people, and 
 not the college, is the writer's home. A scholar is a 
 candle which the love and desire of all men will light. 
 Never his lands or his rents, but the power to charm 
 the disguised soul that sits veiled under this bearded 
 and that rosy visage is his rent and ration. His pro- 
 ducts are as needful as those of the baker or the 
 weaver. Society cannot do Avithout cultivated men. 
 As soon as the first wants are satisfied, the higher 
 wants become imperative. 
 
 'Tis hard to mesmerise ourselves, to whip our 
 OAvn top ; but through sympathy we are capable of 
 energy and endurance. Concert fires people to a 
 certain fury of performance they can rarely reach 
 alone. Here is the use of society : it is so eas} r with 
 the great to be great ; so easy to come up to an exist-
 
 276 SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. [i. 
 
 ing standard ; — as easy as it is to the lover to swim 
 to his maiden through waves so grim before. The 
 benefits of affection are immense ; and the one event 
 which never loses its romance is the encounter with 
 superior persons on terms allowing the happiest 
 intercourse. 
 
 It by no means follows that we are not fit for 
 society, because soirees are tedious, and because the 
 soire'e finds us tedious. A backwoodsman, who had 
 been sent to the University, told me that, when he 
 heard the best -bred young men at the law -school 
 talk together, he reckoned himself a boor ; but when- 
 ever he caught them apart, and had one to himself 
 alone, then they were the boors, and he the better 
 man. And if we recall the rare hours when we en- 
 countered the best persons, we then found ourselves, 
 and then first society seemed to exist. That was 
 society, though in the transom of a brig, or on the 
 Florida Keys. 
 
 A cold, sluggish blood thinks it has not facts 
 enough to the purpose, and must decline its turn 
 in the conversation. But they who speak have no 
 more, — have less. 'Tis not new facts that avail, but 
 the heat to dissolve everybody's facts. Heat puts 
 you in right relation with magazines of facts. The 
 capital defect of cold, arid natures is the want of 
 animal spirits. They seem a power incredible, as if 
 God should raise the dead. The recluse witnesses 
 what others perform by their aid, with a kind of fear. 
 It is as much out of his possibility as the prowess of 
 Cceur-de-Lion, or an Irishman's day's- work on the
 
 I.] SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 277 
 
 railroad. 'Tis said, the present and the future are 
 always rivals. Animal spirits constitute the power 
 of the present, and their feats are like the structure 
 of a pyramid. Their result is a lord, a general, or a 
 boon companion. Before these, what a base mendi- 
 cant is Memory with his leathern badge ! But this 
 genial heat is latent in all constitutions, and is dis- 
 engaged only by the friction of society. As Bacon 
 said of manners, " To obtain them, it only needs not 
 to despise them," so we say of animal spirits, that 
 they are the spontaneous product of health and of a 
 social habit. "For behaviour, men may learn it, as 
 they take diseases one of another." 
 
 But the people are to be taken in very small doses. 
 Tf solitude is proud, so is society vulgar. In society, 
 high advantages are set down to the individual as dis- 
 qualifications. We sink as easily as we rise, through 
 sympathy. So many men whom I know are de- 
 graded by their sympathies, their native aims being 
 high enough, but their relation all too tender to the 
 gross people about them. Men cannot afford to live 
 together on their merits, and they adjust themselves 
 by their demerits, — by their love of gossip, or by 
 sheer tolerance and animal good-nature. They untune 
 and dissipate the brave aspirant. 
 
 The remedy is, to reinforce each of these moods 
 from the other. Conversation will not corrupt us, if 
 we come to the assembly in our own garb and speech, 
 and with the energy of health to select what is ours 
 and reject what is not. Society we must have ; but 
 let it be society, and not exchanging news, or eating
 
 278 SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. [1. 
 
 from the same dish. Is it society to sit in one of 
 your chairs? I cannot go to the houses of my nearest 
 relatives, because I do not wish to be alone. Society 
 exists by chemical affinity, and not otherwise. 
 
 Put any company of people together with freedom 
 for conversation, and a rapid self -distribution takes 
 place, into sets and pairs. The best are accused of 
 exclusiveness. It would be more true to say, they 
 separate as oil from water, as children from old 
 people, without love or hatred in the matter, each 
 seeking his like ; and any interference with the affin- 
 ities would produce constraint and suffocation. All 
 conversation is a magnetic experiment. I know that 
 my friend can talk eloquently ; you know that he 
 cannot articulate a sentence : we have seen him in 
 different company. Assort your party, or invite 
 none. Put Stubbs and Coleridge, Quintilian and 
 Aunt Miriam, into pairs, and you make them all 
 wretched. 'Tis an extempore Sing -Sing built in a 
 parlour. Leave them to seek their own mates, and 
 they will be as merry as sparrows. 
 
 A higher civility will re-establish in our customs 
 a certain reverence Avhich we have lost. What to 
 do with these brisk young men who break through 
 all fences, and make themselves at home in every 
 house ? I find out in an instant if my companion 
 does not want me, and ropes cannot hold me when 
 my welcome is gone. One would think that the 
 affinities would pronounce themselves with a surer 
 reciprocity. 
 
 Here again, as so often, Nature delights to put us
 
 I.] SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE. 279 
 
 between extreme antagonisms, and our safety is in the 
 skill with which we keep the diagonal line. Solitude 
 is impracticable, and society fatal We must keep 
 our head in the one and our hands in the other. The 
 conditions are met, if we keep our independence, yet 
 do not lose our sympathy. These wonderful horses 
 need to be driven by fine hands. We require such a 
 solitude as shall hold us to its revelations when we 
 are in the street and in palaces ; for most men are 
 cowed in society, and say good things to you in 
 private, but will not stand to them in public. But 
 let us not be the victims of words. Society and soli- 
 tude are deceptive names. It is not the circumstance 
 of seeing more or fewer people, but the readiness of 
 sympathy, that imports ; and a sound mind will de- 
 rive its principles from insight, with ever a purer 
 ascent to the sufficient and absolute right, and will 
 accept society as the natural element in which they 
 are to be applied.
 
 CIVILISATION. 
 
 A certain degree of progress from the rudest state 
 in which man is found, — a dweller in caves, or on 
 trees, like an ape, — a cannibal, and eater of pounded 
 snails, worms, and offal, — a certain degree of progress 
 from this extreme is called Civilisation. It is a 
 vague, complex name, of many degrees. Nobody has 
 attempted a definition. Mr. Guizot, writing a book 
 on the subject, does not. It implies the evolution of 
 a highly-organised man, brought to supreme delicacy 
 of sentiment, as in practical power, religion, liberty, 
 sense of honour, and taste. In the hesitation to 
 define what it is, Ave usually suggest it by negations. 
 A nation that has no clothing, no iron, no alphabet, 
 no marriage, no arts of peace, no abstract thought, 
 we call barbarous. And after many arts are invented 
 or imported, as among the Turks and Moorish nations, 
 it is often a little complaisant to call them civilised. 
 
 Each nation grows after its own genius, and has a 
 civilisation of its own. The Chinese and Japanese, 
 though each complete in his way, is different from 
 the man of Madrid or the man of New York. The 
 term imports a mysterious progress. In the brutes is
 
 282 CIVILISATION. [ii. 
 
 none ; and in mankind to-day the savage tribes are 
 gradually extinguished rather than civilised. The 
 Indians of this country have not learned the white 
 man's work ; and in Africa, the negro of to-day is the 
 negro of Herodotus. In other races the growth is 
 not arrested ; hut the like progress that is made by a 
 boy " when he cuts his eye-teeth," as we say,— childish 
 illusions passing daily away, and he seeing things 
 really and comprehensively, — is made by tribes. It 
 is the learning the secret of cumulative power, of 
 advancing on one's self. It implies a facility of 
 association, power to compare, the ceasing from fixed 
 ideas. The Indian is gloomy and distressed when 
 urged to depart from his habits and traditions. He 
 is overpowered by the gaze of the white, and his eye 
 sinks. The occasion of one of these starts of growth 
 is always some novelty that astounds the mind, and 
 provokes it to dare to change. Thus there is a 
 Cadmus, a Pytheas, a Manco Capac, at the beginning 
 of each improvement, — some superior foreigner im- 
 porting new and wonderful arts, and teaching them. 
 Of course, he must not know too much, but must 
 have the sympathy, language, and gods of those he 
 would inform. But chiefly the sea-shore has been 
 the point of departure to knowledge, as to commerce. 
 The most advanced nations are always those who 
 navigate the most. The power which the sea requires 
 in the sailor makes a man of him very fast, and the 
 change of shores and populations clears his head of 
 much nonsense of his wigwam. 
 
 Where shall we begin or end the list of those feats
 
 ii.] CIVILISATION. 283 
 
 of liberty and wit, each of which feats made an epoch 
 of history 1 ? Thus, the effect of a framed or stone 
 house is immense on the tranquillity, power, and 
 refinement of the builder. A man in a cave or in a 
 camp, a nomad, will die with no more estate than the 
 wolf or the horse leaves. But so simple a labour as 
 a house being achieved, his chief enemies are kept at 
 bay. He is safe from the teeth of wild animals, from 
 frost, sun-stroke, and Aveather ; and fine faculties 
 begin to yield their fine harvest. Invention and art 
 are born, manners and social beauty and delight. 
 Tis wonderful how soon a piano gets into a log-hut 
 on the frontier. You would think they found it 
 under a pine-stump. With it comes a Latin grammar, 
 — and one of those towhead boys has written a hymn 
 on Sunday. Now let colleges, now let senates take 
 heed ! for here is one who, opening these fine tastes 
 on the basis of the pioneer's iron constitution, will 
 gather all their laurels in his strong hands. 
 
 When the Indian trail gets widened, graded, and 
 bridged to a good road, there is a benefactor, there is 
 a missionary, a pacificator, a wealth-bringer, a maker 
 of markets, a vent for industry. Another step in 
 civility is the change from war, hunting, and pastur- 
 age to agriculture. Our Scandinavian forefathers 
 have left us a significant legend to convey their sense 
 of the importance of this step. " There was once a 
 giantess who had a daughter, and the child saw a 
 husbandman ploughing in the field. Then she ran 
 and picked him up with her finger and thumb, and 
 put him and his plough and his oxen into her apron,
 
 284 CIVILISATION. [ii. 
 
 and carried them to her mother, and said, ' Mother, 
 what sort of a beetle is this that I found wriggling in 
 the sand V But the mother said, ' Put it away, my 
 child ; we must begone out of this land, for these 
 people will dwell in it.'" Another success is the 
 post-office, with its educating energy augmented by 
 cheapness and guarded by a certain religious senti- 
 ment in mankind ; so that the power of a wafer or a 
 drop of wax or gluten to guard a letter, as it flies 
 over sea, over land, and comes to its address as if a 
 battalion of artillery brought it, I look upon as a fine 
 meter of civilisation. 
 
 The division of labour, the multiplication of the 
 arts of peace, which is nothing but a large allowance 
 to each man to choose his work according to his 
 faculty, — to live by his better hand, — fills the State 
 with useful and happy labourers ; and they, creating 
 demand by the very temptation of their productions, 
 are rapidly and surely rewarded by good sale : and 
 what a police and ten commandments their work 
 thus becomes. So true is Dr. Johnson's remark that 
 "men are seldom more innocently employed than 
 when they are making money." 
 
 The skilful combinations of civil government, 
 though they usually follow natural leadings, as the 
 lines of race, language, religion, and territory, yet 
 require wisdom and conduct in the rulers, and in 
 their result delight the imagination. "We see in- 
 surmountable multitudes obeying, in opposition to 
 their strongest passions, the restraints of a power 
 which they scarcely perceive, and the crimes of a
 
 ii.] CIVILISATION. 285 
 
 single individual marked and punished at the distance 
 of half the earth." 1 
 
 Right position of woman in the State is another 
 index. Poverty and industry with a healthy mind 
 read very easily the laws of humanity, and love 
 them : place the sexes in right relations of mutual 
 respect, and a severe morality gives that essential 
 charm to woman which educates all that is delicate, 
 poetic, and self-sacrificing, breeds courtesy and learn- 
 ing, conversation and wit, in her rough mate ; so 
 that I have thought a sufficient measure of civilisation 
 is the influence of good women. 
 
 Another measure of culture is the diffusion of 
 knowledge, overrunning all the old barriers of caste, 
 and, by the cheap press, bringing the university to 
 every poor man's door in the newsboy's basket. 
 Scraps of science, of thought, of poetry, are in the 
 coarsest sheet, so that in every house we hesitate to 
 burn a newspaper until we have looked it through. 
 
 The ship, in its latest complete equipment, is an 
 
 abridgment and compend of a nation's arts : the ship 
 
 steered by compass and chart, — longitude reckoned 
 
 by lunar observation and by chronometer, — driven 
 
 by steam; and in wildest sea -mountains, at vast 
 
 distances from home, 
 
 " The pulses of her iron heart 
 Go beating through the storm." 
 
 No use can lessen the wonder of this control, by so 
 weak a creature, of forces so prodigious. I remem- 
 ber I watched, in crossing the sea, the beautiful skill 
 
 1 Dr. Thomas Brown.
 
 286 CIVILISATION. [it. 
 
 whereby the engine in its constant working was 
 made to produce two hundred gallons of fresh water 
 out of salt water, every hour, — thereby supplying 
 all the ship's want. 
 
 The skill that pervades complex details ; the man 
 that maintains himself ; the chimney taught to burn 
 its own smoke ; the farm made to produce all that is 
 consumed on it ; the very prison compelled to main- 
 tain itself and yield a revenue, and, better still, made 
 a reform school, and a manufactory of honest men 
 out of rogues, as the steamer made fresh water out 
 of salt,— all these are examples of that tendency to 
 combine antagonisms, and utilise evil, which is the 
 index of high civilisation. 
 
 Civilisation is the result of highly complex organ- 
 isation. In the snake, all the organs are sheathed : 
 no hands, no feet, no fins, no wings. In bird and 
 beast the organs are released and begin to play. In 
 man they are all unbound, and full of joyful action. 
 With this unswadclling he receives the absolute 
 illumination we call Eeason, and thereby true 
 liberty. 
 
 Climate has much to do with this melioration. 
 The highest civility has never loved the hot zones. 
 Wherever snow falls there is usually civil freedom. 
 Where the banana grows the animal system is in- 
 dolent and pampered at the cost of higher qualities : 
 the man is sensual and cruel. But this scale is not 
 invariable. High degrees of moral sentiment control 
 the unfavourable influences of climate ; and some of 
 our grandest examples of men and of races come from
 
 n.] CIVILISATION. 287 
 
 the equatorial regions, — as the genius of Egypt, of 
 India, and of Arabia. 
 
 These feats are measures or traits of civility ; 
 and temperate climate is an important influence, 
 though not quite indispensable, for there have been 
 learning, philosophy, and art in Iceland, and in the 
 tropics. But one condition is essential to the social 
 education of man, namely, morality. There can be 
 no high civility without a deep morality, though it 
 may not always call itself by that name, but some- 
 times the point of honour, as in the institution of 
 chivalry ; or patriotism, as in the Spartan and Roman 
 republics ; or the enthusiasm of some religious sect 
 which imputes its virtue to its dogma ; or the cabal- 
 ism, or esprit de corps, of a masonic or other association 
 of friends. 
 
 The evolution of a highly -destined society must 
 be moral ; it must run in the grooves of the celestial 
 wheels. It must be catholic in aims. What is 
 moral ? It is the respecting in action catholic or 
 universal ends. Hear the definition which Kant 
 gives of moral conduct : " Act always so that the 
 immediate motive of thy will may become a universal 
 rule for all intelligent beings." 
 
 Civilisation depends on morality. Everything 
 good in man leans on what is higher. This rule 
 holds in small as in great. Thus, all our strength 
 and success in the work of our hands depend on our 
 borrowing the aid of the elements. You have seen 
 a carpenter on a ladder with a broad -axe chopping 
 upward chips from a beam. How awkward ! at
 
 288 CIVILISATION. [II. 
 
 what disadvantage he works ! But see him on the 
 oround, dressing his timber under him. Now, not 
 his feeble muscles, but the force of gravity, brings 
 down the axe ; that is to say, the planet itself splits 
 his stick. The farmer had much ill-temper, laziness, 
 and shirking to endure from his hand-sawyers, until 
 one day he bethought him to put his saw -mill on 
 the edge of a waterfall ; and the river never tires of 
 turning his wheel : the river is good-natured, and 
 never hints an objection. 
 
 We had letters to send : couriers could not go 
 fast enough, nor far enough; broke their waggons, 
 foundered their horses; bad roads in spring, snow- 
 drifts in winter, heats in summer ; could not get the 
 horses out of a walk. But we found out that the 
 air and earth were full of Electricity; and always 
 going our way,— just the way we wanted to send. 
 Would lie take a message? Just as lief as not; had 
 nothing else to do ; would carry it in no time. Only 
 one doubt occurred, one staggering objection, — he 
 had no carpet-bag, no visible pockets, no hands, not 
 so much as a mouth to carry a letter. But, after 
 much thought and many experiments, we managed 
 to meet the conditions, and to fold up the letter in 
 such invisible compact form as he could carry in 
 those invisible pockets of his, never wrought by 
 needle and thread, — and it went like a charm. 
 
 I admire still more than the saw-mill the skill 
 which, on the sea -shore, makes the tides drive the 
 wheels and grind corn, and which thus engages the 
 assistance of the moon, like a hired hand, to grind.
 
 II.] CIVILISATION. 289 
 
 and wind, and pump, and saw, and split stone, and roll 
 iron. 
 
 Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance 
 of his labour, to hitch his waggon to a star, and see 
 his chore done by the gods themselves. That is the 
 way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the 
 elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, 
 light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day, and 
 cost us nothing. 
 
 Our astronomy is full of examples of calling in the 
 aid of these magnificent helpers. Thus, on a planet 
 so small as ours, the want of an adequate base for 
 astronomical measurements is early felt, as, for ex- 
 ample, in detecting the parallax of a star. But the 
 astronomer, having by an observation fixed the place 
 of a star, by so simple an expedient as waiting six 
 months, and then repeating his observation, contrived 
 to put the diameter of the earth's orbit, say two 
 hundred millions of miles, between his first observa- 
 tion and his second, and this line afforded him a 
 respectable base for his triangle. 
 
 All our arts aim to win this vantage. We cannot 
 bring the heavenly powers to us, but, if we will only 
 choose our jobs in directions in which they travel, 
 they will undertake them with the greatest pleasure. 
 It is a peremptory rule with them, that they never go 
 out of their road. We are dapper little busybodies, 
 and run this way and that way superserviceably ; but 
 they SAverve never from their foreordained paths, — 
 neither the sun, nor the moon, nor a bubble of air, 
 nor a mote of dust. 
 
 vol. v. U
 
 290 CIVILISATION. [II. 
 
 And as our handiworks borrow the elements, so 
 
 all our social and political action leans on principles. 
 
 To accomplish anything excellent, the will must work 
 
 for catholic and universal ends. A puny creature 
 
 walled in on every side, as Daniel wrote,- — 
 
 ' ' Unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how poor a thing is man !" 
 
 but when his will leans on a principle, when he is 
 the vehicle of ideas, he borrows their omnipotence. 
 Gibraltar may be strong, but ideas are impregnable, 
 and bestow on the hero their invincibility. "It 
 was a great instruction," said a saint in Cromwell's 
 war, "that the best courages are but beams of the 
 Almighty." Hitch your waggon to a star. Let us not 
 fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. 
 Let us not lie and steal. No god will help. We shall 
 find all their teams going the other way, — Charles's 
 Wain, Great Bear, Orion, Leo, Hercules : every god 
 will leave us. Work rather for those interests which 
 the divinities honour and promote, — justice, love, 
 freedom, knowledge, utility. 
 
 If we can thus ride in Olympian chariots by put- 
 ting our works in the path of the celestial circuits, 
 we can harness also evil agents, the powers of dark- 
 ness, and force them to serve against their will the 
 ends of wisdom and virtue. Thus, a wise government 
 puts fines and penalties on pleasant vices. What a 
 benefit would the American government, not yet re- 
 lieved of its extreme need, render to itself, and to 
 every city, village, and hamlet in the States, if it 
 would tax whisky and rum almost to the point of
 
 ii.] CIVILISATION. 291 
 
 prohibition ! Was it Bonaparte who said that he 
 found vices very good patriots 1 — " he got five millions 
 from the love of brandy, and he should be glad to 
 know which of the virtues avouIcI pay him as much." 
 Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheer- 
 fully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make 
 them pay high for such joy as they give and such 
 harm as they do. 
 
 These are traits, and measures, and modes ; and 
 the true test of civilisation is, not the census, nor the 
 size of cities, nor the crops, — no, but the kind of man 
 the country turns out. I see the vast advantages of 
 this country, spanning the breadth of the temperate 
 zone. I see the immense material prosperity, — towns 
 on towns, states on states, and wealth piled in the 
 massive architecture of cities ; California quartz - 
 mountains dumped down in New York to be repiled 
 architecturally along-shore from Canada to Cuba, and 
 thence westward to California again. But it is not 
 New York streets built by the confluence of workmen 
 and wealth of all nations, though stretching out 
 towards Philadelphia until they touch it, and north- 
 ward until they touch New Haven, Hartford, Spring- 
 field, Worcester, and Boston, — not these that make 
 the real estimation. But, when I look over this con- 
 stellation of cities which animate and illustrate the 
 land, and see how little the government has to do 
 with their daily life, how self-helped and self-directed 
 all families are,— knots of men in purely natural 
 societies, — societies of trade, of kindred blood, of 
 habitual hospitality, house and house, man acting on
 
 292 CIVILISATION. [II. 
 
 man by weight of opinion, of longer or better-directed 
 industry, the refining influence of women, the invita- 
 tion which experience and permanent causes open to 
 youth and labour, — when I see how much each virtu- 
 ous and gifted person, whom all men consider, lives 
 affectionately with scores of excellent people who are 
 not known far from home, and perhaps with great 
 reason reckons these people his superiors in virtue, 
 and in the symmetry and force of their qualities, I 
 see what cubic values America has, and in these a 
 better certificate of civilisation than great cities or 
 enormous wealth. 
 
 In strictness, the vital refinements are the moral 
 and intellectual steps. The appearance of the Hebrew 
 Moses, of the Indian Bucldh, — in Greece, of the Seven 
 Wise Masters, of the acute and upright Socrates, and 
 of the Stoic Zeno, — in Judsea, the advent of Jesus, — 
 and in modern Christendom, of the realists Huss, 
 Savonarola, and Luther, are causal facts which carry 
 forward races to new convictions, and elevate the 
 rule of life. In the presence of these agencies, it is 
 frivolous to insist on the invention of printing or gun- 
 powder, of steam-power or gaslight, percussion-caps 
 and rubber-shoes, which are toys thrown off from that 
 security, freedom, and exhilaration which a healthy 
 morality creates in society. These arts add a com- 
 fort and smoothness to house and street life ; but a 
 purer morality, which kindles genius, civilises civil- 
 isation, casts backward all that we held sacred into 
 the profane, as the flame of oil throws a shadow when 
 shined upon by the flame of the Bude-light. Not the
 
 n.] CIVILISATION. 293 
 
 less the popular measures of progress will ever be the 
 arts and the laws. 
 
 But if there be a country which cannot stand any 
 one of these tests,— a country where knowledge cannot 
 be diffused without perils of mob-law and statute-law, 
 — where speech is not free, — where the post-office is 
 violated, mail-bags opened, and letters tampered with, 
 — where public debts and private debts outside of the 
 State are repudiated, — where liberty is attacked in 
 the primary institution of social life, — where the 
 position of the white woman is injuriously affected 
 by the outlawry of the black Avoman, — where the 
 arts, such as they have, are all imported, having no 
 indigenous life, — where the labourer is not secured in 
 the earnings of his own hands, — where suffrage is not 
 free or equal, — that country is, in all these respects, 
 not civil, but barbarous ; and no advantages of soil, 
 climate, or coast can resist these suicidal mischiefs. 
 
 Morality and all the incidents of morality are 
 essential ; as, justice to the citizen, and personal 
 liberty. Montesquieu says : " Countries are well 
 cultivated not as they are fertile, but as they are 
 free ; " and the remark holds not less but more true 
 of the culture of men, than of the tillage of land. 
 And the highest proof of civility is, that the whole 
 public action of the State is directed on securing the 
 greatest good of the greatest number.
 
 ART. 
 
 All departments of life at the present day, — Trade, 
 Politics, Letters, Science, or Religion, — seem to feel, 
 and to labour to express, the identity of their law. 
 They are rays of one sun ; they translate each into a 
 new language the sense of the other. They are sub- 
 lime when seen as emanations of a Necessity contra- 
 distinguished from the vulgar Fate, by being instant 
 and alive, and dissolving man, as well as his works, 
 in its flowing beneficence. This influence is conspicu- 
 ously visible in the principles and history of Art. 
 
 On one side in primary communication with 
 absolute truth through thought and instinct, the 
 human mind on the other side tends, by an equal 
 necessity, to the publication and embodiment of its 
 thought, modified and dwarfed by the impurity and 
 untruth which, in all our experience, injure the indi- 
 viduality through which it passes. The child not 
 only suffers, but cries ; not only hungers, but eats. 
 The man not only thinks, but speaks and acts. 
 Every thought that arises in the mind, in its rising 
 aims to pass out of the mind into act ; just as every 
 plant, in the moment of germination, struggles up to
 
 296 AKT. [in. 
 
 light. Thought is the seed of action ; but action is 
 as much its second form as thought is its first. It 
 rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered 
 and acted. The more profound the thought, the more 
 burdensome. Always in proportion to the depth of its 
 sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the 
 soul, to be spoken, to be done. What is in, will out. It 
 struggles to the birth. Speech is a great pleasure, and 
 action a great pleasure ; they cannot be foreborne. 
 
 The utterance of thought and emotion in speech 
 and action may be conscious or unconscious. The 
 sucking child is an unconscious actor. The man in 
 an ecstasy of fear or anger is an unconscious actor. 
 A large part of our habitual actions are unconsciously 
 done, and most of our necessary words are uncon- 
 sciously said. 
 
 The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or 
 action, to any end, is Art. From the first imitative 
 babble of a child to the despotism of eloquence, from 
 his first pile of toys or chip bridge to the masonry of 
 Minot Eock Lighthouse or the Pacific Eailroad, from 
 the tattooing of the Owhyhees to the Vatican Gallery, 
 from the simplest expedient of private prudence to 
 the American Constitution, from its first to its last 
 works, Art is the spirit's voluntary use and com- 
 bination of things to serve its end. The Will distin- 
 guishes it as spiritual action. Relatively to themselves, 
 the bee, the bird, the beaver, have no art ; for what 
 they do, they do instinctively ; but relatively to the 
 Supreme Being, they have. And the same is true of 
 all unconscious action : relatively to the doer, it is
 
 in.] ART. 297 
 
 instinct ; relatively to the First Cause, it is Art. In 
 this sense, recognising the Spirit which informs 
 Nature, Plato rightly said : " Those things which are 
 said to be done by Nature are indeed done by Divine 
 Art." Art, universally, is the spirit creative. It 
 was defined by Aristotle : " The reason of the thing, 
 without the matter." 
 
 If we follow the popular distinction of works 
 according to their aim, we should say, the Spirit, in 
 its creation, aims at use or at beauty, and hence Art 
 divides itself into the Useful and the Fine Arts. 
 
 The Useful Arts comprehend not only those that 
 lie next to instinct, as agriculture, building, weaving, 
 etc., but also navigation, practical chemistry, and the 
 construction of all the grand and delicate tools and 
 instruments by which man serves himself ; as language, 
 the watch, the ship, the decimal cipher ; and also the 
 sciences, so far as they are made serviceable to politi- 
 cal economy. 
 
 When we reflect on the pleasure we receive from 
 a ship, a railroad, a dry -dock ; or from a picture, a 
 dramatic representation, a statue, a poem, we find 
 that these have not a quite simple, but a blended 
 origin. We find that the question, What is Art? 
 leads us directly to another, — Who is the artist 1 and 
 the solution of this is the key to the history of Art. 
 
 I hasten to state the principle which prescribes, 
 through different means, its firm law to the Useful and 
 the Beautiful Arts. The law is this. The universal 
 soul is the alone creator of the useful and the beau- 
 tiful : therefore, to make anj^thing useful or beautiful.
 
 298 ART. [III. 
 
 the individual must be submitted to the universal 
 mind. 
 
 In the first place, let us consider this in reference 
 to the Useful Arts. Here the omnipotent agent is 
 Nature ; all human acts are satellites to her orb. 
 Nature is the representative of the universal mind, 
 and the law becomes this, — that Art must be a com- 
 plement to nature, strictly subsidiary. It was said, 
 in allusion to the great structures of the ancient 
 Romans, — the aqueducts and bridges, — that "their 
 Art was a Nature working to municipal ends." That 
 is a true account of all just works of useful art. 
 Smeaton built Eddystone Lighthouse on the model 
 of an oak-tree, as being the form in Nature best 
 designed to resist a constant assailing force. Dollond 
 formed his achromatic telescope on the model of the 
 human eye. Duhamel built a bridge by letting in a 
 piece of stronger timber for the middle of the under 
 surface, getting his hint from the structure of the 
 shin-bone. 
 
 The first and last lesson of the Useful Arts is, that 
 Nature tyrannises over our works. They must be 
 conformed to her law, or they will be ground to 
 powder by her omnipresent activity. Nothing droll, 
 nothing whimsical, will endure. Nature is ever inter- 
 fering with Art. You cannot build your house or 
 pagoda as you will, but as you must. There is a 
 quick bound set to your caprice. The leaning tower 
 can only lean so far. The verandah or pagoda roof 
 can curve upward only to a certain point. The slope 
 of your roof is determined by the weight of snow.
 
 Ml.] 
 
 AET. 299 
 
 It is only within narrow limits that the discretion of 
 the architect may range : gravity, wind, sun, rain, the 
 size of men and animals, and such like, have more to 
 say than he. It is the law of fluids that prescribes 
 the shape of the boat, —keel, rudder, and bows, — and, 
 in the finer fluid above, the form and tackle of the 
 sails. Man seems to have no option about his tools, 
 but merely the necessity to learn from Nature what 
 will fit best, as if he were fitting a screw or a door. 
 Beneath a necessity thus almighty, what is artificial 
 in man's life seems insignificant. He seems to take 
 his task so minutely from intimations of Nature, that 
 his works become as it were hers, and he is no longer 
 free. 
 
 But if we work within this limit, she yields us all 
 our strength. All powerful action is performed by 
 bringing the forces of Nature to bear upon our objects. 
 We do not grind corn or lift the loom by our own 
 strength, but we build a mill in such position as to set 
 the north wind to play upon our instrument, or the 
 elastic force of steam, or the ebb and flow of the sea. 
 So in our handiwork, we do few things by muscular 
 force, but we place ourselves in such attitudes as to 
 bring the force of gravity, that is, the weight of the 
 planet, to bear upon the spade or the axe we wield. 
 In short, in all our operations we seek not to use our 
 own, but to bring a quite infinite force to bear. 
 
 Let us now consider this law as it affects the works 
 that have beauty for their end, that is, the productions 
 of the Fine Arts. Here again the prominent fact is 
 subordination of man. His art is the least part of his
 
 300 ART. [III. 
 
 work of art. A great deduction is to be made before 
 we can know his proper contribution to it. 
 
 Music, Eloquence, Poetry, Painting, Sculpture, 
 Architecture. This is a rough enumeration of the 
 Fine Arts. I omit Rhetoric, which only respects the 
 form of eloquence and poetry. Architecture and elo- 
 quence are mixed Arts, whose end is sometimes beauty 
 and sometimes use. 
 
 It will be seen that in each of these Arts there is 
 much which is not spiritual. Each has a material 
 basis, and in each the creating intellect is crippled in 
 some degree by the stuff on which it works. The 
 basis of poetry is language, which is material only on 
 one side. It is a demi-god. But being applied 
 primarily to the common necessities of man, it is not 
 new created by the poet for his own ends. 
 
 The basis of music is the qualities of the air and 
 the vibrations of sonorous bodies. The pulsation of 
 a stretched string or wire gives the ear the pleasure 
 of sweet sound, before yet the musician has enhanced 
 this pleasure by concords and combinations. 
 
 Eloquence, as far as it is a Fine Art, is modified 
 how much by the material organisation of the orator, 
 the tone of the voice, the physical strength, the play 
 of the eye and countenance. All this is so much 
 deduction from the purely spiritual pleasure, — as so 
 much deduction from the merit of Art — and is the 
 attribute of Nature. 
 
 In painting, bright colours stimulate the eye, before 
 yet they are harmonised into a landscape. In sculp- 
 ture and in architecture the material, as marble or
 
 in.] ART. 301 
 
 granite, and in architecture the mass, arc sources of 
 great pleasure, quite independent of the artificial 
 arrangement. The Art resides in the model, in the 
 plan ; for it is on that the genius of the artist is 
 expended, not on the statue or the temple. Just as 
 much Letter as is the polished statue of dazzling 
 marble than the clay model, or as much more im- 
 pressive as is the granite cathedral or pyramid than 
 the ground-plan or profile of them on paper, so much 
 more beauty owe they to Nature than to Art. 
 
 There is a still larger deduction to be made from 
 the genius of the artist in favour of Nature than I 
 have yet specified. 
 
 A jumble of musical sounds on a viol or a flute, in 
 which the rhythm of the tune is played without one 
 of the notes being right, gives pleasure to the un- 
 skilful ear. A very coarse imitation of the human 
 form on canvas, or in wax- work, — a coarse sketch in 
 colours of a landscape, in which imitation is all that 
 is attempted, — these things give to unpractised eyes, 
 to the uncultured, who do not ask a fine spiritual 
 delight, almost as much pleasure as a statue of Canova 
 or a picture of Titian. 
 
 And in the statue of Canova, or the picture of 
 Titian, these give the great part of the pleasure ; 
 they arc the basis on which the fine spirit rears a 
 higher delight, but to which these are indispensable. 
 
 Another deduction from the genius of the artist is 
 what is conventional in his art, of which there is 
 much in every Avork of art. Thus how much is there 
 that is not original in every particular building, in
 
 302 ART. [in. 
 
 every statue, in every tune, painting, poem, or 
 harangue! — whatever is national or usual ; as the 
 usage of building all Roman churches in the form of 
 a cross, the prescribed distribution of parts of a 
 theatre, the custom of draping a statue in classical 
 costume. Yet who will deny that the merely con- 
 ventional part of the performance contributes much 
 to its effect 1 
 
 One consideration more exhausts, I believe, all the 
 deductions from the genius of the artist in any given 
 work. This is the adventitious. Thus the pleasure 
 that a noble temple gives us is only in part owing to 
 the temple. It is exalted by the beauty of sunlight, 
 the play of the clouds, the landscape around it, its 
 grouping with the houses, trees, and towers in its 
 vicinity. The pleasure of eloquence is in greatest 
 part owing often to the stimulus of the occasion which 
 produces it, — to the magic of sympathy, which exalts the 
 feeling of each by radiating on him the feeling of all. 
 
 The effect of music belongs how much to the 
 place, — as the church, or the moonlight walk ; or to 
 the company ; or, if on the stage, to what went before 
 in the play, or to the expectation of what shall come 
 after. 
 
 In poetry, "It is tradition more than invention 
 that helps the poet to a good fable." The adventi- 
 tious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater 
 delight which a verse gives in happy quotation than 
 in the poem. 
 
 It is a curious proof of our conviction that the 
 artist does not feel himself to be the parent of his
 
 in.] ART. 303 
 
 work, and is as much surprised at the effect as we, 
 that we are so unwilling to impute our best sense of 
 any work of art to the author. The highest praise 
 we can attribute to any writer, painter, sculptor, 
 builder, is, that he actually possessed the thought or 
 feeling with which he has inspired us. We hesitate 
 at doing Spenser so great an honour as to think that 
 he intended by his allegory the sense we affix to it. 
 We grudge to Homer the wide human circumspection 
 his commentators ascribe to him. Even Shakspeare, 
 of whom we can believe everything, we think indebted 
 to Goethe and to Coleridge for the wisdom they 
 detect in his Hamlet and Antony. Especially have 
 we this infirmity of faith in contemporary genius. 
 We fear that Allston and Greenough did not foresee 
 and design all the effect they produce on us. 
 
 Our Arts are happy hits. We are like the musician 
 on the lake, whose melody is sweeter than he knows, 
 or like a traveller, surprised by a mountain echo, 
 whose trivial word returns to him in romantic 
 thunders. 
 
 In view of these facts, I say that the power of 
 Nature predominates over the human will in all works 
 of even the Fine Arts, in all that respects their material 
 and external circumstances. Nature paints the best 
 part of the picture ; carves the best part of the statue ; 
 builds the best part of the house ; and speaks the best 
 part of the oration. For all the advantages to which 
 I have adverted are such as the artist did not con- 
 sciously produce. He relied on their aid, he put 
 himself in the way to receive aid from some of them ;
 
 304 AET. [in. 
 
 but he saw that his planting and his watering waited 
 for the sunlight of Nature, or were vain. 
 
 Let us proceed to the consideration of the law 
 stated in the beginning of this essay, as it affects the 
 purely spiritual part of a work of art. 
 
 As, in useful art, so far as it is useful, the work 
 must be strictly subordinated to the laws of Nature, 
 so as to become a sort of continuation, and in no 
 wise a contradiction of Nature ; so, in Art that aims 
 at beauty, must the parts be subordinated to Ideal 
 Nature, and everything individual abstracted, so that 
 it shall be the production of the universal soul. 
 
 The artist who is to produce a work which is to 
 be admired, not by his friends or his townspeople or 
 his contemporaries, but by all men, and which is to 
 be more beautiful to the eye in proportion to its 
 culture, must disindividualise himself, and be a man 
 of no party, and no manner, and no age, but one 
 through whom the soul of all men circulates, as the 
 common air through his lungs. He must work in 
 the spirit in which we conceive a prophet to speak, 
 or an angel of the Lord to act ; that is, he is not to 
 speak his own words, or do his own works, or think 
 his own thoughts, but he is to be an organ through 
 which the universal mind acts. 
 
 In speaking of the Useful Arts, I pointed to the 
 fact that we do not dig, or grind, or hew, by our 
 muscular strength, but by bringing the weight of the 
 planet to bear on the spade, axe, or bar. Precisely 
 analogous to this, in the Fine Arts, is the manner of 
 our intellectual work. We aim to hinder our indi-
 
 in.] ART. 305 
 
 vicluality from acting. So much as we can shove 
 aside our egotism, our prejudice and will, and bring 
 the omniscience of reason upon the subject before us, 
 so perfect is the work. The wonders of Shakspeare 
 are things which he saw whilst he stood aside, and 
 then returned to record them. The poet aims at get- 
 ting observations without aim ; to subject to thought 
 things seen without (voluntary) thought. 
 
 In eloquence, the great triumphs of the art are, 
 when the orator is lifted above himself; when con- 
 sciously he makes himself the mere tongue of the 
 occasion and the hour, and says what cannot but be 
 said. Hence the term abandonment, to describe the 
 self-surrender of the orator. Not his will, but the 
 principle on which he is horsed, the great connection 
 and crisis of events, thunder in the ear of the crowd. 
 
 In poetry, where every word is free, every word is 
 necessary. Good poetry could not have been other- 
 wise written than it is. The first time you hear it, 
 it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible 
 tablet in the Eternal mind, than as if arbitrarily com- 
 posed by the poet. The feeling of all great poets 
 has accorded with this. They found the verse, not 
 made it. The muse brought it to them. 
 
 In sculpture, did ever anybody call the Apollo a 
 fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might 
 be made different 1 A masterpiece of Art has in the 
 mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as 
 a plant or a crystal. 
 
 The whole language of men, especially of artists, 
 in reference to this subject, points at the belief that 
 
 vol. v. X
 
 30G ART. [in. 
 
 every work of art, in proportion to its excellence, 
 partakes of the precision of fate : no room was there 
 for choice, no play for fancy; for in the moment, 
 or in the successive moments, when that form was 
 seen, the iron lids of Eeason were unclosed, which 
 ordinarily are heavy with slumher. The individual 
 mind became for the moment the vent of the mind of 
 humanity. 
 
 There is but one Reason. The mind that made 
 the world is not one mind, but the mind. Every man 
 is an inlet to the same, and to all of the same. And 
 every work of art is a more or less pure manifestation 
 of the same. Therefore we arrive at this conclusion, 
 which I offer as a confirmation of the whole view, 
 that the delight which a work of art affords, seems to 
 arise from our recognising in it the mind that formed 
 Nature, again in active operation. 
 
 It differs from the works of Nature in this, that 
 they are organically reproductive. This is not ; but 
 spiritually it is prolific by its powerful action on the 
 intellects of men. 
 
 Hence it follows that a study of admirable works 
 of art sharpens our perceptions of the beauty of 
 Nature ; that a certain analogy reigns throughout 
 the wonders of both ; that the contemplation of a 
 work of great art draws us into a state of mind which 
 may be called religious. It conspires with all exalted 
 sentiments. 
 
 Proceeding from absolute mind, whose nature is 
 goodness as much as truth, the great works are always 
 attuned to moral nature. If the earth and sea con-
 
 in.] ART. 307 
 
 spire with virtue more than vice, — so do the master- 
 pieces of Art. The galleries of ancient sculpture in 
 Naples and Rome strike no deeper conviction into 
 the mind than the contrast of the purity, the seventy 
 expressed in these fine old heads, with the frivolity 
 and grossness of the mob that exhibits and the mob 
 that gazes at them. These are the countenances of 
 the first-born, — the face of man in the morning of the 
 world. No mark is on these lofty features, of sloth, 
 or luxury, or meanness, and they surprise you with a 
 moral admonition, as they speak of nothing around 
 you, but remind you of the fragrant thoughts and the 
 purest resolutions of your youth. 
 
 Herein is the explanation of the analogies which 
 exist in all the Arts. They are the reappearance of 
 one mind, working in many materials to many tem- 
 porary ends. Raphael paints wisdom ; Handel sings 
 it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren 
 builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, 
 Washington arms it, Watt mechanises it. Painting 
 was called "silent poetry"; and poetry, "speaking 
 painting." The laws of each art are convertible into 
 the laws of every other. 
 
 Herein we have an explanation of the necessity 
 that reigns in all the kingdom of Art. 
 
 Arising out of eternal Reason, one and perfect, 
 whatever is beautiful rests on the foundation of the 
 necessary. Nothing is arbitrary, nothing is insulated 
 in beauty. It depends for ever on the necessary and 
 the useful. The plumage of the bird, the mimic 
 plumage of the insect, has a reason for its rich colours
 
 308 AET. [in. 
 
 in the constitution of the animal. Fitness is so in- 
 separable an accompaniment of beauty, that it has 
 been taken for it. The most perfect form to answer 
 an end is so far beautiful. We feel, in seeing a noble 
 building, which rhymes well, as we do in hearing a 
 perfect song, that it is spiritually organic ; that is, 
 had a necessity, in Nature, for being, was one of the 
 possible forms in the Divine mind, and is now only 
 discovered and executed by the artist, not arbitrarily 
 composed by him. 
 
 And so every genuine work of art has as much 
 reason for being as the earth and the sun. The gay- 
 est charm of beauty has a root in the constitution of 
 things. The Iliad of Homer, the songs of David, the 
 odes of Pindar, the tragedies of .ZEschylus, the Doric 
 temples, the Gothic cathedrals, the plays of Shak- 
 speare, all and each were made not for sport, but in 
 grave earnest, in tears and smiles of suffering and 
 loving men. 
 
 Viewed from this point, the history of Art becomes 
 intelligible, and, moreover, one of the most agreeable 
 studies. We see how each work of art sprang irre- 
 sistibly from necessity, and, moreover, took its form 
 from the broad hint of Nature. Beautiful in this 
 wise is the obvious origin of all the known orders of 
 architecture ; namely, that they were the idealising 
 of the primitive abodes of each people. There was 
 no wilfulness in the savages in this perpetuating of 
 their first rude abodes. The first form in which they 
 built a house would be the first form of their public 
 and religious edifice also. This form becomes im-
 
 III.] AKT. 309 
 
 mediately sacred in the eyes of their children, and, as 
 more traditions cluster round it, is imitated with more 
 splendour in each succeeding generation. 
 
 In like manner, it has been remarked by Goethe 
 that the granite breaks into parallelopipeds, which 
 broken in two, one part would be an obelisk ; that in 
 Upper Egypt the inhabitants would naturally mark a 
 memorable spot by setting up so conspicuous a stone. 
 Again, he suggested, we may see in any stone wall, 
 on a fragment of rock, the projecting veins of harder 
 stone, which have resisted the action of frost and 
 water which has decomposed the rest. This appear- 
 ance certainly gave the hint of the hieroglyphics in- 
 scribed on their obelisk. The amphitheatre of the 
 old Eomans, — any one may see its origin who looks 
 at the crowd running together to see any fight, sick- 
 ness, or odd appearance in the street. The first 
 comers gather round in a circle ; those behind stand 
 on tiptoe ; and farther back they climb on fences or 
 window-sills, and so make a cup of which the object 
 of attention occupies the hollow area. The architect 
 put benches in this, and enclosed the cup with a wall, 
 — and, behold a Coliseum ! 
 
 It would be easy to show of many fine things in 
 the world, — in the customs of nations, the etiquette 
 of courts, the constitution of governments, — the origin 
 in quite simple local necessities. Heraldry, for ex- 
 ample, and the ceremonies of a coronation, are a 
 dignified repetition of the occurrences that might 
 befall a dragoon and his footboy. The College of 
 Cardinals were originally the parish priests of Eome.
 
 310 ART. [ill. 
 
 The leaning towers originated from the civil discords 
 which induced every lord to build a tower. Then it 
 became a point of family pride, — and for more pride 
 the novelty of a leaning tower was built. 
 
 This strict dependence of Art upon material and 
 ideal Nature, this adamantine necessity which under- 
 lies it, has made all its past, and may foreshow its 
 future history. It never was in the power of any 
 man, or any community, to call the Arts into being. 
 They come to serve his actual wants, never to please 
 his fancy. These arts have their origin always in 
 some enthusiasm, as love, patriotism, or religion. 
 Who carved marble 1 The believing man, who wished 
 to symbolise their gods to the waiting Greeks. 
 
 The Gothic cathedrals were built when the builder 
 and the priest and the people were overpowered by 
 their faith. Love and fear laid every stone. The 
 Madonnas of Raphael and Titian were made to be 
 worshipped. Tragedy was instituted for the like 
 purpose, and the miracles of music : all sprang out of 
 some genuine enthusiasm, and never out of dilettante- 
 ism and holidays. Now they languish, because their 
 purpose is merely exhibition. Who cares, who knows 
 what works of art our government have ordered to 
 be made for the Capitol 1 They are a mere nourish 
 to please the eye of persons who have associations 
 with books and galleries. But in Greece, the Demos 
 of Athens divided into political factions upon the 
 merits of Phidias. 
 
 In this country, at this time, other interests than 
 religion and patriotism are predominant, and the Arts,
 
 HI.] AKT. 311 
 
 the daughters of enthusiasm, do not nourish. The 
 genuine offspring of our ruling passions we behold. 
 Popular institutions, the school, the reading-room, the 
 telegraph, the post-office, the exchange, the insurance 
 company, and the immense harvest of economical in- 
 ventions, are the fruit of the equality and the bound- 
 less liberty of lucrative callings. These are superficial 
 wants; and their fruits are these superficial institu- 
 tions. But as far as they accelerate the end of politi- 
 cal freedom and national education, they are preparing 
 the soil of man for fairer flowers and fruits in another 
 age. For beauty, truth, and goodness are not ob- 
 solete ; they spring eternal in the breast of man ; they 
 are as indigenous in Massachusetts as in Tuscany or 
 the Isles of Greece. And that Eternal Spirit, whose 
 triple face they are, moulds from them for ever, for 
 his mortal child, images to remind him of the Infinite 
 and Fair.
 
 ELOQUENCE. 
 
 It is the doctrine of the popular music-masters that 
 whoever cau speak can sing. So probably, every 
 man is eloquent once in his life. Our temperaments 
 differ in capacity of heat, or, we boil at different 
 degrees. One man is brought to the boiling-point by 
 the excitement of conversation in the parlour. The 
 waters, of course, are not very deep. He has a two- 
 inch enthusiasm, a patty -pan ebidlition. Another 
 requires the additional caloric of a multitude, and a 
 public debate ; a third needs an antagonist, or a hot 
 indignation ; a fourth needs a revolution ; and a fifth, 
 nothing less than the grandeur of absolute ideas, the 
 splendours and shades of Heaven and Hell. 
 
 But because every man is an orator, how long 
 soever he may have been a mute, an assembly of men 
 is so much more susceptible. The eloquence of one 
 stimulates all the rest, some up to the speaking-point, 
 and all others to a degree that makes them good 
 receivers and conductors, and they avenge themselves 
 for their enforced silence by increased loquacity on 
 their return to the fireside. 
 
 The plight of these phlegmatic brains is better
 
 314 ELOQUENCE. [ IV . 
 
 than that of those who prematurely boil, and who 
 impatiently break silence before their time. Our 
 county conventions often exhibit a small-pot soon-hot 
 style of eloquence. We are too much reminded of a 
 medical experiment where a series of patients are 
 taking nitrous -oxide gas. Each patient, in turn, 
 exhibits similar symptoms, — redness in the face, 
 volubility, violent gesticulation, delirious attitudes, 
 occasional stamping, an alarming loss of perception 
 of the passage of time, a selfish enjoyment of his 
 sensations, and loss of perception of the sufferings of 
 the audience. 
 
 Plato says, that the punishment which the wise 
 suffer, who refuse to take part in the government, 
 is, to live under the government of worse men ; and 
 the like regret is suggested to all the auditors, as 
 the penalty of abstaining to speak, — that they shall 
 hear worse orators than themselves. 
 
 But this lust to speak marks the universal feeling 
 of the energy of the engine, and the curiosity men 
 feel to toucli the springs. Of all the musical instru- 
 ments on which men play, a popular assembly is 
 that which has the largest compass and variety, 
 and out of which, by genius and study, the most 
 wonderful effects can be drawn. An audience is not 
 a simple addition of the individuals that compose it. 
 Their sympathy gives them a certain social organism, 
 which fills each member, in his own degree, and 
 most of all the orator, as a jar in a battery is charged 
 with the whole electricity of the battery. No one 
 can survey the face of an excited assembly without
 
 IV.] ELOQUENCE. 315 
 
 being apprised of new opportunity for painting in 
 lire human thought, and being agitated to agitate. 
 How many orators sit mute there below ! They 
 come to get justice done to that ear and intuition 
 which no Chatham and no Demosthenes has begun 
 to satisfy. 
 
 The Welsh Triads say, "Many are the friends 
 of the golden tongue." Who can wonder at the 
 attractiveness of Parliament, or of Congress, or the 
 bar, for our ambitious young men, when the highest 
 bribes of society are at the feet of the successful 
 orator? He has his audience at his devotion. All 
 other fames must hush before his. He is the true 
 potentate ; for they are not kings who sit on thrones, 
 but they who know how to govern. The definitions 
 of eloquence describe its attraction for young men. 
 Antiphon the Khamnusian, one of Plutarch's ten 
 orators, advertised in Athens, "that he would cure 
 distempers of the mind with words." No man has 
 a prosperity so high or firm but two or three words 
 can dishearten it. There is no calamity which right 
 words will not begin to redress. Isocrates described 
 his art as "the power of magnifying what was 
 small and diminishing what was great," — an acute 
 but partial definition. Among the Spartans, the art 
 assumed a Spartan shape, namely, of the sharpest 
 weapon. Socrates says : " If any man wishes to 
 converse with the meanest of the Lacedaemonians, 
 he will at first find him despicable in conversation ; 
 but, when a proper opportunity offers, this same 
 person, like a skilful jaculator, will hurl a sentence
 
 316 ELOQUENCE. [iv. 
 
 worthy of attention, short and contorted, so that he 
 
 who converses with him will appear to he in no 
 
 respect superior to a boy." Plato's definition of 
 
 rhetoric is, " the art of ruling the minds of men." 
 
 The Koran says : " A mountain may change its place, 
 
 but a man will not change his disposition " ; yet the 
 
 end of eloquence is, — is it not 1 ? — to alter in a pair 
 
 of hours, perhaps in a half-hour's discourse, the 
 
 convictions and habits of years. Young men, too, 
 
 are eager to enjoy this sense of added power and 
 
 enlarged sympathetic existence. The orator sees 
 
 himself the organ of a multitude, and concentrating 
 
 their valours and powers : 
 
 ' ' But now the Wood of twenty thousand men 
 Blushed in my face. " 
 
 That which he wishes, that which eloquence ought 
 to reach, is, not a particular skill in telling a story, 
 or neatly summing up evidence, or arguing logicalby, 
 or dexterously addressing the prejudice of the com- 
 pany, — no, but a taking sovereign possession of the 
 audience. Him we call an artist, who shall play on 
 an assembly of men as a master on the keys of the 
 piano, — who, seeing the people furious, shall soften 
 and compose them, shall draw them, when he will, 
 to laughter and to tears. Bring him to his audience, 
 and, be they who they may, — coarse or refined, 
 pleased or displeased, sulky or savage, with their 
 opinions in the keeping of a confessor, or with their 
 opinions in their bank-safes, — he will have them 
 pleased and humoured as he chooses ; and they shall 
 carry and execute that which he bids them.
 
 xv.] ELOQUENCE. 317 
 
 This is that despotism which poets have celebrated 
 in the " Pied Piper of Hamelin," whose music drew 
 like the power of gravitation, — drew soldiers and 
 priests, traders and feasters, women and boys, rats 
 and mice ; or that of the minstrel of Meudon, who 
 made the pall-bearers dance around the bier. This is 
 a power of many degrees, and requiring in the orator 
 a great range of faculty and experience, requiring a 
 large composite man, such as Nature rarely organises ; 
 so that, in our experience, we are forced to gather up 
 the figure in fragments, here one talent, and there 
 another. 
 
 The audience is a constant meter of the orator. 
 There are many audiences in every public assembly, 
 each one of which rules in turn. If anything comic 
 and coarse is spoken, you shall see the emergence 
 of the boys and rowdies, so loud and vivacious that 
 you might think the house was filled with them. If 
 new topics are started, graver and higher, these 
 roisters recede ; a more chaste and wise attention 
 takes place. You would think the boys slept, and 
 that the men have any degree of profoundness. If 
 the speaker utter a noble sentiment, the attention 
 deepens, a new and highest audience now listens, and 
 the audiences of the fun and of facts and of the 
 understandins; are all silenced and awed. There is 
 also something excellent in every audience, — the 
 capacity of virtue. They are ready to be beatified. 
 They know so much more than the orator, — and are 
 so just ! There is a tablet there for every line he 
 can inscribe, though he should mount to the highest
 
 318 ELOQUENCE. [iv. 
 
 levels. Humble persons are conscious of new illumina- 
 tion ; narrow brows expand with enlarged affections ; 
 — delicate spirits, long unknown to themselves, masked 
 and muffled in coarsest fortunes, who now hear their 
 own native language for the first time, and leap to 
 hear it. But all these several audiences, each above 
 each, which successively appear to greet the variety 
 of style and topic, are really composed out of the 
 same persons; nay, sometimes the same individual 
 will take active part in them all, in turn. 
 
 This range of many powers in the consummate 
 speaker, and of many audiences in one assembly, leads 
 us to consider the successive stages of oratory. 
 
 Perhaps it is the lowest of the qualities of an 
 orator, but it is, on so many occasions, of chief im- 
 portance, — a certain robust and radiant physical 
 health; or, — shall I say 1 ? — great volumes of animal 
 heat. When each auditor feels himself to make too 
 large a part of the assembly, and shudders with cold 
 at the thinness of the morning audience, and with 
 fear lest all will heavily fail through one bad speech, 
 mere energy and mellowness are then inestimable. 
 Wisdom and learning would be harsh and unwelcome, 
 compared with a substantial cordial man, made of 
 milk, as we say, who is a house-warmer, with his 
 obvious honesty and good meaning, and a hue-and-cry 
 style of harangue, Avhich inundates the assembly with 
 a flood of animal spirits, and makes all safe and secure, 
 so that any and every sort of good speaking becomes 
 at once practicable. I do not rate this animal elo- 
 quence very highly ; and yet, as we must be fed and
 
 IV.] ELOQUENCE. 319 
 
 warmed before we can do any work well, — even the 
 b es t } — so is this semi-animal exuberance, like a good 
 stove, of the first necessity in a cold house. 
 
 Climate has much to do with it, — climate and race. 
 Set a New-Englander to describe any accident which 
 happened in his presence. What hesitation and re- 
 serve in his narrative ! He tells with difficulty some 
 particulars, and gets as fast as he can to the result, 
 and, though he cannot describe, hopes to suggest the 
 whole scene. Now listen to a poor Irishwoman re- 
 counting some experience of hers. Her speech flows 
 like a river, — so unconsidered, so humorous, so path- 
 etic, such justice done to all the parts ! It is a true 
 transubstantiation, — the fact converted into speech, 
 all warm and coloured and alive, as it fell out. Our 
 Southern people are almost all speakers, and have 
 every advantage over the New England people, whose 
 climate is so cold that, 'tis said, we do not like to 
 open our mouths very wide. But neither can the 
 Southerner in the United States, nor the Irish, com- 
 pare with the lively inhabitant of the south of Europe. 
 The traveller in Sicily needs no gayer melodramatic- 
 exhibition than the table d'hote of his inn will afford 
 him in the conversation of the joyous guests. They 
 mimic the voice and manner of the person they 
 describe ; they crow, squeal, hiss, cackle, bark, and 
 scream like mad, and, were it only by the physical 
 strength exerted in telling the story, keep the table 
 in unbounded excitement. But in every constitution 
 some large degree of animal vigour is necessary as 
 material foundation for the higher qualities of the art.
 
 320 ELOQUENCE. [iv. 
 
 But eloquence must be attractive, or it is none. 
 The virtue of books is to be readable, and of orators, 
 to be interesting; and this is a gift of Nature; as 
 Demosthenes, the most laborious student in that kind, 
 signified his sense of this necessity when he wrote 
 " Good Fortune " as his motto on his shield. As we 
 know, the power of discourse of certain individuals 
 amounts to fascination, though it may have no lasting 
 effect. Some portion of this sugar must intermingle. 
 The right eloquence needs no bell to call the people 
 together, and no constable to keep them. It draws 
 the children from their play, the old from their arm- 
 chairs, the invalid from his warm chamber ; it holds 
 the hearer fast; steals away his feet, that he shall 
 not depart, — his memory, that he shall not remember 
 the most pressing affairs, — his belief, that he shall 
 not admit any opposing considerations. The pictures 
 we have of it in semi-barbarous ages, when it has some 
 advantages in the simpler habit of the people, show 
 what it aims at. It is said that the Khans, or story- 
 tellers, in Ispahan and other cities of the East, attain 
 a controlling power over their audience, keeping them 
 for many hours attentive to the most fanciful and 
 extravagant adventures. The whole world knows 
 pretty well the style of these improvisators, and how 
 fascinating they are, in our translations of the "Arabian 
 Nights." Scheherezade tells these stories to save her 
 life, and the delight of young Europe and young 
 America in them proves that she fairly earned it. 
 And who does not remember in childhood some white 
 or black or yellow Scheherezade, who, by that talent
 
 iv.] ELOQUENCE. 321 
 
 of telling endless feats of fairies and magicians, and 
 kings and queens, was more dear and wonderful to a 
 circle of children than any orator in England or 
 America is now ? The more indolent and imaginative 
 complexion of the Eastern nations makes them much 
 more impressible by these appeals to the fancy. 
 
 These legends are only exaggerations of real occur- 
 rences, and every literature contains these high com- 
 pliments to the art of the orator and the bard, from 
 the Hebrew and the Greek down to the Scottish 
 Glenkindie, who 
 
 " harpit a fish out o' saut- water, 
 Or water out of a stone, 
 Or milk out of a maiden's breast 
 Who bairn had never none." 
 
 Homer specially delighted in drawing the same figure. 
 For what is the " Odyssey " but a history of the orator, 
 in the largest style, carried through a series of adven- 
 tures furnishing brilliant opportunities to his talent 1 
 See with what care and pleasure the poet brings him 
 on the stage. Helen is pointing out to Priam, from a 
 tower, the different Grecian chiefs. "The old man 
 asked : ' Tell me, dear child, who is that man, shorter 
 by a head than Agamemnon, yet he looks broader in 
 his shoulders and breast. His arms lie on the ground, 
 but he, like a leader, walks about the bands of the 
 men. He seems to me like a stately ram, who goes as 
 a master of the flock.' Him answered Helen, daughter 
 of Jove : ' This is the wise Ulysses, son of Laertes, 
 who was reared in the state of craggy Ithaca, knowing 
 all wiles and wise counsels.' To her the prudent 
 
 VOL V. Y
 
 322 ELOQUENCE. [iv. 
 
 Anterior replied again : ' woman, yon have spoken 
 truly. For once the wise Ulysses came hither on an 
 embassy, with Menelaus, beloved by Mars. I received 
 them, and entertained them at my house. I became 
 acquainted with the genius and the prudent judgments 
 of both. When they mixed with the assembled Tro- 
 jans, and stood, the broad shoulders of Menelaus rose 
 above the other ; but, both sitting, Ulysses was more 
 majestic. When they conversed, and interweaved 
 stories and opinions with all, Menelaus spoke suc- 
 cinctly, — few but very sweet words, since he was not 
 talkative, nor superfluous in speech, and was the 
 younger. But when the wise Ulysses arose, and stood, 
 and looked down, fixing his eyes on the ground, and 
 neither moved his sceptre backward nor forward, but 
 held it still, like an awkward person, you would say 
 it was some angry or foolish man ; but when he sent 
 his great voice forth out of his breast, and his words 
 fell like the winter snows, not then would any mortal 
 contend with Ulysses ; and we, beholding, wondered 
 not afterwards so much at his aspect.'" 1 Thus he 
 does not fail to arm Ulysses at first with this power 
 of overcoming all opposition by the blandishments of 
 speech. Plutarch tells us that Thucydides, when Archi- 
 damus, king of Sparta, asked him which was the best 
 wrestler, — Pericles or he, — replied : " When I throw 
 him, he says he was never down, and he persuades the 
 very spectators to believe him." Philip of Macedon 
 said of Demosthenes, on hearing the report of one of 
 his orations : " Had I been there, he would have per- 
 
 1 Iliad, III. 191.
 
 iv.] ELOQUENCE. 323 
 
 suaded rac to take up arms against myself"; and 
 Warren Hastings said of Burke's speech on his im- 
 peachment : "As I listened to the orator, I felt for 
 more than half an hour as if I were the most culpable 
 being on earth." 
 
 In these examples, higher qualities have already 
 entered ; but the power of detaining the ear by pleas- 
 ing speech, and addressing the fancy and imagination, 
 often exists without higher merits. Thus separated, as 
 this fascination of discourse aims only at amusement, 
 though it be decisive in its momentary effect, it is yet 
 a juggle, and of no lasting power. It is heard like a 
 band of music passing through the streets, which con- 
 verts all the passengers into poets, but is forgotten as 
 soon as it has turned the next corner ; and unless this 
 oiled tongue could, in Oriental phrase, lick the sun 
 and moon away, it must take its place with opium and 
 brandy. I know no remedy against it but cotton-wool, 
 or the wax which Ulysses stuffed into the ears of his 
 sailors to pass the Sirens safely. 
 
 There are all degrees of power, and the least are 
 interesting, but they must not be confounded. There 
 is the glib tongue and cool self-possession of the sales- 
 man in a large shop, which, as is well known, over- 
 power the prudence and resolution of housekeepers 
 of both sexes. There is a petty lawyer's fluenc}^, 
 which is sufficiently impressive to him who is devoid 
 of that talent, though it be, in so many cases, nothing- 
 more than a facility of expressing with accuracy and 
 speed what everybody thinks and says more slowly, 
 without new information, or precision of thought, —
 
 324 ELOQUENCE. [iv. 
 
 but the same thing, neither less nor more. It requires 
 no special insight to edit one of our country news- 
 papers. Yet whoever can say off currently, sentence 
 by sentence, matter neither better nor worse than 
 what is there printed, will be very impressive to our 
 easily- pleased population. These talkers are of that 
 class who prosper, like the celebrated schoolmaster, 
 by being only one lesson ahead of the pupil. Add a 
 little sarcasm, and prompt allusion to passing occur- 
 rences, and you have the mischievous member of 
 Congress. A spice of malice, a ruffian touch in his 
 rhetoric, will do him no harm with his audience. 
 These accomplishments are of the same kind, and only 
 a degree higher than the coaxing of the auctioneer, or 
 the vituperative style well described in the street word 
 " jawing." These kinds of public and private speaking 
 have their use and convenience to the practitioners ; 
 but we may say of such collectively, that the habit of 
 oratory is apt to discpialify them for eloquence. 
 
 One of our statesmen said : " The curse of this 
 country is eloquent men." And one cannot wonder 
 at the uneasiness sometimes manifested by trained 
 statesmen, with large experience of public affairs, 
 when they observe the disproportionate advantage 
 suddenly given to oratory over the most solid and 
 accumulated public service. In a Senate or other 
 business committee, the solid result depends on a few 
 men with working talent. They know how to deal 
 with the facts before them, to put things into a 
 practical shape, and they value men only as they can 
 forward the work. But a new man comes there, who
 
 iv.] ELOQUENCE. 325 
 
 has no capacity for helping them at all, is insignificant, 
 and nobody in the committee, but has a talent for 
 speaking. In the debate with open doors, this precious 
 person makes a speech, which is printed, and read all 
 over the Union, and he at once becomes famous, and 
 takes the lead in the public mind over all these execu- 
 tive men, who, of course, are full of indignation to 
 find one who has no tact or skill, and knows he has 
 none, put over them by means of this talking power 
 which they despise. 
 
 Leaving behind us these pretensions, better or 
 worse, to come a little nearer to the verity, — eloquence 
 is attractive as an example of the magic of personal 
 ascendency, — a total and resultant power, rare, be- 
 cause it requires a rich coincidence of powers, intel- 
 lect, will, sympathy, organs, and, over all, good fortune 
 in the cause. We have a half-belief that the person 
 is possible who can counterpoise all other persons. 
 We believe that there may be a man who is a match 
 for events, — one who never found his match,— against 
 whom other men being dashed are broken, — one of 
 inexhaustible personal resources who can give you 
 any odds and beat you. What we really wish for is 
 a mind equal to any exigency. You are safe in your 
 rural district, or in the city, in broad daylight, amidst 
 the police, and under the eyes of a hundred thousand 
 people. But how is it on the Atlantic, in a storm, — 
 do you understand how to infuse your reason into 
 men disabled by terror, and to bring yourself off safe 
 then? — how among thieves, or among an infuriated 
 populace, or among cannibals 1 Face to face with a
 
 326 ELOQUENCE. [iv. 
 
 highwayman who has every temptation and opportu- 
 nity for violence and plunder, can you bring yourself 
 off safe by your wit, exercised through speech 1 — a 
 problem easy enough to Csesar or Napoleon. When- 
 ever a man of that stamp arrives, the highwayman 
 has found a master. What a difference between men 
 in power of face ! A man succeeds because he has 
 more power of eye than another, and so coaxes or 
 confounds him. The newspapers, every week, report 
 the adventures of some impudent swindler, who, by 
 steadiness of carriage, duped those who should have 
 known better. Yet any swindlers we have known 
 arc novices and bunglers, as is attested by their ill 
 name. A greater power of face would accomplish 
 anything, and, with the rest of their takings, take 
 away the bad name. A greater power of carrying the 
 thing loftily, and with perfect assurance, would con- 
 found merchant, banker, judge, men of influence and 
 power, — poet and president, — and might head any 
 party, unseat any sovereign, and abrogate any con- 
 stitution in Europe and America. It was said that a 
 man has at one step attained vast power, who has re- 
 nounced his moral sentiment, and settled it with him- 
 self that he will no longer stick at anything. It was 
 said of Sir William Pepperel, one of the worthies of 
 New England, that, "put him where you might, he 
 commanded, and saw what he willed come to pass." 
 Julius Csesar said to Metellus, when that tribune in- 
 terfered to hinder him from entering the Roman 
 treasury : " Young man, it is easier for me to put you 
 to death than to say that I will;" and the youth
 
 iv.] ELOQUENCE. 327 
 
 yielded. In earlier days he was taken by pirates. 
 What then 1 He threw himself into their ship, estab- 
 lished the most extraordinary intimacies, told them 
 stories, declaimed to them ; if they did not applaud 
 his speeches, he threatened them with hanging, — 
 which he performed afterwards, — and, in a short time, 
 was master of all on board. A man this is who can- 
 not be disconcerted, and so can never play his last 
 card, but has a reserve of power when he has hit his 
 mark. With a serene face, he subverts a kingdom. 
 What is told of him is miraculous ; it affects men so. 
 The confidence of men in him is lavish, and he changes 
 the face of the world, and histories, poems, and new 
 philosophies arise to account for him. A supreme 
 commander over all his passions and affections ; but 
 the secret of his ruling is higher than that. It is the 
 power of Nature running without impediment from 
 the brain and will into the hands. Men and women 
 are his game. Where they are, he cannot be without 
 resource. " Whoso can speak well," said Luther, " is 
 a man." It was men of this stamp that the Grecian 
 States used to ask of Sparta for generals. They did 
 not send to Lacedaemon for troops, but they said, 
 " Send us a commander"; and Pausanias, or Gylippus, 
 or Brasidas, or Agis, was despatched by the Ephors. 
 
 It is easy to illustrate this overpowering person- 
 ality by these examples of soldiers and kings ; but 
 there are men of the most peaceful way of life, and 
 peaceful principle, who are felt, wherever they go, as 
 sensibly as a July sun or a December frost, — men 
 who, if they speak, are heard, though they speak in a
 
 328 ELOQUENCE. [ IV . 
 
 whisper,— who, when they act, act effectually, and 
 what they do is imitated ; and these examples may 
 he found on very humble platforms, as well as on 
 high ones. 
 
 In old countries, a high money- value is set on the 
 services of men who have achieved a personal dis- 
 tinction. He who has points to carry must hire, not 
 a skilful attorney, but a commanding person. A 
 barrister in England is reputed to have made thirty 
 or forty thousand pounds per annum in representing 
 the claims of railroad companies before committees 
 of the House of Commons. His clients pay not so 
 much for legal as for manly accomplishments, — 
 for courage, conduct, and a commanding social 
 position, which enable him to make their claims heard 
 and respected. 
 
 I know very well, that, among our cool and calcu- 
 lating people, where every man mounts guard over 
 himself, where heats and panics and abandonments 
 are quite out of the system, there is a good deal of 
 scepticism as to extraordinary influence. To talk of 
 an overpowering mind rouses the same jealousy and 
 defiance which one may observe round a table where 
 anybody is recounting the marvellous anecdotes of 
 mesmerism. Each auditor puts a final stroke to the 
 discourse by exclaiming: "Can he mesmerise me?" 
 So each man inquires if any orator can change his 
 convictions. 
 
 But does any one suppose himself to be quite im- 
 pregnable 1 Does he think that not possibly a man 
 may come to him who shall persuade him out of his
 
 iv.] ELOQUENCE. 329 
 
 most settled determination 1 — for example, good 
 sedate citizen as he is, to make a fanatic of him, — or, 
 if he is penurious, to scpiander money for some purpose 
 he now least thinks of, — or, if he is a prudent, indus- 
 trious person, to forsake his work, and give days and 
 weeks to a new interest 1 ? No, he defies any one, 
 every one. Ah ! he is thinking of resistance, and of 
 a different turn from his own. But what if one 
 should come of the same turn of mind as his own, and 
 who sees much farther on his own Avay than he 1 A 
 man who has tastes like mine, but in greater power, 
 will rule me any day, and make me love my ruler. 
 
 Thus it is not powers of speech that we primarily 
 consider under this word eloquence, hut the power 
 that, being present, gives them their perfection, and, 
 being absent, leaves them a merely superficial value. 
 Eloquence is the appropriate organ of the highest 
 personal energy. Personal ascendency may exist 
 with or without adequate talent for its expression. 
 It is as surely felt as a mountain or a planet; but 
 when it is weaponed with a power of speech, it seems 
 first to become truly human, works actively in all 
 directions, and supplies the imagination with fine 
 materials. 
 
 This circumstance enters into every consideration 
 of the power of orators, and is the key to all their 
 effects. In the assembly, you shall find the orator 
 and the audience in perpetual balance ; and the pre- 
 dominance of either is indicated by the choice of topic. 
 If the talents for speaking exist, but not the strong 
 personality, then there are good speakers who per-
 
 330 ELOQUENCE. [iv. 
 
 fectly receive and express the will of the audience, 
 and the commonest populace is nattered by hearing 
 its low mind returned to it with every ornament 
 which happy talent can add. But if there be person- 
 ality in the orator, the face of things changes. The 
 audience is thrown into the attitude of pupil, follows 
 like a child its preceptor, and hears what he has to 
 say. It is as if, amidst the king's council at Madrid, 
 Ximenes urged that an advantage might be gained of 
 France, and Mendoza that Flanders might be kept 
 down, and Columbus, being introduced, was interro- 
 gated whether his geographical knowledge coxdd aid 
 the cabinet, and he can say nothing to one party or 
 to the other, but he can show how all Europe can be 
 diminished and reduced under the king, by annexing 
 to Spain a continent as large as six or seven Europes. 
 This balance between the orator and the audience 
 is expressed in what is called the pertinence of the 
 speaker. There is always a rivalry between the 
 orator and the occasion, between the demands of the 
 hour and the prepossession of the individual. The 
 emergency which has convened the meeting is usually 
 of more importance than anything the debaters have 
 in their minds, and therefore becomes imperative to 
 them. But if one of them have anything of com- 
 manding necessity in his heart, how speedily he will 
 find vent for it, and with the applause of the assembly ! 
 This balance is observed in the privatest intercourse. 
 Poor Tom never knew the time when the present 
 occurrence was so trivial that he could tell what was 
 passing in his mind without being checked for un-
 
 iv.] ELOQUENCE. .331 
 
 seasonable speech ; but let Bacon speak, and wise 
 men would rather listen, though the revolution of 
 kingdoms Avas on foot. I have heard it reported of 
 an eloquent preacher, whose voice is not yet forgotten 
 in this city, that, on occasions of death or tragic 
 disaster, which overspread the congregation with 
 gloom, he ascended the pulpit with more than his 
 usual alacrity, and, turning to his favourite lessons of 
 devout and jubilant thankfulness, — " Let us praise the 
 Lord," — carried audience, mourners, and mourning 
 along with him, and swept away all the impertinence 
 of private sorrow with his hosannas and songs of 
 praise. Pepys says of Lord Clarendon (with whom 
 "he is mad in love"), on his return from a confer- 
 ence, " I did never observe how much easier a man 
 do speak when he knows all the company to be 
 below him, than in him ; for, though he spoke indeed 
 excellent well, yet his manner and freedom of doing 
 it, as if he played with it, and was informing only all 
 the rest of the company, was mighty pretty." 1 
 
 This rivalry between the orator and the occasion 
 is inevitable, and the occasion always yields to the 
 eminence of the speaker; for a great man is the 
 greatest of occasions. Of course, the interest of the 
 audience and of the orator conspire. It is well with 
 them only when his influence is complete ; then only 
 they are well pleased. Especially, he consults his 
 power by making instead of taking his theme. If he 
 should attempt to instruct the people in that which 
 they already know, he would fail ; but, by making 
 
 1 Diary, I. 169.
 
 332 ELOQUENCE. [iv. 
 
 them wise in that which he knows, he has the advan- 
 tage of the assembly every moment. Napoleon's 
 tactics of marching on the angle of an army, and 
 always presenting a superiority of numbers, is the 
 orator's secret also. 
 
 The several talents which the orator employs, the 
 splendid weapons which went to the equipment of 
 Demosthenes, of iEschines, of Demades the natural 
 orator, of Fox, of Pitt, of Patrick Henry, of Adams, 
 of Mirabeau, deserve a special enumeration. We 
 must not quite omit to name the principal pieces. 
 
 The orator, as we have seen, must be a substantial 
 personality. Then, first, he must have power of state- 
 ment, — must have the fact, and know how to tell it. 
 In any knot of men conversing on any subject, the 
 person who knows most about it will have the ear of 
 the company, if he wishes it, and lead the conversa- 
 tion,— no matter what genius or distinction other 
 men there present may have; and in any public 
 assembly, him who has the facts, and can and will 
 state them, people will listen to, though he is other- 
 wise ignorant, though he is hoarse and ungraceful, 
 though he stutters and screams. 
 
 In a court of justice, the audience are impartial ; 
 they really wish to sift the statements and know 
 what the truth is. And in the examination of wit- 
 nesses there usually leap out, quite unexpectedly, 
 three or four stubborn words or phrases which are 
 the pith and fate of the business, which sink into the 
 ear of all parties, and stick there, and determine the 
 cause. All the rest is repetition and qualifying ; and
 
 iv.] ELOQUENCE. 333 
 
 the court and the county have really come together 
 to arrive at these three or four memorable expressions, 
 which betrayed the mind and meaning of somebody. 
 
 In every company, the man with the fact is like 
 the guide you hire to lead your party up a mountain, 
 or through a difficult county. He may not compare 
 with any of the party in mind, or breeding, or courage, 
 or possessions, but he is much more important to the 
 present need than any of them. That is what we go 
 to the court-house for, — the statement of the fact, and 
 the elimination of a general fact, the real relation of 
 all the parties ; and it is the certainty with which, 
 indifferently in any affair that is well handled, the 
 truth stares us in the face, through all the disguises 
 that are put upon it, — a piece of the well-known 
 human life, — that makes the interest of a court-room 
 to the intelligent spectator. 
 
 I remember, long ago, being attracted by the dis- 
 tinction of the counsel, and the local importance of 
 the cause, into the court-room. The prisoner's counsel 
 were the strongest and cunningest lawyers in the 
 Commonwealth. They drove the attorney for the 
 State from corner to corner, taking his reasons from 
 under him, and reducing him to silence, but not to 
 submission. When hard pressed, he revenged him- 
 self, in his turn, on the judge, by requiring the court 
 to define what salvage was. The court, thus pushed, 
 tried words, and said everything it could think of to 
 fill the time, supposing cases, and describing duties of 
 insurers, captains, pilots, and miscellaneous sea-officers 
 that are or might be, — like a schoolmaster puzzled by
 
 334 ELOQUENCE. [iv. 
 
 a hard sum, who reads the context with emphasis. 
 But all this flood not serving the cuttle-fish to get 
 away in, the horrible shark of the district-attorney 
 being still there, grimly awaiting with his "The court 
 must define," — the poor court pleaded its inferiority. 
 The superior court must establish the law for this, 
 and it read away piteously the decisions of the 
 Supreme Court, but read to those who had no pity. 
 The judge was forced at last to rule something, and 
 the lawyers saved their rogue under the fog of a 
 definition. The parts were so well cast and discrimi- 
 nated, that it was an interesting game to watch. The 
 government was well enough represented. It was 
 stupid, but it had a strong will and possession, and 
 stood on that to the last. The jiidge had a task 
 beyond his preparation, yet his position remained 
 real : he was there to represent a great reality, — the 
 justice of states, which we could well enough see 
 beetling over his head, and which his trifling talk 
 nowise affected, and did not impede, since he was 
 entirely well-meaning. 
 
 The statement of the fact, however, sinks before 
 the statement of the law, which requires immeasur- 
 ably higher powers, and is a rarest gift, being in all 
 great masters one and the same thing, — in lawyers, 
 nothing technical, but always some piece of common 
 sense, alike interesting to laymen as to clerks. Lord 
 Mansfield's merit is the merit of common sense. It 
 is the same quality we admire in Aristotle, Mon- 
 taigne, Cervantes, or in Samuel Johnson, or Franklin. 
 Its application to law seems quite accidental. Each of
 
 iv.] ELOQUENCE. 335 
 
 Mansfield's famous decisions contains a level sentence 
 or two, which hit the mark. His sentences are not 
 always finished to the eye, but are finished to the 
 mind. The sentences are involved, hut a solid pro- 
 position is set forth, a true distinction is drawn. They 
 come from and they go to the sound human under- 
 standing ; and I read without surprise that the black- 
 letter lawyers of the day sneered at his "equitable 
 decisions," as if they were not also learned. This, 
 indeed, is what speech is for, — to make the state- 
 ment ; and all that is called eloquence seems to me of 
 little use, for the most part, to those who have it, but 
 inestimable to such as have something to say. 
 
 Next to the knowledge of the fact and its law is 
 method, which constitutes the genius and efficiency of 
 all remarkable men. A crowd of men go up to Faneuil 
 Hall ; they are all pretty well acquainted with the 
 object of the meeting ; they have all read the facts in 
 the same newspapers. The orator possesses no infor- 
 mation which his hearers have not ; yet he teaches 
 them to see the thing with his eyes. By the new 
 placing, the circumstances acquire new solidity and 
 worth. Every fact gains consequence by his naming 
 it, and trifles become important. His expressions fix 
 themselves in men's memories, and fly from mouth to 
 mouth. His mind has some new principle of order. 
 Where he looks, all things fly into their places. What 
 will he say next 1 Let this man speak, and this man 
 only. By applying the habits of a higher style of 
 thought to the common affairs of this world, he intro- 
 duces beauty and magnificence wherever he goes.
 
 336 ELOQUENCE. [iv. 
 
 Such a power was Burke's, and of this genius we have 
 had some brilliant examples in our own political and 
 legal men. 
 
 Imagery. The orator must be, to a certain extent, 
 a poet. We are such imaginative creatures, that 
 nothing so works on the human mind, barbarous 
 or civil, as a trope. Condense some daily experience 
 into a glowing symbol, and an audience is electrified. 
 They feel as if they already possessed some new right 
 and power over a fact, which they can detach, and so 
 completely master in thought. It is a wonderful aid 
 to the memory, which carries away the image, and 
 never loses it. A popular assembly, like the House 
 of Commons, or the French Chamber, or the American 
 Congress, is commanded by these two powers, — first 
 by a fact, then by skill of statement. Put the argu- 
 ment into a concrete shape, into an image, — some hard 
 phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see 
 and handle and carry home with them, — and the cause 
 is half won. 
 
 Statement, method, imagery, selection, tenacity of 
 memory, power of dealing with facts, of illuminating 
 them, of sinking them by ridicule or by diversion of 
 the mind, rapid generalisation, humour, pathos, are 
 keys which the orator holds ; and yet these fine gifts 
 are not eloquence, and do often hinder a man's 
 attainment of it. And if we come to the heart of the 
 mystery, perhaps we should say that the truly eloquent 
 man is a sane man with power to communicate his 
 sanity. If you arcn the man with the extraordinary 
 weapons of this art, give him a grasp of facts, learning
 
 iv.] ELOQUENCE. 337 
 
 quick fancy, sarcasm, splendid allusion, interminable 
 illustration, — all these talents, so potent and charming, 
 have an equal power to ensnare and mislead the 
 audience and the orator. His talents are too much for 
 him, his horses run away with him; and people 
 always perceive whether you drive, or whether the 
 horses take the bits in their teeth and run. But these 
 talents are quite something else when they are 
 subordinated and serve him ; and we go to Washington, 
 or to Westminster Hall, or might well go round the 
 world, to see a man who drives, and is not run away 
 with, — a man who, in prosecuting great designs, has 
 an absolute command of the means of representing his 
 ideas, and uses them only to express these ; placing 
 facts, placing men ; amid the inconceivable levity of 
 human beings, never for an instant warped from his 
 erectness. There is for every man a statement possible 
 of that truth which he is most unwilling to receive,- — 
 a statement possible, so broad and so pungent that he 
 cannot get away from it, but must either bend to it or 
 die of it. Else there would be no such word as elo- 
 quence, which means this. The listener cannot hide 
 from himself that something has been shown him and 
 the whole world, which he did not wish to see ; and, 
 as he cannot dispose of it, it disposes of him. The 
 history of public men and affairs in America will 
 readily furnish tragic examples of this fatal force. 
 
 For the triumphs of the art somewhat more must 
 still be required, namely, a reinforcing of man from 
 events, so as to give the double force of reason and 
 destiny. In transcendent eloquence, there was ever 
 
 VOL. V. Z
 
 338 ELOQUENCE. [iv 
 
 some crisis in affairs, such as could deeply engage the 
 man to the cause he pleads, and draw all this wide 
 power to a point. For the explosions and eruptions 
 there must he accumulations of heat somewhere, heds 
 of ignited anthracite at the centre. And in cases 
 where profound conviction has been wrought, the 
 eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but 
 who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief. It 
 agitates and tears him, and perhaps almost bereaves 
 him of the power of articulation. Then it rushes from 
 him as in short, abrupt screams, in torrents of meaning. 
 The possession the subject has of his mind is so entire 
 that it insures an order of expression which is the 
 order of Nature itself, and so the order of greatest 
 force, and inimitable by any art. And the main dis- 
 tinction between him and other well-graced actors is 
 the conviction, communicated by every word, that his 
 mind is contemplating a Avhole, and inflamed by the 
 contemplation of the whole, and that the words and 
 sentences uttered by him, however admirable, fall 
 from him as unregarded parts of that terrible whole 
 which he sees, and which he means that you shall see. 
 Add to this concentration a certain regnant calmness, 
 which, in all the tumult, never utters a premature 
 syllable, but keeps the secret of its means and method ; 
 and the orator stands before the people as a demoniacal 
 power to whose miracles they have no key. This 
 terrible earnestness makes good the ancient superstition 
 of the hunter, that the bullet will hit its mark, which 
 is first dipped in the marksman's blood. 
 
 Eloquence must be grounded on the plainest nar-
 
 iv.] ELOQUENCE. 339 
 
 rative. Afterwards, it may warm itself until it ex- 
 hales symbols of every kind and colour, speaks only 
 through the most poetic forms ; but, first and last, 
 it must still be at bottom a biblical statement of fact. 
 The orator is thereby an orator, that he keeps his feet 
 ever on a fact. Thus only is he invincible. No gifts, 
 no graces, no power of wit or learning or illustration, 
 will make any amends for want of this. All audiences 
 are just to this point. Fame of voice or of rhetoric 
 will carry people a few times to hear a speaker ; but 
 they soon begin to ask, " What is he driving at V and 
 if this man does not stand for anything, he will be 
 deserted. A good upholder of anything which they be- 
 lieve, a fact-speaker of any kind, they will long follow ; 
 but a pause in the speaker's own character is very 
 properly a loss of attraction. The preacher enumer- 
 ates his classes of men, and I do not find my place 
 therein ; I suspect, then, that no man does. Every- 
 thing is my cousin; and whilst he speaks things, I 
 feel that he is touching some of my relations, and I am 
 uneasy ; but whilst he deals in w T ords, we are released 
 from attention. If yon would lift me, you must be 
 on higher ground. If you would liberate me, you must 
 be free. If you would correct my false view of facts, — 
 hold up to me the same facts in the true order of thought, 
 and I cannot go back from the new conviction. 
 
 The power of Chatham, of Pericles, of Luther, 
 rested on this strength of character, which, because it 
 did not and could not fear anybody, made nothing of 
 their antagonists, and became sometimes exquisitely 
 provoking and sometimes terrific to these.
 
 340 ELOQUENCE. [iv. 
 
 We are slenderly furnished with anecdotes of these 
 men, nor can we help ourselves by those heavy hooks 
 in which their discourses are reported. Some of them 
 were writers, like Burke ; but most of them were not, 
 and no record at all adequate to their fame remains. 
 Besides, what is best is lost, — the fiery life of the 
 moment. But the conditions for eloquence always 
 exist. It is always dying out of famous places, and 
 appearing in corners. Wherever the polarities meet, 
 wherever the fresh moral sentiment, the instinct of 
 freedom and duty, come in direct opposition to fossil 
 conservatism and the thirst of gain, the spark will 
 pass.. The resistance to slavery in this country has 
 been a fruitful nursery of orators. The natural con- 
 nection by which it drew to itself a train of moral 
 reforms, and the slight yet sufficient party organisa- 
 tion it offered, reinforced the city with new blood 
 from the woods and mountains. Wild men, John 
 Baptists, Hermit Peters, John Knoxes, utter the 
 savage sentiment of Nature in the heart of commercial 
 capitals. They send us every year some piece of ab- 
 original strength, some tough oak-stick of a man who 
 is not to be silenced or insulted or intimidated by a 
 mob, because he is more mob than they, — one who 
 mobs the mob, — some sturdy countryman, on whom 
 neither money, nor politeness, nor hard words, nor 
 eggs, nor blows, nor brickbats, make any impression. 
 He is fit to meet the bar-room wits and bullies ; he is 
 a wit and a bully himself, and something more : he is 
 a graduate of the plough, and the stub-hoe, and the 
 bushwhacker; knows all the secrets of swamp and
 
 iv.] ELOQUENCE. 341 
 
 snow-bank, and has nothing to learn of labour or 
 poverty or the rough of farming. His hard head went 
 through, in childhood, the drill of Calvinism, with 
 text and mortification, so that he stands in the New 
 England assembly a purer bit of New England than 
 any, and flings his sarcasms right and left. He has 
 not only the documents in his pocket to answer all 
 cavils, and to prove all his positions, but he has the 
 eternal reason in his head. This man scornfully 
 renounces your civil organisations, — county, or city, 
 or governor, or army, — is his own navy and artillery, 
 judge and jury, legislature and executive. He has 
 learned his lessons in a bitter school. Yet, if the 
 pupil be of a texture to bear it, the best university 
 that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the 
 gauntlet of the mobs. 
 
 He who will train himself to mastery in this science 
 of persuasion must lay the emphasis of education, not 
 on popular arts, but on character and insight. Let 
 him see that his speech is not differenced from action ; 
 that, when he has spoken, he has not done nothing, 
 nor done wrong, but has cleared his own skirts, has 
 engaged himself to wholesome exertion. Let him 
 look on opposition as opportunity. He cannot be 
 defeated or put down. There is a principle of resur- 
 rection in him, an immortality of purpose. . Men are 
 averse and hostile, to give value to their suffrages. 
 It is not the people that are in fault for not being con- 
 vinced, but he that cannot convince them. He should 
 mould them, armed as he is with the reason and love 
 which are also the core of their nature. He is not to
 
 342 ELOQUENCE. [iv. 
 
 neutralise their opposition, but he is to convert them 
 into fiery apostles and publishers of the same wisdom. 
 
 The highest platform of eloquence is the moral 
 sentiment. It is what is called affirmative truth, and 
 has the property of invigorating the hearer ; and it 
 conveys a hint of our eternity, when he feels himself 
 addressed on grounds which will remain when every- 
 thing else is taken, and which have no trace of time 
 or place or party. Everything hostile is stricken 
 down in the presence of the sentiments ; their majesty 
 is felt by the most obdurate. It is observable that, 
 as soon as one acts for large masses, the moral element 
 will and must be allowed for, will and must work ; 
 and the men least accustomed to appeal to these senti- 
 ments invariably recall them when they address nations. 
 Napoleon, even, must accept and use it as he can. 
 
 It is only to these simple strokes that the highest 
 power belongs, — when a weak human hand touches, 
 point by point, the eternal beams and rafters on which 
 the whole structure of Nature and society is laid. In 
 this tossing sea of delusion we feel with our feet the 
 adamant ; in this dominion of chance we find a prin- 
 ciple of permanence. For I do not accept that defini- 
 tion of Isocrates, that the office of his art is to make 
 the great small and the small great ; but I esteem this 
 to be its perfection, — when the orator sees through all 
 masks to the eternal scale of truth, in such sort that 
 he can hold up before the eyes of men the fact of to- 
 day steadily to that standard, thereby making the 
 great great, and the small small, which is the true 
 way to astonish and to reform mankind.
 
 IV.] ELOQUENCE. 343 
 
 All the chief orators of the world have been grave 
 men, relying on this reality. One thought the philo- 
 sophers of Demosthenes's own time found running 
 through all his orations, — this namely, that "virtue 
 secures its own success." "To stand on one's own 
 feet." Heeren finds the keynote to the discourses of 
 Demosthenes, as of Chatham. 
 
 Eloquence, like every other art, rests on laws the 
 most exact and determinate. It is the best speech of 
 the best sold. It may well stand as the exponent of 
 all that is grand and immortal in the mind. If it do 
 not so become an instrument, but aspires to be some- 
 what of itself, and to glitter for show, it is false and 
 weak. In its right exercise, it is an elastic, unex- 
 hausted power, — who has sounded, who has estimated 
 it? — expanding with the expansion of our interests 
 and affections. Its great masters, whilst they valued 
 every help to its attainment, and thought no pains too 
 great which contributed in any manner to further it ; 
 — resembling the Arabian warrior of fame, who wore 
 seventeen weapons in his belt, and in personal com- 
 bat used them all occasionally ; — yet subordinated all 
 means ; never permitted any talent — neither voice, 
 rhythm, poetic power, anecdote, sarcasm — to appear 
 for show ; but were grave men, who preferred their 
 integrity to their talent, and esteemed that object for 
 which they toiled, whether the prosperity of their 
 country, or the laws, or a reformation, or liberty of 
 speech or of the press, or letters, or morals, as above 
 the whole world and themselves also.
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE. 
 
 The perfection of the providence for childhood is 
 easily acknowledged. The care which covers the 
 seed of the tree under tough husks and stony cases 
 provides for the human plant the mother's breast and 
 the father's house. The size of the nestler is comic, 
 and its tiny beseeching weakness is compensated per- 
 fectly by the happy patronising look of the mother, 
 who is a sort of high reposing Providence toward it. 
 Welcome to the parents the puny straggler, strong 
 in his weakness, his little arms more irresistible than 
 the soldier's, his lips touched with persuasion which 
 Chatham and Pericles in manhood had not. His un- 
 affected lamentations when he lifts up his voice on 
 high, or, more beautiful, the sobbing child, — the face 
 all liquid grief, as he tries to swallow his vexation, — 
 soften all hearts to pity, and to mirthful and clamor- 
 ous compassion. The small despot asks so little that 
 all reason and all nature are on his side. His ignor- 
 ance is more charming than all knowledge, and his 
 little sins more bewitching than any virtue. His 
 flesh is angels' flesh, all alive. "Infancy," said Cole- 
 ridge, " presents body and spirit in unity : the body
 
 34G DOMESTIC LIFE. [v. 
 
 is all animated." All clay, between his three or four 
 sleeps, he coos like a pigeon-house, sputters and spurs, 
 and puts on his faces of importance ; and when he 
 fasts, the little Pharisee fails not to sound his trumpet 
 before him. By lamplight he delights in shadows on 
 the wall ; by daylight, in yellow and scarlet. Carry 
 him out of doors, — he is overpowered by the light 
 and by the extent of natural objects, and is silent. 
 Then presently begins his use of his fingers, and he 
 studies power, the lesson of his race. First it appears 
 in no great harm, in architectural tastes. Out of 
 blocks, thread-spools, cards and checkers, he will build 
 his pyramid with the gravity of Palladio. With an 
 acoustic apparatus of whistle and rattle he explores 
 the laws of sound. But chiefly, like his senior country- 
 men, the young American studies new and speedier 
 modes of transportation. Mistrusting the cunning of 
 his small legs, he wishes to ride on the necks and 
 shoulders of all flesh. The small enchanter nothing 
 can withstand, — no seniority of age, no gravity of 
 character ; uncles, aunts, grandsires, grandams, fall an 
 easy prey : he conforms to nobody, all conform to 
 him ; all caper and make mouths, and babble, and 
 chirrup to him. On the strongest shoulders he rides, 
 and pulls the hair of laurelled heads. 
 
 "The childhood," said Milton, "shows the man, as 
 morning shows the day." The child realises to every 
 man his own earliest remembrance, and so supplies a 
 defect in our education, or enables us to live over the 
 unconscious history with a sympathy so tender as to 
 be almost personal experience.
 
 v.] DOMESTIC LIFE. 347 
 
 Fast — almost too fast for the wistful curiosity of 
 the parents, studious of the witchcraft of curls and 
 dimples and broken words — the little talker grows to 
 a boy. He walks daily among wonders : fire, light, 
 darkness, the moon, the stars, the furniture of the 
 house, the red tin horse, the domestics, who like rude 
 foster-mothers befriend and feed him, the faces that 
 claim his kisses, are all in turn absorbing ; yet warm, 
 cheerful, and with good appetite, the little sovereign 
 subdues them without knowing it; the new know- 
 ledge is taken up into the life of to-day and becomes 
 the means of more. The blowing rose is a new event; 
 the garden full of flowers is Eden over again to the 
 small Adam ; the rain, the ice, the frost, make epochs 
 in his life. What a holiday is the first snow in which 
 Twoshoes can be trusted abroad ! 
 
 What art can paint or gild any object in after-life 
 with the glow which Nature gives to the first baubles 
 of childhood ! St. Peter's cannot have the magical 
 power over us that the red and gold covers of our 
 first picture-book possessed. How the imagination 
 cleaves to the warm glories of that tinsel even now ! 
 What entertainments make every clay bright and 
 short for the fine freshman ! The street is old as 
 Nature ; the persons all have their sacredness. His 
 imaginative life dresses all things in their best. His 
 fears adorn the dark parts with poetry. He has heard 
 of wild horses and of bad boys, and with a pleasing 
 terror he watches at his gate for the passing of those 
 varieties of each species. The first ride into the 
 country, the first bath in running water, the first time
 
 348 DOMESTIC LIFE. [v. 
 
 the skates are put on, the first game out of doors in 
 moonlight, the hooks of the nursery, are new chapters 
 of joy. The "Arahian Nights' Entertainments," the 
 " Seven Champions of Christendom," " Robinson 
 Crusoe," and the " Pilgrim's Progress," — what mines 
 of thought and emotion, what a wardrohe to dress 
 the whole world withal, are in this encyclopaedia of 
 young thinking ! And so hy beautiful traits, which, 
 without art, yet seem the masterpiece of wisdom pro- 
 voking the love that watches and educates him, the 
 little pilgrim prosecutes the journey through nature 
 which he has thus gaily begun. He grows up the 
 ornament and joy of the house, which rings to his 
 glee, to rosy boyhood. 
 
 The household is the home of the man, as well as 
 of the child. The events that occur therein are more 
 near and affecting to us than those which are sought 
 in senates and academies. Domestic events are cer- 
 tainly our affair. What are called public events may 
 or may not be ours. If a man wishes to acquaint 
 himself with the real history of the world, with the 
 spirit of the age, he must not go first to the state- 
 house or the court -room. The subtle spirit of life 
 must be sought in facts nearer. It is what is done 
 and suffered in the house, in the constitution, in the 
 temperament, in the personal history, that has the 
 profoundest interest for us. Fact is better than 
 fiction, if only we could get pure fact. Do you think 
 any rhetoric or any romance would get your ear from 
 the wise gipsy who could tell straight on the real 
 fortunes of the man ; who could reconcile your moral
 
 v.] 
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE. 349 
 
 character and your natural history ; who could ex- 
 plain your misfortunes, your fevers, your debts, your 
 temperament, your habits of thought, your tastes, and, 
 in every explanation, not sever you from the whole, 
 but unite you to it 1 ? Is it nut plain that not in 
 senates, or courts, or chambers of commerce, but in 
 the dwelling-house must the true character and hope 
 of the time be consulted 1 ? These facts are, to be 
 sure, harder to read. It is easier to count the census, 
 or compute the square extent of a territory, to criti- 
 cise its polity, books, art, than to come to the persons 
 and dwellings of men, and read their character and 
 hope in their way of life. Yet we are always hover- 
 ing round this better divination. In one form or 
 another, we are always returning to it. The physi- 
 ognomy and phrenology of to-day are rash and 
 mechanical systems enough, but they rest on ever- 
 lasting foundations. We are sure that the sacred 
 form of man is not seen in these whimsical, pitiful, 
 and sinister masks (masks which we wear and which 
 we meet), these bloated and shrivelled bodies, bald 
 heads, bead eyes, short winds, puny and precarious 
 healths, and early deaths. We live ruins amidst ruins. 
 The great facts are the near ones. The account of 
 the body is to be sought in the mind. The history 
 of your fortunes is written first in your life. 
 
 Let us come, then, out of the public square, and 
 enter the domestic precinct. Let us go to the sitting- 
 room, the table-talk, and the expenditure of our con- 
 temporaries. An increased consciousness of the soul, 
 you say, characterises the period. Let us see if it
 
 350 DOMESTIC LIFE. [v- 
 
 has not only arranged the atoms at the circumference, 
 but the atoms at the core. Does the household obey 
 an idea? Do you see the man, — his form, genius, and 
 aspiration, — in his economy? Is that translucent, 
 thorough-lighted? There should be nothing confound- 
 ing and conventional in economy, but the genius and 
 love of the man so conspicuously marked in all his estate, 
 that the eye that knew him should read his character in 
 his property, in his grounds, in his ornaments, in every 
 expense. A man's money should not follow the direc- 
 tion of his neighbour's money, but should represent to 
 him the things he would willingliest do with it. I am 
 not one thing and my expenditure another. My ex- 
 penditure is me. That our expenditure and our char- 
 acter are twain, is the vice of society. 
 
 We ask the price of many things in shops and stalls, 
 but some things each man buys without hesitation, if 
 it were only letters at the post-office, conveyance in 
 carriages and boats, tools for his work, books that are 
 written to his condition, etc. Let him never buy 
 anything else than what he wants, never subscribe 
 at others' instance, never give unwillingly. Thus, a 
 scholar is a literary foundation. All his expense is 
 for Aristotle, Fabricius, Erasmus, and Petrarch. Do 
 not ask him to help with his savings young drapers 
 or grocers to stock their shops, or eager agents to lobby 
 in legislatures, or join a company to build a factory 
 or a fishing-craft. These things are also to be done, but 
 not by such as he. How could such a book as Plato's 
 Dialogues have come down, but for the sacred savings 
 of scholars and their fantastic appropriation of them?
 
 v.] DOMESTIC LIFE. 351 
 
 Another man is a mechanical genius, an inventor 
 of looms, a builder of ships, — a shipbuilding founda- 
 tion, and could achieve nothing if he should dissipate 
 himself on books or on horses. Another is a farmer, 
 — an agricultural foundation ; another is a chemist, — 
 and the same rule holds for all. We must not make 
 believe with our money, but spend heartily, and buy 
 up and not down. 
 
 I am afraid that, so considered, our houses will not 
 be found to have unity, and to express the best 
 thought. The household, the calling, the friendships, 
 of the citizen are not homogeneous. His house ought 
 to show us his honest opinion of what makes his well- 
 being when he rests among his kindred, and forgets 
 all affectation, compliance, and even exertion of will. 
 He brings home whatever commodities and ornaments 
 have for years allured his pursuit, and his character 
 must be seen in them. But what idea predominates 
 in our houses'? Thrift first, then convenience and 
 pleasure. Take off all the roofs, from street to street, 
 and we shall seldom find the temple of any higher god 
 than Prudence. The progress of domestic living has 
 been in cleanliness, in ventilation, in health, in 
 decorum, in countless means and arts of comfort, in 
 the concentration of all the utilities of every clime in 
 each house. They are arranged for low benefits. 
 The houses of the rich are confectioners' shops, where 
 we get sweetmeats and wine ; the houses of the poor 
 are imitations of these to the extent of their ability. 
 With these ends housekeeping is not beautiful; it 
 cheers and raises neither the husband, the wife, nor
 
 352 DOMESTIC LIFE. [v. 
 
 the child ; neither the host, nor the guest; it oppresses 
 women. A house kept to the end of prudence is 
 laborious without joy; a house kept to the end of 
 display is impossible to all but a few women, and their 
 success is dearly bought. 
 
 If we look at this matter curiously, it becomes 
 dangerous. We need all the force of an idea to lift 
 this load, for the wealth and multiplication of conveni- 
 ences embarrass us, especially in northern climates. 
 The shortest enumeration of our wants in this rugged 
 climate appals us by the multitude of things not easy 
 to be done. And if you look at the multitude of par- 
 ticulars, one would say : Good housekeeping is impos- 
 sible ; order is too precious a thing to dwell with men 
 and women. See, in families where there is both 
 substance and taste, at what expense any favourite 
 punctuality is maintained. If the children, for ex- 
 ample, are considered, dressed, dieted, attended, kept 
 in proper company, schooled, and at home fostered 
 by the parents, — then does the hospitality of the house 
 suffer ; friends are less carefully bestowed, the daily 
 table less catered. If the hours of meals are punctual, 
 the apartments are slovenly. If the linens and hang- 
 ings are clean and fine, and the furniture good, the 
 yard, the garden, the fences are neglected. If all are 
 well attended, then must the master and mistress be 
 studious of f)articulars at the cost of their own accom- 
 plishments and growth, — or persons are treated as 
 things. 
 
 The difficulties to be overcome must be freely 
 admitted ; they are many and great. Nor are they
 
 v.] DOMESTIC LIFE. 353 
 
 to be disposed of by any criticism or amendment of 
 particulars taken one at a time, but only by the 
 arrangement of the household to a higher end than 
 those to which our dwellings are usually built and 
 furnished. And is there any calamity more grave, or 
 that more invokes the best good-will to remove it, 
 than this 1 — to go from chamber to chamber, and see 
 no beauty ; to find in the housemates no aim ; to hear 
 an endless chatter and blast; to be compelled to 
 criticise ; to hear only to dissent and to be disgusted ; 
 to find no invitation to what is good in us, and no 
 receptacle for what is wise ; this is a great price to 
 pay for sweet bread and warm lodging, — being de- 
 frauded of affinity, of repose, of genial culture, and 
 the inmost presence of beauty. 
 
 It is a sufficient accusation of our ways of living, 
 and certainly ought to open our ear to every good- 
 minded reformer, that our idea of domestic well-being 
 now needs wealth to execute it. Give me the means, 
 says the wife, and your house shall not annoy your 
 taste nor waste your time. On hearing this, we under- 
 stand how these Means have come to be so omnipotent 
 on earth. And indeed the love of wealth seems to 
 groAV chiefly out of the root of the love of the Beautiful. 
 The desire of gold is not for gold. It is not the love 
 of much wheat and wool and household-stuff. It is 
 the means of freedom and benefit. We scorn shifts ; 
 we desire the elegance of munificence ; we desire at 
 least to put no stint or limit on our parents, relatives, 
 guests, or dependants ; we desire to play the bene- 
 factor and the prince with our townsmen, with the 
 
 VOL. v. 2 A
 
 354 DOMESTIC LIFE. [v. 
 
 stranger at the gate, with the bard, or the beauty, 
 with the man or woman of worth, who alights at our 
 door. How can we do this, if the wants of each day 
 imprison us in lucrative labours, and constrain us to a 
 continual vigilance lest we be betrayed into expense 1 
 Give us wealth, and the home shall exist. But that is 
 a very imperfect and inglorious solution of the problem, 
 and therefore no solution. " Give us wealth." You 
 ask too much. Few have wealth ; but all must have 
 a home. Men are not born rich; and in getting 
 wealth, the man is generally sacrificed, and often is 
 sacrificed without acquiring wealth at last. Besides, 
 that cannot be the right answer; — there are objec- 
 tions to wealth. Wealth is a shift. The wise man 
 angles with himself only, and with no meaner bait. 
 Our whole use of wealth needs revision and reform. 
 Generosity does not consist in giving money or 
 money's worth. These so-called goods are only the 
 shadow of good. To give money to a sufferer is only 
 a come -off. It is only a postponement of the real 
 payment, a bribe paid for silence, — a credit-system in 
 which a paper promise to pay answers for the time 
 instead of liquidation. We owe to man higher 
 succours than food and fire. We owe to man man. 
 If he is sick, is unable, is mean-spirited and odious, it 
 is because there is so much of his nature which is 
 unlawfully withholden from him. He should be 
 visited in this his prison with rebuke to the evil 
 demons, with manly encouragement, with no mean- 
 spirited offer of condolence because you have not 
 money, or mean offer of money as the utmost benefit,
 
 v.] DOMESTIC LIFE. 355 
 
 but by your heroism, your purity, and your faith. 
 You are to bring with you that spirit which is under- 
 standing, health, and self-help. To offer him money 
 in lieu of these is to do him the same wrong as when 
 the bridegroom offers his betrothed virgin a sum of 
 money to release him from his engagements. The 
 great depend on their heart, not on their purse. 
 Genius and virtue, like diamonds, are best plain-set, 
 — set in lead, set in poverty. The greatest man in 
 history was the poorest. How was it with the 
 captains and sages of Greece and Rome, with Socrates, 
 with Epaminondas 1 Aristides was made general 
 receiver of Greece, to collect the tribute which each 
 State was to furnish against the barbarian. " Poor," 
 says Plutarch, "when he set about it, poorer when 
 he had finished it." How was it with iEmilius and 
 Cato? What kind of house was kept by Paul and 
 John, — by Milton and Marvell, — by Samuel John- 
 son, — by Samuel Adams in Boston, and Jean Paul 
 Richter at Baireuth 1 
 
 I think it plain that this voice of communities and 
 ages, " Give us wealth, and the good household shall 
 exist," is vicious, and leaves the whole difficulty un- 
 touched. It is better, certainly, in this form, "Give 
 us your labour, and the household begins." I see not 
 how serious labour, the labour of all and every day, 
 is to be avoided ; and many things betoken a revolu- 
 tion of opinion and practice in regard to manual 
 labour that may go far to aid our practical inquiry. 
 Another age may divide the manual labour of the 
 world more equally on all the members of society,
 
 356 DOMESTIC LIFE. [v 
 
 and so make the labours of a few hours avail to the 
 wants and add to the vigour of the man. But the 
 reform that applies itself to the household must not 
 be partial. It must correct the whole system of our 
 social living. It must come with plain living and 
 high thinking ; it must break up caste, and put 
 domestic service on another foundation. It must 
 come in connection with a true acceptance by each 
 man of his vocation, — not chosen by his parents or 
 friends, but by his genius, with earnestness and love. 
 Nor is this redress so hopeless as it seems. Cer- 
 tainly, if we begin by reforming particulars of our 
 present system, correcting a few evils and letting the 
 rest stand, we shall soon give up in despair. For 
 our social forms are very far from truth and equity. 
 But the way to set the axe at the root of the tree is, 
 to raise our aim. Let us understand, then, that a 
 house should bear witness in all its economy that 
 human culture is the end to which it is built and 
 garnished. It stands there under the sun and moon 
 to ends analogous, and not less noble than theirs. It 
 is not for festivity, it is not for sleep : but the pine 
 and the oak shall gladly descend from the mountains 
 to uphold the roof of men as faithful and necessary 
 as themselves ; to be the shelter always open to good 
 and true persons ; — a hall which shines with sincerity, 
 brows ever tranquil, and a demeanour impossible to 
 disconcert; whose inmates know what they want; 
 who do not ask your house how theirs should be 
 kept. They have aims : they cannot pause for trifles. 
 The diet of the house does not create its order, but
 
 v.] DOMESTIC LIFE. 357 
 
 knowledge, character, action, absorb so much life and 
 yield so much entertainment that the refectory has 
 ceased to be so curiously studied. With a change of 
 aim has followed a change of the whole scale by which 
 men and things were wont to be measured. Wealth 
 and poverty are seen for what they are. It begins to 
 be seen that the poor are only they who feel poor, 
 and poverty consists in feeling poor. The rich, as we 
 reckon them, and among them the very rich, in a true 
 scale would be found very indigent and ragged. The 
 great make us feel, first of all, the indifference of 
 circumstances. They call into activity the higher 
 perceptions, and subdue the low habits of comfort 
 and luxury; but the higher perceptions find their 
 objects everywhere: only the low habits need palaces 
 and banquets. 
 
 Let a man, then, say, My house is here in the 
 county, for the culture of the county; — an eating- 
 house and sleeping-house for travellers it shall be, 
 but it shall be much more. I pray you, excellent 
 wife, not to cumber yourself and me to get a rich 
 dinner for this man or this woman who has alighted 
 at our gate, nor a bedchamber made ready at too 
 great a cost. These things, if they are curious in, 
 they can get for a dollar at any village. But let this 
 stranger, if he will, in your looks, in your accent and 
 behaviour, read your heart and earnestness, your 
 thought and will, which he cannot buy at any price, 
 in any village or city, and which he may well travel 
 fifty miles, and dine sparely and sleep hard, in order 
 to behold. Certainly, let the board be spread and
 
 358 DOMESTIC LIFE. [v. 
 
 let the bed be dressed for the traveller ; but let not 
 the emphasis of hospitality lie in these things. 
 Honour to the house where they are simple to the 
 verge of hardship, so that there the intellect is awake 
 and reads the laws of the universe, the soul worships 
 truth and love, honour and courtesy flow into all 
 deeds. 
 
 There was never a country in the world which 
 could so easily exhibit this heroism as ours; never 
 anywhere the State has made such efficient provision 
 for popular education, where intellectual entertain- 
 ment is so within reach of youthful ambition. The 
 poor man's son is educated. There is many a humble 
 house in every city, in every town, where talent and 
 taste, and sometimes genius, dwell with poverty aDd 
 labour. Who has not seen, and who can see un- 
 moved, under a low roof, the eager, blushing boys 
 discharging as they can their household chores, and 
 hastening into the sitting-room to the study of to- 
 morrow's merciless lesson, yet stealing time to read 
 one chapter more of the novel hardly smuggled into 
 the tolerance of father and mother, — atoning for the 
 same by some pages of Plutarch or Goldsmith ; the 
 warm sympathy with which they kindle each other 
 in school-yard, or in barn or wood- shed, with scraps 
 of poetry or song, with phrases of the last oration, or 
 mimicry of the orator ; the youthful criticism, on Sun- 
 day, of the sermons ; the school declamation faith- 
 fully rehearsed at home, sometimes to the fatigue, 
 sometimes to the admiration of sisters; the first 
 solitary joys of literary vanity, when the translation
 
 v.] DOMESTIC LIFE. 359 
 
 or the theme has been completed, sitting alone near 
 the top of the house ; the cautious comparison of the 
 attractive advertisement of the arrival of Macready, 
 Booth, or Kemhle, or of the discourse of a well-known 
 speaker, with the expense of the entertainment ; the 
 affectionate delight with which they greet the return 
 of each one after the early separations which school 
 or business requires ; the foresight with which, during 
 such absences, they hive the honey which opportunity 
 offers, for the ear and imagination of the others ; and 
 the unrestrained glee with which they disburden 
 themselves of their early mental treasures when the 
 holidays bring them again together? What is the 
 hoop that holds them stanch ? It is the iron band of 
 poverty, of necessity, of austerity, which, excluding 
 them from the sensual enjoyments which make other 
 boys too early old, has directed their activity in safe 
 and right channels, and made them, despite them- 
 selves, reverers of the grand, the beautiful, and the 
 good. Ah ! short-sighted students of books, of Nature, 
 and of man ! too happy, could they know their ad- 
 vantages. They pine for freedom from that mild 
 parental yoke ; they sigh for fine clothes, for rides, for 
 the theatre, and premature freedom and dissipation, 
 which others possess. Woe to them, if their wishes 
 were crowned ! The angels that dwell with them, 
 and are weaving laurels of life for their youthful 
 brows, are Toil, and Want, and Truth, and Mutual 
 Faith. 
 
 In many parts of true economy a cheering lesson 
 may be learned from the mode of life and manners of
 
 360 DOMESTIC LIFE. [v. 
 
 the later Eomans, as described to us in the letters of 
 the younger Pliny. Nor can I resist the temptation 
 of quoting so trite an instance as the noble housekeep- 
 ing of Lord Falkland in Clarendon : " His house being 
 within little more than ten miles from Oxford, he con- 
 tracted familiarity and friendship with the most polite 
 and accurate men of that University, who found such 
 an immenseness of wit, and such a solidity of judg- 
 ment in him, so infinite a fancy, bound in by a most 
 logical ratiocination, such a vast IvDOwledge that he 
 was not ignorant in anything, yet such an excessive 
 humility, as if he had known nothing, that they fre- 
 quently resorted and dwelt with him, as in a college 
 situated in a purer air ; so that his house was a uni- 
 versity in a less volume, whither they came, not so 
 much for repose as study, and to examine and refine 
 those grosser propositions which laziness and consent 
 made current in vulgar conversation." 
 
 I honour that man whose ambition it is, not to 
 win laurels in the State or the army, not to be a jurist 
 or a naturalist, not to be a poet or a commander, but 
 to be a master of living well, and to administer the 
 offices of master or servant, of husband, father, and 
 friend. But it requires as much breadth of power for 
 this as for those other functions, — as much, or more, 
 — and the reason for the failure is the same. I think 
 the vice of our housekeeping is, that it does not hold 
 man sacred. The vice of government, the vice of 
 education, the vice of religion, is one with that of 
 private life. 
 
 In the old fables we used to read of a cloak brought
 
 v.] DOMESTIC LIFE. 361 
 
 from fairyland as a gift for the fairest and purest in 
 Prince Arthur's court. It was to be her prize whom 
 it would fit. Every one was eager to try it on, but 
 it would fit nobody : for one it was a world too wide, 
 for the next it dragged on the ground, and for the 
 third it shrank to a scarf. They, of course, said that 
 the devil was in the mantle, for really the truth was 
 in the mantle, and was exposing the ugliness which 
 each would fain conceal. All drew back with terror 
 from the garment. The innocent Genelas alone could 
 wear it. In like manner every man is provided in 
 his thought with a measure of man which he applies 
 to every passenger. Unhappily, not one in many 
 thousands comes up to the stature and proportions 
 of the model. Neither does the measurer himself, 
 neither do the people in the street ; neither do the 
 select individuals whom he admires, — the heroes of 
 the race. When he inspects them critically, he dis- 
 covers that their aims are low, that they are too 
 quickly satisfied. He observes the swiftness with 
 which life culminates, and the humility of the ex- 
 pectations of the greatest part of men. To each 
 occurs, soon after the age of puberty, some event, or 
 society, or way of living, which becomes the crisis of 
 life, and the chief fact in their history. In Avoman, 
 it is love and marriage (which is more reasonable) ; 
 and yet it is pitiful to date and measure all the facts 
 and sequel of an unfolding life from such a youthful, 
 and generally inconsiderate, period as the age of 
 courtship and marriage. In men, it is their place of 
 education, choice of an employment, settled in a town,
 
 362 DOMESTIC LIFE. 
 
 [v. 
 
 or removal to the East or to the West, or some other 
 magnified trifle, which makes the meridian moment, 
 and all the after years and actions only derive in- 
 terest from their relation to that. Hence it comes 
 that we soon catch the trick of each man's conversa- 
 tion, and, knowing his two or three main facts, anti- 
 cipate what he thinks of each new topic that rises. 
 It is scarcely less perceivable in educated men, so 
 called, than in the uneducated. I have seen finely 
 endowed men at college festivals, ten, twenty years 
 after they had left the halls, returning, as it seemed, 
 the same boys who went away. The same jokes 
 pleased, the same straws tickled ; the manhood and 
 offices they brought thither at this return seemed mere 
 ornamental masks ; underneath they were boys yet. 
 We never come to be citizens of the world, but are 
 still villagers, who think that everything in their petty 
 town is a little superior to the same thing anywhere 
 else. In each the circumstance signalised differs, but 
 in each it is made the coals of an ever-burning egotism. 
 In one, it was his going to sea ; in a second, the diffi- 
 culties he combated in going to college ; in a third, his 
 journey to the West, or his voyage to Canton ; in a 
 fourth, his coming out of the Quaker Society ; in a 
 fifth, his new diet and regimen ; in a sixth, his com- 
 ing forth from the abolition organisations ; and in a 
 seventh, his going into them. It is a life of toys and 
 trinkets. We are too easily pleased. 
 
 I think this sad result appears in the manners. 
 The men we see in each other do not give us 
 the image and likeness of man. The men we see
 
 v.] DOMESTIC LIFE. 363 
 
 are whipped through the world ; they are harried, 
 wrinkled, anxious ; they all seem the hacks of some 
 invisible riders. How seldom do we behold tran- 
 quillity ! We have never yet seen a man. We do 
 not know the majestic manners that belong to him, 
 which appease and exalt the beholder. There are 
 no divine persons with us, and the multitude do not 
 hasten to be divine. And yet we hold fast, all 
 our lives long, a faith in a better life, in better men, 
 in clean and noble relations, notwithstanding our 
 total inexperience of a true society. Certainly, this 
 was not the intention of Nature, to produce, with all 
 this immense expenditure of means and power, so 
 cheap and humble a result. The aspirations in the 
 heart after the good and true teach us better, — nay, 
 the men themselves suggest a better life. 
 
 Every individual nature has its own beaut} r . One 
 is struck in every company, at every fireside, with 
 the riches of nature, when he hears so many new 
 tones, all musical, sees in each person original man- 
 ners, which have a proper and peculiar charm, and 
 reads new expressions of face. He perceives that 
 Nature has laid for each the foundations of a divine 
 building, if the soul will build thereon. There is no 
 face, no form, which one cannot in fancy associate 
 with great power of intellect or with generosity of 
 soul. In our experience, to be sure, beauty is not, 
 as it ought to be, the dower of man and of woman 
 as invariably as sensation. Beauty is, even in the 
 beautiful, occasional, — or, as one has said, culminat- 
 ing and perfect only a single moment, before which
 
 364 DOMESTIC LIFE. [v. 
 
 it is unripe, and after which it is on the wane. But 
 beauty is never quite absent from our eyes. Every 
 face, every figure, suggests its own right and sound 
 estate. Our friends are not their own highest form. 
 But let the hearts they have agitated witness what 
 power has lurked in the traits of these structures of 
 clay that pass and repass us ! The secret power of 
 form over the imagination and affections transcends 
 all our philosophy. The first glance we meet may 
 satisfy us that matter is the vehicle of higher powers 
 than its own, and that no laws of line or surface can 
 ever account for the inexhaustible expressiveness of 
 form. We see heads that turn on the pivot of the 
 spine, — no more; and we see heads that seem to 
 turn on a pivot as deep as the axle of the world, — so 
 slow, and lazily, and great, they move. We see on 
 the lip of our companion the presence or absence of 
 the great masters of thought and poetry to his mind. 
 We read in his brow, on meeting him after many 
 years, that he is where we left him, or that he has 
 made great strides. 
 
 Whilst thus nature and the hints we draw from 
 man suggest a true and lofty life, a household equal 
 to the beauty and grandeur of this world, especially 
 we learn the same lesson from those best relations to 
 individual men which the heart is always prompting 
 us to form. Happy will that house be in which the 
 relations are formed from character, after the highest, 
 and not after the lowest order ; the house in which 
 character marries, and not confusion and a miscellany 
 of unavowable motives. Then shall marriage be a
 
 v.] DOMESTIC LIFE. 365 
 
 covenant to secure to either party the sweetness 
 and honour of being a calm, continuing, inevitable 
 benefactor to the other. Yes, and the sufficient 
 reply to the sceptic who doubts the competence of 
 man to elevate and to be elevated is in that desire 
 and power to stand in joyful and ennobling inter- 
 course with individuals, which makes the faith and 
 the practice of all reasonable men. 
 
 The ornament of a house is the friends who 
 frequent it. There is no event greater in life than 
 the appearance of new persons about our hearth, 
 except it be the progress of the character which 
 draws them. It has been finely added by Landor to 
 his definition of the great man: " It is he who can call 
 together the most select company when it pleases 
 him." A verse of the old Greek Menander remains, 
 which runs in translation : — 
 
 " Not on the store of sprightly wine, 
 
 Nor plenty of delicious meats, 
 Though generous Nature did design 
 
 To court us with perpetual treats, — 
 'Tis not on these we for content depend, 
 So much as on the shadow of a Friend." 
 
 It is the happiness which, where it is truly known, 
 postpones all other satisfactions, and makes politics 
 and commerce and churches cheap. For we figure 
 to ourselves, — do we notl — that when men shall 
 meet as they should, as States meet, — each a bene- 
 factor, a shower of falling stars, so rich with deeds, 
 with thoughts, with so much accomplishment, — it 
 shall be the festival of nature, which all things sym-
 
 366 DOMESTIC LIFE. [v. 
 
 bolise ; and perhaps Love is only the highest symbol 
 of Friendship, as all other things seem symbols of 
 love. In the progress of each man's character, his 
 relations to the best men, which at first seem only 
 the romances of youth, acquire a graver importance ; 
 and he will have learned the lesson of life who is 
 skilful in the ethics of Friendship. 
 
 Beyond its primary ends of the conjugal, parental, 
 and amicable relations, the household should cherish 
 the beautiful arts and the sentiment of veneration. 
 
 1. Whatever brings the dweller into a finer life ; 
 what educates his eye, or ear, or hand; whatever 
 purifies and enlarges him, may well find place there. 
 And yet let him not think that a property in beauti- 
 ful objects is necessary to his apprehension of them, 
 and seek to turn his house into a museum. Kather 
 let the noble practice of the Greeks find place in 
 our society, and let the creations of the plastic arts 
 be collected with care in galleries by the piety and 
 taste of the people, and yielded as freely as the sun- 
 light to all. Meantime, be it remembered, we are 
 artists ourselves, and competitors, each one, with 
 Phidias and Eaphael in the production of what is 
 graceful or grand. The fountain of beauty is the 
 heart, and every generous thought illustrates the 
 walls of your chamber. Why should we owe our 
 power of attracting our friends to pictures and vases, 
 to cameos and architecture? Why should we con- 
 vert ourselves into showmen and appendages to our 
 fine houses and our works of art 1 If by love and
 
 v.] DOMESTIC LIFE. 367 
 
 nobleness we take up into ourselves the beauty we 
 admire, Ave shall spend it again on all around us. 
 The man, the woman, needs not the embellishment 
 of canvas and marble, whose every act is a subject 
 for the sculptor, and to whose eye the gods and 
 nymphs never appear ancient ; for they know by 
 heart the whole instinct of majesty. 
 
 I do not undervalue the fine instruction which 
 statues and pictures give. But I think the public 
 museum in each town will one day relieve the private 
 house of this charge of owning and exhibiting them. 
 I go to Eome and see on the walls of the Vatican the 
 Transfiguration, painted by Eaphael, reckoned the 
 first picture in the world ; or in the Sistine Chapel I 
 see the grand sibyls and prophets, painted in fresco 
 by Michel Angelo, — which have every day now for 
 three hundred years inflamed the imagination and 
 exalted the piety of what vast multitudes of men of 
 all nations ! I wish to bring home to my children 
 and my friends copies of these admirable forms, 
 which I can find in the shops of the engravers ; but I 
 do not wish the vexation of owning them. I wish to 
 find in my own town a library and museum which is 
 the property of the town, where I can deposit this 
 precious treasure, where I and my children can see it 
 from time to time, and where it has its proper place 
 among hundreds of such donations from other citizens 
 who have brought thither whatever articles they have 
 judged to be in their nature rather a public than a 
 private property. 
 
 A collection of this kind, the property of each
 
 368 DOMESTIC LIFE. [v. 
 
 town, would dignify the town, and we should love 
 and respect our neighbours more. Obviously, it would 
 be easy for every town to discharge this truly muni- 
 cipal duty. Every one of us would gladly contribute 
 his share ; and the more gladly, the more considerable 
 the institution had become. 
 
 2. Certainly, not aloof from this homage to beauty, 
 but in strict connection therewith, the house will 
 come to be esteemed a Sanctuary. The language of 
 a ruder age has given to common law the maxim that 
 every man's house is his castle : the progress of truth 
 will make every house a shrine. Will not man one 
 day open his eyes and see how dear he is to the soul 
 of Nature, — how near it is to him 1 Will he not see, 
 through all he miscalls accident, that Law prevails 
 for ever and ever ; that his private being is a part of 
 it ; that its home is in his own unsounded heart ; that 
 his economy, his labour, his good and bad fortune, his 
 health and manners, are all a curious and exact de- 
 monstration in miniature of the Genius of the Eternal 
 Providence ? When he perceives the Law, he ceases 
 to despond. Whilst he sees it, every thought and act 
 is raised, and becomes an act of religion. Does the 
 consecration of Sunday confess the desecration of the 
 entire week? Does the consecration of the church 
 confess the profanation of the house ? Let us read 
 the incantation backward. Let the man stand on his 
 feet. Let religion cease to be occasional; and the pulses 
 of thought that go to the borders of the universe, 
 let them proceed from the bosom of the Household.
 
 V.] DOMESTIC LIFE. 369 
 
 These are the consolations, — these are the ends to 
 which the household is instituted and the rooftree 
 stands. If these are sought, and in any good degree 
 attained, can the State, can commerce, can climate, 
 can the labour of many for one, yield anything better, 
 or half as good 1 Beside these aims, Society is weak 
 and the State an intrusion. I think that the heroism 
 which at this day would make on us the impression 
 of Epaminondas and Phocion must be that of a 
 domestic conqueror. He who shall bravely and 
 gracefully subdue this Gorgon of Convention and 
 Fashion, and show men how to lead a clean, handsome, 
 and heroic life amid the beggarly elements of our 
 cities and villages ; whoso shall teach me how to eat 
 my meat and take my repose, and deal with men, 
 without any shame following, will restore the life of 
 man to splendour, and make his own name dear to all 
 history. 
 
 VOL, v. 2 B
 
 FARMING. 
 
 The glory of the farmer is that, in the division of 
 labours, it is his part to create. All trade rests at last 
 on his primitive activity. He stands close to Nature ; 
 he obtains from the earth the bread and the meat. 
 The food which was not, he causes to be. The first 
 farmer was the first man, and all historic nobility 
 rests on possession and use of land. Men do not like 
 hard work, but every man has an exceptional respect 
 for tillage, and a feeling that this is the original 
 calling of his race, that he himself is only excused 
 from it by some circumstance which made him dele- 
 gate it for a time to other hands. If he have not 
 some skill which recommends him to the farmer, 
 some product for which the farmer will give him 
 corn, he must himself return into his due place 
 among the planters. And the profession has in all 
 eyes its ancient charm, as standing nearest to God, 
 the first cause. 
 
 Then the beauty of Nature, the tranquillity and 
 innocence of the. countryman, his independence, and 
 his pleasing arts, — the care of bees, of poultry, of 
 sheep, of cows, the dairy, the care of hay, of fruits,
 
 372 FARMING. [vi. 
 
 of orchards and forests, and the reaction of these on 
 the workman, in giving him a strength and plain 
 dignity, like the face and manners of Nature, all men 
 acknowledge. All men keep the farm in reserve as 
 an asylum where, in case of mischance, to hide their 
 poverty, — or a solitude, if they do not succeed in 
 society. And who knows how many glances of re- 
 morse are turned this way from the bankrupts of 
 trade, from mortified pleaders in courts and senates, or 
 from the victims of idleness and pleasure 1 Poisoned 
 by town life and town vices, the sufferer resolves : 
 "Well, my children, whom I have injured, shall go 
 back to the land, to be recruited and cured by that 
 which should have been my nursery, and now shall 
 be their hospital." 
 
 The farmer's office is precise and important, but 
 you must not try to paint him in rose-colour; you 
 cannot make pretty compliments to fate and gravita- 
 tion, whose minister he is. He represents the neces- 
 sities. It is the beauty of the great economy of the 
 world that makes his comeliness. He bends to the 
 order of the seasons, the weather, the soils and crops, 
 as the sails of a ship bend to the wind. He repre- 
 sents continuous hard labour, year in, year out, and 
 small gains. He is a slow person, timed to Nature, 
 and not to city watches. He takes the pace of 
 seasons, plants, and chemistry. Nature never hurries : 
 atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work. 
 The lesson one learns in fishing, yachting, hunting, or 
 planting, is the manners of Nature ; patience with the 
 delays of wind and sun, delays of the seasons, bad
 
 vi. 1 FARMING. 373 
 
 weather, excess or lack of water, — patience with the 
 slowness of our feet, with the parsimony of our 
 strength, with the largeness of sea and land we must 
 traverse, etc. The farmer times himself to Nature, 
 and acquires that livelong patience which belongs to 
 her. Slow, narrow man, his rule is, that the earth 
 shall feed and clothe him ; and he must wait for his 
 crop to grow. His entertainments, his liberties, and 
 his spending must be on a farmer's scale, and not on 
 a merchant's. It were as false for farmers to use a 
 wholesale and massy expense, as for States to use a 
 minute economy. But if thus pinched on one side, 
 he has compensatory advantages. He is permanent, 
 clings to his land as the rocks do. In the town where 
 I live, farms remain in the same families for seven 
 and eight generations ; and most of the first settlers 
 (in 1635), should they reappear on the farms to-day, 
 would find their own blood and names still in posses- 
 sion. And the like fact holds in the surrounding 
 towns. 
 
 This hard work will always be done by one kind 
 of man ; not by scheming speculators, nor by soldiers, 
 nor professors, nor readers of Tennyson ; but by men 
 of endurance, — deep-chested, long-winded, tough, slow 
 and sure, and timely. The farmer has a great health, 
 and the appetite of health, and means to his end : he 
 has broad lands for his home, wood to burn great 
 fires, plenty of plain food ; his milk, at least, is un- 
 watered ; and for sleep, he has cheaper and better 
 and more of it than citizens. 
 
 He has grave trusts confided to him. In the great
 
 374 FAKMING. [vi. 
 
 household of Nature, the farmer stands at the door of 
 the bread-room, and weighs to each his loaf. It is 
 for him to say whether men shall marry or not. 
 Early marriages and the number of births are indis- 
 solubly connected with abundance of food ; or, as 
 Burke said, "Man breeds at the mouth." Then he is 
 the Board of Quarantine. The farmer is a hoarded 
 capital of health, as the farm is the capital of wealth ; 
 and it is from him that the health and power, moral 
 and intellectual, of the cities came. The city is always 
 recruited from the country. The men in cities who 
 are the centres of energy, the driving-wheels of trade, 
 politics, or practical arts, and the women of beauty 
 and genius, are the children or grandchildren of 
 farmers, and are spending the energies which their 
 fathers' hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty fur- 
 rows, in poverty, necessity, and darkness. 
 
 He is the continuous benefactor. He who digs a 
 well, constructs a stone fountain, plants a grove of 
 trees by the roadside, plants an orchard, builds a 
 durable house, reclaims a swamp, or so much as puts 
 a stone seat by the wayside, makes the land so far 
 lovely and desirable, makes a fortune which he cannot 
 carry away with him, but which is usef id to his country 
 long afterwards. The man that works at home helps 
 society at large with somewhat more of certainty than 
 he who devotes himself to charities. If it be true 
 that, not by notes of political parties, but by the 
 eternal laws of political economy, slaves are driven 
 out of a slave State as fast as it is surrounded by free 
 States, then the true abolitionist is the farmer, who,
 
 VI.] 
 
 FARMING. 375 
 
 heedless of laws and constitutions, stands all day in 
 the field, investing his labour in the land, and making 
 a product with which no forced labour can compete. 
 
 We commonly say that the rich man can speak 
 the truth, can afford honesty, can afford independence 
 of opinion and action;— and that is the theory of 
 nobility. But it is the rich man in a true sense, that 
 is to say, not the man of large income and large 
 expenditure, but solely the man whose outlay is less 
 than his income and is steadily kept so. 
 
 In English factories, the boy that watches the 
 loom, to tie the thread when the wheel stops to indi- 
 cate that a thread is broken, is called a minder. And 
 in this great factory of our Copernican globe, shifting 
 its slides ; rotating its constellations, times, and tides ; 
 bringing now the day of planting, then of watering, 
 then of weeding, then of reaping, then of curing and 
 storina;, — the farmer is the minder. His machine is 
 of colossal proportions, — the diameter of the water- 
 wheel, the arms of the levers, the power of the battery, 
 are out of all mechanic measure ; — and it takes him 
 long to understand its parts and its working. This 
 pump never "sucks"; these screws are never loose; 
 this machine is never out of gear ; the vat and piston, 
 wheels and tires, never wear out, but are self- 
 repairing. 
 
 Who are the farmer's servants'? Not the Irish, 
 nor the coolies, but Geology and Chemistry, the 
 quarry of the air, the water of the brook, the light- 
 ning of the cloud, the castings of the worm, the 
 plough of the frost. Long before he was born, the
 
 376 FAEMING. [vi. 
 
 sun of ages decomposed the rocks, mellowed his land, 
 soaked it with light and heat, covered it with vege- 
 table film, then with forests, and accumulated the 
 sphagnum whose decays made the peat of his meadow. 
 
 Science has shown the great circles in which 
 Nature works ; the manner in which marine plants 
 balance the marine animals, as the land plants supply 
 the oxygen which the animals consume, and the ani- 
 mals the carbon which the plants absorb. These 
 activities are incessant. Nature works on a method 
 of all for each and each for all. The strain that is 
 made on one point bears on every arch and founda- 
 tion of the structure. There is a perfect solidarity. 
 You cannot detach an atom from its holdings, or strip 
 oft* from it the electricity, gravitation, chemic affinity, 
 or the relation to light and heat, and leave the atom 
 bare. No, it brings with it its universal ties. 
 
 Nature, like a cautious testator, ties up her estate 
 so as not to bestow it all on one generation, but 
 has a forelooking tenderness and equal regard to 
 the next and the next, and the fourth, and the 
 fortieth age. 
 
 There lie the inexhaustible magazines. The eternal 
 rocks, as we call them, have held their oxygen or lime 
 undiminished, entire, as it was. No particle of oxygen 
 can rust or wear, but has the same energy as on the 
 first morning. The good rocks, those patient waiters, 
 say to him : " We have the sacred power as we re- 
 ceived it. We have not failed of our trust, and now 
 — when in our immense day the hour is at last struck 
 — take the gas we have hoarded; mingle it with
 
 vi.] FARMING. 377 
 
 water; and let it be free to grow in plants and 
 animals, and obey the thought of man." 
 
 The earth works for him ; the earth is a machine 
 which yields almost gratuitous service to every appli- 
 cation of intellect. Every plant is a manufacturer 
 of soil. In the stomach of the plant development 
 begins. The tree can draw on the whole air, the 
 whole earth, on all the rolling main. The plant is 
 all suction-pipe, — imbibing from the ground by its 
 root, from the air by its leaves, with all its might. 
 
 The air works for him. The atmosphere, a sharp 
 solvent, drinks the essence and spirit of every solid 
 on the globe, — a menstruum which melts the moun- 
 tains into it. Air is matter subdued by heat. As 
 the sea is the grand receptacle of all rivers, so the air 
 is the receptacle from which all things spring, and 
 into which they all return. The invisible and creep- 
 ing air takes form and solid mass. Our senses are 
 sceptics, and believe only the impression of the 
 moment, and do not believe the chemical fact that 
 these huge mountain-chains are made up of gases and 
 rolling wind. But Nature is as subtle as she is strong. 
 She turns her capital day by day ; deals never with 
 dead, but ever with quick subjects. All things are 
 flowing, even those that seem immovable. The 
 adamant is always passing into smoke. The plants 
 imbibe the materials which they want from the air 
 and the ground. They burn, that is, exhale and 
 decompose, their own bodies into the air and earth 
 again. The animal burns, or undergoes the like 
 perpetual consumption. The earth burns, — the
 
 378 FARMING. 
 
 [vi. 
 
 mountains burn and decompose, — slower, but inces- 
 santly. It is almost inevitable to push the generalisa- 
 tion up into higher parts of Nature, rank over rank 
 into sentient beings. Nations burn with internal fire 
 of thought and affection, which wastes while it works. 
 We shall find finer combustion and finer fuel. Intel- 
 lect is a fire : rash and pitiless it melts this wonderful 
 bone-house which is called man. Genius even, as it 
 is the greatest good, is the greatest harm. Whilst all 
 thus burns, — the universe in a blaze kindled from the 
 torch of the sun, — it needs a perpetual tempering, a 
 phlegm, a sleep, atmospheres of azote, deluges of 
 water, to check the fury of the conflagration; a 
 hoarding to check the spending; a centripetence 
 equal to the centrifugence : and this is invariably 
 supplied. 
 
 The railroad dirt -cars are good excavators ; but 
 there is no porter like Gravitation, who will bring- 
 down any weights which man cannot carry, and if he 
 wants aid, knows where to find his fellow-labourers. 
 Water works in masses, and sets its irresistible 
 shoulder to your mills or your ships, or transports 
 vast boulders of rock in its iceberg a thousand miles. 
 But its far greater power depends on its talent of 
 becoming little, and entering the smallest holes and 
 pores. By this agency, carrying in solution elements 
 needful to every plant, the vegetable world exists. 
 
 But as I said, we must not paint the farmer in rose- 
 colour. Whilst these grand energies have wrought 
 for him, and made his task possible, he is habitually 
 engaged in small economies, and is taught the power
 
 vi.] FARMING. 379 
 
 that lurks in petty things. Great is the force of a 
 few simple arrangements ; for instance, the powers of 
 a fence. On the prairie you wander a hundred miles, 
 and hardly find a stick or a stone. At rare intervals, 
 a thin oak opening has been spared, and every such 
 section has been long occupied. But the farmer 
 manages to procure wood from far, puts up a rail 
 fence, and at once the seeds sprout and the oaks rise. 
 It was only browsing and fire which had kept them 
 down. Plant fruit-trees by the roadside, and their 
 fruit will never be allowed to ripen. Draw a pine 
 fence about them, and for fifty years they mature for 
 the owner their delicate fruit. There is a great deal of 
 enchantment in a chestnut rail or picketed pine boards. 
 Nature suggests every economical expedient some- 
 where on a great scale. Set out a pine-tree, and it 
 dies in the first year, or lives a poor spindle. But 
 Nature drops a pine-cone in Mariposa, and it lives 
 fifteen centuries, grows three or four hundred feet 
 high, and thirty in diameter, — grows in a grove of 
 giants, like a colonnade of Thebes. Ask the tree how 
 it was done. It did not grow on a ridge, but in a 
 basin, where it found deep soil, cold enough and dry 
 enough for the pine ; defended itself from the sun by 
 growing in groves, and from the wind by the walls of 
 the mountain. The roots that shot deepest, and the 
 stems of happiest exposure, drew the nourishment 
 from the rest, until the less thrifty perished and 
 manured the soil for the stronger, and the mammoth 
 Sequoias rose to their enormous proportions. The 
 traveller who saw them remembered his orchard at
 
 380 FAEMING. [vi. 
 
 home, where every year, in the destroying wind, his 
 forlorn trees pined like suffering virtue. In Septem- 
 ber, when the pears hang heaviest, and are taking from 
 the sun their gay colours, comes usually a gusty da)' 
 which shakes the whole garden, and throws down the 
 heaviest fruit in bruised heaps. The planter took the 
 hint of the Sequoias, built a high wall, or — better — 
 surrounded the orchard with a nursery of birches and 
 evergreens. Thus he had the mountain basin in 
 miniature ; and his pears grew to the size of melons, 
 and the vines beneath them ran an eighth of a mile. 
 But this shelter creates a new climate. The wall 
 that keeps off the strong wind keeps off the cold wind. 
 The high wall reflecting the heat back on the soil 
 gives that acre a quadruple share of sunshine, 
 
 " Enclosing in the garden square 
 A dead and standing pool of air," 
 
 and makes a little Cuba within it, whilst all without 
 is Labrador. 
 
 The chemist comes to his aid every year by follow- 
 ing: out some new hint drawn from Nature, and now 
 affirms that this drearj r space occupied by the farmer 
 is needless : he will concentrate his kitchen -garden 
 into a box of one or two rods square, will take the 
 roots into his laboratory ; the vines and stalks and 
 stems may go sprawling about in the fields outside, 
 he will attend to the roots in his tub, gorge them with 
 food that is good for them. The smaller his garden, 
 the better he can feed it, and the larger the crop. As 
 he nursed his Thanksgiving turkeys on bread and 
 milk, so he will pamper his peaches and grapes on the
 
 vi.] FARMING. 381 
 
 viands they like best. If they have an appetite for 
 potash, or salt, or iron, or ground bones, or even now 
 and then for a dead hog, he will indulge them. They 
 keep the secret well, and never tell on your table 
 whence they drew their sunset complexion or their 
 delicate flavours. 
 
 See what the farmer accomplishes by a cartload of 
 tiles : he alters the climate by letting off water which 
 kept the land cold through constant evaporation, and 
 allows the warm rain to bring down into the roots the 
 temperature of the air and of the surface-soil ; and he 
 deepens the soil, since the discharge of this standing 
 water allows the roots of his plants to penetrate below 
 the surface to the subsoil, and accelerates the ripen- 
 ing of the crop. The town of Concord is one of the 
 oldest towns in this country, far on now in its third 
 century. The selectmen have once in every five years 
 perambulated the boundaries, and yet, in this very 
 year, a large quantity of land has been discovered and 
 added to the town without a murmur of complaint 
 from any quarter. By drainage we went down to a 
 subsoil we did not know, and have found there is a 
 Concord under old Concord, which we are now getting 
 the best crops from ; a Middlesex under Middlesex ; 
 and, in fine, that Massachusetts has a basement story 
 more valuable, and that promises to pay a better 
 rent, than all the superstructure. But these tiles 
 have acquired by association a new interest. These 
 tiles are political economists, confuters of Malthus 
 and Ricardo ; they are so many Young Americans 
 announcing a better era, — more bread. They drain
 
 382 FARMING. [vi. 
 
 the land, make it sweet and friable; have made 
 English Chat Moss a garden, and will now do as 
 much for the Dismal Swamp. But beyond this bene- 
 fit, they are the text of better opinions and better 
 auguries for mankind. 
 
 There has been a nightmare bred in England of 
 indigestion and spleen among landlords and loomlords, 
 namely, the dogma that men breed too fast for the 
 powers of the soil ; that men multiply in a geometrical 
 ratio, whilst corn only in an arithmetical ; and hence 
 that, the more prosperous we are, the faster we ap- 
 proach these frightful limits : nay, the plight of every 
 new generation is worse than of the foregoing, because 
 the first comers take up the best lands ; the next, the 
 second best ; and each succeeding wave of popidation 
 is driven to poorer, so that the land is ever yielding 
 less returns to enlarging hosts of eaters. Henry 
 Carey of Philadelphia replied : " Not so, Mr. Malthus, 
 but just the opposite of so is the fact." 
 
 The first planter, the savage, without helpers, 
 without tools, looking chiefly to safety from his 
 enemy, — man or beast,— takes poor land. The better 
 lands are loaded with timber, which he cannot clear ; 
 they need drainage, which he cannot attempt. He 
 cannot plough, or fell trees, or drain the rich swamp. 
 He is a poor creature; he scratches with a sharp 
 stick, lives in a cave or a hutch, has no road but the 
 trail of the moose or bear : he lives on their flesh 
 when he can kill one, on roots and fruits when he 
 cannot. He falls, and is lame ; he coughs, he has a 
 stitch in his side, he has a fever and chills ; when he
 
 VI.] FARMING. 383 
 
 is hungry, he cannot always kill and eat a bear ; — 
 chances of war, — sometimes the bear eats him. Tis 
 long before he digs or plants at all, and then only a 
 patch. Later he learns that his planting is better 
 than hunting ; that the earth works faster for him 
 than he can work for himself, — works for him when 
 he is asleep, when it rains, when heat overcomes him. 
 The sunstroke which knocks him down brings his 
 corn up. As his family thrive, and other planters 
 come up around him, he begins to fell trees, and clear 
 good land ; and when, by and by, there is more skill, 
 and tools and roads, the new generations are strong- 
 enough to open the lowlands, where the wash of 
 mountains has accumulated the best soil, which yield 
 a hundredfold the former crops. The last lands are 
 the best lands. It needs science and great numbers 
 to cultivate the best lands, and in the best manner. 
 Thus true political economy is not mean, but liberal, 
 and on the pattern of the sun and sky. Population 
 increases in the ratio of morality : credit exists in the 
 ratio of morality. 
 
 Meantime we cannot enumerate the incidents and 
 agents of the farm without reverting to their influence 
 on the farmer. He carries out this cumulative pre- 
 paration of means to their last effect. This crust of 
 soil which ages have refined he refines again for the 
 feeding of a civil and instructed people. The great 
 elements with which he deals cannot leave him un- 
 affected, or unconscious of his ministry; but their 
 influence somewhat resembles that which the same 
 Nature has on the child, — of subduing and silencing
 
 384 FARMING. [vi. 
 
 him. We see the farmer with pleasure and respect, 
 ■when we think what powers and utilities are so 
 meekly worn. He knows every secret of labour ; he 
 changes the face of the landscape. Put him on a new 
 planet, and he would know Avhere to begin; yet 
 there is no arrogance in his bearing, but a perfect 
 gentleness. The farmer stands well on the world. 
 Plain in manners as in dress, he would not shine in 
 palaces; he is absolutely unknown and inadmissible 
 therein ; living or dying, he never shall be heard of 
 in them ; yet the drawing-room heroes put down 
 beside him would shrivel in his presence, — he solid 
 and unexpressive, they expressed to gold-leaf. But 
 he stands well on the world, — as Adam did, as an 
 Indian does, as Homer's heroes, Agamemnon or 
 Achilles, do. He is a person whom a poet of any 
 clime — Milton, Firdusi, or Cervantes — would appre- 
 ciate as being really a piece of the old Nature, com- 
 parable to sun and moon, rainbow and flood ; because 
 he is, as all natural persons are, representative of 
 Nature as much as these. 
 
 That uncorrupted behaviour which we admire in 
 animals and in young children belongs to him, to the 
 hunter, the sailor, — the man who lives in the presence 
 of Nature. Cities force growth, and make men 
 talkative and entertaining, but they make them 
 artificial. What possesses interest for us is the naiurel 
 of each, his constitutional excellence. This is for ever 
 a surprise, engaging and lovely ; we cannot be satiated 
 with knowing it, and about it ; and it is this which the 
 conversation with Nature cherishes and guards.
 
 WORKS AND DAYS. 
 
 Our nineteenth century is the age of tools. They 
 grow out of our structure. "Man is the meter of all 
 things," said Aristotle; "the hand is the instrument 
 of instruments, and the mind is the form of forms." 
 The human body is the magazine of inventions, the 
 patent-office, where are the models from which every 
 hint was taken. All the tools and engines on earth 
 are only extensions of its limbs and senses. One 
 definition of man is " an intelligence served by organs." 
 Machines can only second, not supply, his unaided 
 senses. The body is a meter. The eye appreciates 
 finer differences than art can expose. The apprentice 
 clings to his foot-rule, a practised mechanic will 
 measure by his thumb and his arm with equal pre- 
 cision; and a good surveyor will pace sixteen rods 
 more accurately than another man can measure them 
 by tape. The sympathy of eye and hand by which 
 an Indian or a practised slinger hits his mark with a 
 stone, or a wood-chopper or a carpenter swings his 
 axe to a hair-line on his log, are examples ; and there 
 is no sense or organ which is not capable of exquisite 
 performance. 
 
 vol. v. 2 c
 
 386 WORKS AND DAYS. [vir. 
 
 Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our 
 science ; and such is the mechanical determination of 
 our age, and so recent are our best contrivances, that 
 use has not dulled our joy and pride in them ; and 
 we pity our fathers for dying before steam and 
 galvanism, sulphuric ether and ocean telegraphs, 
 photograph and spectroscope arrived, as cheated out 
 of half their human estate. These arts open great 
 gates of a future, promising to make the world plastic 
 and to lift human life out of its beggary to a godlike 
 ease and power. 
 
 Our century, to be sure, had inherited a tolerable 
 apparatus. "We had the compass, the printing-press, 
 watches, the spiral spring, the barometer, the tele- 
 scope. Yet so many inventions have been added, 
 that life seems almost made over new ; and as Leibnitz 
 said of Newton, " that if he reckoned all that had been 
 done by mathematicians from the beginning of the 
 world down to Newton, and what had been done by 
 him, his would be the better half," so one might say 
 that the inventions of the last fifty years counterpoise 
 those of the fifty centuries before them. For the 
 vast production and manifold application of iron is 
 new ; and our common and indispensable utensils of 
 house and farm are new; the sewing-machine, the 
 power-loom, the M'Cormick reaper, the mowing- 
 machines, gas-light, lucifer matches, and the immense 
 productions of the laboratory, are new in this century, 
 and one franc's worth of coal does the work of a 
 labourer for twenty days. 
 
 Why need I speak of steam, the enemy of space and
 
 vii.] WORKS AND DAYS. 387 
 
 time, with its enormous strength and delicate applica- 
 bility, which is made in hospitals to bring a bowl of gruel 
 to a sick man's bed, and can twist beams of iron like 
 candy-braids, and vies with the forces which upheaved 
 and doubled over the geologic strata 1 Steam is an 
 apt scholar and a strong-shouldered fellow, but it has 
 not yet done all its work. It already Avalks about the 
 field like a man, and will do anything required of it. 
 It irrigates crops, and drags away a mountain. It 
 must sew our shirts, it must drive our gigs ; taught 
 by Mr. Babbage, it must calculate interest and loga- 
 rithms. Lord Chancellor Thurlow thought it might 
 be made to draw bills and answers in Chancery. If 
 that were satire, it is yet coming to render many 
 higher services of a mechanico-intellectual kind, and 
 will leave the satire short of the fact. 
 
 How excellent are the mechanical aids we have 
 applied to the human body, as in dentistry, in vacci- 
 nation, in the rhinoplastic treatment ; in the beautiful 
 aid of ether, like a finer sleep ; and in the boldest 
 promiser of all, — the transfusion of the blood, — which, 
 in Paris, it was claimed, enables a man to change his 
 blood as often as his linen ! 
 
 What of this dapper caoutchouc and gutta-percha, 
 which make water-pipes and stomach-pumps, belting 
 for mill-wheels, and diving bells, and rain-proof coats 
 for all climates, which teach us to defy the wet, and 
 put every man on a footing with the beaver and the 
 crocodile 1 What of the grand tools with which we 
 engineer, like kobolds and enchanters, — tunnelling 
 Alps, canalling the American Isthmus, piercing the
 
 388 WORKS AND DAYS. [vn. 
 
 Arabian desert 1 ? In Massachusetts we fight the sea 
 successfully with beach-grass and broom, — and the 
 blowing sand-barrens with pine plantations. The soil 
 of Holland, once the most populous in Europe, is below 
 the level of the sea. Egypt, where no rain fell for 
 three thousand years, now, it is said, thanks Mehemet 
 Ali's irrigations and planted forests for late-returning 
 showers. The old Hebrew King said : " He makes the 
 wrath of man to praise him." And there is no argu- 
 ment of theism better than the grandeur of ends 
 brought about by paltry means. The chain of 
 western railroads from Chicago to the Pacific has 
 planted cities and civilisation in less time than it costs 
 to bring an orchard into bearing. 
 
 What shall we say of the ocean telegraph, that 
 extension of the eye and ear, whose sudden perform- 
 ance astonished mankind as if the intellect were taking 
 the brute earth itself into training, and shooting the 
 first thrills of life and thought through the unwilling 
 brain 1 
 
 There does not seem any limit to these new infor- 
 mations of the same Spirit that made the elements at 
 first, and now, through man, works them. Art and 
 power will go on as they have done, — will make day 
 out of night, time out of space, and space out of time. 
 
 Invention breeds invention. No sooner is the 
 electric telegraph devised, than gutta-percha, the very 
 material it requires, is found. The aeronaut is pro- 
 vided with gun-cotton, the very fuel he wants for his 
 balloon. When commerce is vastly enlarged, Cali- 
 fornia and Australia expose the gold it needs. When
 
 vii.] WOKKS AND DAYS. 389 
 
 Europe is over-populated, America and Australia crave 
 to be peopled ; and so, throughout, every chance is 
 timed, as if Nature, who made the lock, knew where 
 to find the key. 
 
 Another result of our arts is the new intercourse 
 which is surprising us with new solutions of the 
 embarrassing political problems. The intercourse is 
 not new, but the scale is new. Our selfishness would 
 have held slaves, or would have excluded from a 
 quarter of the planet all that are not born on the soil 
 of that quarter. Our politics are disgusting; but 
 what can they help or hinder when from time to time 
 the primal instincts are impressed on masses of man- 
 kind, when the nations are in exodus and flux? 
 Nature loves to cross her stocks, — and German, 
 Chinese, Turk, Euss, and Kanaka were putting out 
 to sea, and intermarrying race with race; and com- 
 merce took the hint, and ships were built capacious 
 enough to carry the people of a county. 
 
 This thousand-handed art has introduced a new 
 element into the State. The science of power is forced 
 to remember the power of science. Civilisation 
 mounts and climbs. Malthus, when he stated that 
 the mouths went on multiplying geometrically, and 
 the food only arithmetically, forgot to say that the 
 human mind was also a factor in political economy, 
 and that the augmenting wants of society would be 
 met by an augmenting power of invention. 
 
 Yes, we have a pretty artillery of tools now in our 
 social arrangements : we ride four times as fast as 
 our fathers did ; travel, grind, weave, forge, plant, till,
 
 390 WORKS AND DAYS. [vil. 
 
 and excavate better. We have new shoes, gloves, 
 glasses, and gimlets ; we have the calculus ; we have 
 the newspaper, which does its best to make every 
 square acre of land and sea give an account of itself 
 at your breakfast-table ; we have money, and paper 
 money ; we have language, — the finest tool of all, and 
 nearest to the mind. Much will have more. Man 
 natters himself that his command over Nature must 
 increase. Things begin to obey him. We are to have 
 the balloon yet, and the next Avar will be fought in the 
 air. We may yet find a rose-water that will wash the 
 negro white. He sees the skull of the English race 
 changing from its Saxon type under the exigencies of 
 American life. 
 
 Tantalus, who in old times was seen vainly trying 
 to quench his thirst with a flowing stream, which ebbed 
 whenever he approached it, has been seen again lately. 
 He is in Paris, in New York, in Boston. He is now 
 in great spirits ; thinks he shall reach it yet : thinks 
 he shall bottle the wave. It is, however, getting a 
 little doubtful. Things have an ugly look still. No 
 matter how many centuries of culture have preceded, 
 the new man always finds himself standing on the 
 brink of chaos, always in a crisis. Can anybody re- 
 member when the times were not hard, and money not 
 scarce 1 Can anybody remember when sensible men, 
 and the right sort of men, and the right sort of women, 
 were plentiful? Tantalus begins to think steam a 
 delusion, and galvanism no better than it should be. 
 
 Many facts concur to show that we must look deeper 
 for our salvation than to steam, photographs, balloons,
 
 vii.] WOBKS AND DAYS. 391 
 
 or astronomy. These tools have some questionable pro- 
 perties. They are reagents. Machinery is aggressive. 
 The weaver becomes a web, the machinist a machine. 
 If you do not use the tools, they use you. All tools 
 are in one sense edge-tools, and dangerous. A man 
 builds a fine house ; and now he has a master, and a 
 task for life : he is to furnish, watch, show it, and 
 keep it in repair, the rest of his days. A man has a 
 reputation, and is no longer free, but must respect 
 that. A man makes a picture or a book, and, if 
 it succeeds, 'tis often the worse for him. I saw a 
 brave man the other day, hitherto as free as the 
 hawk or the fox of the wilderness, constructing his 
 cabinet of drawers for shells, eggs, minerals, and 
 mounted birds. It was easy to see that he was 
 amusing himself with making pretty links for his 
 own limbs. 
 
 Then the political economist thinks " 'tis doubtful 
 if all the mechanical inventions that ever existed 
 have lightened the day's toil of one human being." 
 The machine unmakes the man. Now that the 
 machine is so perfect, the engineer is nobody. Every 
 new step in improving the engine restricts one more 
 act of the engineer, — unteaches him. Once it took 
 Archimedes ; now it only needs a fireman, and a boy 
 to know the coppers, to pull up the handles or mind 
 the water-tank. But when the engine breaks, they 
 can do nothing. 
 
 What sickening details in the daily journals ! I 
 believe they have ceased to publish the "Newgate 
 Calendar " and the " Pirate's Own Book " since the
 
 39U WORKS AND DAYS. [vn. 
 
 family newspapers, namely, the New York Tribune 
 and the London Times, have quite superseded them 
 in the freshness, as well as the horror, of their 
 records of crime. Politics were never more corrupt 
 and brutal ; and Trade, that pride and darling of our 
 ocean, that educator of nations, that benefactor in 
 spite of itself, ends in shameful defaulting, bubble, 
 and bankruptcy, all over the world. 
 
 Of course, we resort to the enumeration of his 
 arts and inventions as a measure of the worth of 
 man. But if, with all his arts, he is a felon, we 
 cannot assume the mechanical skill or chemical re- 
 sources as the measure of worth. Let us try another 
 gauge. 
 
 What have these arts done for the character, for 
 the worth of mankind? Are men better? 'Tis 
 sometimes questioned whether morals have not de- 
 clined as the arts have ascended. Here are great 
 arts and little men. Here is greatness begotten 
 of paltriness. We cannot trace the triumphs of 
 civilisation to such benefactors as we wish. The 
 greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckster- 
 ing Trade. Every victory over matter ought to 
 recommend to man the worth of his nature. But 
 now one wonders who did all this good. Look up 
 the inventors. Each has his own knack ; his genius 
 is in veins and spots. But the great, equal, sym- 
 metrical brain, fed from a great heart, you shall not 
 find. Every one has more to hide than he has to 
 show, or is lamed by his excellence. 'Tis too plain 
 that with the material power the moral progress has
 
 vii. I WORKS AND DAYS. 393 
 
 not kept pace. It appears that Ave have not made a 
 judicious investment. AVorks and days were offered 
 us, and we took works. 
 
 The new study of the Sanskrit has shown us the 
 origin of the old names of God, — Dyaus, Deus, Zeus, 
 Zeu pater, Jupiter, — names of the sun, still recognis- 
 able through the modifications of our vernacular 
 words, importing that the Day is the Divine Power 
 and Manifestation, and indicating that those ancient 
 men, in their attempts to express the Supreme 
 Power of the universe, called him the Day, and that 
 this name was accepted by all the tribes. 
 
 Hesiod wrote a poem which he called " Works 
 and Days," in which he marked the changes of the 
 Greek year, instructing the husbandman at the rising 
 of what constellation he might safely sow, when to 
 reap, Avhen to gather wood, when the sailor might 
 launch his boat in security from storms, and what 
 admonitions of the planets he must heed. It is full 
 of economies for Grecian life, noting the proper age 
 for marriage, the rules of household thrift and of 
 hospitality. The poem is full of piety as well as 
 prudence, and is adapted to all meridians, by adding 
 the ethics of works and of days. But he has not 
 pushed his study of days into such inquiry and 
 analysis as they invite. 
 
 A farmer said "he shoidd like to have all the 
 land that joined his own.'' Bonaparte, who had the 
 same appetite, endeavoured to make the Mediter- 
 ranean a French lake. Czar Alexander was more 
 expansive, and wished to call the Pacific my ocean;
 
 394 WOKKS AND DAYS. [vil. 
 
 and the Americans were obliged to resist his attempts 
 to make it a close sea. But if he had the earth for 
 his pasture, and the sea for his pond, he would be a 
 pauper still. He only is rich who owns the day. 
 There is no king, rich man, fairy, or demon, who 
 possesses such power as that. The days are ever 
 divine as to the first Aryans. They are of the least 
 pretension, and of the greatest capacity, of anything 
 that exists. They come and go like muffled and 
 veiled figures, sent from a distant friendly party; 
 but they say nothing; and if we do not use the 
 gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away. 
 
 How the day fits itself to the mind, winds itself 
 round it like a fine drapery, clothing all its fancies ! 
 Any holiday communicates to us its colour. We 
 wear its cockade and favours in our humour. Re- 
 member what boys think in the morning of " Election 
 day," of the Fourth of July, of Thanksgiving or 
 Christmas. The very stars in their courses wink to 
 them of nuts and cakes, bonbons, presents, and fire- 
 works. Cannot memory still descry the old school- 
 house and its porch, somewhat hacked by jack-knives, 
 where you spun tops and snapped marbles ; and do 
 you not recall that life was then calendared by 
 moments, threw itself into nervous knots or glittering 
 hours, even as now, and not spread itself abroad an 
 equable felicity 1 In college terms, and in years that 
 followed, the young graduate, when the Commence- 
 ment anniversary returned, though he were in a 
 swamp, would see a festive light, and find the air 
 faintly echoing with plausive academic thunders. In
 
 vii.] WORKS AND DAYS. 395 
 
 solitude and in the country, what dignity distinguishes 
 the holy time ! The old Sabbath, or Seventh Day, 
 white with the religions of unknown thousands of 
 years, when this hallowed hour dawns out of the deep, 
 a clean page, which the wise may inscribe with truth, 
 whilst the savage scrawls it with fetishes,— the cathe- 
 dral music of history breathes through it a psalm to 
 our solitude. 
 
 So, in the common experience of the scholar, the 
 weathers fit his moods. A thousand tunes the vari- 
 able wind plays, a thousand spectacles it brings, and 
 each is the frame or dwelling of a new spirit. I used 
 formerly to choose my time with some nicety for each 
 favourite book. One author is good for winter, and 
 one for the dog-days. The scholar must look long for 
 the right hour for Plato's Timaeus. At last the elect 
 morning arrives, the early dawn, — a few lights con- 
 spicuous in the heaven, as of a world just created and 
 still becoming, — and in its wide leisures we dare 
 open that book. 
 
 There are clays when the great are near us, when 
 there is no frown on their brow, no condescension 
 even ; when they take us by the hand, and we share 
 their thought. There are clays which are the carnival 
 of the year. The angels assume flesh, and repeatedly 
 become visible. The imagination of the gods is 
 excited, and rushes on every side into forms. Yester- 
 day not a bird peeped ; the world was barren, peaked, 
 and pining : to-day 'tis inconceivably populous ; crea- 
 tion swarms and meliorates. 
 
 The days are made on a loom whereof the warp and
 
 396 WOKKS AND DAYS. [vn. 
 
 woof are past and future time. They are majestically 
 dressed, as if every god brought a thread to the skyey 
 web. 'Tis pitiful the things by which we are rich or 
 poor, — a matter of coins, coats, and carpets, a little 
 more or less stone, or wood, or paint, the fashion of a 
 cloak or hat ; like the luck of naked Indians, of whom 
 one is proud in the possession of a glass bead or a red 
 feather, and the rest miserable in the want of it. 
 But the treasures which Nature spent itself to amass, — 
 the secular, refined, composite anatomy of man, — which 
 all strata go to form, which the prior races, from 
 infusory and saurian, existed to ripen ; the surround- 
 ing plastic natures ; the earth with its foods ; the 
 intellectual, temperamenting air; the sea with its 
 invitations ; the heaven deep with worlds ; and the 
 answering brain and nervous structure replying to 
 these ; the eye that looketh into the deeps, which 
 again look back to the eye, — abyss to abyss ; — these, 
 not like a glass bead, or the coins or carpets, are given 
 immeasurably to all. 
 
 This miracle is hurled into every beggar's hands. 
 The blue sky is a covering for a market, and for the 
 cherubim and seraphim. The sky is the varnish or 
 glory with which the Artist has washed the whole 
 work, — the verge or confines of matter and spirit. 
 Nature could no farther go. Coidd our happiest 
 dream come to pass in solid fact, — could a power open 
 our eyes to behold "millions of spiritual creatures 
 walk the earth," — I believe I should find that mid- 
 plain on which they moved floored beneath and arched 
 above with the same web of blue depth which weaves
 
 VII.] WORKS AND DAYS. 397 
 
 itself over me now, as I trudge the streets on my 
 affairs. 
 
 'Tis singular that our rich English language should 
 have no word to denote the face of the world. Kincle 
 was the old English term, which, however, filled only 
 half the range of our fine Latin word, with its delicate 
 future tense, — natura, about to be born, or what German 
 philosophy denotes as a becoming. But nothing ex- 
 presses that power Avhich seems to Avork for beauty 
 alone. The Greek Kosmos did ; and therefore, with 
 great propriety, Humboldt entitles his book, which 
 recounts the last results of science, Cosmos. 
 
 Such are the days, — the earth is the cup, the sky 
 is the cover, of the immense bounty of Nature which 
 is offered us for our daily aliment ; but what a force 
 of illusion begins life with us, and attends us to the 
 end ! We are coaxed, flattered, and duped, from 
 morn to eve, from birth to death ; and where is the 
 old eye that ever saAV through the deception 1 The 
 Hindoos represent Maia, the illusory energy of Vishnu, 
 as one of his principal attributes. As if, in this 
 gale of warring elements, which life is, it Avas 
 necessary to bind souls to human life as mariners in a 
 tempest lash themselves to the mast and bulwarks of 
 a ship, and Nature employed certain illusions as her 
 ties and straps, — a rattle, a doll, an apple, for a child ; 
 skates, a river, a boat, a horse, a gun, for the growing 
 boy ; — and I Avill not begin to name those of the youth 
 and adult, for they are numberless. Seldom and 
 sloAvly the mask falls, and the pupil is permitted to 
 see that all is one stuff, cooked and painted under
 
 398 WORKS AND DAYS. [vn. 
 
 many counterfeit appearances. Hume's doctrine was 
 that the circumstances vary, the amount of happiness 
 does not ; that the beggar cracking fleas in the sun- 
 shine under a hedge and the duke rolling by in his 
 chariot, the girl equipped for her first ball and the 
 orator returning triumphant from the debate, had 
 different means, but the same quantity of pleasant 
 excitement. 
 
 This element of illusion lends all its force to hide 
 the values of present time. Who is he that does not 
 always find himself doing something less than his 
 best task 1 " What are you doing ? " " Oh, nothing ; 
 I have been doing thus, or I shall do so or so, but 
 now I am only — " Ah ! poor dupe, will you never 
 slip out of the web of the master juggler, — never 
 learn that, as soon as the irrecoverable years have 
 woven their blue glory between to-day and us, these 
 passing hours shall glitter and draw us, as the wildest 
 romance and the homes of beauty and poetry 1 How 
 difficult to deal erect with them ! The events they 
 bring, their trade, entertainments, and gossip, their 
 urgent work, all throw dust in the eyes and distract 
 attention. He is a strong man who can look them in 
 the eye, see through this juggle, feel their identity, 
 and keep his own; who can know surely that one 
 will be like another to the end of the world, nor per- 
 mit love, or death, or politics, or money, war, or 
 pleasure, to draw him from his task. 
 
 The world is always equal to itself, and every man 
 in moments of deeper thought is apprised that he is 
 repeating the experiences of the people in the streets
 
 vii.] WORKS AND DAYS. 399 
 
 of Thebes or Byzantium. An everlasting Now reigns 
 in Nature, which hangs the same roses on our bushes 
 which charmed the Roman and the Chaldcean in their 
 hanging gardens. "To what end, then," he asks, 
 " should I study languages, and traverse countries, to 
 learn so simple truths 1 " 
 
 History of ancient art, excavated cities, recovery of 
 books and inscriptions, — yes, the works were beauti- 
 ful, and the history worth knowing; and academies 
 convene to settle the claims of the old schools. What 
 journeys and measurements, — Niebuhr and Midler and 
 Layard, — to identify the plain of Troy and Nimroud 
 town ! And your homage to Dante costs you so 
 much sailing; and to ascertain the discoverers of 
 America needs as much voyaging as the discovery 
 cost. Poor child ! that flexile clay of which these old 
 brothers moulded their admirable symbols was not 
 Persian, nor Memphian, nor Teutonic, nor local at all, 
 but was common lime and silex and water, and sun- 
 light, the heat of the blood, and the heaving of the 
 lungs ; it was that clay which thou heldest but now 
 in thy foolish hands, and threwest away to go and 
 seek in vain in sepulchres, mummy-pits, and old book- 
 shops of Asia Minor, Egypt, and England. It was the 
 deep to-day which all men scorn ; the rich poverty, 
 which men hate; the populous, all-loving solitude, 
 which men quit for the tattle of towns. He lurks, 
 he hides, — he who is success, reality, joy, and power. 
 One of the illusions is that the present hour is not the 
 critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that 
 every day is the best day in the year. No man has
 
 400 WORKS AND DAYS. [vn. 
 
 learned anything rightly, until he knows that every 
 day is Doomsday. 'Tis the old secret of the gods that 
 they come in low disguises. 'Tis the vulgar great 
 who come dizened with gold and jewels. Real kings 
 hide away their crowns in their wardrobes, and affect 
 a plain and poor exterior. In the Norse legend of 
 our ancestors, Odin dwells in a fisher's hut, and 
 patches a boat. In the Hindoo legends, Hari dwells 
 a peasant among peasants. In the Greek legend, 
 Apollo lodges with the shepherds of Admetus ; and 
 Jove liked to rusticate among the poor Ethiopians. 
 So, in our history, Jesus is born in a barn, and his 
 twelve peers are fishermen. 'Tis the very principle 
 of science that Nature shows herself best in leasts; 
 'twas the maxim of Aristotle and Lucretius, and, in 
 modern times, of Swedenborg and of Hahnemann. 
 The order of changes in the egg determines the age 
 of fossil strata. So it was the rule of our poets, in 
 the legends of fairy lore, that the fairies largest in 
 power were the least in size. In the Christian graces, 
 humility stands highest of all, in the form of the 
 Madonna ; and in life, this is the secret of the wise. 
 We owe to genius always the same debt, of lifting 
 the curtain from the common, and showing us that 
 divinities are sitting disguised in the seeming gang of 
 gipsies and pedlars. In daily life, what distinguishes 
 the master is the using those materials he has, instead 
 of looking about for what are more renowned, or what 
 others have used well. "A general," said Bonaparte, 
 " always has troops enough, if he only knows how to 
 employ those he has, and bivouacs with them." Do
 
 vi i.J WORKS AND DAYS. 401 
 
 not refuse the employment which the hour brings 
 you, for one more ambitious. The highest heaven of 
 wisdom is alike near from every point, and thou must 
 find it, if at all, by methods native to thyself alone. 
 
 That work is ever the more pleasant to the im- 
 agination which is not now required. How wist- 
 fully, when we have promised to attend the working 
 committee, we look at the distant hills and their 
 seductions ! 
 
 The use of history is to give value to the present 
 hour and its duty. That is good which commends to 
 me my country, my climate, my means and materials, 
 my associates. I knew a man in a certain religious 
 exaltation, who "thought it an honour to wash his 
 own face." He seemed to me more sane than those 
 who hold themselves cheap. 
 
 Zoologists may deny that horse-hairs in the water 
 change to worms; but I find that whatever is old 
 corrupts, and the past turns to snakes. The reverence 
 for the deeds of our ancestors is a treacherous senti- 
 ment. Their merit was not to reverence the old, but 
 to honour the present moment : and we falsely make 
 them excuses of the very habit which they hated and 
 defied. 
 
 Another illusion is, that there is not time enough 
 for our work. Yet we might reflect that though 
 many creatures eat from one dish, each, according to 
 its constitution, assimilates from the elements what 
 belongs to it, whether time, or space, or light, or 
 water, or food. A snake converts whatever prey the 
 meadow yields him into snake ; a fox, into fox ; and 
 
 vol. v. 2d
 
 •402 WORKS AND DAYS. [vn. 
 
 Peter and John are working up all existence into 
 Peter and John. A poor Indian chief of the Six 
 Nations of New York made a wiser reply than any 
 philosopher, to some one complaining that he had 
 not enough time. "Well," said Ked Jacket, "I 
 suppose you have all there is." 
 
 A third illusion haunts us, that a long duration, as 
 a year, a decade, a century, is valuable. But an old 
 French sentence says, "God works in moments," — 
 "En pen d'heure Dieu labeure." We ask for long life, 
 but 'tis deep life, or grand moments, that signify. 
 Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical. 
 Life is unnecessarily long. Moments of insight, of 
 fine personal relation, a smile, a glance, — what ample 
 borrowers of eternity they are ! Life culminates and 
 concentrates j and Homer said : " The gods ever give 
 to mortals their apportioned share of reason only on 
 one day." 
 
 I am of the opinion of the poet Wordsworth, 
 " that there is no real happiness in this life, but in 
 intellect and virtue." I am of the opinion of Pliny, 
 " that, whilst we are musing on these things, we are 
 adding to the length of our lives." I am of the 
 opinion of Glauco, who said : " The measure of life, O 
 Socrates, is, with the wise, the speaking and hearing 
 such discourses as yours." 
 
 He only can enrich me who can recommend to me 
 the space between sun and sun. Tis the measure of 
 a man, — his apprehension of a day. For we do not 
 listen with the best regard to the verses of a man 
 who is only a poet, nor to his problems, if he is only
 
 vii.] WOEKS AND DAYS. 403 
 
 an algebraist ; but if a man is at once acquainted 
 with the geometric foundations of things and with 
 their festal splendour, his poetry is exact and his 
 arithmetic musical. And him I reckon the most 
 learned scholar, not who can unearth for me the 
 buried dynasties of Sesostris and Ptolemy, the Sothiac 
 era, the Olympiads and consulships, but who can 
 unfold the theory of this particular Wednesday. 
 Can he uncover the ligaments concealed from all but 
 piety, which attach the dull men and things we know 
 to the First Cause 1 These passing fifteen minutes, 
 men think, are time, not eternity; are low and 
 subaltern, are but hope or memory, th?o is, the way 
 to or the way from welfare, but not welfare. Can he 
 show their tie 1 That interpreter shall guide us from 
 a menial and eleemosynary existence into riches and 
 stability. He dignifies the place where he is. This 
 mendicant America, this curious, peering, itinerant, 
 imitative America, studious of Greece and Rome, of 
 England and Germany, will take off its dusty shoes, 
 will take off its glazed traveller's cap, and sit at home 
 with repose and deep joy on its face. The world has 
 no such landscape, the seons of history no such hour, 
 the future no equal second opportunity. Now let 
 poets sing ! now let arts unfold ! 
 
 One more view remains. But life is good only 
 when it is magical and musical, a perfect timing and 
 consent, and when we do not anatomise it. You 
 must treat the days respectfully, you must be a day 
 yourself, and not interrogate it like a college professor. 
 The world is enigmatical, — everything said, and
 
 404 WORKS AND DAYS. [vn. 
 
 everything known or done, — and must not be taken 
 literally, but genially. We must be at the top of our 
 condition to understand anything rightly. You must 
 hear the bird's song without attempting to render it 
 into nouns and verbs. Cannot we be a little abstemi- 
 ous and obedient ? Cannot we let the morning be 1 
 
 Everything in the universe goes by indirection. 
 There are no straight lines. I remember well the 
 foreign scholar who made a week of my youth happy 
 by his visit. "The savages in the islands," he said, 
 " delight to play with the surf, coming in on the top 
 of the rollers, then swimming out again, and repeat 
 the delicious manoeuvre for hours. Well, human life 
 is made up of such transits. There can be no great- 
 ness without abandonment. But here your very 
 astronomy is an espionage. I dare not go out of 
 doors and see the moon and stars but they seem to 
 measure my tasks, to ask how many lines or pages are 
 finished since I saw them last. Not so, as I told you, 
 was it in Belleisle. The days at Belleisle were all 
 different, and only joined by a perfect love of the 
 same object. Just to fill the hour, — that is happiness. 
 Fill my hour, ye gods, so that I shall not say, whilst 
 I have done this, ' Behold, also, an hour of my life is 
 gone,' — but rather, 'I have lived an hour.' ' 
 
 We do not want factitious men, who can do any 
 literary or professional feat, as, to write poems, or 
 advocate a cause, or carry a measure, for money ; or 
 turn their ability indifferently in any particular 
 direction by the strong effort of will. No, what has 
 been best done in the world, — the works of genius, —
 
 vii.] WOKKS AND DAYS. 405 
 
 cost nothing. There is no painful effort, but it is the 
 spontaneous flowing of the thought. Shakspeare 
 made his Hamlet as a bird weaves its nest. Poems 
 have been written between sleeping and waking, 
 irresponsibly. Fancy defines herself : 
 
 " Forms that men spy 
 With the half-shut eye 
 In the heams of the setting sun, am I." 
 
 The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue 
 had gone out of them. They could not paint the like 
 in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote 
 their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine 
 powers ; as was said of the letters of the French- 
 women, — " the charming accident of their more 
 charming existence." Then the poet is never the 
 poorer for his song. A song is no song unless the 
 circumstance is free and fine. If the singer sing from 
 a sense of duty or from seeing no way of escape, I 
 had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do 
 not care to sleep ; and those only write or speak best 
 who do not too much respect the writing or the 
 speaking. 
 
 The same rule holds in science. The savant is 
 often an amateur. His performance is a memoir to 
 the Academy on fish-worms, tadpoles, or spiders' legs ; 
 he observes as other academicians observe ; he is on 
 stilts at a microscope, and — his memoir finished and 
 read and printed— he retreats into his routinary 
 existence, which is quite separate from his scientific. 
 But in Newton, science was as easy as breathing ; he 
 used the same wit to weigh the moon that he used to
 
 406 WORKS AND DAYS. [vn. 
 
 buckle his shoes; and all his life was simple, wise, 
 and majestic. So was it in Archimedes, — always self- 
 same, like the sky. In Linnaeus, in Franklin, the like 
 sweetness and equality, — no stilts, no tiptoe; and their 
 results are wholesome and memorable to all men. 
 
 In stripping time of its illusions, in seeking to find 
 what is the heart of the day, we come to the quality 
 of the moment, and drop the duration altogether. 
 It is the depth at which Ave live, and not at all the 
 surface extension, that imports. We pierce to the 
 eternity, of which time is the flitting surface; and, 
 really, the least acceleration of thought, and the least 
 increase of power of thought, make life to seem and 
 to be of vast duration. We call it time ; but when 
 that acceleration and that deepening take effect, it 
 acquires another and a higher name. 
 
 There are people who do not need much experi- 
 menting; who, after years of activity, say, we knew 
 all this before ; who love at first sight and hate at 
 first sight ; discern the affinities and repulsions ; who 
 do not care so much for conditions as others,' for they 
 are always in one condition, and enjoy themselves ; 
 who dictate to others, and are not dictated to ; who 
 in their consciousness of deserving success constantly 
 slight the ordinary means of attaining it ; who have 
 self-existence and self-help; who are suffered to be 
 themselves in society ; who are great in the present ; 
 who have no talents, or care not to have them, — being 
 that which was before talent, and shall be after it, and 
 of which talent seems only a tool ; — this is character, 
 the highest name at which philosophy has arrived.
 
 vii.] WORKS AND DAYS. 407 
 
 Tis not important how the hero does this or this, 
 but what he is. What he is will appear in every gesture 
 and syllable. In this way the moment and the char- 
 acter are one. 
 
 'Tis a fine fable for the advantage of character over 
 talent, the C4reek legend of the strife of Jove and 
 Phoebus. Phcebus challenged the gods, and said, 
 " Who will outshoot the far-darting Apollo?" Zeus 
 said, "I will." Mars shook the lots in his helmet, 
 and that of Apollo leaped out first. Apollo stretched 
 his bow and shot his arrow into the extreme west. 
 Then Zeus arose, and with one stride cleared the 
 whole distance, and said, "Where shall I shoot? 
 there is no space left." So the bowman's prize was 
 adjudged to him who drew no bow. 
 
 And this is the progress of every earnest mind ; 
 from the works of man and the activity of the hands 
 to a delight in the faculties which rule them ; from a 
 respect to the works to a wise wonder at this mystic 
 element of time in which he is conditioned ; from 
 local skills and the economy which reckons the 
 amount of production per hour to the finer economy 
 which respects the quality of what is done, and the 
 right we have to the work, or the fidelity with which 
 it flows from ourselves ; then to the depth of thought 
 it betrays, looking to its universality, or, that its roots 
 are in eternity, not in time. Then it flows from char- 
 acter, that sublime health which values one moment 
 as another, and makes us great in all conditions, and 
 is the only definition we have of freedom and power,
 
 BOOKS. 
 
 It is easy to accuse books, and bad ones are easily 
 found ; and the best^ are but records, and not the 
 things recorded ; and certainly there is dilettanteism 
 enough, and books that are merely neutral and do 
 nothing for us. In Plato's " Gorgias," Socrates says : 
 "The shipmaster walks in a modest garb near the 
 sea, after bringing his passengers from ^Egina or from 
 Pontus, not thinking he has done anything extraor- 
 dinary, and certainly knowing that his passengers are 
 the same, and in no respect better than when he took 
 them on board." So is it with books, for the most 
 part : they work no redemption in us. The book- 
 seller might certainly know that his customers are in 
 no respect better for the purchase and consumption of 
 his wares. The volume is dear at a dollar, and, after 
 reading to weariness the lettered backs, we leave the 
 shop with a sigh, and learn, as I did, without surprise, 
 of a surly bank director, that in bank parlours they 
 estimate all stocks of this kind as rubbish. 
 
 But it is not less true that there are books which 
 are of that importance in a man's private experience, 
 as to verify for him the fables of Cornelius Agrippa,
 
 410 BOOKS. [vin. 
 
 of Michael Scott, or of the old Orpheus of Thrace, — 
 books which take rank in our life with parents and 
 lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so 
 stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative, — books 
 which are the work and the proof of faculties so com- 
 prehensive, so nearly equal to the world which they 
 paint, that, though one shuts them with meaner ones, 
 he feels his exclusion from them to accuse his way of 
 living. 
 
 Consider what you have in the smallest chosen 
 library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men 
 that coidd be picked out of all civil countries, in a 
 thousand years, have set in best order the results of 
 their learning and wisdom. The men themselves 
 were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of in- 
 terruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought 
 which they did not uncover to their bosom friend 
 is here written out in transparent words to us, the 
 strangers of another age. 
 
 We owe to books those general benefits which 
 come from high intellectual action. Thus, I think, 
 we often owe to them the perception of immortality. 
 They impart sympathetic activity to the moral power. 
 Go with mean people, and you think life is mean. 
 Then read Plutarch, and the world is a proud place, 
 peopled with men of positive quality, with heroes and 
 demigods standing around us, who will not let us 
 sleep. Then, they address the imagination : only 
 poetry inspires poetiy. They become the organic 
 culture of the time. College education is the reading 
 of certain books which the common sense of all
 
 viii.] BOOKS. 411 
 
 scholars agrees will represent the science already 
 accumulated. If you know that, — for instance in 
 geometry, if you have read Euclid and Laplace, — your 
 opinion has some value ; if you do not know these, 
 you. are not entitled to give any opinion on the subject. 
 Whenever any sceptic or bigot claims to be heard on 
 the questions of intellect and morals, we ask if he is 
 familiar with the books of Plato, where all his pert 
 objections have once for all been disposed of. If not, 
 he has no right to our time. Let him go and find 
 himself answered there. 
 
 Meantime the colleges, whilst they provide us 
 with libraries, furnish no professor of books ; and, I 
 think, no chair is so much wanted. In a library we 
 are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, 
 but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these 
 paper and leathern boxes ; and though they know us, 
 and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty centuries 
 for us, — some of them, — and are eager to give us a 
 sign, and unbosom themselves, it is the law of their 
 limbo that they must not speak until spoken to ; and 
 as the enchanter has dressed them, like battalions of 
 infantry, in coat and jacket of one cut, by the thousand 
 and ten thousand, your chance of hitting on the right 
 one is to be computed by the arithmetical rule of 
 Permutation and Combination, — not a choice out of 
 three caskets, but out of half a million caskets all 
 alike. But it happens in our experience, that in this 
 lottery there are at least fifty or a hundred blanks to 
 a prize. It seems, then, as if some charitable soul, 
 after losing a great deal of time among the false books,
 
 412 BOOKS. [Tin, 
 
 and alighting upon a few true ones which made him 
 happy and wise, would do a right act in naming those 
 which have been bridges or ships to carry him safely 
 over dark morasses and barren oceans, into the heart 
 of sacred cities, into palaces and temples. This 
 would be best done by those great masters of books 
 who from time to time appear, — the Fabricii, the 
 Seldens, Magliabecchis, Scaligers, Mirandolas, Bayles, 
 Johnsons, whose eyes sweep the whole horizon of 
 learning. But private readers, reading purely for 
 love of the book, would serve us by leaving each the 
 shortest note of what he found. 
 
 There are books; and it is practicable to read 
 them, because they are so few. We look over with 
 a sigh the monumental libraries of Paris, of the Vatican, 
 and the British Museum. In 1858 the number of 
 printed books in the Imperial Library at Paris was 
 estimated at eight hundred thousand volumes, with 
 an annual increase of twelve thousand volumes ; so 
 that the number of printed books extant to-day may 
 easily exceed a million. It is easy to count the 
 number of pages which a diligent man can read in a 
 day, and the number of years which human life in 
 favourable circumstances allows to reading; and to 
 demonstrate that, though he should read from dawn 
 till dark, for sixty years, he must die in the first 
 alcoves. But nothing can be more deceptive than 
 this arithmetic, where none but a natural method is 
 really pertinent. I visit occasionally the Cambridge 
 Library, and I can seldom go there without renewing 
 the conviction that the best of it all is already within
 
 vin.] BOOKS. 413 
 
 the four walls of my study at home. The inspection 
 of the catalogue brings me continually back to the 
 few standard writers who are on every private shelf ; 
 and to these it can afford only the most slight and 
 casual additions. The crowds and centuries of books 
 are only commentary and elucidation, echoes and 
 weakeners of these few great voices of Time. 
 
 The best rule of reading will be a method from 
 nature, and not a mechanical one of hours and pages. 
 It holds each student to a pursuit of his native aim, 
 instead of a desultory miscellany. Let him read what 
 is proper to him, and not waste his memory on a crowd 
 of mediocrities. As whole nations have derived their 
 culture from a single book, — as the Bible has been the 
 literature as well as the religion of large portions of 
 Europe, — as Hafiz was the eminent genius of the 
 Persians, Confucius of the Chinese, Cervantes of the 
 Spaniards ; so, perhaps, the human mind would be a 
 gainer, if all the secondary writers were lost, — say, 
 in England, all but Shakspeare, Milton, and Bacon, — 
 through the profounder study so drawn to those 
 wonderful minds. With this pilot of his own genius, 
 let the student read one, or let him read many, he will 
 read advantageously. Dr. Johnson said : "Whilst you 
 stand deliberating which book your son shall read first, 
 another boy has read both : read anything five hours 
 a day, and you will soon be learned." 
 
 Nature is much our friend in this matter. Nature 
 is always clarifying her water and her wine. No fil- 
 tration can be so perfect. She does the same thing by 
 books as by her gases and plants. There is always a
 
 414 BOOKS. [viii. 
 
 selection in writers, and then a selection from the 
 selection. In the first place, all books that get fairly 
 into the vital air of the world were written by the 
 successful class, by the affirming and advancing class, 
 who utter what tens of thousands feel though they 
 cannot say. There has already been a scrutiny and 
 choice from many hundreds of young pens, before the 
 pamphlet or political chapter which you read in a 
 fugitive journal comes to your eye. All these are 
 young adventurers, who produce their performance to 
 the wise ear of Time, who sits and weighs, and, ten 
 years hence, out of a million of pages reprints one. 
 Again it is judged, it is winnowed by all the winds of 
 opinion, and Avhat terrific selection has not passed on 
 it before it can be reprinted after twenty years, — and 
 reprinted after a century ! — it is as if Minos and Rha- 
 damanthus had indorsed the writing. 'Tis therefore 
 an economy of time to read old and famed books. 
 Nothing can be preserved which is not good ; and I 
 know beforehand that Pindar, Martial, Terence, Galen, 
 Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Erasmus, More, will be superior 
 to the average intellect. In contemporaries, it is not 
 so easy to distinguish betwixt notoriety and fame. 
 
 Be sure, then, to read no mean books. Shun the 
 spawn of the press on the gossip of the hour. Do not 
 read what you shall learn, without asking, in the street 
 and the train. Dr. Johnson said, " he always went 
 into stately shops ; " and good travellers stop at the 
 best hotels ; for, though they cost more, they do not 
 cost much more, and there is the good company and 
 the best information. In like manner, the scholar
 
 mil] BOOKS. 415 
 
 knows that the fumed hooks contain, first and last, the 
 
 best thoughts and facts. Now and then, by rarest 
 
 luck, in some foolish Grub Street is the gem Ave want. 
 
 But in the best circles is the best information. If you 
 
 should transfer the amount of your reading day by 
 
 day from the newspaper to the standard authors 
 
 But who dare speak of such a thing 1 
 
 The three practical rides, then, which I have to offer, 
 
 are, — 1. Never read any book that is not a year old. 
 
 2. Never read any but famed books. 3. Never read 
 
 any but what you like ; or, in Shakspeare's phrase, 
 
 " No profit goes where is no pleasure ta'en : 
 In brief, sir, study what you most affect." 
 
 Montaigne says, " Books are a languid pleasure ; " 
 but I find certain books vital and spermatic, not 
 leaving the reader what he was : he shuts the book a 
 richer man. I Avould never willingly read any others 
 than such. And I will venture, at the risk of inditing 
 a list of old primers and grammars, to count the few 
 books which a superficial reader must thankfully use. 
 
 Of the old Greek books, I think there are five 
 which we cannot spare : 1. Homer, who, in spite of 
 Pope and all the learned uproar of centuries, has really 
 the true fire, and is good for simple minds, is the true 
 and adequate germ of Greece, and occupies that place 
 as history, which nothing can supply. It holds 
 through all literature, that our best history is still 
 poetry. It is so in Hebrew, in Sanskrit, and in Greek. 
 English History is best known through Shakspeare ; 
 how much through Merlin, Robin Hood, and the 
 Scottish ballads ! — the German, through the Nibelun-
 
 416 BOOKS. 
 
 [vni. 
 
 genlied ;— the Spanish, through the Cid. Of Homer, 
 George Chapman's is the heroic translation, though 
 the most literal prose version is the best of all. 
 2. Herodotus, whose history contains inestimable 
 anecdotes, which brought it with the learned into a 
 sort of disesteem ; but in these days, when it is found 
 that what is most memorable of history is a few anec- 
 dotes, and that we need not be alarmed though we 
 should find it not dull, it is regaining credit. 3. 
 iEschylus, the grandest of the three tragedians, who 
 has given us under a thin veil the first plantation of 
 Europe. The " Prometheus " is a poem of the like 
 dignity and scope as the Book of Job, or the 
 Norse Edda. 4. Of Plato I hesitate to speak, lest 
 there should be no end. You find in him that which 
 you have already found in Homer, now ripened to 
 thought, — the poet converted to a philosopher, with 
 loftier strains of musical wisdom than Homer reached ; 
 as if Homer were the youth, and Plato the finished 
 man ; yet with no less security of bold and perfect 
 song, when he cares to use it, and with some harp- 
 strings fetched from a higher heaven He contains 
 the future, as he came out of the past. In Plato, you 
 explore modern Europe in its causes and seed, — all 
 that in thought, which the history of Europe embodies 
 or has yet to embody. The well-informed man finds 
 himself anticipated. Plato is up with him too. 
 Nothing has escaped him. Every new crop in the 
 fertile harvest of reform, every fresh suggestion of 
 modern humanity, is there. If the student wish to 
 see both sides, and justice done to the man of the
 
 vrn.] BOOKS. 417 
 
 world, pitiless exposure of pedants, and the supremacj* 
 of truth and the religious sentiment, he shall he con- 
 tented also. Why should not young men be educated 
 on this book 1 It would suffice for the tuition of the 
 race, — to test their understanding, and to express their 
 reason. Here is that which is so attractive to all men, 
 — the literature of aristocracy shall I call it 1 — the 
 picture of the best persons, sentiments, and manners, 
 by the first master, in the best times, — portraits of 
 Pericles, Alcibiades, Crito, Prodicus, Protagoras, 
 Anaxagoras, and Socrates, with the lovely background 
 of the Athenian and suburban landscape. Or who 
 can overestimate the images with which Plato has 
 enriched the minds of men, and which pass like bullion 
 in the currency of all nations ? Read the "Phsedo," 
 the "Protagoras," the "Phsedrus," the "Timseus," the 
 "Republic," and the "Apology of Socrates." 5. 
 Plutarch cannot be spared from the smallest library ; 
 first, because he is so readable, which is much ; then, 
 that he is medicinal and invigorating. The lives of 
 Cimon, Lycurgus, Alexander, Demosthenes, Phocion, 
 Marcellus, and the rest, are what history has of best. 
 But this book has taken care of itself, and the opinion 
 of the world is expressed in the innumerable cheap 
 editions, which make it as accessible as a newspaper. 
 But Plutarch's " Morals " is less known, and seldom 
 reprinted. Yet such a reader as I am writing to can 
 as ill spare it as the " Lives." He will read in it the 
 essays "On the Daemon of Socrates," "On Isis and 
 Osiris," "On Progress in Virtue," "On Garrulity," 
 " On Love," and thank anew the art of printing, and 
 vol. v. 2 E
 
 418 BOOKS. [vili. 
 
 the cheerful domain of ancient thinking. Plutarch 
 charms by the facility of his associations ; so that it 
 signifies little where you open his book, you find 
 yourself at the Olympian tables. His memory is like 
 the Isthmian Games, where all that was excellent in 
 Greece was assembled, and you are stimulated and 
 recruited by lyric verses, by philosophic sentiments, 
 by the forms and behaviour of heroes, by the worship 
 of the gods, and by the passing of fillets, parsley and 
 laurel wreaths, chariots, armour, sacred cups, and 
 utensils of sacrifice. An inestimable trilogy of ancient 
 social pictures are the three " Banquets " respectively 
 of Plato, Xenophon, and Plutarch. Plutarch's has 
 the least approach to historical accuracy ; but the 
 meeting of the Seven Wise Masters is a charming- 
 portraiture of ancient manners and discourse, and is 
 as clear as the voice of a fife, and entertaining as a 
 French novel. Xenophon's delineation of Athenian 
 manners is an accessory to Plato, and supplies traits 
 of Socrates ; whilst Plato's has merits of every kind, 
 — being a repertory of the wisdom of the ancients on 
 the subject of love, — a picture of a feast of wits, not 
 less descriptive than Aristophanes, — and, lastly, con- 
 taining that ironical eulogy of Socrates which is the 
 source from which all the portraits of that philosopher 
 current in Europe have been drawn. 
 
 Of course a certain outline should be obtained of 
 Greek history, in which the important moments and 
 persons can be rightly set down ; but the shortest is 
 the best, and if one lacks stomach for Mr. Grote's 
 voluminous annals, the old slight and popular summary
 
 vni.] BOOKS. 419 
 
 of Goldsmith or of Gillies will serve. The valuable 
 part is the age of Pericles and the next generation. 
 And here we must read the " Clouds " of Aristophanes, 
 and what more of that master we gain appetite for, 
 to learn our way in the streets of Athens, and to know 
 the tyranny of Aristophanes, requiring more genius 
 and sometimes not less cruelty than belonged to the 
 official commanders. Aristophanes is now very acces- 
 sible, with much valuable commentary, through the 
 labours of Mitchell and Cartwright. An excellent 
 popular book is J. A. St. John's " Ancient Greece " ; 
 the " Life and Letters " of Niebuhr, even more than 
 his Lectures, furnish leading views ; and Winckel- 
 mann, a Greek born out of due time, has become 
 essential to an intimate knowledge of the Attic genius. 
 The secret of the recent histories in German and in 
 English is the discovery, owed first to Wolff, and 
 later to Boeckh, that the sincere Greek history of that 
 period must be drawn from Demosthenes, especially 
 from the business orations, and from the comic poets. 
 If we come down a little by natural steps from 
 the master to the disciples, we have, six or seven 
 centuries later, the Platonists, — who also cannot be 
 skipped, — Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Synesius, 
 Jamblichus. Of Jamblichus the Emperor Julian 
 said, " that he was posterior to Plato in time, not in 
 genius." Of Plotinus, we have eulogies by Porphyry 
 and Longinus, and the favour of the Emperor Galli- 
 enus, — indicating the respect he inspired among his 
 contemporaries. If any one who had read with in- 
 terest the " Isis and Osiris " of Plutarch should then
 
 420 BOOKS. [vin. 
 
 read a chapter called " Providence," by Synesius, 
 translated into English by Thomas Taylor, he will 
 find it one of the majestic remains of literature, and, 
 like one walking in the noblest of temples, will con- 
 ceive new gratitude to his fellowmen, and a new esti- 
 mate of their nobility. The imaginative scholar will 
 find few stimulants to his brain like these writers. 
 He has entered the Elysian Fields ; and the grand and 
 pleasing figures of gods and daemons and daemoniacal 
 men, of the " azonic " and the " aquatic gods," daemons 
 with fulgid eyes, and all the rest of the Platonic 
 rhetoric, exalted a little under the African sun, sail 
 before his eyes. The acolyte has mounted the tripod 
 over the cave at Delphi ; his heart dances, his sight 
 is quickened. These guides speak of the gods with 
 such depth and with such pictorial details, as if they 
 had been bodily present at the Olympian feasts. The 
 reader of these books makes new acquaintance with 
 his own mind ; new regions of thought are opened. 
 Jamblichus's " Life of Pythagoras " works more 
 directly on the will than the others ; since Pythagoras 
 was eminently a practical person, the founder of a 
 school of ascetics and socialists, a planter of colonies, 
 and nowise a man of abstract studies alone. 
 
 The respectable and sometimes excellent translations 
 of Bonn's Library have done for literature what rail- 
 roads have done for internal intercourse. I do not 
 hesitate to read all the books I have named, and all 
 good books, in translations. What is really best in 
 any book is translatable, — any real insight or broad 
 human sentiment. Nay, I observe that, in our Bible,
 
 viii.] BOOKS. 421 
 
 and other books of lofty moral tone, it seems easy 
 and inevitable to render the rhythm and music of the 
 original into phrases of equal melody. The Italians 
 have a fling at translators, — i traditori traduttori ; but 
 I thank them. I rarely read any Latin, Greek, Ger- 
 man, Italian, sometimes not a French book in the 
 original, which I can procure in a good version. I 
 like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English 
 speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every 
 region under heaven. I should as soon think of 
 swimming across Charles River when I wish to go to 
 Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when 
 I have them rendered for me in my mother-tongue. 
 
 For history there is great choice of ways to bring 
 the student through early Rome. If he can read Livy, 
 he has a good book ; but one of the short English 
 compends, some Goldsmith or Ferguson, should be 
 used, that will place in the cycle the bright stars of 
 Plutarch. The poet Horace is the eye of the Augustan 
 age ; Tacitus, the wisest of the historians ; and Martial 
 will give him Roman manners, — and some very bad 
 ones, — in the early days of the Empire : but Martial 
 must be read, if read at all, in his own tongue. These 
 will bring him to Gibbon, who will take him in charge, 
 and convey him with abundant entertainment down 
 — with notice of all remarkable objects on the way — 
 through fourteen hundred years of time. He cannot 
 spare Gibbon, with his vast reading, — with such wit 
 and continuity of mind, that, though never profound, 
 his book is one of the conveniences of civilisation, like 
 the new railroad from ocean to ocean, — and, I think,
 
 422 BOOKS. [vin. 
 
 will be sure to send the reader to his "Memoirs 
 of Himself," and the " Extracts from my Journal," 
 and "Abstracts of my Readings," which will spur 
 the laziest scholar to emulation of his prodigious 
 performance. 
 
 Now having our idler safe down as far as the fall 
 of Constantinople in 1453, he is in very good courses ; 
 for here are trusty hands waiting for him. The 
 cardinal facts of European history are soon learned. 
 There is Dante's poem, to open the Italian Republics 
 of the Middle Age ; Dante's " Vita Nuova," to explain 
 Dante and Beatrice ; and Boccaccio's " Life of Dante," 
 — a great man to describe a greater. To help us, 
 perhaps a volume or two of M. Sismondi's " Italian 
 Republics" will be as good as the entire sixteen. 
 When we come to Michel Angelo, his Sonnets and 
 Letters must be read, with his Life by Vasari, or, in 
 our day, by Herman Grimm. For the Church, and 
 the Feudal Institution, Mr. Hallam's " Middle Ages " 
 will furnish, if superficial, yet readable and conceiv- 
 able outlines. 
 
 The "Life of the Emperor Charles V.," by the 
 useful Robertson, is still the key of the following 
 age. Ximenes, Columbus, Loyola, Luther, Erasmus, 
 Melanchthon, Francis I, Henry VIIL, Elizabeth, and 
 Henry IV. of France, are his contemporaries. It is 
 a time of seeds and expansions, whereof our recent 
 civilisation is the fruit. 
 
 If now the relations of England to European affairs 
 bring him to British ground, he is arrived at the very 
 moment when modern history takes new proportions.
 
 viii.] BOOKS. 423 
 
 He can look back for the legends and mythology to 
 the "Younger Edda" and the " Heimskrintda " of 
 Snorro Stmieson, to Mallet's " Northern Antiquities," 
 to Ellis's "Metrical Romances," to Asser's "Life of 
 Alfred" and Venerable Bede, and to the researches 
 of Sharon Turner and Palgrave. Hume will serve 
 him for an intelligent guide, and in the Elizabethan 
 era he is at the richest period of the English mind, 
 with the chief men of action and of thought which 
 that nation bas produced, and with a pregnant future 
 before him. Here he has Shakspeare, Spenser, Sidney, 
 Raleigh, Bacon, Chapman, Jonson, Ford, Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, Herbert, Donne, Herrick; and Milton, 
 Marvell, and Dryclen, not long after. 
 
 In reading history, he is to prefer the history of 
 individuals. He will not repent the time he gives 
 to Bacon, — not if he read the "Advancement of 
 Learning," the "Essays," the "Novum Organum," 
 the "History of Henry VII," and then all the 
 "Letters" (especially those to the Earl of Devon- 
 shire, explaining the Essex business), and all but his 
 "Apophthegms." 
 
 The task is aided by the strong mutual light 
 which these men shed on each other. Thus, the 
 works of Ben Jonson are a sort of hoop to bind all 
 these fine persons together, and to the land to which 
 they belong. He has written verses to or on all 
 his notable contemporaries ; and what with so many 
 occasional poems, and the portrait sketches in his 
 "Discoveries," and the gossiping record of his 
 opinions in his conversations with Drummond of
 
 424 BOOKS. [tiii. 
 
 Hawthornden, he has really illustrated the England 
 of his time, if not to the same extent, yet much in 
 the same way, as Walter Scott has celebrated the 
 persons and places of Scotland. Walton, Chapman, 
 Herrick, and Sir Henry Wotton write also to the 
 times. 
 
 Among the best books are certain Autobiographies : 
 as, St. Augustine's Confessions ; Benvenuto Cellini's 
 Life; Montaigne's Essays; Lord Herbert of Cher- 
 bury's Memoirs ; Memoirs of the Cardinal de Eetz ; 
 Kousseau's Confessions ; Linnseus's Diary ; Gibbon's, 
 Hume's, Franklin's, Burns's, Alfieri's, Goethe's, and 
 Haydon's Autobiographies. 
 
 Another class of books closely allied to these, and 
 of like interest, are those which may be called Table- 
 Talks : of which the best are Saadi's Gulistan ; 
 Luther's Table-Talk ; Aubrey's Lives ; Spence's Anec- 
 dotes; Selden's Table-Talk ; Boswell's Life of Johnson; 
 Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe ; Coleridge's 
 Table-Talk ; and Hazlitt's Life of Northcote. 
 
 There is a class whose value I should designate 
 as Favourites: such as Froissart's Chronicles; Southey's 
 Chronicle of the Cid ; Cervantes ; Sully's Memoirs ; 
 Rabelais ; Montaigne ; Isaak Walton ; Evelyn ; Sir 
 Thomas Browne ; Aubrey ; Sterne ; Horace Walpole ; 
 Lord Clarendon; Doctor Johnson; Burke, shedding 
 floods of light on his times ; Lamb ; Landor ; and De 
 Quincey ; — a list, of course, that may easily be swelled, 
 as dependent on individual caprice. Many men are 
 as tender and irritable as lovers in reference to these 
 predilections. Indeed, a man's library is a sort of
 
 VIII.] BOOKS. 425 
 
 harem, and I observe that tender readers have a 
 great pudency in showing their books to a stranger. 
 
 The annals of bibliography afford many examples 
 of the delirious extent to which book-fancying can 
 go, when the legitimate delight in a book is trans- 
 ferred to a rare edition or to a manuscript. This 
 mania reached its height about the beginning of the 
 present century. For an autograph of Shakspeare 
 one hundred and fifty -five guineas were given. In 
 May 1812 the library of the Duke of Eoxburgh 
 was sold. The sale lasted forty-two days, — we 
 abridge the story from Dibdin, — and among the 
 many curiosities was a copy of Boccaccio published 
 by Valdarfer, at Venice, in 1471 ; the only perfect 
 copy of this edition. Among the distinguished 
 company which attended the sale were the Duke 
 of Devonshire, Earl Spencer, and the Duke of Marl- 
 borough, then Marquis of Blandford. The bid stood 
 at five hundred guineas. "A thousand guineas," 
 said Earl Spencer. "And ten," added the Marquis. 
 You might hear a pin drop. All eyes were bent on 
 the bidders. Now they talked apart, now ate a 
 biscuit, now made a bet, but without the least 
 thought of yielding one to the other. But to pass 
 over some details, — the contest proceeded until the 
 Marquis said, "Two thousand pounds." The Earl 
 Spencer bethought him like a prudent general of 
 useless bloodshed and waste of powder, and had 
 paused a quarter of a minute, when Lord Althorp 
 with long steps came to his side, as if to bring his 
 father a fresh lance to renew the fight. Father and
 
 426 BOOKS. [vin. 
 
 son whispered together, and Earl Spencer exclaimed, 
 "Two thousand two hundred and fifty pounds!" 
 An electric shock went through the assembly. " And 
 ten," quietly added the Marquis. There ended the 
 strife. Ere Evans let the hammer fall, he paused ; 
 the ivory instrument swept the air; the spectators 
 stood dumb when the hammer fell. The stroke of 
 its fall sounded on the farthest shores of Italy. The 
 tap of that hammer was heard in the libraries of 
 Rome, Milan, and Venice. Boccaccio stirred in his 
 sleep of five hundred years, and M. Van Praet groped 
 in vain among the royal alcoves in Paris to detect a 
 copy of the famed Valdarfer Boccaccio. 
 
 Another class I distinguish by the term Vocabularies. 
 Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy " is a book of great 
 learning. To read it is like reading in a dictionary. 
 'Tis an inventory to remind us how many classes 
 and species of facts exist, and, in observing into what 
 strange and multiplex byways learning has strayed, 
 to infer our opulence. Neither is a dictionary a bad 
 book to read. There is no cant in it, no excess of 
 explanation, and it is full of suggestion, — the raw 
 material of possible poems and histories. Nothing is 
 wanting but a little shuffling, sorting, ligature, and 
 cartilage. Out of a hundred examples, Cornelius 
 Agrippa "On the Vanity of Arts and Sciences" 
 is a specimen of that scribatiousness which grew to 
 be the habit of the gluttonous readers of his time. 
 Like the modern Germans, they read a literature 
 while other mortals read a few books. They read 
 voraciously, and must disburden themselves ; so they
 
 V'lii.] BOOKS. 427 
 
 take any general topic, as, Melancholy, or Praise of 
 Science, or Praise of Folly, and write and quote 
 without method or end. Now and then out of that 
 affluence of their learning comes a fine sentence from 
 Theophrastus, or Seneca, or Boethius, but no high 
 method, no inspiring efflux. But one cannot afford 
 to read for a few sentences ; they are good only as 
 strings of suggestive words. 
 
 There is another class, more needful to the present 
 age, because the currents of custom run now in another 
 direction, and leave us dry on this side ; — I mean the 
 Imaginative. A right metaphysics should do justice 
 to the co-ordinate powers of Imagination, Insight, 
 Understanding, and Will. Poetry, with its aids of 
 Mythology and Eomance, must be well allowed for an 
 imaginative creature. Men are ever lapsing into a 
 beggarly habit, wherein eveiything that is not cipher- 
 ing, that is, which does not serve the tyrannical animal, 
 is hustled out of sight. Our orators and writers are 
 of the same poverty, and, in this rag-fair, neither the 
 Imagination, the great awakening power, nor the 
 Morals, creative of genius and of men, are addressed. 
 But though orator and poet be of this hunger party, 
 the capacities remain. We must have symbols. The 
 child asks you for a story, and is thankful for the 
 poorest. It is not poor to him, but radiant with 
 meaning. The man asks for a novel, — that is, asks 
 leave for a few hours to be a poet, and to paint things 
 as they ought to be. The youth asks for a poem. 
 The very dunces wish to go to the theatre. What 
 private heavens can we not open, by yielding to all
 
 428 BOOKS. [viii. 
 
 the suggestion of rich music ! We must have idola- 
 tries, mythologies, — some swing and verge for the 
 creative power lying coiled and cramped here, driving 
 ardent natures to insanity and crime if it do not find 
 vent. Without the great arts which speak to the 
 sense of beauty, a man seems to me a poor, naked, 
 shivering creature. These are his becoming draperies, 
 which warm and adorn him. Whilst the prudential 
 and economical tone of society starves the imagination, 
 affronted Nature gets such indemnity as she may. The 
 novel is that allowance and frolic the imagination 
 finds. Everything else pins it down, and men flee 
 for redress to Byron, Scott, Disraeli, Dumas, Sand, 
 Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray, and Eeade. Their educa- 
 tion is neglected ; but the circulating library and the 
 theatre, as well as the trout-fishing, the Notch Moun- 
 tains, the Adirondack country, the tour to Mont 
 Blanc, to the White Hills, and the Ghauts, make such 
 amends as they can. 
 
 The imagination infuses a certain volatility and 
 intoxication. It has a flute which sets the atoms of 
 our frame in a dance, like planets; and, once so 
 liberated, the whole man reeling drunk to the music, 
 they never quite subside to their old stony state. 
 But what is the imagination ? Only an arm or weapon 
 of the interior energy; only the precursor of the 
 reason. And books that treat the old pedantries of 
 the world, our times, places, professions, customs, 
 opinions, histories, with a certain freedom, and distri- 
 bute things, not after the usages of America and 
 Europe, but after the laws of right reason, and with as
 
 Viil.] BOOKS. 429 
 
 daring a freedom as we use in dreams, put us on 
 our feet again, enable ns to form an original judg- 
 ment of our duties, and suggest new thoughts for 
 to-morrow. 
 
 "Lucrezia Floriani," "Le Peche de M. Antoine," 
 "Jeanne," and "Consuelo," of George Sand, are great 
 steps from the novel of one termination, which we 
 all read twenty years ago. Yet how far off from life 
 and manners and motives the novel still is ! Life lies 
 about us dumb ; the day, as we know it, has not yet 
 found a tongue. These stories are to the plots of real 
 life what the figures in "La Belle Assemblee," which 
 represent the fashion of the month, are to portraits. 
 But the novel will find the way to our interiors one 
 day, and will not always be the novel of costume 
 merely. I do not think it inoperative now. So much 
 novel-reading cannot leave the young men and maidens 
 untouched ; and doubtless it gives some ideal dignity 
 to the day. The young study noble behaviour ; and 
 as the player in " Consuelo " insists that he and his 
 colleagues on the boards have taught princes the 
 fine etiquette and strokes of grace and dignity which 
 they practise with so much effect in their villas and 
 among their dependants, so I often see traces of the 
 Scotch or the French novel in the courtesy and brilli- 
 ancy of young midshipmen, collegians, and clerks. 
 Indeed, when one observes how ill and ugly people 
 make their loves and quarrels, 'tis pity they should 
 not read novels a little more, to import the fine gener- 
 osities, and the clear, firm conduct, which are as be- 
 coming in the unions and separations which love effects
 
 430 BOOKS. [viil 
 
 under shingle roofs as in palaces and among illustrious 
 personages. 
 
 In novels the most serious questions are beginning 
 to be discussed. What made the popularity of " Jane 
 Eyre," but that a central question was answered in 
 some sort ? The question there answered in regard to 
 a vicious marriage will always be treated according to 
 the habit of the party. A person of commanding 
 individualism will answer it as Rochester does, — as 
 Cleopatra, as Milton, as George Sand do, — magnifying 
 the exception into a rule, dwarfing the world into an 
 exception. A person of less courage, that is, of less 
 constitution, will answer as the heroine does, — giving 
 way to Fate, to conventionalism, to the actual state 
 and doings of men and women. 
 
 For the most part, our novel-reading is a passion 
 for results. We admire parks, and high-born beau- 
 ties, and the homage of drawing-rooms, and parlia- 
 ments. They make us sceptical, by giving promi- 
 nence to wealth and social position. 
 
 I remember when some peering eyes of boys dis- 
 covered that the oranges hanging on the boughs of 
 an orange-tree in a gay piazza were tied to the twigs 
 by thread. I fear 'tis so with the novelist's pros- 
 perities. Nature has a magic by which she fits the 
 man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his 
 character. But the novelist plucks this event here, 
 and that fortune there, and ties them rashly to his 
 figures, to tickle the fancy of his readers with a cloy- 
 ing success, or scare them with shocks of tragedy. 
 And so, on the whole, 'tis a juggle. We are cheated
 
 via.] BOOKS. 431 
 
 into laughter or wonder by feats which only oddly 
 combine acts that we do every clay. There is no new 
 element, no power, no furtherance. 'Tis only con- 
 fectionery, not the raising of new corn. Great is the 
 poverty of their inventions. She was beautiful, and he 
 fell in love. Money, and killing, and the Wandering 
 Jew, and persuading the lover that his mistress is 
 betrothed to another, — these are the mainsprings: 
 new names, but no new qualities in the men and 
 women. Hence the vain endeavour to keep any bit 
 of this fairy gold, which has rolled like a brook 
 through our hands. A thousand thoughts awoke ; 
 great rainbows seemed to span the sky, — a morning 
 among the mountains ; — but we close the book, and 
 not a ray remains in the memory of evening. But 
 this passion for romance, and this disappointment, 
 show how much we need real elevations and pure 
 poetry : that which shall show us, in morning and 
 night, in stars and mountains, and in all the plight 
 and circumstance of men, the analogons of our own 
 thoughts, and a like impression made by a just book 
 and by the face of Nature. 
 
 If our times are sterile in genius, we must cheer 
 us with books of rich and believing men who had 
 atmosphere and amplitude about them. Every good 
 fable, every mythology, every biography from a religi- 
 ous age, every passage of love, and even philosophy 
 and science, when they proceed from an intellectual 
 integrity, and are not detached and critical, have the 
 imaginative element. The Greek fables, the Persian 
 history (Firdusi), the " Younger Edda " of the Scan-
 
 432 BOOKS. [viii. 
 
 dinavians, the "Chronicle of the Cid," the poem of 
 Dante, the sonnets of Michel Angelo, the English 
 drama of Shakspeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and 
 Ford, and even the prose of Bacon and Milton, — in 
 our time, the Ode of Wordsworth, and the poems 
 and the prose of Goethe, have this enlargement, and 
 inspire hope and generous attempts. 
 
 There is no room left, — and yet I might as well 
 not have begun as to leave out a class of books which 
 are the best : I mean the Bibles of the world, or the 
 sacred books of each nation, which express for each 
 the supreme result of their experience. After the 
 Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, which constitute the 
 sacred books of Christendom, these are, the Desatir 
 of the Persians, and the Zoroastrian Oracles ; the 
 Vedas and Laws of Menu ; the Upanishads, the 
 Vishnu Purana, the Bhagvat Geeta, of the Hindoos ; 
 the books of the Buddhists; the "Chinese Classic," 
 of four books, containing the wisdom of Confucius 
 and Mencius. Also such other books as have acquired 
 a semi-canonical authority in the world, as expressing 
 the highest sentiment and hope of nations. Such 
 are the " Hermes Trismegistus," pretending to be 
 Egyptian remains ; the " Sentences " of Epictetus ; 
 of Marcus Antoninus ; the " Vishnu Sarma " of the 
 Hindoos ; the " Gulistan " of Saadi ; the " Imitation 
 of Christ" of Thomas a Kempis; and the "Thoughts" 
 of Pascal. 
 
 All these books are the majestic expressions of 
 the universal conscience, and are more to our daily 
 purpose than this year's almanac or this day's news-
 
 viii.] BOOKS. 433 
 
 paper. But they are for the closet, and to be read 
 on the bended knee. Their communications are not 
 to be given or taken with the lips and the end of the 
 tongue, but out of the glow of the cheek, and with 
 the throbbing heart. Friendship should give and 
 take, solitude and time brood and ripen, heroes 
 absorb and enact them. They are not to be held by 
 letters printed on a page, but are living characters 
 translatable into every tongue and form of life. I 
 read them on lichens and bark; I watch them on 
 waves on the beach ; they fly in birds, they creep in 
 worms ; I detect them in laughter and blushes and 
 eye -sparkles of men and women. These are Scrip- 
 tures which the missionary might well carry over 
 prairie, desert, and ocean, to Siberia, Japan, Tim- 
 buctoo. Yet he will find that the spirit which is in 
 them journeys faster than he, and greets him on his 
 arrival, — was there already long before him. The 
 missionary must be carried by it, and find it there, 
 or he goes in vain. Is there any geography in these 
 things'? We call them Asiatic, we call them primeval; 
 but perhaps that is only optical; for Nature is always 
 equal to herself, and there are as good eyes and ears 
 now in the planet as ever were. Only these ejacula- 
 tions of the soul are uttered one or a few at a time, 
 at long intervals, and it takes millenniums to make a 
 Bible. 
 
 These are a few of the books which the old and 
 
 the later times have yielded us, which will reward 
 
 the time spent on them. In comparing the number 
 
 of good books with the shortness of life, many might 
 
 vol. v. 2 F
 
 434 BOOKS. [vin. 
 
 well be read by proxy, if we had good proxies ; and 
 it would be well for sincere young men to borrow 
 a hint from the French Institute and the British 
 Association, and, as they divide the whole body into 
 sections, each of which sits upon and reports of certain 
 matters confided to it, so let each scholar associate 
 himself to such persons as he can rely on, in a literary 
 club, in which each shall undertake a single work or 
 series for which he is qualified. For example, how 
 attractive is the whole literature of the "Roman 
 de la Rose," the "Fabliaux," and the gaie science of 
 the French Troubadours ! Yet who in Boston has 
 time for that 1 But one of our company shall under- 
 take it, shall study and master it, and shall report on 
 it, as under oath ; shall give us the sincere result, as 
 it lies in his mind, adding nothing, keeping nothing 
 back. Another member, meantime, shall as honestly 
 search, sift, and as truly report, on British mythology, 
 the Round Table, the histories of Brut, Merlin, and 
 Welsh Poetry ; a third on the Saxon Chronicles, 
 Robert of Gloucester, and William of Malmesbury ; a 
 fourth, on Mysteries, Early Drama, "Gesta Roman- 
 orum," Collier, and Dyce, and the Camden Society. 
 Each shall give us his grains of gold, after the wash- 
 ing ; and every other shall then decide whether this 
 is a book indispensable to him also.
 
 CLUBS. 
 
 We are delicate machines, and require nice treatment 
 to get from us the maximum of power and pleasure. 
 We need tonics, but must have those that cost little 
 or no reaction. The flame of life burns too fast in 
 pure oxygen, and Nature has tempered the air with 
 nitrogen. So thought is the native air of the mind, 
 yet pure it is a poison to our mixed constitution, and 
 soon burns up the bone-house of man, unless tempered 
 with affection and coarse practice in the material 
 world. Varied foods, climates, beautiful objects, — 
 and especially the alternation of a large variety of 
 objects, — are the necessity of this exigent system of 
 ours. But our tonics, our luxuries, are force-pumps 
 which exhaust the strength they pretend to supply ; 
 and of all the cordials known to us, the best, safest, 
 and most exhilarating, with the least harm, is society ; 
 and every healthy and efficient mind passes a large 
 part of life in the company most easy to him. 
 
 We seek society with very different aims, and the 
 staple of conversation is widely unlike in its circles. 
 Sometimes it is facts,— running from those of daily 
 necessity to the last results of science, — and has all
 
 436 CLUBS. [ix. 
 
 degrees of importance ; sometimes it is love, and 
 makes the balm of our early and of our latest days ; 
 sometimes it is thought, as from a person who is a 
 mind only ; sometimes a singing, as if the heart 
 poured out all like a bird; sometimes experience. 
 With some men it is a debate ; at the approach of a 
 dispute they neigh like horses. Unless there be an 
 argument, they think nothing is doing. Some talkers 
 excel in the precision with which they formulate their 
 thoughts, so that you get from them somewhat to 
 remember; others lay criticism asleep by a charm. 
 Especially women use words that are not words, — as 
 steps in a dance are not steps, — but reproduce the 
 genius of that they speak of ; as the sound of some 
 bells makes us think of the bell merely, whilst the 
 church-chimes in the distance bring the church and 
 its serious memories before us. Opinions are acci- 
 dental in people, — have a poverty-stricken air. A man 
 valuing himself as the organ of this or that dogma is 
 a dull companion enough : but opinion native to the 
 speaker is sweet and refreshing, and inseparable from 
 his image. Neither do we by any means always go to 
 people for conversation. How often to say nothing, 
 — and yet must go ; as a child will long for his com- 
 panions, but among them plays by himself. Tis only 
 presence which we want. But one thing is certain, 
 — at some rate, intercourse we must have. The ex- 
 perience of retired men is positive, — that we lose our 
 days and are barren of thought for want of some 
 person to talk with. The understanding can no more 
 empty itself by its own action than can a deal box.
 
 ix.] CLUBS. 437 
 
 The clergyman walks from house to house all day 
 all the year to give people the comfort of good talk. 
 The physician helps them mainly in the same way, hy 
 healthy talk giving a right tone to the patient's mind. 
 The dinner, the walk, the fireside, all have that for 
 their main end. 
 
 See how Nature has secured the communication of 
 knowledge. 'Tis certain that money does not more 
 burn in a boy's pocket than a piece of news burns in 
 our memory until we can tell it. And, in higher 
 activity of mind, every new perception is attended 
 with a thrill of pleasure, and the imparting of it to 
 others is also attended with pleasure. Thought is 
 the child of the intellect, and this child is conceived 
 with joy and born with joy. 
 
 Conversation is the laboratory and workshop of 
 the student. The affection or sympathy helps. The 
 wish to speak to the want of another mind assists to 
 clear your own. A certain truth possesses us, which 
 Ave in all ways strive to utter. Every time we say a 
 thing in conversation, we get a mechanical advantage 
 in detaching it well and deliverly. I prize the 
 mechanics of conversation. 'Tis pulley and lever and 
 screw. To fairly disengage the mass, and send it 
 jingling down, a good boulder, — a block of quartz 
 and gold, to be worked up at leisure in the useful 
 arts of life, — is a wonderful relief. 
 
 What are the best days in memory 1 ? Those in 
 which we met a companion who was truly such. How 
 sweet those hours when the day was not long enough 
 to communicate and compare our intellectual jewels,
 
 438 CLUBS. [ix. 
 
 — the favourite passages of each book, the proud 
 anecdotes of our heroes, the delicious verses we had 
 hoarded ! What a motive had then our solitary days ! 
 How the countenance of our friend still left some 
 light after he had gone ! We remember the time 
 when the best gift we could ask of fortune was to fall 
 in with a valuable companion in a ship's cabin, or on 
 a long journey in the old stage-coach, where, each 
 passenger being forced to know every other, and 
 other employments being out of question, conversation 
 naturally flowed, people became rapidly acquainted, 
 and, if well adapted, more intimate in a day than if 
 they had been neighbours for years. 
 
 In youth, in the fury of curiosity and acquisition, 
 the day is too short for books and the crowd of 
 thoughts, and we are impatient of interruption. Later, 
 when books tire, thought has a more languid flow ; 
 and the days come when we are alarmed, and say 
 there are no thoughts. " What a barren-witted pate 
 is mine!" the student says: "I will go and learn 
 whether I have lost my reason." He seeks intelli- 
 gent persons, whether more wise or less wise than he, 
 who give him provocation, and at once and easily the 
 old motion begins in his brain : thoughts, fancies, 
 humours flow ; the cloud lifts ; the horizon broadens ; 
 and the infinite opulence of things is again shown 
 him. But the right conditions must be observed. 
 Mainly he must have leave to be himself. Sancho 
 Panza blessed the man who invented sleep. So I 
 prize the good invention whereby everybody is pro- 
 vided with somebody who is glad to see him.
 
 ix.] CLUBS. 439 
 
 If men are less when together than they are alone, 
 they are also in some respects enlarged. They kindle 
 each other ; and such is the power of suggestion, that 
 each sprightly story calls out more ; and sometimes a 
 fact that had long slept in the recesses of memory 
 hears the voice, is welcomed to daylight, and proves 
 of rare value. Every metaphysician must have ob- 
 served, not only that no thought is alone, but that 
 thoughts commonly go in pairs ; though the related 
 thoughts first appeared in his mind at long distances 
 of time. Things are in pairs : a natural fact has onby 
 half its value, until a fact in moral nature, its counter- 
 part is stated. Then they confirm and adorn each 
 other; a story is matched by another story. And 
 that may be the reason why, when a gentleman has 
 told a good thing, he immediately tells it again. 
 
 Nothing seems so cheap as the benefit of conversa- 
 tion : nothing is more rare. 'Tis wonderful how you 
 are balked and baffled. There is plenty of intelli- 
 gence, reading, curiosity ; but serious, happy dis- 
 course, avoiding personalities, dealing with results, is 
 rare : and I seldom meet with a reading and thought- 
 ful person but he tells me, as if it were his exceptional 
 mishap, that he has no companion. 
 
 Suppose such a one to go out exploring different 
 circles in search of this wise and genial counterpart, 
 — he might inquire far and wide. Conversation in 
 society is found to be on a platform so low as to ex- 
 clude science, the saint, and the poet. Amidst all the 
 gay banter, sentiment cannot profane itself and venture 
 out. The reply of old Isocrates comes so often to
 
 440 CLUBS. [IX. 
 
 mind, — " The things which are now seasonable I can- 
 not say ; and for the things which I can say it is not 
 now the time." Besides, who can resist the charm of 
 talent ? The lover of letters loves power too. Among 
 the men of wit and learning, he could not withhold 
 his homage from the gaiety, grasp of memory, luck, 
 splendour, and speed ; such exploits of discourse, such 
 feats of society ! What new powers, what mines of 
 wealth ! But when he came home, his brave sequins 
 were dry leaves. He found either that the fact they 
 had thus dizened and adorned was of no value, or 
 that he already knew all and more than all they had 
 told him. He could not find that he was helped by 
 so much as one thought or principle, one solid fact, 
 one commanding impulse : great was the dazzle, but 
 the gain was small. He uses his occasions ; he seeks 
 the company of those who have convivial talent. But 
 the moment they meet, to be sure they begin to be 
 something else than they were; they play pranks, 
 dance jigs, run on each other, pun, tell stories, try 
 many fantastic tricks, under some superstition that 
 there must be excitement and elevation ; — and they 
 kill conversation at once. I know well the rusticity 
 of the shy hermit. No doubt he does not make 
 allowance enough for men of more active blood and 
 habit. But it is only on natural ground that conver- 
 sation can be rich. It must not begin with uproar 
 and violence. Let it keep the ground, let it feel the 
 connection with the battery. Men must not be off 
 their centres. 
 
 Some men love only to talk where they are masters.
 
 ix.] CLUBS. 441 
 
 They like to go to school-girls, or to boys, or into the 
 shops where the sauntering people gladly lend an ear 
 to any one. On these terms they give information, 
 and please themselves by sallies and chat which are 
 admired by the idlers : and the talker is at his ease 
 and jolly, for he can walk out without ceremony when 
 he pleases. They go rarely to their equals, and then 
 as for their own convenience simply, making too 
 much haste to introduce and impart their new whim 
 or discovery; listen badly, or do not listen to the 
 comment or to the thought by which the company 
 strive to repay them; rather, as soon as their own 
 speech is done, they take their hats. Then there are 
 the gladiators, to whom it is always a battle ; 'tis no 
 matter on which side, they fight for victory ; then the 
 heady men, the egotists, the monotones, the steriles, 
 and the impracticables. 
 
 It does not help that you find as good or a better 
 man than yourself, if he is not timed and fitted to 
 you. The greatest sufferers are often those who have 
 the most to say, — men of a delicate sympathy, who 
 are dumb in mixed company. Able people, if they 
 do not know how to make allowance for them, par- 
 alyse them. One of those conceited prigs who value 
 Nature only as it feeds and exhibits them is equally a 
 pest with the roysterers. There must be large recep- 
 tion as well as giving. How delightful after these 
 disturbers is the radiant, playful wit of — one whom I 
 need not name, — for in every society there is his 
 representative. Good-nature is stronger than toma- 
 hawks. His conversation is all pictures : he can re-
 
 442 CLUBS. 
 
 [IX. 
 
 produce whatever he has seen ; he tells the best story 
 m the county, and is of such genial temper that he 
 disposes all others irresistibly to good-hurnour and 
 discourse. Diderot said of the Abb6 Galiani : "He 
 was a treasure in rainy days; and if the cabinetmakers 
 made such things, everybody would have one in the 
 country." 
 
 One lesson we learn early, — that, in spite of seem- 
 ing difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily 
 assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and 
 angry if we find that we are premature, and that their 
 watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin 
 which we never forgive in each other is difference of 
 opinion. We know beforehand that yonder man must 
 think as we do. Has he not two hands, — two feet, — 
 hair and nails 1 Does he not eat, — bleed, — laugh, — 
 cry ? His dissent from me is the veriest affectation. 
 This conclusion is at once the logic of persecution 
 and of love. And the ground of our indignation 
 is our conviction that his dissent is some wilfulness 
 he practises on himself. He checks the flow of his 
 opinion, as the cross cow holds up her milk. Yes, 
 and we look into his eye, and see that he knows it 
 and hides his eye from ours. 
 
 But to come a little nearer to my mark, I am to 
 say that there may easily be obstacles in the way of 
 finding the pure article we are in search of; but 
 when we find it, it is worth the pursuit, for beside its 
 comfort as medicine and cordial, once in the right 
 company, new and vast values do not fail to appear. 
 All that man can do for man is to be found in that
 
 ix. J CLUBS. 443 
 
 market. There are great prizes in this game. Our 
 fortunes in the world are as our mental equipment 
 for this competition is. Yonder is a man who can 
 answer the questions which I cannot. Is it so? 
 Hence comes to me boundless curiosity to know his 
 experiences and his wit. Hence competition for the 
 stakes dearest to man. What is a match at whist, or 
 draughts, or billiards, or chess, to a match of mother- 
 wit, of knowledge, and of resources? However 
 courteously we conceal it, it is social rank and spirit- 
 ual power that are compared ; whether in the parlour, 
 the courts, the caucus, the senate, or the chamber of 
 science, — which are only less or larger theatres for 
 this competition. 
 
 He that can define, he that can answer a question 
 so as to admit of no further answer, is the best man. 
 This was the meaning of the story of the Sphinx. In 
 the old time conundrums were sent from king to king- 
 by ambassadors. The seven wise masters at Peri- 
 ander's banquet spent their time in answering them. 
 The life of Socrates is a propounding and a solu- 
 tion of these. So, in the hagiology of each nation, 
 the lawgiver was in each case some man of elo- 
 quent tongue, whose sympathy brought him face to 
 face with the extremes of society. Jesus, Menu, the 
 first Buddhist, Mahomet, Zertusht, Pythagoras, are 
 examples. 
 
 Jesus spent his life in discoursing with humble 
 people on life and duty, in giving wise answers, 
 showing that he saw at a larger angle of vision, and at 
 least silencing those who were not generous enough
 
 444 CLUBS. [ix. 
 
 to accept his thoughts. Luther spent his life so ; 
 and it is not his theologic works, — his " Commentary 
 on the Galatians," and the rest, but his "Table-Talk," 
 which is still read by men. Dr. Johnson was a man 
 of no profound mind,— full of English limitations, 
 English politics, English Church, Oxford philosophy ; 
 yet having a large heart, mother-wit, and good sense, 
 which impatiently overleaped his customary bounds, 
 his conversation as reported by Boswell has a lasting 
 charm. Conversation is the vent of character as well 
 as of thought ; and Dr. Johnson impresses his com- 
 pany, not only by the point of the remark, but also, 
 when the point fails, because he makes it. His 
 obvious religion or superstition, his deep wish that 
 they should think so or so, weighs with them, — so 
 rare is depth of feeling, or a constitutional value for 
 a thought or opinion, among the light-minded men 
 and women who make up society ; and though they 
 know that there is in the speaker a degree of short- 
 coming, of insincerity, and of talking for victory, yet 
 the existence of character, and habitual reverence for 
 principles over talent or learning, is felt by the 
 frivolous. 
 
 One of the best records of the great German 
 master, who towered over all his contemporaries in 
 the first thirty years of this century, is his conversa- 
 tions as recorded by Eckermann; and the "Table- 
 Talk " of Coleridge is one of the best remains of his 
 
 *5*- 
 
 genius. 
 
 In the Norse legends, the gods of Valhalla, when 
 they meet the Jotuns, converse on the perilous terms
 
 ix.] CLUBS. 445 
 
 that he Avho cannot answer the other's questions 
 forfeits his own life. Odin conies to the threshold 
 of the Jotun Waftrhudnir in disguise, calling himself 
 Gangrader ; is invited into the hall, and told that he 
 cannot go out thence unless he can answer every 
 question Waftrhudnir shall put. Waftrhudnir asks 
 him the name of the god of the sun, and of the god 
 who brings the night; what river separates the 
 dwellings of the sons of the giants from those of the 
 gods ; what plain lies between the gods and Surtur, 
 their adversary, etc. ; all which the disguised Odin 
 answers satisfactorily. Then it is his turn to interro- 
 gate, and he is answered well for a time by the Jotun. 
 At last he puts a question which none but himself 
 could answer : " What did Odin whisper in the ear 
 of his son Balder, when Balder mounted the funeral 
 pile 1 ?" The startled giant replies: "None of the 
 gods knows what in the old time THOU saidst in the 
 ear of thy son : Avith death on my mouth have I 
 spoken the fate-words of the generation of the .ZEsir ; 
 with Odin contended I in wise words. Thou must 
 ever the wisest be." 
 
 And still the gods and giants are so known, and 
 still they play the same game in all the million 
 mansions of heaven and of earth ; at all tables, clubs, 
 and ttte-h-tetes, the lawyers in the court-house, the 
 senators in the capitol, the doctors in the academy, 
 the wits in the hotel. Best is he who gives an 
 answer that cannot be answered again. Omnis definitio 
 periculosa est, and only wit has the secret. The same 
 thing took place when Leibnitz came to visit Newton ;
 
 446 CLUBS. 
 
 [IX. 
 
 when Schiller came to Goethe ; when France, in the 
 person of Madame de Steel, visited Goethe and 
 Schiller ; when Hegel was the guest of Victor Cousin 
 in Paris ; when Linnaeus was the guest of Jussieu. 
 It happened many years ago, that an American 
 chemist carried a letter of introduction to Dr. Dalton 
 of Manchester, England, the author of the theory of 
 atomic proportions, and was coolly enough received 
 by the Doctor in the laboratory where he was 
 engaged. Only Dr. Dalton scratched a formula on a 
 scrap of paper and pushed it towards the guest, — 
 "Had he seen that?" The visitor scratched on 
 another paper a formula describing some results of 
 his own with sulphuric acid, and pushed it across the 
 table, — "Had he seen that?" The attention of the 
 English chemist was instantly arrested, and they 
 became rapidly acquainted. To answer a question so 
 as to admit of no reply, is the test of a man, — to 
 touch bottom every time. Hyde, Earl of Rochester, 
 asked Lord -Keeper Guilford, "Do you not think I 
 could understand any business in England in a 
 month?" "Yes, my Lord," replied the other, "but 
 I think you would understand it better in two months." 
 When Edward I. claimed to be acknowledged by the 
 Scotch (1292) as lord paramount, the nobles of Scot- 
 land replied: "No answer can be made while the 
 throne is vacant." When Henry III. (1217) plead 
 duress against his people demanding confirmation and 
 execution of the Charter, the reply was: "If this 
 were admitted, civil wars could never close but by 
 the extirpation of one of the contending parties."
 
 IX.] CLUBS. 447 
 
 What can you do with one of these sharp respond- 
 ents? What can you do with an eloquent man? 
 No rules of debate, no contempt of court, no exclu- 
 sions, no gag-laws can be contrived, that his first 
 syllable will not set aside or overstep and annul. You 
 can shut out the light, it may be ; but can you shut 
 out gravitation ? You may condemn his book ; but 
 can you fight against his thought? That is always 
 too nimble for you, anticipates you, and breaks out 
 victorious in some other quarter. Can you stop the 
 motions of good sense ? What can you do with Beau- 
 marchais, who converts the censor whom the court 
 has appointed to stifle his play into an ardent advo- 
 cate ? The court appoints another censor, who shall 
 crush it this time. Beaumarchais persuades him to 
 defend it. The court successively appoints three 
 more severe inquisitors ; Beaumarchais converts them 
 all into triumphant vindicators of the play which is 
 to bring in the Bevolution. Who can stop the mouth 
 of Luther, — of Newton, — of Franklin, — of Mirabeau, 
 — of Talleyrand ? 
 
 These masters can make good their own place, and 
 need no patron. Every variety of gift — science, re- 
 ligion, politics, letters, art, prudence, war, or love — 
 has its vent and exchange in conversation. Conver- 
 sation is the Olympic games whither every superior 
 gift resorts to assert and approve itself, — and, of 
 course, the inspirations of powerful and public men, 
 with the rest. But it is not this class, — whom the 
 splendour of their accomplishment almost inevitably 
 guides into the vortex of ambition, makes them chan-
 
 448 CLUBS. [ix, 
 
 cellors and commanders of council and of action, and 
 makes them at last fatalists, — not these whom we 
 now consider. We consider those who are interested 
 in thoughts, their own and other men's, and who de- 
 light in comparing them, who think it the highest 
 compliment they can pay a man, to deal with him as 
 an intellect, to expose to him the grand and cheerful 
 secrets perhaps never opened to their daily com- 
 panions, to share with him the sphere of freedom and 
 the simplicity of truth. 
 
 But the best conversation is rare. Society seems to 
 have agreed to treat fictions as realities, and realities 
 as fictions ; and the simple lover of truth, especially 
 if on very high grounds, — as a religious or intellectual 
 seeker, — finds himself a stranger and alien. 
 
 It is possible that the best conversation is between 
 two persons who can talk only to each other. Even 
 Montesquieu confessed that, in conversation, if he 
 perceived he was listened to by a third person, it 
 seemed to him from that moment the whole question 
 vanished from his mind. I have known persons of 
 rare ability who were heavy company to good, social 
 men who knew well enough how to draw out others 
 of retiring habit ; and, moreover, were heavy to in- 
 tellectual men who ought to have known them. And 
 does it never occur that we, perhaps, live with people 
 too superior to be seen, — as there are musical notes 
 too high for the scale of most ears 1 There are men 
 who are great only to one or two companions of more 
 opportunity, or more adapted. 
 
 It was to meet these wants that in all civil nations
 
 ix.] CLUBS. 449 
 
 attempts have been made to organise conversation by 
 bringing together cultivated people under the most 
 favourable conditions. 'Tis certain there was liberal 
 and refined conversation in the Greek, in the Eoman, 
 and in the Middle Age. There was a time when in 
 France a revolution occurred in domestic architecture ; 
 when the houses of the nobility, which, up to that 
 time, had been constructed on feudal necessities, in a 
 hollow square, — the ground -floor being resigned to 
 offices and stables, and the floors above to rooms of 
 state and to lodging-rooms, — were rebuilt with new 
 purpose. It was the Marchioness of Kambouillet who 
 first got the horses out of and the scholars into the 
 palaces, having constructed her hotel with a view to 
 society, with superb suites of drawing-rooms on the 
 same floor, and broke through the morgue of etiquette 
 by inviting to her house men of wit and learning as 
 well as men of rank, and piqued the emulation of 
 Cardinal Eichelieu to rival assemblies, and so to the 
 founding of the French Academy. The history of the 
 Hotel Eambouillet and its brilliant circles makes an 
 important date in French civilisation. And a history 
 of clubs from early antiquity, tracing the efforts to 
 secure liberal and refined conversation, through the 
 Greek and Roman to the Middle Age, and thence 
 down through French, English, and German memoirs, 
 tracing the clubs and coteries in each country, would 
 be an important chapter in history. We know well 
 the Mermaid Club, in London, of Shakspeare, Ben 
 Jonson, Chapman, Herrick, Selden, Beaumont and 
 Fletcher ; its " Eules " are preserved, and many allu- 
 VOL. v. 2 G
 
 450 CLUBS. [ix. 
 
 sions to their suppers are found in Jonson, Herrick, 
 and in Aubrey. Anthony Wood has many details of 
 Harrington's Club. Dr. Bentley's Club held Newton, 
 Wren, Evelyn, and Locke ; and we owe to Boswell 
 our knowledge of the club of Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, 
 Burke, Gibbon, Beynolds, Garrick, Beauclerk, and 
 Percy. And we have records of the brilliant society 
 that Edinburgh boasted in the first decade of this 
 century. Such societies are possible only in great 
 cities, and are the compensation which these can make 
 to their dwellers for depriving them of the free inter- 
 course with Nature. Every scholar is surrounded by 
 wiser men than he — if they cannot write as well. 
 Cannot they meet and exchange results to their 
 mutual benefit and delight 1 It was a pathetic experi- 
 ence when a genial and accomplished person said to 
 me, looking from his country home to the capital of 
 New England : " There is a town of two hundred thou- 
 sand people, and not a chair in it for me." If he were 
 sure to find at No. 2000 Tremont Street what scholars 
 were abroad after the morning studies were ended, 
 Boston would shine as the New Jerusalem to his eyes. 
 Now this want of adapted society is mutual. The 
 man of thought, the man of letters, the man of science, 
 the administrator skilful in affairs, the man of manners 
 and culture, whom you so much wish to find, — each 
 of these is wishing to be found. Each wishes to open 
 his thought, his knowledge, his social skill to the day- 
 light in your company and affection, and to exchange 
 his gifts for yours ; and the first hint of a select and 
 intelligent company is welcome.
 
 IX.] CLUBS. 451 
 
 But the club must be self-protecting, and obstacles 
 arise at the outset. There are people who cannot 
 Avell be cultivated, whom you must keep down and 
 quiet if you can. There are those who have the in- 
 stinct of a bat to fly against any lighted candle and 
 put it out, — marplots and contradictors. There are 
 those who go only to talk, and those who go only to 
 hear : both are bad. A right rule for a club would 
 be, — Admit no man whose presence excludes any one 
 topic. It requires people who are not surprised and 
 shocked, who do and let do, and let be, who sink 
 trifles, and know solid values, and who take a great 
 deal for granted. 
 
 It is always a practical difficulty with clubs to 
 regulate the laws of election so as to exclude peremp- 
 torily every social nuisance. Nobody wishes bad 
 manners. We must have loyalty and character. The 
 poet Marvell was wont to say " that he would not 
 drink wine with any one with whom he could not 
 trust his life." But neither can we afford to be super- 
 fine. A man of irreproachable behaviour and excel- 
 lent sense preferred on his travels taking his chance 
 at a hotel for company, to the charging himself with 
 too many select letters of introduction. He confessed 
 he liked low company. He said the fact was incon- 
 testable, that the society of gipsies was more attractive 
 than that of bishops. The girl deserts the parlour for 
 the kitchen; the boy, for the wharf. Tutors and 
 parents cannot interest him like the uproarious con- 
 versation he finds in the market or the dock. I knew 
 a scholar, of some experience in camps, who said that
 
 452 CLUBS. [ix. 
 
 he liked, in a bar-room, to tell a few coon stories, and 
 put himself on a good footing with the company ; 
 then he could be as silent as he chose. A scholar 
 does not wish to be always pumping his brains ; he 
 wants gossips. The black-coats are good company 
 only for black-coats ; but when the manufacturers, 
 merchants, and shipmasters meet, see how much they 
 have to say, and how long the conversation lasts ! 
 They have come from many zones; they have tra- 
 versed wide countries ; they know each his own arts, 
 and the cunning artisans of his craft ; they have seen 
 the best and the worst of men. Their knowledge 
 contradicts the popular opinion and your own on 
 many points. Things which you fancy wrong they 
 know to be right and profitable ; things which you 
 reckon superstitious they know to be true. They 
 have found virtue in the strangest homes; and in 
 the rich store of their adventures are instances and 
 examples which you have been seeking in vain for 
 years, and which they suddenly and unwittingly offer 
 you. 
 
 I remember a social experiment in this direction, 
 wherein it appeared that each of the members fancied 
 he was in need of society, but himself unpresent- 
 able. On trial they all found that they could be 
 tolerated by, and could tolerate, each other. Nay, 
 the tendency to extreme self-respect which hesitated 
 to join in a club was running rapidly down to abject 
 admiration of each other, when the club was broken 
 up by new combinations. 
 
 The use of the hospitality of the club hardly needs
 
 ix.] CLUBS. 453 
 
 explanation. Men are unbent and social at table ; 
 and I remember it was explained to me, in a Southern 
 city, that it was impossible to set any public charity 
 on foot unless through a tavern dinner. I do not 
 think our metropolitan charities would plead the same 
 necessity ; but to a club met for conversation a supper 
 is a good basis, as it disarms all parties, and puts 
 pedantry and business to the door. All are in good 
 humour and at leisure, which are the first conditions 
 of discourse; the ordinary reserves are thrown off, 
 experienced men meet with the freedom of boys, and, 
 sooner or later, impart all that is singular in their 
 experience. 
 
 The hospitalities of clubs are easily exaggerated. 
 No doubt the suppers of wits and philosophers acquire 
 much lustre by time and renown. Plutarch, Xeno- 
 phon, and Plato, who have celebrated each a banquet 
 of their set, have given us next to no data of the 
 viands; and it is to be believed that an indifferent 
 tavern dinner in such society was more relished by 
 the convives than a much better one in worse company. 
 Herrick's verses to Ben Jonson no doubt paint the 
 fact : — 
 
 " When we such clusters head 
 As made us nobly wild, not mad ; 
 And yet, each verse of thine 
 Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine." 
 
 Such friends make the feast satisfying ; and I notice 
 that it was when things went prosperously, and the 
 company was full of honour, at the banquet of the 
 Cid, that " the guests all were joyful, and agreed in
 
 454 CLUBS. [ix. 
 
 one thing, — that they had not eaten better for three 
 years." 
 
 I need only hint the value of the club for bringing 
 masters in their several arts to compare and expand 
 their views, to come to an understanding on these 
 points, and so that their united opinion shall have its 
 just influence on public questions of education and 
 politics. Tis agreed that in the sections of the 
 British Association more information is mutually and 
 effectually communicated, in a few hours, than in 
 many months of ordinary correspondence, and the 
 printing and transmission of ponderous reports. We 
 know that Vhomme de lettres is a little wary, and not 
 fond of giving away his seed-corn ; but there is an 
 infallible way to draw him out, namely, by having as 
 good as he. If you have Tuscaroora and he Canada, 
 he may exchange kernel for kernel. If his discretion 
 is incurable, and he dare not speak of fairy gold, he 
 will yet tell what new books he has found, what old 
 ones recovered, what men write and read abroad. A 
 principal purpose also is the hospitality of the club, 
 as a means of receiving a worthy foreigner with mutual 
 advantage. 
 
 Every man brings into society some partial thought 
 and local culture. We need range and alternation of 
 topics, and variety of minds. One likes in a com- 
 panion a phlegm which it is a triumph to disturb, and, 
 not less, to make in an old acquaintance unexpected 
 discoveries of scope and power through the advantage 
 of an inspiring subject. Wisdom is like electricity. 
 There is no permanently wise man, but men capable
 
 ix.] CLUBS. 455 
 
 of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or 
 other favourable conditions, become wise for a short 
 time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a 
 while. But, while we look complacently at these 
 obvious pleasures and values of good companions, I do 
 not forget that Nature is always very much in earnest, 
 and that her great gifts have something serious and 
 stern. When we look for the highest benefits of con- 
 versation, the Spartan rule of one to one is usually 
 enforced. Discourse, when it rises highest and 
 searches deepest, when it lifts us into that mood out 
 of which thoughts come that remain as stars in our 
 firmament, is between two.
 
 COURAGE. 
 
 I observe that there are three qualities which 
 conspicuously attract the wonder and reverence of 
 mankind : — 
 
 1. Disinterestedness, as shown in indifference to 
 the ordinary bribes and influences of conduct, — a 
 purpose so sincere and generous that it cannot be 
 tempted aside by any prospects of wealth or other 
 private advantage. Self-love is, in almost all men, 
 such an over -weight, that they are incredulous of a 
 man's habitual preference of the general good to his 
 own ; but when they see it proved by sacrifices of 
 ease, wealth, rank, and of life itself, there is no limit 
 to their admiration. This has made the power of 
 the saints of the East and West, who have led the 
 religion of great nations. Self-sacrifice is the real 
 miracle out of which all the reported miracles grew. 
 This makes the renown of the heroes of Greece 
 and Rome, — of Socrates, Aristides, and Phocion; of 
 Quintus Curtius, Cato, and Regulus ; of Hatem Tai's 
 hospitality ; of Chatham, whose scornful magnanimity 
 gave him immense popularity : of Washington, giving 
 his service to the public without salary or reward.
 
 458 COUKAGE. [x. 
 
 2. Practical power. Men admire the man who 
 can organise their wishes and thoughts in stone 
 and wood and steel and brass, — the man who can 
 build the boat, who has the impiety to make the 
 rivers run the way he wants them, who can lead 
 his telegraph through the ocean from shore to shore ; 
 who, sitting in his closet, can lay out the plans of 
 a campaign, — sea- war and land-war; such that the 
 best generals and admirals, when all is done, see that 
 they must thank him for success ; the power of better 
 combination and foresight, however exhibited, which, 
 whether it only plays a game of chess, or whether 
 more loftily, a cunning mathematician, penetrating 
 the cubic weights of stars, predicts the planet which 
 eyes had never seen ; or whether, exploring the 
 chemical elements whereof we and the world are 
 made, and seeing their secret, Franklin draws off 
 the lightning in his hand, suggesting that one day 
 a wiser geology shall make the earthquake harmless 
 and the volcano an agricultural resource. Or here 
 is one who, seeing the wishes of men, knows how to 
 come at their end ; whispers to this friend, argues 
 down that adversary, moulds society to his purpose, 
 and looks at all men as wax for his hands — takes 
 command of them as the wind does of clouds, as the 
 mother does of the child, or the man that knows 
 more does of the man that knows less ; and leads 
 them in glad surprise to the very point where they 
 would be : this man is followed with acclamation. 
 
 3. The third excellence is courage, the perfect 
 will, which no terrors can shake, which is attracted
 
 X.] COURAGE. 459 
 
 by frowns or threats or hostile armies, nay, needs 
 these to awake and fan its reserved energies into a 
 pure flame, and is never quite itself until the hazard 
 is extreme ; then it is serene and fertile, and all its 
 powers play well. There is a Hercules, an Achilles, 
 a Bustem, an Arthur, or a Cid, in the mythology of 
 every nation ; and in authentic history, a Leonidas, a 
 Scipio, a Caesar, a Eichard Coeur de Lion, a Cromwell, 
 a Nelson, a Great Conde, a Bertrand du Guesclin, a 
 Doge Dandolo, a Napoleon, a Massena, and Ney. 
 Tis said courage is common, but the immense esteem 
 in which it is held proves it to be rare. Animal 
 resistance, the instinct of the male animal when 
 cornered, is no doubt common ; but the pure article, 
 courage with eyes, courage with conduct, self-posses- 
 sion at the cannon's mouth, cheerfulness in lonely 
 adherence to the right, is the endowment of elevated 
 characters. I need not show how much it is esteemed, 
 for the people give it the first rank. They forgive 
 everything to it. What an ado we make through 
 two thousand years about Thermopylae and Salamis ! 
 What a memory of Poitiers and Crecy, and Bunker 
 Hill, and Washington's endurance ! And any man 
 who puts his life in peril in a cause which is esteemed 
 becomes the darling of all men. The very nursery- 
 books, the ballads which delight boys, the romances 
 which delight men, the favourite topics of eloquence, 
 the thunderous emphasis which orators give to every 
 martial defiance and passage of arms, and which the 
 people greet, may testify. How short a time since 
 this whole nation rose every morning to read or to
 
 460 COURAGE. [x. 
 
 hear the traits of courage of its sons and brothers in 
 the field, and was never weary of the theme ! We 
 have had examples of men who, for showing effective 
 courage on a single occasion, have become a favourite 
 spectacle to nations, and must be brought in chariots 
 to every mass meeting. 
 
 Men are so charmed with valour, that they have 
 pleased themselves with being called lions, leopards, 
 eagles, and dragons, from the animals contemporary 
 with us in the geologic formations. But the animals 
 have great advantage of us in precocity. Touch the 
 snapping-turtle with a stick, and he seizes it with his 
 teeth. Cut off his head, and the teeth will not let 
 go the stick. Break the egg of the young, and the 
 little embryo, before yet the eyes are open, bites 
 fiercely ; these vivacious creatures contriving, — shall 
 we say 1 — not only to bite after they are dead, but 
 also to bite before they are born. 
 
 But man begins life helpless. The babe is in 
 paroxysms of fear the moment its nurse leaves it 
 alone, and it comes so slowly to any power of self- 
 protection, that mothers say the salvation of the life 
 and health of a young child is a perpetual miracle. 
 The terrors of the child are quite reasonable, and 
 add to his loveliness; for his utter ignorance and 
 weakness, and his enchanting indignation on such 
 a small basis of capital, compel every bystander to 
 take his part. Every moment, as long as he is 
 awake, he studies the use of his eyes, ears, hands, 
 and feet, learning how to meet and avoid his dangers, 
 and thus every hour loses one terror more. But this
 
 x.] COURAGE. 461 
 
 education stops too soon. A large majority of men 
 being bred in families, and beginning early to be 
 occupied day by day with some routine of safe 
 industry, never come to the rough experiences that 
 make the Indian, the soldier, or the frontiersman 
 self-subsistent and fearless. Hence the high price 
 of courage indicates the general timidity. "Man- 
 kind," said Franklin, " are dastardly when they meet 
 with opposition." In war even, generals are seldom 
 found eager to give battle. Lord Wellington said, 
 "uniforms were often masks;" and again, "When 
 my journal appears, many statues must come down." 
 The Norse Sagas relate that when Bishop Magne 
 reproved King Sigurd for his wicked divorce, the 
 priest who attended the bishop, expecting every 
 moment when the savage king would burst with rage 
 and slay his superior, said "that he saw the sky no 
 bigger than a calf -skin." And I remember when a 
 pair of Irish girls, who had been run away with in a 
 waggon by a skittish horse, said that, when he began 
 to rear, they were so frightened that they could not 
 see the horse. 
 
 Cowardice shuts the eyes till the sky is not larger 
 than a calf-skin ; shuts the eyes so that we cannot 
 see the horse that is running away Avith us ; worse, 
 shuts the eyes of the mind and chills the heart. 
 Fear is cruel and mean. The political reigns of 
 terror have been reigns of madness and malignity, — a 
 total perversion of opinion ; society is upside down, 
 and its best men are thought too bad to live. Then 
 the protection which a house, a family, neighbourhood
 
 162 COURAGE. [x. 
 
 and property, even the first accumulation of savings, 
 gives, goes in all times to generate this taint of the re- 
 spectable classes. Voltaire said : "One of the chief mis- 
 fortunes of honest people is that they are cowardly." 
 Those political parties which gather-in the well-dis- 
 posed portion of the community, — how infirm and 
 ignoble ! what white lips they have ! always on the 
 defensive, as if the lead were entrusted to the journals, 
 often written in great part by women and boys, who, 
 without strength, wish to keep up the appearance of 
 strength. They can do the hurras, the placarding, 
 the flags, — and the voting, if it is a fair day; but the 
 aggressive attitude of men who will have right done, 
 will no longer be bothered with burglars and ruffians 
 in the streets, counterfeiters in public offices, and 
 thieves on the bench ; that part, the part of the leader 
 and soul of the vigilance committee, must be taken 
 by stout and sincere men who are really angry and 
 determined. In ordinary, we have a snappish criti- 
 cism which watches and contradicts the opposite 
 party. We want the will which advances and dic- 
 tates. "When we get an advantage, as in Congress 
 the other day, it is because our adversary has com- 
 mitted a fault, not that we have taken the initiative 
 and given the law. Nature has made up her mind 
 that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended. 
 Complaining never so loud, and with never so much 
 reason, is of no use. One heard much cant of peace- 
 parties long ago in Kansas and elsewhere, that their 
 strength lay in the greatness of their wrongs, and 
 dissuading all resistance, as if to make this strength
 
 x.] COURAGE. 463 
 
 greater. But were their wrongs greater than the 
 negro's 1 ? and what kind of strength did they ever 
 give him? It was always invitation to the tyrant, 
 and bred disgust in those who would protect the 
 victim. What cannot stand must fall ; and the 
 measure of our sincerity, and therefore of the respect 
 of men, is the amount of health and wealth we will 
 hazard in the defence of our right. An old farmer, 
 my neighbour across the fence, when I ask him if he 
 is not going to town-meeting, says : " No : 'tis no 
 use balloting, for it will not stay ; but what you do 
 with the gun will stay so." Nature has charged 
 every one with his own defence as with his own 
 support, and the only title I can have to your help is 
 when I have manfully put forth all the means I 
 possess to keep me, and, being overborne by odds, 
 the bystanders have a natural wish to interfere and 
 see fair play. 
 
 But with this pacific education, we have no readi- 
 ness for bad times. I am much mistaken if every 
 man who went to the army in the late war had not a 
 lively curiosity to know how he should behave in 
 action. Tender, amiable boys, who had never en- 
 countered any rougher play than a base-ball match 
 or a fishing excursion, were suddenly drawn up to 
 face a bayonet charge or capture a battery. Of course, 
 they must each go into that action with a certain 
 despair. Each whispers to himself: "My exertions 
 must be of small account to the result ; only will the 
 benignant Heaven save me from disgracing myself 
 and my friends and my State. Die ! yes, I can well
 
 464 COUEAGE. [x. 
 
 die ; but I cannot afford to misbehave ; and I do not 
 know how I shall feel." So great a soldier as the old 
 French Marshal Montluc acknowledges that he has 
 often trembled with fear, and recovered courage when 
 he had said a prayer for the occasion. I knew a 
 young soldier who died in the early campaign, who 
 confided to his sister that he had made up his mind 
 to volunteer for the war. " I have not," he said, 
 " any proper courage, but I shall never let any one 
 find it out." And he had accustomed himself always 
 to go into whatever place of danger, and do whatever 
 he was afraid to do, setting a dogged resolution to 
 resist this natural infirmity. Coleridge has preserved 
 an anecdote of an officer in the British Navy, who 
 told him that when he, in his first boat expedition, a 
 midshipman in his fourteenth year, accompanied Sir 
 Alexander Ball, " as we were rowing up to the vessel 
 we were to attack, amid a discharge of musketry, I 
 was overpowered with fear, my knees shook, and I 
 was ready to faint away. Lieutenant Ball seeing me, 
 placed himself close beside me, took hold of my hand 
 and Avhispered, ' Courage, my dear boy ! you will 
 recover in a minute or so ; I was just the same when 
 I first went out in this way.' It was as if an angel 
 spoke to me. From that moment I was as fearless 
 and as forward as the oldest of the boat's crew. But 
 I dare not think what would have become of me, if, 
 at that moment, he had scoffed and exposed me." 
 
 Knowledge is the antidote to fear, — Knowledge, 
 Use, and Reason, with its higher aids. The child is 
 as much in danger from a staircase, or the fire-grate,
 
 x.] COUEAGE. 46. r > 
 
 or a bath-tub, or a cat, as the soldier from a cannon 
 or an ambush. Each surmounts the fear as fast as he 
 precisely understands the peril, and learns the means 
 of resistance. Each is liable to panic, which is, 
 exactly, the terror of ignorance surrendered to the 
 imagination. Knowledge is the encourager, know- 
 ledge that takes fear out of the heart, knowledge and 
 use, which is knowledge in practice. They can 
 conquer who believe they can. It is he who has done 
 the deed once who does not shrink from attempting it 
 again. It is the groom who knows the jumping 
 horse well who can safely ride him. It is the veteran 
 soldier, who, seeing the flash of the cannon, can step 
 aside from the path of the ball. Use makes a better 
 soldier than the most urgent considerations of duty, — 
 familiarity with danger enabling him to estimate the 
 danger. He sees how much is the risk, and is not 
 afflicted with imagination ; knows practically Marshal 
 Saxe's rule, that every soldier killed costs the enemy 
 his weight in lead. 
 
 The sailor loses fear as fast as he acquires command 
 of sails and spars and steam ; the frontiersman, 
 when he has a perfect rifle and has acquired a sure 
 aim. To the sailor's experience every new circum- 
 stance suggests what he must do. The terrific chances 
 which make the hours and the minutes long to the 
 passenger, he whiles away by incessant application of 
 expedients and repairs. To him a leak, a hurricane, 
 or a waterspout, is so much work, — no more. The 
 hunter is not alarmed by bears, catamounts, or wolves, 
 nor the grazier by his bull, nor the dog-breeder by 
 
 vol. v. 2 H
 
 466 COURAGE. [x. 
 
 his bloodhound, nor an Arab by the simoom, nor a 
 farmer by a fire in the woods. The forest on fire 
 looks discouraging enough to a citizen : the farmer is 
 skilful to fight it. The neighbours run together; 
 with pine boughs they can mop out the flame, and, 
 by raking with the hoe a long but little trench, 
 confine to a patch the fire which would easily spread 
 over a hundred acres. 
 
 In short, courage consists in equality to the prob- 
 lem before us. The schoolboy is daunted before 
 his tutor by a question of arithmetic, because he does 
 not yet command the simple steps of the solution 
 which the boy beside him has mastered. These once 
 seen, he is as cool as Archimedes, and cheerily pro- 
 ceeds a step farther. Courage is equality to the prob- 
 lem, in affairs, in science, in trade, in council, or in 
 action ; consists in the conviction that the agents with 
 whom you contend are not superior in strength or 
 resources or spirit to you. The general must stimu- 
 late the mind of his soldiers to the perception that 
 they are men, and the enemy is no more. Know- 
 ledge, yes ; for the danger of dangers is illusion. The 
 eye is easily daunted ; and the drums, flags, shining 
 helmets, beard, and mustache of the soldier have con- 
 quered }^ou long before his sword or bayonet reaches 
 you. 
 
 But we do not exhaust the subject in the slight 
 analysis ; we must not forget the variety of tempera- 
 ments, each of which qualifies this power of resistance. 
 It is observed that men with little imagination are 
 less fearful; they wait till they feel pain, whilst
 
 x.] COURAGE. 467 
 
 others of more sensibility anticipate it, and suffer in 
 the fear of the pang more acutely than in the pang. 
 Tis certain that the threat is sometimes more formid- 
 able than the stroke, and 'tis possible that the be- 
 holders suffer more keenly than the victims. Bodily 
 pain is superficial, seated usually in the skin and the 
 extremities, for the sake of giving us warning to put 
 us on our guard ; not in the vitals, where the rupture 
 that produces death is perhaps not felt, and the victim 
 never knew what hurt him. Pain is superficial, and 
 therefore fear is. The torments of martyrdoms are 
 probably most keenly felt by the bystanders. The 
 torments are illusory. The first suffering is the last 
 suffering, the later hurts being lost on insensibility. 
 Our affections and wishes for the external welfare of 
 the hero tumultuously rush to expression in tears and 
 outcries ; but we, like him, subside into indifferency 
 and defiance when we perceive how short is the 
 longest arm of malice, how serene is the sufferer. 
 
 It is plain that there is no separate essence called 
 courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the 
 heart containing drops or atoms that make or give 
 this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of 
 every man, when he is free to do that which is con- 
 stitutional to him to do. It is directness, — the instant 
 performing of that which he ought. The thoughtful 
 man says, you differ from me in opinion and methods ; 
 but do you not see that I cannot think or act other- 
 wise than I do? that my way of living is organic 1 ? 
 And to be really strong we must adhere to our own 
 means. On organic action all strength depends. Hear
 
 468 COUEAGE. [x. 
 
 what women say of doing a task by sheer force of 
 will : it costs them a fit of sickness. Plutarch relates 
 that the Pythoness who tried to prophesy without 
 command in the Temple at Delphi, though she per- 
 formed the usual rites, and inhaled the air of the 
 cavern standing on the tripod, fell into convulsions, 
 and died. Undoubtedly there is a temperamental 
 courage, a warlike blood, which loves a fight, does not 
 feel itself except in a quarrel, as one sees in wasps, or 
 ants, or cocks, or cats. The like vein appears in cer- 
 tain races of men and in individuals of every race. In 
 every school there are certain fighting boys ; in every 
 society, the contradicting men ; in every town, bravoes 
 and bullies, better or worse dressed, fancy-men, patrons 
 of the cock-pit and the ring. Courage is tempera- 
 mental, scientific, ideal. Swedenborg has left this 
 record of his king: "Charles XII, of Sweden, did 
 not know what that was which others called fear, nor 
 what that spurious valour and daring that is excited 
 by inebriating draughts, for he never tasted any liquid 
 but pure water. Of him we may say, that he led a 
 life more remote from death, and in fact lived more, 
 than any other man." It was told of the Prince of 
 Conde, " that there not being a more furious man in 
 the world, danger in fight never disturbs him more 
 than just to make him civil, and to command in words 
 of great obligation to his officers and men, and with- 
 out any the least disturbance to his judgment or 
 spirit." Each has his own courage, as his own talent ; 
 but the courage of the tiger is one, and of the horse 
 another. The dog that scorns to fight, will fight for
 
 x.] COURAGE. 469 
 
 his master. The llama that will carry a load if you 
 caress him, will refuse food and die if he is scourged. 
 The fury of onset is one, and of calm endurance 
 another. There is a courage of the cabinet as well as 
 a courage of the field ; a courage of manners in private 
 assemblies, and another in public assemblies ; a cour- 
 age which enables one man to speak masterly to a 
 hostile company, whilst another man who can easily 
 face a cannon's mouth dares not open his own. 
 
 There is a courage of a merchant in dealing with 
 his trade, by which dangerous turns of affairs are met 
 and prevailed over. Merchants recognise as much 
 gallantry, well judged too, in the conduct of a wise 
 and upright man of business, in difficult times, as 
 soldiers in a soldier. 
 
 There is a courage in the treatment of every art 
 by a master in architecture, in sculpture, in painting, 
 or in poetry, each cheering the mind of the spectator 
 or receiver as by true strokes of genius, which yet 
 nowise implies the presence of physical valour in the 
 artist. This is the courage of genius, in every kind. 
 A certain quantity of power belongs to a certain 
 quantity of faculty. The beautiful voice at church 
 goes sounding on, and covers up in its volume, as in 
 a cloak, all the defects of the choir. The singers, I 
 observe, all yield to it, and so the fair singer indulges 
 her instinct, and dares, and dares, because she knows 
 she can. 
 
 It gives the cutting edge to every profession. The 
 judge puts his mind to the tangle of contradictions in 
 the case, squarely accosts the question, and, by not
 
 470 COUEAGE. [x. 
 
 being afraid of it, by dealing with it as business which 
 must be disposed of, he sees presently that common 
 arithmetic and common methods apply to this affair. 
 Perseverance strips it of all peculiarity, and ranges it 
 on the same ground as other business. Morphy played 
 a daring game in chess : the daring was only an illu- 
 sion of the spectator, for the player sees his move to 
 be well fortified and safe. You may see the same 
 dealing in criticism ; a new book astonishes for a few 
 days, takes itself out of common jurisdiction, and 
 nobody knows what to say of it : but the scholar is 
 not deceived. The old principles which books exist 
 to express are more beautiful than any book ; and 
 out of love of the reality he is an expert judge how 
 far the book has approached it and where it has come 
 short. In all applications 'tis the same power, — 
 the habit of reference to one's own mind, as the home 
 of all truth and counsel, and which can easily dispose 
 of any book because it can very well do without all 
 books. When a confident man comes into a company 
 magnifying this or that author he has freshly read, 
 the company grow silent and ashamed of their ignor- 
 ance. But I remember the old professor, whose 
 searching mind engraved every word he spoke on the 
 memory of the class, when we asked if he had read 
 this or that shining novelty, " No, I have never read 
 that book ; " instantly the book lost credit, and was 
 not to be heard of again. 
 
 Every creature has a courage of his constitution 
 fit for his duties : — Archimedes, the courage of a 
 geometer to stick to his diagram, heedless of the
 
 x.] COURAGE. 471 
 
 siege and sack of the city ; and the Roman soldier 
 his faculty to strike at Archimedes. Each is strong, 
 relying on his own, and each is betrayed when he 
 seeks in himself the courage of others. 
 
 Captain John Brown, the hero of Kansas, said to 
 me in conversation, that " for a settler in a new 
 country, one good, believing, strong-minded man is 
 worth a hundred, nay, a thousand men without char- 
 acter, and that the right men will give a permanent 
 direction to the fortunes of a State. As for the bully- 
 ing drunkards of which armies are usually made up, 
 he thought cholera, smallpox, and consumption as 
 valuable recruits." He held the belief that courage 
 and chastity are silent concerning themselves. He 
 said : " As soon as I hear one of my men say, 'Ah, let 
 me only get my eye on such a man, I'll bring him 
 down,' I don't expect much aid in the fight from that 
 talker. Tis the quiet, peaceable men, the men of 
 principle, that make the best soldiers." 
 
 " 'Tis still observed those men most valiant are 
 Who are most modest ere they came to war." 
 
 True courage is not ostentatious ; men who wish 
 to inspire terror seem thereby to confess themselves 
 cowards. Why do they rely on it, but because they 
 know how potent it is with themselves 1 
 
 The true temper has genial influences. It makes 
 a bond of union between enemies. Governor Wise of 
 Virginia, in the record of his first interviews with his 
 prisoner, appeared to great advantage. If Governor 
 Wise is a superior man, or inasmuch as he is a superior
 
 472 COURAGE. [x. 
 
 man, he distinguishes John Brown. As they confer, 
 they understand each other swiftly ; each respects the 
 other. If opportunity allowed, they would prefer each 
 other's society and desert their former companions. 
 Enemies would become affectionate. Hector and 
 Achilles, Richard and Saladin, Wellington and Soult, 
 General Daumas and Abdel Kader, become aware that 
 they are nearer and more alike than any other two, 
 and, if their nation and circumstance did not keep 
 them apart, would run into each other's arms. 
 
 See, too, what good contagion belongs to it. Every- 
 where it finds its own with magnetic affinity. Cour- 
 age of the soldier awakes the courage of woman. 
 Florence Nightingale brings lint and the blessing of 
 her shadow. Heroic women offer themselves as nurses 
 of the brave veteran. The troop of Virginian infantry 
 that had marched to guard the prison of John Brown 
 ask leave to pay their respects to the prisoner. Poetry 
 and eloquence catch the hint, and soar to a pitch 
 unknown before. Everything feels the new breath, 
 except the old doting, nigh-dead politicians, whose 
 heart the trumpet of resurrection could not wake. 
 
 The charm of the best courages is that they are 
 inventions, inspirations, flashes of genius. The hero 
 could not have done the feat at another hour, in a 
 lower mood. The best act of the marvellous genius 
 of Greece was its first act ; not in the statue or the 
 Parthenon, but in the instinct which, at Thermopylae, 
 held Asia at bay, kept Asia out of Europe, — Asia 
 with its antiquities and organic slavery, — from cor- 
 rupting the hope and new morning of the West. The
 
 x.] COURAGE. 473 
 
 statue, the architecture, were the later and inferior 
 creation of the same genius. In view of this moment 
 of history, we recognise a certain prophetic instinct 
 better than wisdom. Napoleon said well, " My hand 
 is immediately connected with my head ; " but the 
 sacred courage is connected with the heart. The head 
 is a half, a fraction, until it is enlarged and inspired 
 by the moral sentiment. For it is not the means on 
 which we draw, as health, or wealth, practical skill or 
 dexterous talent, or multitudes of followers, that 
 count, but the aims only. The aim reacts back on 
 the means. A great aim aggrandises the means. 
 The meal and water that are the commissariat of the 
 forlorn hope that stake their lives to defend the pass 
 are sacred as the Holy Grail, or as if one had eyes to 
 see in chemistry the fuel that is rushing to feed the 
 sun. 
 
 There is a persuasion in the soul of man that he is 
 here for cause, that he was put down in this place 
 by the Creator to do the work for which he inspires 
 him, that thus he is an overmatch for all antagonists 
 that could combine against him. The pious Mrs. 
 Hutchinson says of some passages in the defence of 
 Nottingham against the Cavaliers : " It was a great 
 instruction that the best and highest courages are 
 beams of the Almighty." And whenever the reli- 
 gious sentiment is adequately affirmed, it must be with 
 dazzling courage. As long as it is cowardly insinu- 
 ated, as with the wish to succour some partial and 
 temporary interest, or to make it affirm some prag- 
 matical tenet which our parish church receives to-day,
 
 474 COUEAGE. [x. 
 
 it is not imparted, and cannot inspire or create. For 
 it is always new, leads and surprises, and practice 
 never comes up with it. There are ever appearing 
 in the world men who, almost as soon as they are 
 born, take a bee-line to the rack of the inquisitor, the 
 axe of the tyrant, like Jordano Bruno, Vanini, Huss, 
 Paul, Jesus, and Socrates. Look at Foxe's Lives of the 
 Martyrs, Sewel's History of the Quakers, Southey's 
 Book of the Church, at the folios of the Brothers 
 Bollandi, who collected the lives of twenty-five thou- 
 sand martyrs, confessors, ascetics, and self-tormentors. 
 There is much of fable, but a broad basis of fact. 
 The tender skin does not shrink from bayonets, the 
 timid woman is not scared by faggots ; the rack is not 
 frightful, nor the rope ignominious. The poor Puri- 
 tan, Antony Parsons, at the stake, tied straw on his 
 head, when the fire approached him, and said : "This 
 is God's hat." Sacred courage indicates that a man 
 loves an idea better than all things in the world ; 
 that he is aiming neither at pelf nor comfort, but will 
 venture all to put in act the invisible thought in his 
 mind. He is everywhere a liberator, but of a freedom 
 that is ideal ; not seeking to have land or money or 
 conveniences, but to have no other limitation than 
 that which his own constitution imposes. He is free 
 to speak truth j he is not free to lie. He wishes to 
 break every yoke all over the world which hinders his 
 brother from acting after his thought. 
 
 There are degrees of courage, and each step up- 
 ward makes us acquainted with a higher virtue. Let 
 us say then frankly that the education of the will is
 
 x.] COUEAGE. 475 
 
 the object of our existence. Poverty, the prison, the 
 rack, the fire, the hatred and execrations of our fellow- 
 meu, appear trials beyond the endurance of common 
 humanity ; but to the hero whose intellect is aggran- 
 dised by the soul, and so measures these penalties 
 against the good which his thought surveys, these 
 terrors vanish as darkness at sunrise. 
 
 We have little right in piping times of peace to 
 pronounce on these rare heights of character ; but 
 there is no assurance of security. In the most private 
 life, difficult duty is never far off. Therefore we 
 must think with courage. Scholars and thinkers are 
 prone to an effeminate habit, and shrink if a coarser 
 shout comes up from the street, or a brutal act is re- 
 corded in the journals. The Medical College piles up 
 in its museum its grim monsters of morbid anatomy, 
 and there are melancholy sceptics with a taste for 
 carrion who batten on the hideous facts in history, — 
 persecutions, inquisitions, St. Bartholomew massacres, 
 devilish lives, Nero, Caesar, Borgia, Marat, Lopez, — 
 men in whom every ray of humanity was extinguished, 
 parricides, matricides, and whatever moral monsters. 
 These are not cheerful facts, but they do not disturb 
 a healthy mind; they require of us a patience as 
 robust as the energy that attacks us, and an unrest- 
 ing exploration of final causes. Wolf, snake, and 
 crocodile are not inharmonious in nature, but are 
 made useful as checks, scavengers, and pioneers ; and 
 we must have a scope as large as Nature's to deal 
 with beast-like men, detect what scullion function is 
 assigned them, and foresee in the secular melioration
 
 476 COURAGE. [x. 
 
 of the planet how these will hecome unnecessary, and 
 will die out. 
 
 He has not learned the lesson of life who does not 
 every day surmount a fear. I do not wish to put 
 myself or any man into a theatrical position, or urge 
 him to ape the courage of his comrade. Have the 
 courage not to adopt another's courage. There is 
 scope and cause and resistance enough for us in our 
 proper work and circumstance. And there is no 
 creed of an honest man, he he Christian, Turk, or 
 Gentoo, which does not equally preach it. If you 
 have no faith in beneficent power above you, but see 
 only an adamantine fate coiling its folds about nature 
 and man, then reflect that the best use of fate is to 
 teach us courage, if only because baseness cannot 
 change the appointed event. If you accept your 
 thoughts as inspirations from the Supreme Intelli- 
 gence, obey them when they prescribe difficult duties, 
 because they come only so long as they are used ; or, 
 if your scepticism reaches to the last verge, and you 
 have no confidence in any foreign mind, then be 
 brave, because there is one good opinion which must 
 always be of consequence to you, namely, your own. 
 
 I am permitted to enrich my chapter by adding an 
 anecdote of pure courage from real life, as narrated in 
 a ballad by a lady to whom all the particulars of the 
 fact are exactly known.
 
 x.] COURAGE. 477 
 
 GEORGE NIDIVER. 
 
 Men have done brave deeds, 
 
 And bards have sxmg them well : 
 
 I of good George Nidiver 
 Now the tale will tell. 
 
 In Californian mountains 
 
 A hunter bold was he : 
 Keen his eye and sure his aim 
 
 As any you should see. 
 
 A little Indian boy 
 
 Followed him everywhere, 
 Eager to share the hunter's joy, 
 
 The hunter's meal to share. 
 
 And when the bird or deer 
 Fell by the hunter's skill, 
 
 The boy was always near 
 
 To help with right good-will. 
 
 One day as through the cleft 
 Between two mountains steep, 
 
 Shut in both right and left, 
 Their questing way they keep, 
 
 They see two grizzly bears 
 With hunger fierce and fell 
 
 Rush at them unawares 
 
 Eight down the narrow dell. 
 
 The boy turned round with screams, 
 And ran with terror wild ; 
 
 One of the pair of savage beasts 
 Pursued the shrieking child. 
 
 The hunter raised his gun, — 
 He knew one charge was all, — 
 
 And through the boy's pursuing foe 
 He sent his only ball.
 
 478 COURAGE. [x. 
 
 The other on George Nidiver 
 
 Came on with dreadful pace : 
 The hunter stood unarmed, 
 
 And met him face to face. 
 
 I say imarmed he stood. 
 
 Against those frightful paws 
 The rifle hut, or club of wood, 
 
 Could stand no more than straws. 
 
 George Nidiver stood still 
 
 And looked him in the face ; 
 The wild beast stopped amazed, 
 
 Then came with slackening pace. 
 
 Still firm the hunter stood, 
 
 Although his heart beat high ; 
 Again the creature stopped, 
 
 And gazed with wondering eye. 
 
 The hunter met his gaze, 
 
 Nor yet an inch gave way ; 
 The bear turned slowly round, 
 
 And slowly moved away. 
 
 What thoughts were in his mind 
 
 It would be hard to spell : 
 What thoughts were in George Nidiver 
 
 I rather guess than tell. 
 
 But sure that rifle's aim, 
 
 Swift choice of generous part, 
 Showed in its passing gleam 
 
 The depths of a brave heart.
 
 SUCCESS. 
 
 Our American people cannot be taxed with slowness 
 in performance, or in praising their performance. The 
 earth is shaken by our engineries. We are feeling 
 our youth and nerve and bone. We have the power 
 of territory and of sea-coast, and know the use of 
 these. We count our census, we read our growing 
 valuations, we survey our map, which becomes old in 
 a year or two. Our eyes run approvingly along the 
 lengthened lines of railroad and telegraph. We have 
 gone nearest to the Pole. We have discovered the 
 Antarctic continent. We interfere in Central and 
 South America, at Canton, and in Japan ; we are 
 adding to an already enormous territory. Our politi- 
 cal constitution is the hope of the world, and we value 
 ourselves on all these feats. 
 
 Tis the way of the world ; 'tis the law of youth, 
 and of unfolding strength. Men are made each with 
 some triumphant superiority, which, through some 
 adaptation of fingers, or ear, or eye, or ciphering, or 
 pugilistic or musical or literary craft, enriches the 
 community with a new art ; and not only we, but all 
 men of European stock, value these certificates. Giotto
 
 480 SUCCESS. [xi. 
 
 could draw a perfect circle ; Erwin of Steinbach could 
 build a minster ; Olaf, king of Norway, could run 
 round his galley on the blades of the oars of the rowers, 
 when the ship was in motion ; Ojeda could run out 
 swiftly on a plank projected from the top of a tower, 
 turn round swiftly, and come back ; Evelyn writes 
 from Eome : " Bernini, the Florentine sculptor, archi- 
 tect, painter, and poet, a little before my coming to 
 Rome, gave a public opera, wherein he painted the 
 scenes, cut the statues, invented the engines, com- 
 posed the music, writ the comedy, and built the 
 theatre." 
 
 " There is nothing in war," said Napoleon, " which 
 I cannot do by my own hands. If there is nobody to 
 make gunpowder, I can manufacture it. The gun- 
 carriages I know how to construct. If it is necessary 
 to make cannons at the forge, I can make them. The 
 details of working them in battle, if it is necessary to 
 teach, I shall teach them. In administration, it is I 
 alone who have arranged the finances, as you know." 
 
 It is recorded of Linnaeus, among many proofs of 
 his beneficent skill, that when the timber in the ship- 
 yards of Sweden was ruined by rot, Linnaeus was 
 desired by the government to find a remedy. He 
 studied the insects that infested the timber, and found 
 that they laid their eggs in the logs within certain 
 days in April, and he directed that during ten days 
 at that season the logs should be immersed under 
 water in the docks ; which being done the timber was 
 found to be uninjured. 
 
 Columbus at Veragua foimd plenty of gold ; but
 
 XI.] SUCCESS. 481 
 
 leaving the coast, the ship full of one hundred and 
 fifty skilful seamen, — some of them old pilots, and 
 with too much experience of their craft and treachery 
 to him, — the wise admiral kept his private record of 
 his homeward path. And when he reached Spain, he 
 told the King and Queen, " that they may ask all the 
 pilots who came with him, where is Veragua. Let 
 them answer and say, if they know where Veragua 
 lies. I assert that they can give no other account than 
 that they went to lands where there was abundance 
 of gold, but they do not know the way to return 
 thither, but would be obliged to go on a voyage of 
 discovery, as much as if they had never been there 
 before. There is a mode of reckoning," he proudly 
 adds, " derived from astronomy, which is sure and safe 
 to any who understands it." 
 
 Hippocrates in Greece knew how to stay the de- 
 vouring plague which ravaged Athens in his time, and 
 his skill died with him. Dr. Benjamin Rush, in 
 Philadelphia, carried that city heroically through the 
 yellow fever of the year 1793. Leverrier carries 
 the Copernican system in his head, and knew where 
 to look for the new planet. We have seen an Ameri- 
 can woman write a novel of which a million copies 
 were sold in all languages, and which had one merit, 
 of speaking to the universal heart, and was read with 
 equal interest to three audiences, namety, in the 
 parlour, in the kitchen, and in the nursery of every 
 house. We have seen women who could institute 
 hospitals and schools in armies. We have seen a 
 woman who by pure song could melt the souls of 
 VOL. v. 2 I
 
 482 SUCCESS. [xi. 
 
 whole populations. And there is no limit to these 
 varieties of talent. 
 
 These are arts to be thankful for,— each one as it 
 is a new direction of human power. We cannot 
 choose but respect them. Our civilisation is made up 
 of a million contributions of this kind. For success, 
 to be sure, we esteem it a test in other people, since 
 we do first in ourselves. We respect ourselves more 
 if we have succeeded. Neither do we grudge to each 
 of these benefactors the praise or the profit which 
 accrues from his industry. 
 
 Here are already quite different degrees of moral 
 merit in these examples. I don't know but we and 
 our race elsewhere set a higher value on wealth, vic- 
 tory, and coarse superiority of all kinds, than other 
 merij — have less tranquillity of mind, are less easily 
 contented. The Saxon is taught from his infancy to 
 wish to be first. The Norseman was a restless rider, 
 fighter, freebooter. The ancient Norse ballads describe 
 him as afflicted with this inextinguishable thirst of 
 victory. The mother says to her son : — 
 
 " Success shall be in thy courser tall, 
 Success in thyself, which is best of all, 
 Success in thy hand, success in thy foot, 
 In struggle with man, in battle with brute :— 
 The holy God and Saint Drothin dear 
 Shall never shut eyes on thy career ; 
 
 Look out, look out, Svend Vonved !" 
 
 These feats that we extol do not signify so much 
 as we say. These boasted arts are of very recent 
 origin. They are local conveniences, but do not 
 really add to our stature. The greatest men of the
 
 xi.] SUCCESS. 483 
 
 world have managed not to want them. Newton was 
 a great man, without telegraph, or gas, or steam-coach, 
 or rubber shoes, or lucifer matches, or ether for his 
 pain; so was Shakspeare, and Alfred, and Scipio, 
 and Socrates. These are local conveniences, but how 
 easy to go now to parts of the world where not only 
 all these arts are wanting, but where they are despised. 
 The Arabian sheiks, the most dignified people in the 
 planet, do not want them; yet have as much self- 
 respect as the English, and are easily able to impress 
 the Frenchman or the American who visits them with 
 the respect due to a brave and sufficient man. 
 
 These feats have, to be sure, great difference of 
 merit, and some of them involve power of a high kind. 
 But the public values the invention more than the 
 inventor does. The inventor knows there is much 
 more and better where this came from. The public 
 sees in it a lucrative secret. Men see the reward 
 which the inventor enjoys, and they think : " How 
 shall we win that?" Cause and effect are a little 
 tedious ; how to leap to the result by short or by 
 false means 1 We are not scrupulous. What we ask 
 is victory, without regard to the cause ; after the Eob 
 Roy rule, after the Napoleon rule, to be the strongest 
 to-day, — the way of the Talleyrands, — prudent people, 
 whose watches go faster than their neighbours', and 
 who detect the first moment of decline, and throw 
 themselves on the instant on the winning side. I 
 have heard that Nelson used to say : " Never mind 
 the justice or the impudence, only let me succeed." 
 Lord Brougham's single duty of counsel is, "to get
 
 484 SUCCESS. [xi. 
 
 the prisoner clear." Fuller says 'tis a maxim of 
 lawyers, " that a crown once worn cleareth all defects 
 of the wearer thereof." Bien ne reussit mieux que le 
 succes. And we Americans are tainted with this in- 
 sanity, as our bankruptcies and our reckless politics 
 may show. We are great by exclusion, grasping, and 
 egotism. Our success takes from all what it gives to 
 one. 'Tis a haggard, malignant, careworn running 
 for luck. 
 
 Egotism is a kind of buckram that gives momentary 
 strength and concentration to men, and seems to be 
 much used in Nature for fabrics in which local and 
 spasmodic energy is required. I could point to men 
 in this country of indispensable importance to the 
 carrying on of American life, of this humour, whom 
 we could ill spare ; any one of them would be a 
 national loss. But it spoils conversation. They wall 
 not try conclusions with you. They are ever thrust- 
 ing this pampered self between you and them. It is 
 plain they have a long education to undergo to reach 
 simplicity and plain-dealing, which are what a wise 
 man mainly cares for in his companion. Nature 
 knows how to convert evil to good ; Nature utilises 
 misers, fanatics, showmen, egotists, to accomplish her 
 ends ; but we must not think better of the foible for 
 that. The passion for sudden success is rude and 
 puerile, just as war, cannons, and executions are used 
 to clear the ground of bad, lumpish, irreclaimable 
 savages, but always to the damage of the conquerors. 
 
 I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to 
 get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on mid-
 
 xr.] SUCCESS. 485 
 
 night tables, to learn the economy of the mind by 
 phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery with- 
 out apprenticeship, or the sale of goods through pre- 
 tending that they sell, or power through making 
 believe you are powerful, or through a packed jury 
 or caucus, bribery and "repeating" votes, or wealth 
 by fraud. They think they have got it, but they 
 have got something else, — a crime which calls for 
 another crime, and another devil behind that ; these 
 are steps to suicide, infamy, and the harming of man- 
 kind. We countenance each other in this life of 
 show, puffing, advertisement, and manufacture of 
 public opinion ; and excellence is lost sight of in the 
 hunger for sudden performance and praise. 
 
 There was a wise man, an Italian artist, Michel 
 Angelo, who writes thus of himself : " Meanwhile the 
 Cardinal Ippolito, in - whom all my best hopes were 
 placed, being dead, I began to understand that the 
 promises of this world are, for the most part, vain 
 phantoms, and that to confide in one's self, and be- 
 come something of worth and value, is the best and 
 safest course." Now, though I am by no means sure 
 that the reader will assent to all my propositions, yet 
 I think we shall agree in my first rule for success, — 
 that we shall drop the brag and the advertisement, 
 and take Michel Angelo's course, " to confide in one's 
 self, and be something of worth and value." 
 
 Each man has an aptitude born with him to do 
 easily some feat impossible to any other. Do your 
 woi'k. I have to say this often, but Nature says it 
 oftener. 'Tis clownish to insist on doing all with
 
 486 SUCCESS. [xi. 
 
 one's own hands, as if every man should huild his 
 own clumsy house, forge his hammer, and bake his 
 dough ; but he is to dare to do what he can do best ; 
 not help others as they would direct him, but as he 
 knows his helpful power to be. To do otherwise is 
 to neutralise all those extraordinary special talents 
 distributed among men. Yet, whilst this self-truth is 
 essential to the exhibition of the world and to the 
 growth and glory of each mind, it is rare to find a 
 man who believes his own thought or who speaks that 
 which he was created to say. As nothing astonishes 
 men so much as common sense and plain-dealing, so 
 nothing is more rare in any man than an act of his 
 own. Any work looks wonderful to him, except that 
 which he can do. We do not believe our own thought ; 
 we must serve somebody ; we must quote somebody ; 
 we dote on the old and the distant ; we are tickled by 
 great names ; we import the religion of other nations ; 
 we quote their opinions; we cite their laws. The 
 gravest and learnedest courts in this country shudder 
 to face a new question, and will wait months and 
 years for a case to occur that can be tortured into a 
 precedent, and thus throw on a bolder party the onus 
 of an initiative. Thus we do not carry a counsel in 
 our breasts, or do not know it ; and because we can- 
 not shake off from our shoes this dust of Europe and 
 Asia, the world seems to be born old, society is under 
 a spell, every man is a borrower and a mimic, life is 
 theatrical, and literature a quotation ; and hence that 
 depression of spirits, that furrow of care, said to mark 
 every American brow.
 
 xi.] SUCCESS. 487 
 
 Self-trust is the first secret of success, the belief 
 that, if you are here, the authorities of the universe 
 put you here, and for cause, or with some task 
 strictly appointed you in your constitution, and so 
 long as you work at that you are well and successful. 
 It by no means consists in rushing prematurely to a 
 showy feat that shall catch the eye and satisfy spec- 
 tators. It is enough if you work in the right direc- 
 tion. So far from the performance being the real 
 success, it is clear that the success was much earlier 
 than that, namely, when all the feats that make our 
 civility were the thoughts of good heads. The fame 
 of each discovery rightly attaches to the mind that 
 made the formula which contains all the details, and 
 not to the manufacturers who now make their gain 
 by it ; although the mob uniformly cheers the pub- 
 lisher, and not the inventor. It is the dulness of the 
 multitude that they cannot see the house, in the 
 ground-plan ; the working, in the model of the pro- 
 jector. Whilst it is a thought, though it were a new 
 fuel, or a new food, or the creation of agriculture, it 
 is cried down ; it is a chimera : but when it is a fact, 
 and comes in the shape of eight per cent, ten per 
 cent, a hundred per cent, they cry: "It is the voice of 
 God." Horatio Greenough, the sculptor, said to me 
 of Robert Fulton's visit to Paris : " Fulton knocked 
 at the door of Napoleon with steam, and was rejected ; 
 and Napoleon lived long enough to know that he had 
 excluded a greater power than his own." 
 
 Is there no loving of knowledge, and of art, and of 
 our design, for itself alone 1 Cannot we please our-
 
 488 SUCCESS. [xi. 
 
 selves with performing our work, or gaining truth 
 and power, without being praised for it 1 I gain my 
 point, I gain all points, if I can reach my companion 
 with any statement which teaches him his own Avorth. 
 The sum of wisdom is, that the time is never lost 
 that is devoted to work The good workman never 
 says, "There, that will do ;" but, " There, that is it : 
 try it, and come again, it will last always." If the 
 artist, in whatever art, is well at work on his own 
 design, it signifies little that he does not yet find 
 orders or customers. I pronounce that young man 
 happy who is content with having acquired the skill 
 which he had aimed at, and waits willingly when the 
 occasion of making it appreciated shall arrive, know- 
 ing well that it will not loiter. The time your rival 
 spends in dressing up his work for effect, hastily, and 
 for the market, you spend in study and experiments 
 towards real knowledge and efficiency. He has 
 thereby sold his picture or machine, or won the prize, 
 or got the appointment ; but you have raised yourself 
 into a higher school of art, and a few years will show 
 the advantage of the real master over the short popu- 
 larity of the showman. I know it is a nice point to 
 discriminate this self-trust, which is the pledge of all 
 mental vigour and performance, from the disease to 
 which it is allied, — the exaggeration of the part which 
 we can play; — yet they are two things. But it is 
 sanity to know, that, over my talent or knack, and 
 a million times better than any talent, is the central 
 intelligence which subordinates and uses all talents ; 
 and it is only as a door into this, that any talent or
 
 xi.] SUCCESS. 489 
 
 the knowledge it gives is of value. He only who 
 comes into this central intelligence, in which no 
 egotism or exaggeration can be, comes into self- 
 possession. 
 
 My next point is that, in the scale of powers, it 
 is not talent, but sensibility, which is best: talent 
 confines, but the central life puts us in relation to all. 
 How often it seems the chief good to be born with a 
 cheerful temper, and well adjusted to the tone of the 
 human race. Such a man feels himself in harmony, 
 and conscious by his receptivity of an infinite strength. 
 Like Alfred, " good fortune accompanies him like a 
 gift of God." Feel yourself, and be not daunted by 
 things. Tis the fulness of man that runs over into 
 objects, and makes his Bibles and Shakspeares and 
 Homers so great. The joyful reader borrows of his 
 own ideas to fill their faulty outline, and knows not 
 that he borrows and gives. 
 
 There is something of poverty in our criticism. 
 We assume that there are few great men, all the rest 
 are little; that there is but one Homer, but one 
 Shakspeare, one Newton, one Socrates. But the soul 
 in her beaming hour does not acknowledge these 
 usurpations. We should know how to praise Socrates, 
 or Plato, or Saint John, without impoverishing us. 
 In good hours we do not find Shakspeare or Homer 
 over-great, — only to have been translators of the 
 happy present, — and every man and woman divine 
 possibilities. 'Tis the good reader that makes the 
 good book ; a good head cannot read amiss : in every 
 book he finds passages which seem confidences or
 
 490 SUCCESS. 
 
 [XI. 
 
 asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant 
 for his ear. 
 
 The light by which we see in this world comes 
 out from the soul of the observer. Wherever any 
 noble sentiment dwelt, it made the faces and houses 
 around to shine. Nay, the powers of this busy brain 
 are miraculous and illimitable. Therein are the 
 rules and formulas by which the whole empire of 
 matter is worked. There is no prosperity, trade, 
 art, city, or great material wealth of any kind, but 
 if you trace it home, you will find it rooted in a 
 thought of some individual man. 
 
 Is all life a surface affair 1 'Tis curious, but our 
 difference of wit appears to be only a difference 
 of impressionability, or power to appreciate faint, 
 fainter, and infinitely faintest voices and visions. 
 When the scholar or the writer has pumped his 
 brain for thoughts and verses, and then comes abroad 
 into Nature, has he never found that there is a better 
 poetry hinted in a boy's whistle of a tune, or in the 
 piping of a sparrow, than in all his literary results ? 
 We call it health. What is so admirable as the 
 health of youth? — with his long days because his 
 eyes are good, and brisk circulations keep him warm 
 in cold rooms, and he loves books that speak to the 
 imagination ; and he can read Plato, covered to his 
 chin with a cloak in a cold upper chamber, though 
 he should associate the Dialogues ever after with a 
 woollen smell. 'Tis the bane of life that natural 
 effects are continually crowded out, and artificial 
 arrangements substituted. We remember wheu, in
 
 xi.] SUCCESS. 491 
 
 early youth, the earth spoke and the heavens glowed ; 
 when an evening, any evening, grim and wintry, 
 sleet and snow, was enough for us; the houses 
 were in the air. Now it costs a rare combination 
 of clouds and lights to overcome the common and 
 mean. What is it we look for in the landscape, in 
 sunsets and sunrises, in the sea and the firmament? 
 what but a compensation for the cramp and pettiness 
 of human performances 1 We bask in the day, and 
 the mind finds somewhat as great as itself. In 
 Nature, all is large, massive repose. Remember 
 what befalls a city boy who goes for the first time 
 into the October woods. He is suddenly initiated 
 into a pomp and glory that bring to pass for him 
 the dreams of romance. He is the king he dreamed 
 he was ; he walks through tents of gold, through 
 bowers of crimson, porphyry, and topaz, pavilion 
 on pavilion, garlanded with vines, flowers, and sun- 
 beams, with incense and music, with so many hints to 
 his astonished senses ; the leaves twinkle and pique 
 and flatter him, and his eye and step are tempted 
 on by what hazy distances to happier solitudes. All 
 this happiness he owes only to his finer perception. 
 The owner of the wood -lot finds only a number of 
 discoloured trees: and says: "They ought to come 
 down ; they aren't growing any better ; they should 
 be cut and corded before spring." 
 
 Wordsworth writes of the delights of the boy in 
 Nature : — 
 
 " For never will come back the hour 
 Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower."
 
 492 SUCCESS. [xi. 
 
 But I have just seen a man, well knowing what he 
 spoke of, who told me that the verse was not true 
 for him ; that his eyes opened as he grew older, and 
 that every spring was more beautiful to him than 
 the last. 
 
 We live among gods of our own creation. Does 
 that deep -toned hell, which has shortened many a 
 night of ill nerves, render to you nothing but acoustic 
 vibrations? Is the old church, which gave you the 
 first lessons of religious life, or the village school, or 
 the college where you first knew the dreams of fancy 
 and joys of thought, only boards or brick and mortar 1 
 Is the house in which you were born, or the house in 
 which your dearest friend lived, only a piece of real 
 estate whose value is covered by the Hartford insur- 
 ance 1 You walk on the beach and enjoy the anima- 
 tion of the picture. Scoop up a little water in the 
 hollow of your palm, take up a handful of shore 
 sand; well, these are the elements. What is the 
 beach but acres of sand 1 what is the ocean but cubic 
 miles of water 1 a little more or less signifies nothing. 
 No, it is that this brute matter is part of somewhat 
 not brute. It is that the sand floor is held by spheral 
 gravity, and bent to be a part of the round globe, 
 under the optical sky, — part of the astonishing 
 astronomy, and existing, at last, to moral ends and 
 from moral causes. 
 
 The world is not made up to the eye of figures, 
 that is, only half; it is also made of colour. How 
 that element washes the universe with its enchanting 
 waves ! The sculptor had ended his work, and behold
 
 xi.] SUCCESS. 493 
 
 a new world of dream-like glory. Tis the last stroke 
 of Nature ; beyond colour she cannot go. In like 
 manner, life is made up, not of knowledge only, but 
 of love also. If thought is form, sentiment is colour. 
 It clothes the skeleton world with space, variety, and 
 glow. The hues of sunset make life great; so the 
 affections make some little web of cottage and fireside 
 populous, important, and filling the main space in 
 our history. 
 
 The fundamental fact in our metaphysic constitu- 
 tion is the correspondence of man to the world, so 
 that every change in that writes a record in the 
 mind. The mind yields sympathetically to the tend- 
 encies or law which stream through things, and make 
 the order of .Nature ; and in the perfection of this 
 correspondence or expressiveness, the health and force 
 of man consist. If we follow this hint into our in- 
 tellectual education, we shall find that it is not pro- 
 positions, not new dogmas and a logical exposition of 
 the world, that are our first need ; but to watch and 
 tenderly cherish the intellectual and moral sensi- 
 bilities, those fountains of right thought, and woo 
 them to stay and make their home with us. Whilst 
 they abide with us, we shall not think amiss. Our 
 perception far outruns our talent. We bring a 
 welcome to the highest lessons of religion and of 
 poetry out of all proportion beyond our skill to teach. 
 And, further, the great hearing and sympathy of 
 men is more true and wise than their speaking is 
 wont to be. A deep sympathy is what we require 
 for any student of the mind ; for the chief difference
 
 494 SUCCESS. [xi. 
 
 between man and man is a difference of impression- 
 ability. Aristotle, or Bacon, or Kant, propound some 
 maxim which is the keynote of philosophy thence- 
 forward. But I am more interested to know, that, 
 when at last they have hurled out their grand word, 
 it is only some familiar experience of every man in 
 the street. If it be not, it will never be heard of 
 again. 
 
 Ah ! if one could keep this sensibility, and live in 
 the happy sufficing present, and find the day and its 
 cheap means contenting, which only ask receptivity 
 in you, and no strained exertion and cankering 
 ambition, overstimulating to be at the head of your 
 class and the head of society, and to have distinction 
 and laurels and consumption ! We are not strong by 
 our power to penetrate, but by our relatedness. The 
 world is enlarged for us, not by new objects, but by 
 finding more affinities and potencies in those we have. 
 
 This sensibility appears in the homage to beauty 
 which exalts the faculties of youth, in the power 
 which form and colour exert upon the soul ; when we 
 see eyes that are a compliment to the human race, 
 features that explain the Phidian sculpture. Fonte- 
 nelle said : " There are three things about which I 
 have curiosity, though I know nothing of them, — 
 music, poetry, and love." The great doctors of this 
 science are the greatest men, — Dante, Petrarch, 
 Michel Angelo, and Shakspeare. The wise Socrates 
 treats this matter with a certain archness, yet with 
 very marked expressions. "I am always," he says, 
 " asserting that I happen to know, I may say, nothing
 
 xi.] SUCCESS. 495 
 
 but a mere trifle relating to matters of love ; yet in 
 that kind of learning I lay claim to being more skilled 
 than any one man of the past or present time." 
 They may well speak in this uncertain manner of 
 their knowledge, and in this confident manner of 
 their will, for the secret of it is hard to detect, so 
 deep it is ; and yet genius is measured by its skill in 
 this science. 
 
 Who is he in youth, or in maturity, or even in old 
 age, who does not like to hear of those sensibilities 
 which turn curled heads round at church, and send 
 wonderful eye-beams across assemblies, from one to 
 one, never missing in the thickest crowd. The keen 
 statist reckons by tens and hundreds ; the genial man 
 is interested in every slipper that comes into the 
 assembly. The passion, alike everywhere, creeps 
 under the snows of Scandinavia, under the fires of 
 the equator, and swims in the seas of Polynesia. 
 Lofn is as puissant a divinity in the Norse Edda, as 
 Camadeva in the red vault of India, Eros in the 
 Greek, or Cupid in the Latin heaven. And what is 
 specially true of love is, that it is a state of extreme 
 impressionability ; the lover has more senses and finer 
 senses than others ; his eye and ear are telegraphs ; 
 he reads omens on the flower, and cloud, and face, 
 and form, and gesture, and reads them aright. In 
 his surprise at the sudden and entire understanding 
 that is between him and the beloved person, it occurs 
 to him that they might somehow meet independently 
 of time and place. How delicious the belief that he 
 could elude all guards, precautions, ceremonies, means,
 
 496 SUCCESS. [xi. 
 
 and delays, and hold instant and sempiternal com- 
 munication ! In solitude, in banishment, the hope 
 returned, and the experiment was eagerly tried. The 
 supernal powers seem to take his part. What was on 
 his lips to say is uttered by his friend. When he 
 went abroad, he met, by wonderful casualties, the 
 one person he sought. If in his walk he chanced to 
 look back, his friend was walking behind him. And 
 it has happened that the artist has often drawn in his 
 pictures the face of the future wife whom he had not 
 yet seen. 
 
 But also in complacences, nowise so strict as this 
 of the passion, the man of sensibility counts it a 
 delight only to hear a child's voice fully addressed to 
 him, or to see the beautiful manners of the youth of 
 either sex. When the event is past and remote, how 
 insignificant the greatest compared with the piquancy 
 of the present ! To-day at the school examination 
 the professor interrogates Sylvina in the history class 
 about Odoacer and Alaric. Sylvina can't remember, 
 but suggests that Odoacer was defeated ; and the pro- 
 fessor tartly replies : " No, he defeated the Komans." 
 But 'tis plain to the visitor, that 'tis of no importance 
 at all about Odoacer, and 'tis a great deal of import- 
 ance about Sylvina ; and if she says he was defeated, 
 why he had better, a great deal, have been defeated, 
 than give her a moment's annoy. Odoacer, if there 
 was a particle of the gentleman in him, would have 
 said : Let me be defeated a thousand times. 
 
 And as our tenderness for youth and beauty gives 
 a new and just importance to their fresh and manifold
 
 xi.] SUCCESS. 497 
 
 claims, so the like sensibility gives welcome to all 
 excellence, has eyes and hospitality for merit in 
 corners. An Englishman of marked character and 
 talent, who had brought with him hither one or two 
 friends and a library of mystics, assured me that 
 nobody and nothing of possible interest was left in 
 England, — he had brought all that was alive away. 
 I was forced to reply : " No, next door to you, prob- 
 ably on the other side of the partition in the same 
 house, was a greater man than any you had seen." 
 Every man has a history worth knowing, if he could 
 tell it, or if we could draw it from him. Character 
 and wit have their own magnetism. Send a deep 
 man into any town, and he will find another deep man 
 there, unknown hitherto to his neighbours. That is 
 the great happiness of life, — to acid to our high 
 acquaintances. The very law of averages might have 
 assured you that there will be in every hundred heads 
 say ten or five good heads. Morals are generated as 
 the atmosphere is. 'Tis a secret, the genesis of either ; 
 but the springs of justice and courage do not fail any 
 more than salt or sulphur springs. 
 
 The world is always opident, the oracles are never 
 silent ; but the receiver must by a happy temperance 
 be brought to that top of condition, that frolic health, 
 that he can easily take and give these fine communi- 
 cations. Health is the condition of wisdom, and the 
 sign is cheerfulness, — an open and noble temper. 
 There was never poet who had not the heart in 
 the right place. The old trouveur, Pons Capdeuil, 
 wrote — 
 
 vol. v. 2 k
 
 498 SUCCESS. [xi. 
 
 ' ' Oft have I heard, and deem the witness true, 
 Whom man delights in, God delights in too." 
 
 All beauty warms the heart, is a sign of health, 
 prosperity, and the favour of God. Everything last- 
 ing and fit for men, the Divine Power has marked 
 with this stamp. What delights, what emancipates, 
 not what scares and pains us, is wise and good in 
 speech and in the arts. For, truly, the heart at the 
 centre of the universe with every throb hurls the flood 
 of happiness into every artery, vein, and veinlet, so 
 that the whole system is inundated with the tides of 
 joy. The plenty of the poorest place is too great : 
 the harvest cannot be gathered. Every sound ends 
 in music. The edge of every surface is tinged with 
 prismatic rays. 
 
 One more trait of true success. The good mind 
 chooses what is positive, what is advancing, — embraces 
 the affirmative. Our system is one of poverty. 'Tis 
 presumed, as I said, there is but one Shakspeare, one 
 Homer, one Jesus, — not that all are or shall be in- 
 spired. But we must begin by affirming. Truth and 
 goodness subsist for evermore. It is true there is evil 
 and good, night and day, but these are not equal. 
 The day is great and final. The night is for the day, 
 but the day is not for the night. What is this immor- 
 tal demand for more, which belongs to our constitu- 
 tion 1 this enormous ideal 1 There is no such critic 
 and beggar as this terrible Soul. No historical person 
 begins to content us. We know the satisfactoriness 
 of justice, the sufficiency of truth. We know the 
 answer that leaves nothing to ask. We know the
 
 xi.] SUCCESS. 499 
 
 Spirit by its victorious tone. The searching tests to 
 apply to every new pretender are amount and quality, 
 — what does he add ? and what is the state of mind 
 he leaves me in ? Your theory is unimportant ; but 
 what new stock you can add to humanity, or how high 
 you can carry life 1 A man is a man only as he makes 
 life and nature happier to us. 
 
 I fear the popular notion of success stands in direct 
 opposition in all points to the real and wholesome 
 success. One adores public opinion, the other private 
 opinion; one fame, the other desert; one feats, the 
 other humility ; one lucre, the other love : one mono- 
 poly, and the other hospitality of mind. 
 
 We may apply this affirmative law to letters, to 
 manners, to art, to the decorations of our houses, etc. 
 I do not find executions or tortures or lazar-houses, 
 or grisly photographs of the field on the day after the 
 battle, fit subjects for cabinet pictures. I think that 
 some so-called " sacred subjects " must be treated with 
 more genius than I have seen in the masters of Italian 
 or Spanish art to be right pictures for houses and 
 churches. Nature does not invite such exhibition. 
 Nature lays the ground-plan of each creature accu- 
 rately, — sternly fit for all his functions : then veils it 
 scrupulously. See how carefully she covers up the 
 skeleton. The eye shall not see it : the sun shall not 
 shine on it. She weaves her tissues and integuments 
 of flesh and skin and hair and beautiful colours of the 
 day over it, and forces death down underground, and 
 makes haste to cover it up with leaves and vines, and 
 wipes carefully out every trace by new creation. "Who
 
 500 SUCCESS. [xi. 
 
 and what are you that would lay the ghastly anatomy 
 
 bare 1 
 
 Don't hang a dismal picture on the wall, and do 
 
 not daub with sables and glooms in your conversation. 
 
 Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't 
 
 bewail and bemoan. Omit the negative propositions. 
 
 Nerve us with incessant affirmatives. Don't waste 
 
 yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but 
 
 chant the beauty of the good. When that is spoken 
 
 which has a right to be spoken, the chatter and the 
 
 criticism will stop. Set clown nothing that will not 
 
 help somebody ; 
 
 " For every gift of noble origin 
 Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath." 
 
 The affirmative of affirmatives is love. As much 
 love, so much perception. As caloric to matter, so is 
 love to mind ; so it enlarges, and so it empowers it. 
 Good-will makes insight, as one finds his way to the 
 sea by embarking on a river. I have seen scores of 
 people who can silence me, but I seek one who shall 
 make me forget or overcome the frigidities and im- 
 becilities into which I fall. The painter Giotto, Vasari 
 tells us, renewed art, because he put more goodness 
 into his heads. To awake in man and to raise the 
 sense of worth, to educate his feeling and judgment 
 so that he shall scorn himself for a bad action, that is 
 the only aim. 
 
 'Tis cheap and easy to destroy. There is not a 
 joyful boy or an innocent girl buoyant with fine 
 purposes of duty, in all the street full of eager and 
 rosy faces, but a cynic can chill and dishearten with
 
 xi.] SUCCESS. 501 
 
 a single word. Despondency comes readily enough 
 to the most sanguine. The cynic has only to follow 
 their hint with his bitter confirmation, and they check 
 that eager courageous pace and go home with heavier 
 step and premature age. They will themselves 
 quickly enough give the hint he wants to the cold 
 wretch. Which of them has not failed to please 
 where they most wished it ? or blundered where they 
 were most ambitious of success 1 or found themselves 
 awkward or tedious or incapable of study, thought, 
 or heroism, and only hoped by good sense and fidelity 
 to do what they could and pass unblamed 1 And this 
 witty malefactor makes their little hope less with 
 satire and scepticism, and slackens the springs of 
 endeavour. Yes, this is easy ; but to help the young 
 soul, add energy, inspire hope, and blow the coals 
 into a useful flame ; to redeem defeat by new thought, 
 by firm action, that is not easy, that is the work of 
 divine men. 
 
 We live on different planes or platforms. There 
 is an external life, which is educated at school, taught 
 to read, write, cipher, and trade ; taught to grasp all 
 the boy can get, urging him to put himself forward, 
 to make himself useful and agreeable in the world, to 
 ride, run, argue, and contend, unfold his talents, shine, 
 conquer, and possess. 
 
 But the inner life sits at home, and does not learn 
 to do things, nor value these feats at all. 'Tis a quiet, 
 wise perception. It loves truth, because it is itself 
 real; it loves right, it knows nothing else; but it 
 makes no progress ; was as wise in our first memory
 
 502 SUCCESS. [xi. 
 
 of it as now ; is just the same now in maturity, and 
 hereafter in age, it was in youth. We have grown 
 to manhood and womanhood ; we have powers, con- 
 nection, children, reputations, professions ; this makes 
 no account of them all. It lives in the great present; 
 it makes the present great. This tranquil well- 
 founded, wide -seeing soul is no express rider, no 
 attorney, no magistrate : it lies in the sun, and broods 
 on the world. A person of this temper once said to 
 a man of much activity : " I will pardon you that you 
 do so much, and you me that I do nothing." And 
 Euripides says that "Zeus hates busy bodies and those 
 who do too much."
 
 OLD AGE. 
 
 On the anniversary of the Phi Beta Kappa Society 
 at Cambridge, in 1861, the venerable President 
 Quincy, senior member of the Society, as well as 
 senior alumnus of the University, was received at the 
 dinner with peculiar demonstrations of respect. He 
 replied to these compliments in a speech, and, grace- 
 fully claiming the privileges of a literary society, 
 entered at some length into an Apology for Old Age, 
 and, aiding himself by notes in his hand, made a 
 sort of running commentary on Cicero's chapter "De 
 Senectute." The character of the speaker, the trans- 
 parent good faith of his praise and blame, and the 
 ndiveU of his eager preference of Cicero's opinions to 
 King David's, gave unusual interest to the College 
 festival. It was a discourse full of dignity, honouring 
 him who spoke and those who heard. 
 
 The speech led me to look over at home — an easy 
 task — Cicero's famous essay, charming by its uniform 
 rhetorical merit ; heroic with Stoical precepts ; with 
 a Eoman eye to the claims of the State; happiest, 
 perhaps, in his praise of life on the farm ; and rising 
 at the conclusion to a lofty strain. But he does
 
 504 OLD AGE. [xii. 
 
 not exhaust the subject; rather invites the attempt 
 to add traits to the picture from our broader modern 
 life. 
 
 Cicero makes no reference to the illusions which 
 cling to the element of time, and in which Nature 
 delights. Wellington, in speaking of military men, 
 said : " What masks are these uniforms to hide 
 cowards !" I have often detected the like deception 
 in the cloth shoe, wadded pelisse, wig, spectacles, and 
 padded chair of Age. Nature lends herself to these 
 illusions, and adds dim sight, deafness, cracked voice, 
 snowy hair, short memory, and sleep. These also are 
 masks, and all is not Age that wears them. Whilst 
 we yet call ourselves young, and our mates are yet 
 youths with even boyish remains, one good fellow in 
 the set prematurely sports a gray or a bald head, 
 which does not impose on us who know how innocent 
 of sanctity or of Platonism he is, but does deceive 
 his juniors and the public, who presently distinguish 
 him with a most amusing respect : and this lets us 
 into the secret, that the venerable forms that so awed 
 our childhood were just such impostors. Nature is 
 full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young 
 shoulders, and then a young heart beating under four- 
 score winters. 
 
 For if the essence of Age is not present, these signs, 
 whether of Art or Nature, are counterfeit and ridicu- 
 lous : and the essence of Age is intellect. Wherever 
 that appears, we call it old. If we look into the eyes 
 of the youngest person, we sometimes discover that 
 here is one who knows already what you would go
 
 xii.] OLD AGE. 505 
 
 about with much pains to teach him ; there is that in 
 him which is the ancestor of all around him : which 
 fact the Indian Vedas express when they say : " He 
 that can discriminate is the father of his father." 
 And in our old British legends of Arthur and the 
 Eound Table, his friend and counsellor, Merlin the 
 Wise, is a babe found exposed in a basket by the 
 river-side, and, though an infant of only a few days, 
 speaks articulately to those who discover him, tells 
 his name and history, and presently foretells the fate 
 of the bystanders. Wherever there is power, there 
 is Age. Don't be deceived by dimples and curls. I 
 tell you that babe is a thousand years old. 
 
 Time is, indeed, the theatre and seat of illusion : 
 nothing is so ductile and elastic. The mind stretches 
 an hour to a century, and dwarfs an age to an hour. 
 Saadi found in a mosque at Damascus an old Persian 
 of a hundred and fifty years who was dying, and was 
 saying to himself : " I said, coming into the world by 
 birth, 'I will enjoy myself for a few moments.' 
 Alas ! at the variegated table of life I partook of a 
 few mouthfuls, and the Fates said, 'Enough/'" That 
 which does not decay is so central and controlling in 
 us, that, as long as one is alone by himself, he is not 
 sensible of the inroads of time, which always begin at 
 the surface-edges. If, on a winter day, you should 
 stand within a bell-glass, the face and colour of the 
 afternoon clouds would not indicate whether it were 
 June or January ; and if we did not find the reflec- 
 tion of ourselves in the eyes of the young people, we 
 could not know that the century-clock had struck
 
 506 OLD AGE. [xii. 
 
 seventy instead of twenty. How many men habit- 
 ually believe that each chance passenger with whom 
 they converse is of their own age, and presently find 
 it was his father, and not his brother, whom they 
 knew ! 
 
 But not to press too hard on these deceits and 
 illusions of Nature, which are inseparable from our 
 condition, and looking at Age under an aspect more 
 conformed to the common sense, if the question be 
 the felicity of Age, I fear the first popular judgments 
 will be unfavourable. From the point of sensuous 
 experience, seen from the streets and markets and the 
 haunts of pleasure and gain, the estimate of Age is 
 low, melancholy, and sceptical. Frankly face the 
 facts, and see the result. Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, 
 hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions : 
 the surest poison is time. This cup, which Nature 
 puts to our lips, has a wonderful virtue, surpassing 
 that of any other draught. It opens the senses, adds 
 power, fills us with exalted dreams, which we call 
 hope, love, ambition, science : especially, it creates a 
 craving for larger draughts of itself. But they who 
 take the larger draughts are drunk with it, lose their 
 stature, strength, beauty, and senses, and end in folly 
 and delirium. We postpone our literary work until 
 we have more ripeness and skill to write, and we one 
 day discover that our literary talent was a youthful 
 effervescence which we have now lost. We had a 
 judge in Massachusetts who at sixty proposed to 
 resign, alleging that he perceived a certain decay in 
 his faculties; he was dissuaded by his friends, on
 
 xir.] OLD AGE. 507 
 
 account of the public convenience at that time. At 
 seventy it was hinted to him that it was time to re- 
 tire ; but he now replied, that he thought his judg- 
 ment as robust, and all his faculties as good as ever 
 they were. But besides the self-deception, the strong 
 and hasty labourers of the street do not work well 
 with the chronic valetudinarian. Youth is everywhere 
 in place. Age, like woman, requires fit surroundings. 
 Age is comely in coaches, in churches, in chairs of 
 state, and ceremony, in council-chambers, in courts of 
 justice, and historical societies. Age is becoming in 
 the country. But in the rush and uproar of Broad- 
 way, if you look into the faces of the passengers, there 
 is dejection or indignation in the seniors, a certain 
 concealed sense of injury, and the lip made up with a 
 heroic determination not to mind it. Few envy the 
 consideration enjoyed by the oldest inhabitant. We 
 do not count a man's years until he has nothing else 
 to count. The vast inconvenience of animal immor- 
 tality was told in the fable of Tithonus. In short, the 
 creed of the street is, Old Age is not disgraceful, but 
 immensely disadvantageous. Life is well enough, but 
 we shall all be glad to get out of it, and they will all 
 be glad to have us. 
 
 This is odious on the face of it. Universal convic- 
 tions are not to be shaken by the whimsies of over- 
 fed butchers and firemen, or by the sentimental fears 
 of girls who would keep the infantile bloom on their 
 cheeks. We know the value of experience. Life and 
 art are cumulative; and he who has accomplished 
 something in any department alone deserves to be
 
 508 OLD AGE. [xii. 
 
 heard on that subject. A man of great employments 
 and excellent performance used to assure me that he 
 did not think a man worth anything until he was 
 sixty ; although this smacks a little of the resolution 
 of a certain " Young Men's Eepublican Club," that all 
 men should be held eligible who were under seventy. 
 But in all governments, the councils of power were 
 held by the old ; and patricians or patres, senate or 
 series, seigneurs or seniors, gerousia, the senate of Sparta, 
 the presbytery of the Church, and the like, all signify 
 simply old men. 
 
 The cynical creed or lampoon of the market is 
 refuted by the universal prayer for long life, which 
 is the verdict of Nature, and justified by all history. 
 We have, it is true, examples of an accelerated pace 
 by which young men achieved grand works ; as in the 
 Macedonian Alexander, in Eaffaelle, Shakspeare, Pas- 
 cal, Burns, and Byron ; but these are rare exceptions. 
 Nature, in the main, vindicates her law. Skill to do 
 comes of doing; knowledge comes by eyes always 
 open, and working hands ; and there is no knowledge 
 that is not power. Beranger said : " Almost all the 
 good workmen live long." And if the life be true 
 and noble, we have quite another sort of seniors than 
 the frowzy, timorous, peevish dotards who are falsely 
 old, — namely, the men who fear no city, but by whom 
 cities stand ; who appearing in any street, the people 
 empty their houses to gaze at and obey them : as at 
 "My Cid, with the fleecy beard," in Toledo; or 
 Bruce, as Barbour reports him ; as blind old Dandolo, 
 elected Doge at eighty-four years, storming ConstaDti-
 
 xii.] OLD AGE. 509 
 
 nople at ninety -four, and after the revolt again victori- 
 ous, and elected at the age of ninety-six to the throne 
 of the Eastern Empire, which he declined, and died 
 Doge at ninety-seven. We still feel the force of 
 Socrates, " whom well-advised the oracle pronounced 
 wisest of men ;" of Archimedes, holding Syracuse 
 against the Romans by his wit, and himself better 
 than all their nation ; of Michel Angelo, wearing the 
 four crowns of architecture, sculpture, painting, and 
 poetry ; of Galileo, of whose blindness Castelli said : 
 " The noblest eye is darkened that Nature ever made, 
 — an eye that hath seen more than all that went be- 
 fore him, and hath opened the eyes of all that shall 
 come after him ;" of Newton, who made an important 
 discovery for every one of his eighty-five years; of 
 Bacon, who "took all knowledge to be his province;" 
 of Fontenelle, "that precious porcelain vase laid up 
 in the centre of France to be guarded with the utmost 
 care for a hundred years ;" of Franklin, Jefferson, and 
 Adams, the wise and heroic statesmen ; of Washing- 
 ton, the perfect citizen; of Wellington, the perfect 
 soldier ; of Goethe, the all-knowing poet ; of Hum- 
 boldt, the encyclopsedia of science. 
 
 Under the general assertion of the well-being of 
 Age, we can easily count particular benefits of that 
 condition. It has weathered the perilous capes and 
 shoals in the sea whereon we sail, and the chief evil 
 of life is taken away in removing the grounds of fear. 
 The insurance of a ship expires as she enters the 
 harbour at home. It were strange, if a man should 
 turn his sixtieth year without a feeling of immense
 
 510 OLD AGE. [xii. 
 
 relief from the number of dangers he has escaped. 
 When the old wife says, " Take care of that tumour 
 in your shoulder, perhaps it is cancerous," — he replies, 
 "I am yielding to a surer decomposition." The 
 humorous thief who drank a pot of beer at the 
 gallows blew off the froth because he had heard it was 
 unhealthy ; but it will not add a pang to the prisoner 
 marched out to be shot to assure him that the pain 
 in his knee threatens mortification. When the pleuro- 
 pneumonia of the cows raged, the butchers said, that, 
 though the acute degree was novel, there never was a 
 time when this disease did not occur among cattle. 
 All men carry seeds of all distempers through life 
 latent, and we die without developing them ; such is 
 the affirmative force of the constitution ; but if you 
 are enfeebled by any cause, some of these sleeping 
 seeds start and open. Meantime at every stage we 
 lose a foe. At fifty years, 'tis said, afflicted citizens 
 lose their sick headaches. I hope this hegira is not as 
 movable a feast as that one I annually look for, when 
 the horticulturists assure me that the rosebugs in our 
 gardens disappear on the tenth of July ; they stay a 
 fortnight later in mine. But be it as it may with the 
 sick headache, — 'tis certain that graver headaches and 
 heart-aches are lulled once for all, as we come up with 
 certain goals of time. The passions have answered 
 their purpose : that slight but dread overweight, with 
 which, in each instance, Nature secures the execution 
 of her aim, drops off. To keep man in the planet, she 
 impresses the terror of death. To perfect the com- 
 missariat, she implants in each a certain rapacity to
 
 xii.] OLD AGE. 511 
 
 get the supply, and a little oversupply, of his Avants. 
 To ensure the existence of the race, she reinforces the 
 sexual instinct, at the risk of disorder, grief, and pain. 
 To secure strength, she plants cruel hunger and thirst, 
 which so easily overdo their office, and invite disease. 
 But these temporary stays and shifts for the protec- 
 tion of the young animal are shed as fast as they can 
 be replaced by nobler resources. We live in youth 
 amidst this rabble of passions, quite too tender, quite 
 too hungry and irritable. Later, the interiors of 
 mind and heart open, and supply grander motives. 
 We learn the fatal compensations that wait on every 
 act. Then — one after another — this riotous time- 
 destroying crew disappear. 
 
 I count it another capital advantage of Age, this, 
 that a success more or less signifies nothing. Little 
 by little, it has amassed such a fund of merit, that it 
 can very well afford to go on its credit when it will. 
 When I chanced to meet the poet Wordsworth, then 
 sixty-three years old, he told me "that he had just 
 had a fall and lost a tooth, and, when his companions 
 were much concerned for the mischance, he had re- 
 plied, that he was glad it had not happened forty 
 years before." Well, Nature takes care that we shall 
 not lose our organs forty years too soon. A lawyer 
 argued a cause yesterday in the Supreme Court, and 
 I was struck with a certain air of levity and defiance 
 which vastly became him. Thirty years ago it was a 
 serious concern to him whether his pleading was good 
 and effective. Now it is of importance to his client, 
 but of none to himself. It has been long already fixed
 
 512 OLD AGE. [xn. 
 
 what he can do and cannot do, and his reputation 
 does not gain or suffer from one or a dozen new per- 
 formances. If he should, on a new occasion, rise quite 
 beyond his mark, and achieve somewhat great and 
 extraordinary, that, of course, would instantly tell; 
 but he may go below his mark with impunity, and 
 people will say : " Oh, he had headache," or, " He lost 
 his sleep for two nights." What a lust of appearance, 
 what a load of anxieties that once degraded him, he 
 is thus rid of ! Every one is sensible of this cumula- 
 tive advantage in living. All the good days behind 
 him are sponsors, who speak for him when he is silent, 
 pay for him when he has no money, introduce him 
 where he has no letters, and work for him when he 
 sleeps. 
 
 A third felicity of age is, that it has found expres- 
 sion. The youth suffers not oidy from ungratified 
 desires, but from powers untried, and from a picture 
 in his mind of a career which has, as yet, no outward 
 reality. He is tormented with the want of corre- 
 spondence between things and thoughts. Michel 
 Angelo's head is full of masculine and gigantic figures 
 as gods walking, which make him savage until his 
 furious chisel can render them into marble ; and of 
 architectural dreams, until a hundred stone-masons 
 can lay them in courses of travertine. There is the 
 like tempest in every good head in which some great 
 benefit for the world is planted. The throes continue 
 until the child is born. Every faculty new to each 
 man thus goads him and drives him out into doleful 
 deserts, until it finds proper vent. All the functions
 
 xii.] OLD AGE. 513 
 
 of human duty irritate and lash him forward, be- 
 moaning and chiding, until they are performed. He 
 wants friends, employment, knowledge, power, house 
 and land, wife and children, honour and fame : he 
 has religious wants, aesthetic wants, domestic, civil, 
 humane wants. One by one, day after day, he learns 
 to coin his wishes into facts. He has his calling, 
 homestead, social connection, and personal power, and 
 thus, at the end of fifty years, his soul is appeased by 
 seeing some sort of correspondence between his wish 
 and his possession. This makes the value of Age, the 
 satisfaction it slowly offers to every craving. He is 
 serene who does not feel himself pinched and wronged, 
 but whose condition, in particular and in general, allows 
 the utterance of his mind. In old persons, when thus 
 fully expressed, we often observe a fair, plump, 
 perennial, waxen complexion, which indicates that all 
 the ferment of earlier days has subsided into serenity 
 of thought and behaviour. 
 
 The compensations of Nature play in Age as in 
 youth. In a world so charged and sparkling with 
 power, a man does not live long and actively without 
 costly additions of experience, which, though not 
 spoken, are recorded in his mind. What to the youth 
 is only a guess or a hope, is in the veteran a digested 
 statute. He beholds the feats of the juniors with 
 complacency, but as one who, having long ago known 
 these games, has refined them into results and morals. 
 The Indian Red Jacket, when the young braves were 
 boasting their deeds, said, "But the sixties have all 
 the twenties and forties in them." 
 
 vol. v. 2 L
 
 514 OLD AGE. [xii. 
 
 For a fourth benefit, Age sets its house in order, 
 and finishes its works, which to every artist is a 
 supreme pleasure. Youth has an excess of sensibility, 
 before which every object glitters and attracts. We 
 leave one pursuit for another, and the young man's 
 year is a heap of beginnings. At the end of a twelve- 
 month he has nothing to show for it, — not one com- 
 pleted work. But the time is not lost. Our instincts 
 drove us to hive innumerable experiences, that are 
 yet of no visible value, and which we may keep for 
 twice seven years before they shall be wanted. The 
 best things are of secular growth. The instinct of 
 classifying marks the wise and healthy mind. Lin- 
 naeus projects his system, and lays out his twenty-four 
 classes of plants, before yet he has found in Nature 
 a single plant to justify certain of his classes. His 
 seventh class has not one. In process of time, he 
 finds with delight the little white Trientalis, the only 
 plant with seven petals and sometimes seven stamens, 
 which constitutes a seventh class in conformity with 
 his system. The conchologist builds his cabinet whilst 
 as yet he has few shells. He labels shelves for classes, 
 cells for species : all but a few are empty. But every 
 year fills some blanks, and with accelerating speed as 
 he becomes knowing and known. An old scholar 
 finds keen delight in verifying the impressive anec- 
 dotes and citations he has met with in miscellaneous 
 reading and hearing, in all the years of youth. We 
 carry in memory important anecdotes, and have lost 
 all clue to the author from whom we had them. We 
 have a heroic speech from Eome or Greece, but can-
 
 XII.] OLD AGE. 515 
 
 not fix it on the man who said it. We have an 
 admirable line worthy of Horace, ever and anon re- 
 sounding in our mind's ear, but have searched all 
 probable and improbable books for it in vain. We 
 consult the reading men : but, strangely enough, they 
 who know everything know not this. But especially 
 we have a certain insulated thought, which haunts 
 us, but remains insulated and barren. Well, there is 
 nothing for all this but patience and time. Time, 
 yes, that is the finder, the unweariable explorer, not 
 subject to casualties, omniscient at last. The day 
 comes when the hidden author of our story is found ; 
 when the brave speech returns straight to the hero 
 who said it ; when the admirable verse finds the poet 
 to whom it belongs ; and best of all, when the lonely 
 thought, which seemed so wise, yet half -wise, half- 
 thought, because it cast no light abroad, is suddenly 
 matched in our mind by its twin, by its sequence, or 
 next related analogy, which gives it instantly radiat- 
 ing power, and justifies the superstitious instinct with 
 which we have hoarded it. We remember our old 
 Greek Professor at Cambridge, an ancient bachelor, 
 amid his folios, possessed by this hope of completing 
 a task, with nothing to break his leisure after the 
 three hours of his daily classes, yet ever restlessly 
 stroking his leg, and assuring himself " he should 
 retire from the University and read the authors." 
 In Goethe's Romance, Makaria, the central figure for 
 wisdom and influence, pleases herself with withdraw- 
 ing into solitude to astronomy and epistolary corre- 
 spondence. Goethe himself carried this completion of
 
 516 OLD AGE. [xii. 
 
 studies to the highest point. Many of his works 
 hung on the easel from youth to age, and received a 
 stroke in every month or year. A literary astrologer, 
 he never applied himself to any task but at the 
 happy moment when all the stars consented. Bentley 
 thought himself likely to live till fourscore, — long 
 enough to read everything that was worth reading, — 
 "Et tunc magna mei sub terris ibit imago." Much wider 
 is spread the pleasure which old men take in complet- 
 ing their secular affairs, the inventor his inventions, 
 the agriculturist his experiments, and all old men in 
 finishing their houses, rounding their estates, clearing 
 their titles, reducing tangled interests to order, recon- 
 ciling enmities, and leaving all in the best posture for 
 the future. It must be believed that there is a pro- 
 portion between the designs of a man and the length 
 of his life : there is a calendar of his years, so of his 
 performances. 
 
 America is the country of young men, and too full 
 of work hitherto for leisure and tranquillity ; yet we 
 have had robust centenarians, and examples of dignity 
 and wisdom. I have lately found in an old note-book 
 a record of a visit to ex -President John Adams, in 
 1825, soon after the election of his son to the Presi- 
 dency. It is but a sketch, and nothing important 
 passed in the conversation ; but it reports a moment 
 in the life of a heroic person, who, in extreme old age, 
 appeared still erect and worthy of his fame. 
 
 , Feb., 1825. To-day, at Quincy, with 
 
 my brother, by invitation of Mr. Adams's family. The
 
 xii.] OLD AGE. 517 
 
 old President sat in a large stuffed arm-chair, dressed 
 in a blue coat, black small-clothes, white stockings; 
 a cotton cap covered his bald head. We made our 
 compliment, told him he must let us join our con- 
 gratulations to those of the nation on the happiness 
 of his house. He tlmnked us, and said : " I am re- 
 joiced, because the nation is happy. The time of 
 gratulation and congratulations is nearly over with 
 me : I am astonished that I have lived to see and 
 know of this event. I have lived now nearly a cen- 
 tury [he was ninety in the following October] ; a 
 long, harassed, and distracted life." I said : " The 
 world thinks a good deal of joy has been mixed with 
 it." — "The world does not know," he replied, "how 
 much toil, anxiety, and sorrow I have suffered." I 
 asked if Mr. Adams's letter of acceptance had been 
 read to him. "Yes," he said, and added: "My son 
 has more political prudence than any man that I 
 know who has existed in my time ; he never was put 
 off his guard : and I hope he will continue such ; but 
 what effect age may work in diminishing the power 
 of his mind, I do not know ; it has been very much 
 on the stretch, ever since he was born. He has 
 always been laborious, child and man, from infancy." 
 When Mr. J. Q. Adams's age was mentioned, he 
 said : " He is now fifty-eight, or will be in July j" and 
 remarked that " all the Presidents were of the same 
 age : General Washington was about fifty-eight, and 
 I was about fifty-eight, and Mr. Jefferson, and Mr. 
 Madison, and Mr. Monroe." We inquired when he 
 expected to see Mr. Adams. He said : " Never : Mr.
 
 518 OLD AGE. [xn. 
 
 Adams will not come to Quincy but to my funeral. 
 It would be a great satisfaction to me to see him, but 
 I don't wish him to come on my account." He spoke 
 of Mr. Lechmere, whom he "well remembered to 
 have seen come down daily, at a great age, to walk 
 in the old town-house," adding; "And I wish I could 
 walk as well as he did. He was Collector of the 
 Customs for many years under the Royal Govern- 
 ment." E. said : "I suppose, sir, you would not have 
 taken his place, even to walk as well as he." — " No," 
 he replied, "that was not what I wanted." He 
 talked of Whitefield, and "remembered when he was 
 a Freshman in College, to have come into town to 
 the Old South church [I think] to hear him, but could 
 not get into the house; — I, however, saw him," he 
 said, "through a window, and distinctly heard all. 
 He had a voice such as I never heard before or since. 
 He cast it out so that you might hear it at the meet- 
 ing-house [pointing towards the Quincy meeting- 
 house], and he had the grace of a dancing-master, of 
 an actor of plays. His voice and manner helped 
 him more than his sermons. I went with Jonathan 
 Sewall." — "And you were pleased with him, sir 1 ?" — 
 " Pleased ! I was delighted beyond measure." We 
 asked if at Whitefield's return the same popularity 
 continued. " Not the same fury," he said, " not the 
 same wild enthusiasm as before, but a greater esteem, 
 as he became more known. He did not terrify, but 
 was admired." 
 
 We spent about an hour in his room. He speaks 
 very distinctly for so old a man, enters bravely into
 
 xii.] OLD AGE. 519 
 
 long sentences, which are interrupted by want of 
 breath, but carries them invariably to a conclusion, 
 without correcting a word. 
 
 He spoke of the new novels of Cooper, and " Peep 
 at the Pilgrims," and "Saratoga," with praise, and 
 named with accuracy the characters in them. He 
 likes to have a person always reading to him, or com- 
 pany talking in his room, and is better the next day 
 after having visitors in his chamber from morning to 
 night. 
 
 He received a premature report of his son's elec- 
 tion, on Sunday afternoon, without any excitement, 
 and told the reporter he had been hoaxed, for it was 
 not yet time for any news to arrive. The informer, 
 something damped in his heart, insisted on repairing 
 to the meeting-house, and proclaimed it aloud to the 
 congregation, who were so overjoyed that they rose 
 in their seats and cheered thrice. The Reverend Mr. 
 Whitney dismissed them immediately. 
 
 When life has been well spent, age is a loss of 
 what it can well spare, — muscular strength, organic 
 instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. 
 But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is 
 young in fourscore years, and, dropping off obstruc- 
 tions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and 
 wise. I have heard that whoever loves is in no con- 
 dition old. I have heard, that, whenever the name 
 of man is spoken, the doctrine of immortality is 
 announced ; it cleaves to his constitution. The mode 
 of it baffles our wit, and no whisper comes to us from
 
 520 OLD AGE. [xii. 
 
 the other side. But the inference from the working 
 of intellect, hiving knowledge, hiving skill, — at the 
 end of life just ready to be born, — affirms the inspira- 
 tions of affection and of the moral sentiment. 
 
 END OF VOL. V. 
 
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