rTirPTTTi PO A TU"T\ L OO A T7"O 
 
 jECTURES AND jSSAYS, 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. W. J. SCOTT, 
 
 OF THE NORTH GEORGIA CONFERENCE. 
 
 C'OPYRIGHT SECURED. 
 
 CONSTITUTION PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 ATLANTA, GA. 
 
INSCRIBED TO 
 
 EDNA, WILLIE, WALTER, ALICE. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 A few explanatory statements will suffice for a Proem 
 to this small volume. In its preparation I have sought 
 to utilize some of my literary work which has already 
 received the recognition of "print and pay" in the South- 
 ern Methodist Quarterly Review, under the distinguished 
 editorship of Dr. W. P. Harrison, who is in some direc- 
 tions the rpost scholarly man of his church. Other mate- 
 rial has been gathered from my contributions to the 
 columns of standard literary and religious magazines and 
 journals. A very considerable part of it, however, is now 
 published for the first time. I am greatly indebted to the 
 appreciation of many personal friends who will take the 
 larger part of the present edition. I wish also to tender my 
 acknowledgments to Mrs. Mary Lanier, of Baltimore, 
 and Charles Scribner's Sons, of New York, for the per- 
 mission granted me to append to my .first lecture some of 
 the choicest poems of the lamented Sidney Lanier. My 
 readers, I am sure, will also appreciate their kindness. 
 
 W. J. SCOTT. 
 
 Atlanta, Ga. 
 
LECTURES. 
 
SIDNEY LANIER THE POET, 
 
 It was my good fortune to enjoy the personal acquaint- 
 ance of 'this illustrious poet. That acquaintance was 
 limited, however, to a few brief interviews, which were 
 quite informal and wholly unpremeditated. I can hardly 
 say that he sought my acquaintance, and I am sure that 
 I did not seek his ; for as yet I was ignorant of his 
 literary antecedents, and I doubt if he himself had so 
 much as dreamed of his own literary possibilities. 
 
 After the lapse of so many eventful years I can not 
 be exact as to the date of our first interview ; but I have 
 a clear impression that it was in the early summer of 
 1867, at Montgomery Hall, in the capital city of Ala- 
 bama. Having entered the hotel not without the 
 proverbial welcome of "mine host" I wrote my name 
 and residence on the register and took my seat in the 
 rotunda for a slight rest and recuperation. It was but 
 a little while until I was approached by a pleasant-faced 
 young gentleman who quietly asked if I was the editor 
 of Scoffs Magazine I replied affirmatively, whereupon 
 he was kind enough to say that he had read the Maga- 
 zine, and liked it In answer to an inquiry he informed 
 me that he was a native of Macon, Ga. , a son of Robert 
 S. Lanier, Esq., and grandson of Sterling Lanier, two 
 excellent citizens of that central city. Learning that I 
 
8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 had met both his father and grand-father, our relation 
 as landlord and guest became more pleasant and even 
 somewhat confidential. He presently stated that he 
 was a graduate of Oglethorpe University, and after his 
 graduation served two years as tutor in the same insti- 
 tution, which at the time boasted of an able Faculty. 
 Amongst them was President Samuel K. Talmage, a 
 near kinsman of Dr. De Witt Talmage, of Brooklyn, 
 N. Y. Another member of the Faculty was Prof. 
 James Woodrow, since eminent for scientific attain- 
 ments, to whom Mr. Lanier afterward acknowledged 
 his indebtedness for much valuable aid in the way of 
 mental stimulus and inspiration. 
 
 Like thousands of our most cultured young men, he 
 responded promptly to the call of the South at the 
 beginning of the war between the States. He served 
 in the ranks for more than two years, enjoying an occa- 
 sional whiff of "villainous saltpeter" and was then 
 transferred to the Signal Service Corps. While in this 
 department he was captured on a blockade-runner, and 
 for some months was straitly imprisoned at Point Look- 
 out. Shortly before the close of the war he was released 
 or exchanged, and from that time until I met him at 
 Montgomery he had bravely battled with adverse for- 
 tune. During this first conversation he also stated that 
 he was an occasional writer of prose and verse, and then 
 had in press a war novel with the quaint title of " Tiger 
 Lilies." I confess that I was charmed not more by the 
 evidences of his varied accomplishments than by the 
 frankness of his whole personal bearing, and expressed 
 
SIDNEV LANIER THE POET. 9 
 
 my willingness to secure a contribution for Scott 1 s Maga- 
 zine. 
 
 On the next day, before leaving the city, I accom- 
 panied him to the third floor of the hotel, and, unlocking 
 his trunk, he submitted to me a number of manuscripts 
 among them a prose article entitled 4< Three Water- 
 falls," which struck me as being a masterpiece of wit 
 and humor. It was shortly afterward published in Scot? s 
 Magazine, and will, I learn, be reproduced in a forth- 
 coming edition of his writings. I am quite sure it will 
 be considered by the better class of readers as one of 
 the finest specimens ot classical punning within the 
 range of American literature. 
 
 Beyond these brief in;erviews I had no personal 
 knowledge of Lanier, except such as was obtained by 
 occasional correspondence and the frequent reading of his 
 contributions to the press. Looking back to our first 
 interview, I am less impressed by the weary stretch of 
 intervening years than by the immense moral distance 
 between the literary status of the Sidney Lanier of that 
 day, then alike " unknown to fortune and to fame," and 
 the Sidney Lanier whose bust was installed a few months 
 ago in the library room of the Johns Hopkins University 
 amid the loud acclaim of hundreds of the warm admirers 
 of his phenomenal genius. 
 
 Owing to a singular perverseness of mankind, most 
 men must needs die to be appreciated. History, and 
 especially literary biography, is replete with illustrations 
 of this truth. The legendary story of Apollo is in point. 
 It is related of him that while upon earth he kept the 
 
IO LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 flocks of Admetus, but being thereafter translated 
 to the skies, became the god ot the fine arts, and 
 guided the chariot of the sun along its zodiac way 
 through the illimitable heavens. With greater histori- 
 cal accuracy is it said that 
 
 Nine cities claimed the mighty Homer dead, 
 Through which the living Homer begged his bread. 
 
 Johnson, in his " Lives of the Poets," tells us that 
 Thomas Otway often went supperless to his lodgings in 
 a garret, and one hundred years thereafter William Haz- 
 litt, the best of dramatic critics, pronounced his "Venice 
 Preserved " the most classical English tragedy since the 
 Elizabethan age. 
 
 The world knows by heart the story of Robert Burns. 
 This "foremost Briton of the eighteenth century" was 
 incontinently snubbed by the provincial gentry of Dum- 
 fries. The Government itself provided no better reward 
 for his services to humanity than the place of an excise- 
 man, with a beggarly stipend of forty pounds sterling 
 per annum But the descendants of the Dumfries gentry 
 have erected a mausoleum within bow-shot of the cot- 
 tage where he died in abject penury. Sidney Lanier 
 himself did not escape the "slings and arrows of out- 
 rageous fortune" in the shape of contemporary criticism, 
 which he heartily despised, and doubtless suffered at 
 times from "the proud man's contumely" and the 
 traditional dullness of pig-headed editors and reviewers. 
 For years, at least, he prosecuted his literary work under 
 the pressure of disease and in the face of discourage- 
 
SIDNEY LANIER THE POET. I I 
 
 ments that would have shaken the constancy of any 
 soul less heroic in its aims and impulses. Still, in less 
 than a single decade from his death, his appreciative 
 countrymen project a fifteen thousand dollar monument 
 as his fitting memorial. 
 
 To this present generation, not less than to the Jews 
 of Christ's own day, may be properly addressed the 
 words of the great Teacher: " Your fathers stoned the 
 prophets, and ye build their sepulchers." 
 
 Mr. Lanier was exceedingly fortunate in his ances- 
 try. While I am a Democrat, both in my social instincts 
 and in my political affinities, I am nevertheless a believer 
 in blood, and in blood of the bluest possible tint. Lanier 
 was not born in the purple, nor was he next of kin to 
 the English Howards ; but he had in his ethnical make- 
 up that Huguenotic strain which has been the basis of 
 much of our modern civilization in both hemispheres. 
 When Louis XIV signed his revocation of the edict of 
 Nantes he depopulated several of the fairest provinces 
 of France, and sent tens of thousands of skilled artisans 
 and their families to England, Switzerland, and the Low 
 Countries. The date of that imperial blunder was the 
 day-dawn of English manufactures in the finer silk and 
 woolen fabrics. Along with these sturdy craftsmen 
 there were many refugees of better rank and fortune, 
 not only the co-religionists of Coligny and Conde', but 
 their kinsmen by birth or marriage. 
 
 At the time of the arrival of these French Protestants, 
 England, partly because of the general demoralization 
 consequent on the Commonwealth wars, but chiefly for 
 
12 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 lack of industrial development and' enterprise, had rela- 
 tively declined in national distinction. As a military 
 power she was neither feared nor highly respected on 
 the Continent. Her neighbors across the channel out 
 stripped her in commercial progress, and her ancient 
 ally, Portugal, surpassed her in maritime discovery. The 
 memories of Crecy and Agincourt had waxed dim, 
 and Blenheim and Malplaquet awaited the coming of 
 Eugene and Marlborough to give them historic immor- 
 tality. 
 
 As already intimated, the arrival of these French 
 Protestants was followed by results that enabled William 
 III to dictate the peace of Ryswick, and not many 
 years thereafter constituted England the workshop of 
 the nations and the mistress of the seas. Amongst these 
 Huguenots were the ancestors of Mr. Lanier. These 
 ancestors were greatly distinguished for their musical 
 endowments. In that capacity they were connected 
 with the court during several generations. Mr. Lanier 
 inherited in a large measure these gifts, and they stood 
 him in good stead before he had obtained any wide 
 recognition as an author. Because of his marvelous 
 accomplishments as first flute in the Peabody Symphony 
 Concerts he secured the friendship and patronage of 
 Bayard Taylor, the poet and traveler. Under the 
 auspices of this steadfast friend he gained admittance to 
 the best literary circles, and afterward was selected to 
 write the ode for the Centennial Cantata at Philadelphia 
 in 1876 From this time his literary success was assured. 
 Besides his remunerative position as lecturer at the Johns 
 
SIDNEY LANIER THE POET. 13 
 
 Hopkins University *he was frequently solicited to do 
 special work by leading publishers in New York and 
 Boston. 
 
 It is in order now to discontinue these biographical 
 details and to attempt some just characterization of him 
 as a poet. To do this intelligently we must have some- 
 what to say of his equipment for his chosen life work. 
 He was, beyond most of our distinguished English or 
 American poets, a man of multifarious learning. Nor 
 were these varied attainments in the least superficial, 
 but as thorough as they were comprehensive. His classi- 
 cal training was rarely equaled in any age or country. 
 A classmate of his at Oglethorpe University informed 
 me that while yet an under-graduate he wrote Greek 
 and Latin with more facility than the average collegian 
 could prepare the customary Greek and Latin exercises. 
 To this knowledge of the classical tongues he subse- 
 quently added an intimate knowledge of German, French, 
 and Spanish. Some of his best early literary work con 
 sisted of admirable translations from standard German 
 poetry. His acquirements in Anglo-Saxon literature 
 were so well known that the Scribners employed him to 
 edit their "King Arthur" series of histories for boys. 
 
 With the better class of English fiction, beginning 
 with Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett, down to 
 Thackeray and George Eliot, he exhibits a critical 
 knowledge that will make his work on "The English 
 Novel and the Principle of Its Development" a perma- 
 nent contribution to our standard literature. Indeed, 
 the reader of his poems will be struck as much by the 
 
14 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 affluence of his learning as by th'e exuberance of his 
 fancy or the majestic sweep of his Miltonic imagination. 
 Nor is it exaggeration to say that both in his prose and 
 poetical writings we find frequent proofs of the fact that 
 he ranged at large and at will through all the fields of 
 human investigation. 
 
 Another element of his professional outfit was his 
 mastery of the laws of English versification. In this 
 matter his musical culture was exceedingly helpful to 
 him, because of the close relationship that exists between 
 the sister arts of music and poetry. In his masterly trea- 
 tise on "The Science of English Verse" (which he wrote 
 in an incredibly short space of time) we find the whole 
 matter of English prosody brought within the domain 
 of applied science. Barring a deal of rigmarole about 
 iambuses, spondees, and dactyls, that science, "falsely so 
 called," was in a chaotic condition. Hitherto, as Lanier 
 claimed, criticism was without "a scientific basis for its 
 most elementary judgments " Had he lived to riper 
 years, he would have consummated a beneficial revolu- 
 tion in the art of verse-making. Even as the matter 
 was left by him he has contributed vastly to our former 
 fund of information, and we may confidently expect a 
 marked advancement in the technique of the poetry of the 
 future. His own inimitable versification in such poems 
 as the " Marshes of Glynn " furnish admirable exempli- 
 fications of his teachings. Having disposed of this pre- 
 liminary matter of equipment, we come now to speak 
 of the distinctive excellences of his poetry. Not the 
 least striking of these distinctive excellences was his 
 
SIDNEY LANIER THE POET. 15 
 
 versatility. The bulk of his published poetry is not 
 large, but his wide gamut suggests the ever-shifting 
 melodies of the full throated mocking-bird, whom he has 
 so aply styled the " trim Shakespeare of the tree." 
 
 Mr. Lanier says of Tennyson, for whom he had a 
 more enthusiastic than discriminative appreciation, that 
 he was "wanting in some register of wit." That is 
 true of ihe amiable British laureate, as his writings 
 abundantly testify. There is no rollicking humor, no 
 nimble flashes of wit, no genial interplay of emotion or 
 expression, reminding us of Pope's oft quoted line : 
 
 From grave to gay, from lively to severe. 
 
 Tennyson might have written an Iliad, but by no possi- 
 bility could he have produced a " Rape of the Lock " 
 In the many-sided Shakespeare what marvelous fecun- 
 dity of creation as well as sentiment ! Richard the 
 hunch-back tyrant, and Sir John Falstaff, that travesty 
 on knighthood ; Coriolanus, with his hearty patrician 
 disdain of the populace, and Marc Antony, whose 
 witchery of appeal charmed and captured the same 
 babbling Demos of the forum. So likewise the melan- 
 choly Dane, wrestling with the problem, "is life worth 
 living?" and the fiery Hotspur venting his spleen on 
 the lordly popinjay who prated glibly of <4 parmaceti," 
 as " the sovereignest remedy for an inward bruise." In 
 these two examples we perceive the difference between 
 what Goethe, we believe, calls "one-sided" and "all- 
 sided culture." Shakespeare was akin to all mankind. 
 Tennyson, whether he wrote a welcome to Alexandro- 
 
1 6 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 vina or the touching story of Enoch Arden, was alike 
 deficient in English humor and in French wit. His 
 genius was provincial, rather than cosmopolitan. From 
 aught that he has written we should never suspect that 
 he was a compatriot of Lawrence Sterne, who invented 
 Corporal Trim, and still less that he belonged to the 
 same race with Rabelais, who related the adventures of 
 Pantagruel. On the other hand, Sidney Lanier touched 
 every chord of human sentiment. Contrast the light- 
 lilting "Song of the Chattahoochee " with the dialect 
 poem "The Power of Prayer," the joint production of 
 himself and his brother Clifford. Place side by side his 
 "Psalm of the West" and his ingeniously-wrought tale 
 of the "Jacquerie," and you perceive the utter absence 
 of humdrum, or even the slightest trace of offensive 
 mannerism. 
 
 But perhaps the most salient point of Lanier's poetry 
 is its lofty idealism. He was neither insensible nor 
 indifferent to the morbid tendency of the age to material- 
 ism in philosophy, and realism in art and literature. 
 Especially did he condemn the Byronic craze that in 
 one form or another has tainted English poetry since 
 the memorable morning that the Lord of Newstead 
 Abbey waked to find his name and fame the club-talk 
 of London from Wapping to Westminister. He had 
 little patience with the pessimistic platitudes of Festus 
 Bailey and even a more pronounced dislike for the sen- 
 sualism of Swinburne and his followers, with their 
 prurient fancies and erotic rhymings. Against this 
 school rightly named Satanic his whole soul revolted 
 
SIDNEY LANIER THE POET I/ 
 
 with infinite loathing and disgust. He thought of these 
 bards as did Carlyle of certain German playwrights : 
 that their writings were largely a nauseous mixture of 
 "bawdry and blasphemy." His criticism of such men 
 as \Valter Whitman and William Morris may have an 
 air of harshness, but it is in keeping with his whole 
 theory of art, whether in poetry, painting, or sculpture. 
 That theory he embodies in the terse statement that 
 moral beauty and artistic beauty are best represented 
 by convergent lines that meet at a common point, which 
 is ideal beauty. This is further shown in his employ- 
 ment of the phrases, "holiness of beauty" and "beauty 
 of holiness," as correlative and complementary With 
 striking emphasis, likewise, does he admonish the 
 students of Johns Hopkins University that they may 
 ' ' abandon the hope that the ages will accept them as 
 artists" unless "they are suffused with truth, goodness, 
 wisdom, and love." He yet further charges them that 
 a high moral purpose must dominate them, whether 
 they work "in stone, in colors, or in character-forms of 
 the novel." 
 
 To refer again to Byron, we may justly say that the 
 lack of this " moral purpose " and of the spirit of moral 
 goodness was the bane and blight oi his writings, and 
 lost him that immortality which by intellectual endow- 
 ment he was eminently fitted to achieve. It was the 
 presence and inspiration of this enthusiastic love of 
 moral beauty that gave to Lanier his grandest succes- 
 ses. In reference to this trait of Lanier's character and 
 genius we borrow the annexed paragraph from William 
 
1 8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 Hayes Ward, to whose excellent memorial sketch we 
 are indebted for both valuable facts and suggestions in 
 the preparation of this review. Mr. Ward says: " It 
 was this constant ' San Greal ' quest after the lofty in 
 character and aim which made him worthy of fellowship 
 with Milton and Ruskin, and which puts him in sharpest 
 contrast with the school led by Swinburne a school 
 whose reed has a short gamut, and plays but two notes : 
 Mars and Eros, hopeless death and lawless love. " 
 
 But we propose now to furnish some illustrations of 
 the idealistic trend of Lanier's muse. Wadsworth's 
 " Peter Bell " was so intently realistic that 
 
 A primrose by a river's brim 
 A yellow primrose was to him, 
 And nothing more. 
 
 The tribe of Peter Bell is not extinct, but rather on the 
 increase, in this matter-of-fact age. On the contrary, 
 Sidney Lanier cast the glamour of his marvelous fancy 
 over the common incidents of every-day life, and they 
 became lustrous with supernal beauty. Indeed, things 
 great and small are only so relatively. Trees have 
 tongues witness the ' 'Talking Oak" of Tennyson 
 and Lanier is reported to have said that the footstalk of 
 a violet was to him a Jacob's ladder reaching to the 
 gates of Heaven. Let us illustrate this thought by a 
 single familiar instance. Thousands of people who 
 resided in the South Atlantic States during the recon- 
 struction period will recall the scarcity of grain. This 
 was especially true of Middle Georgia. That section 
 
SIDNEY LANIER THE POET. 19 
 
 had been harried by Yankee troopers, and utterly devas- 
 tated during Sherman's historical "march to the sea. 7 ' 
 The farmers, after the downfall of the Confederacy, were 
 sorely straitened for food-supplies, and even for seed- 
 corn. The high price of cotton stimulated its produc- 
 tion, and materially lessened the acreage devoted to 
 breadstuffs. This policy very soon brought the agri- 
 cultural class to the verge of bankruptcy. It was with 
 reference to this pitiable condition of things, greatly 
 aggravated by the tumble of the cotton market, that 
 Mr. Lanier, while sojourning at Sunny Side, a small 
 railway station below Atlanta, wrote his remarkable 
 poem entitled " Corn " for Lippincot? s Magazine. There 
 seemed little in the theme which allowed of poetic treat- 
 ment, but he touched it with the wand of Prospero, and 
 straightway it was transfigured. By the magic of genius 
 the tasseled corn-row became a thing of exquisite beawty. 
 This poem was widely copied and greatly admired in all 
 sections of the Union. While all of it is admirable, 
 perhaps the part that best illustrates the idealistic faculty 
 of the poet is his apostrophe to the Old Red Hills of 
 Georgia. This apostrophe follows what he has to say 
 of the unthrifty farmer, whom he describes as 
 
 Sailing in borrowed ships of usury 
 A foolish Jason on a treacherous sea, 
 Seeking the fleece and finding misery. 
 
 And now comes the apostrophe : 
 
 Old Hill, Old Hill ! thou gashed and hoary Lear 
 Whom the divine Cordelia of the year, 
 
2O LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 E'en pitying Spring will vainly strive to cheer ; 
 
 King whom no subject man nor beast will own, 
 
 Discrowned, undaughtered, and alone ; 
 
 Yet shall the great God turn thy fate 
 
 And bring thee back into thy monarch state 
 
 And majesty immaculate. 
 
 How vividly does this bring to mind that midnight 
 storm upon the blasted heath, when Lear, a poor, weak, 
 despised old man, betrayed by his unnatural daughters, 
 Regan and Goneril, challenged the thunder to do its 
 utmost rumble its bellyful and talks in a weird way 
 to the zigzag lightning, and says most piteously to these 
 warring elements: " You are not my daughters. I tax 
 you not with unkindness. I never gave you my king- 
 dom ; you owe me no subscription." 
 
 But this lofty idealism is still more conspicuous in the 
 " Marshes of Glynn " This poem was designed to con- 
 sist of six hymns, yet was left incomplete. Some of it, 
 which was published, was written when he was so 
 enfeebled by disease that he could with extreme diffi- 
 culty lift his food to his mouth. There would seem to 
 be as little poetic inspiration in the salt-marshes of Glynn 
 as in the desert sands of Barca. The stunted vegetation 
 is chiefly of cypress-knees and saw palmettoes. The 
 filthy lagoons are the habitat of slimy serpents and 
 unsightly saurians, and besides, the nursery of noxious 
 insects. And yet Lake Como,* as pictured by Claude 
 Melnotte to the trustful Pauline, was not so ravishingly 
 beautiful when the tide was in its noon 
 
SIDNEY LANIER THE POET. 21 
 
 As the length and the breadth and the sweep of the 
 
 marshes of Glynn, 
 
 Stretching leisurely off in a pleasant plain 
 To the terminal blue of the main. 
 
 We can not, however, within our allotted space, 
 enlarge on this particular poem. The idealism of Lanier's 
 poetry is after all best exemplified in ' 4 The Symphony, " 
 the grandest production of his genius, not likely to be 
 fully appreciated for some years to come, but which of 
 itself constitutes him the poet of a better time coming. 
 In "an age of calculators and economists" and we 
 may add of philosophisms and philanthropisms when 
 truth and virtue and righteousness are tested by the 
 touch-stone of the five senses, we may not look for such 
 subtle and transcendental philosophy to receive its just 
 recompense, either in " pudding or praise." But if in 
 the upward march of the higher civilization there should 
 come a resurrection day for the dead chivalries and 
 sanctities that hallowed Calvary and flamed on Sinai, 
 and indeed that have found fitting expression in lowlier 
 lives and humbler ways, then this wonderful poem, will 
 find fit audience and wide acceptance. 
 
 Neither in Alexander Pope's "Ode for St. Cecilia's 
 Day " nor in the " Alexander's Feast '' of John Dryden 
 is there such a tribute to music in its higher departments 
 as Richard Wagner interpreted it in his best scores. 
 There are indeed single passages in the " Symphony" 
 that might suffice to make a poet's reputation. 
 
 It remains to be said that the poetry of Sidney Lanier 
 
22 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 is not only idealistic, but likewise ethical, and even 
 notably Christian in its tone and expression. 
 
 All those grand old bards, w'hose epic songs vibrate 
 through the ages, had, like Ezekiel or Isaiah, the vales 
 gift, albeit in a smaller measure. Blind Homer, when 
 he wrote the tale of Troy divine, or when he recounted 
 the adventures of the wide-wandering Ulysses, saw God 
 and his providence in things both great and small. It 
 was wise and fitting that he should begin the Iliad with 
 a reverent invocation of the heavenly goddess. So Vir- 
 gil, in his less-impassioned recital of the warfaring and 
 wayfaring of the pious yEneas, was not forgetful of the 
 eternal verities.- Nor was Dante, when in exile and 
 want he sung his Divina Commedia, less conscious of 
 his high mission than was the exile of Patmos when he 
 saw the Apocalypse. In him it has been well said, 
 "Ten silent centuries " found a voice whose echoes still 
 abide. So too of Milton, " fallen on evil days and evil 
 tongues. " His was no ' ' middle flight " when he spoke 
 "of man's first disobedience,' 7 and when, later in life, 
 infirm and blind, he sung of " Paradise Regained. " 
 
 \Ve claim that Sidney Lanier had this vates faculty in 
 no small degree. Mr. Ward, his memorialist, fails to 
 clearly recognize this religious element in his poetry. 
 We think this constitutes his greatest merit. Nor was 
 it due chiefly, as has been suggested, to his early Cal- 
 vinistic training, but quite as much to his fine brain-tissue 
 and his exquisite nervous organism. We grant that in 
 his poem of "Remonstrance" he records a vigorous 
 protest against mere ecclesiasticism. But this, properly 
 
SIDNEY LANIER THE POET. 23 
 
 understood, is simply a nineteenth-century echo of the 
 " Woe unto you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites !" which 
 fell from the lips of Him -who spake as man never spake, 
 and who on occasion spoke as one having authority. It 
 was in this Christly spirit that Sidney Lanier spurned 
 the narrow limitations of merely human creeds, and 
 challenged for the soul that larger liberty which is its 
 birthright by virtue of redemption. Elsewhere we 
 ought to say everywhere he champions the essential 
 truths of Christianity. In "The Crystal " this is strik- 
 ingly true. He says of Socrates, Buddha, Aurelius, 
 Epictetus, and their kindred spirits, that they, one and 
 all, were marred by ' ' some heinous freckle of the flesh," 
 or it might be some " little mole " that marks and seals 
 their kinship to mankind. But of the blessed Christ he 
 speaks on this wise : 
 
 But thee, but thee, O sovereign seer of time 
 
 But thee, O poet's poet, wisdom's tongue ; 
 
 But thee, O man's best man, O love's best love ; 
 
 O perfect life in perfect labor writ; 
 
 O all men's comrade, servant, king, or priest : 
 
 What if, or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, 
 
 What least defect or shadow of defect, 
 
 What rumor tattled by an enemy, 
 
 Of inference loose, what lack of grace, 
 
 Even in torture's grasp or sleep's or death's 
 
 O what amiss may I forgive in thee, 
 
 Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ! 
 
 Similar utterances may be found in any of his larger 
 poems, even when picked up at random, and clearly 
 
24 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 warrant the conclusion that he was in no dubious sense 
 a Christian bard. 
 
 It has already been intimated that for several years 
 he had been a sufferer from chronic invalidism. Such, 
 however, was his devotion to duty, and such his faculty 
 of endurance, that he wrought at his literary tasks with 
 only occasional intermissions. At intervals he tried 
 alternately the soft climate of the Florida flats and then 
 the more bracing atmosphere of Central Pennsylvania. 
 As the end drew near he resolved to test life in the 
 mountainous district of Western North Carolina. But 
 neither change of scene nor climate afforded more than 
 temporary relief. In all these years of pain and weari- 
 ness he had the loving ministrations of a wife ever fond 
 and ever faithful. In September, 1881, the supreme 
 moment came when, as his wife touchingly writes, 
 "that unfaltering will rendered its submission to the 
 adored will of God." Reckoned "by figures on a dial's 
 face " his years were few, but measured by the far-reach- 
 ing results of his lifework they were like the stars for 
 multitude. 
 
 He died at an age when Wordsworth had not written 
 his " Excursion,'' nor Tennyson his "In Memoriam." 
 What else he might have accomplished is matter of con- 
 jecture, but he did enough to be enrolled, as Mr. Ward 
 has said, amongst " the princes of song." 
 
 We are not advised of the scenes of his death-cham- 
 ber, nor indeed is it always wise to unveil these sacred 
 things to the world's "broad-unwinking eyes." His 
 brother poet, Henry Timrod, expressed a common 
 
SIDNEY LANIER THE POET. 25 
 
 sentiment when his wife, looking into his face, tenderly 
 said: ''Husband, dear, you will soon be at rest." 
 " Yes," responded the dying poet, "but, darling, love 
 is stronger than rest. " 
 
 A few months ago I read some beautiful lines addressed 
 "To Sidney Lanier, on the Paradise Side of the River 
 of Death." They were written by a Northern lady of 
 merited distinction. Without any purpose to theolo- 
 gize or even to moralize unduly, I beg to express the 
 conviction that the artistic development of Sidney 
 Lanier, which was momentarily arrested by the stroke 
 of death, has been renewed under serener skies in the 
 " life elysian." It may be that he has already reached 
 that stage of " quiet and eternal frenzy " where he has 
 an open vision of the blended "beauty of holiness and 
 holiness of beauty" which he ever esteemed the con- 
 summation of the poetic art and the climax of all high 
 literary excellence. 
 
26 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE 
 
 Out of the hills of Habersham, 
 
 Down the valleys of Hall, 
 I hurry amain to reach the plain, 
 Run the rapid and leap the fall, 
 Split at the rock and together again, 
 Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, 
 And flee from folly on every side, 
 With a lover's pain to attain the plain 
 
 Far from the hills of Habersham, 
 
 Far from the valleys of Hall. 
 
 All down the hills of Habersham, 
 
 All through the valleys of Hall, 
 The rushes cried Abide, abide, 
 The willful waterweeds held me thrall, 
 The laving laurel turned my tide, 
 The ferns and the fondling grass said Stay 
 The dewberry dipped for to work delay, 
 And the little reeds sighed Abide, abide, 
 
 Here in the hills of Habersham, 
 
 Here in the valleys of Hall. 
 
 High o'er the hills of Habersham, 
 Veiling the valleys of Hall, 
 The hickory told me manifold 
 Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall 
 Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, 
 
SIDNEY LANIER THE POET. 2/ 
 
 The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine, 
 Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign, 
 Said, Pass not, so cold, these manifold 
 
 Deep shades of the hills of Habersham, 
 
 These glades in the valleys of Hall. 
 
 And oft in the hills of Habersham, 
 
 And oft in the valleys of Hall, 
 
 The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone 
 Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl, 
 And many a luminous jewel lone 
 Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist, 
 Ruby, garnet and amethyst 
 Made lures with the lights of streaming stone 
 
 In the clefts of the hills of Habersham, 
 
 In the beds of the valleys of Hall. 
 
 But oh, not the hills of Habersham, 
 
 And oh, not the valleys of Hall 
 Avail : I am fain for to water the plain. 
 Downward the voices of Duty call 
 Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main, 
 The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, 
 And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, 
 And the lordly main from beyond the plain 
 
 Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, 
 
 Calls through the valleys of Hall. 
 
28 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 THE MOCKING BIRD. 
 
 Superb and sole, upon a plumed spray 
 
 That o'er the general leafage boldly grew, 
 
 He summ'd the woods in song ; or typic drew 
 
 The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay 
 
 Of languid doves when long their lovers stray, 
 
 And all birds' passion-plays that sprinkle dew 
 
 At morn in brake or bosky avenue. 
 
 What e'er birds did or dreamed, this bird could say. 
 
 Then down he shot, bounced airily along 
 
 The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song 
 
 Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again. 
 
 Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain : 
 
 How may the death of that dull insect be 
 
 The life of yon trim Shakespere on the tree? 
 
 THAR'S MORE IN THE MAN THAN THAR is IN THE LAND, 
 
 I knowed a man, which he lived in Jones, 
 Which Jones is a county of red hills and stones, 
 And he lived pretty much by gittin' of loans. 
 And his mules was nuthin' but skin and bones, 
 And his hogs was flat as his corn-bread pones, 
 And he had 'bout a thousand acres o' land. 
 
 This man which his name it was also Jones 
 
 He swore that he'd leave them old red hills and stones, 
 
 Fur he couldn't make nuthin' but yallerish cotton, 
 
SIDNEY LANIER THE POET. 2Q 
 
 And little o' that, and his fences was rotten, 
 And what little corn he had, hit was boughten 
 And dinged ef a livin' was in the land. 
 
 And the longer he swore the madder he got, 
 And he riz and he walked to the stable lot, 
 And he hollered to Tom to come thar and hitch 
 Fur to emigrate somewhar whar land was rich, 
 And to quit raisin' cock-burs, thistles and sich, 
 And a wastin' ther time on the cussed land. 
 
 So him and Tom they hitched up the mules, 
 Pertestin' that folks was mighty big fools 
 That 'ud stay in Georgy ther lifetime out, 
 Just scratchin' a livin' when all of 'em mought 
 Git places in Texas whar cotton would sprout 
 By the time you could plant it in the land. 
 
 And he driv by a house whar a man named Brown 
 Was a livin', not fur from the edge o' town, 
 And he bantered Brown fur to buy his place, 
 And said that bein' as money was skace, 
 And bein' as sheriffs was hard to face, 
 Two dollars an acre would git the land. 
 
 They closed at a dollar and fifty cents, 
 
 And Jones he bought him a waggin and tents, 
 
 And loaded his corn, and his wimmin, and truck, 
 
 And moved to Texas, which it tuck 
 
 His entire pile, with the best of luck, 
 
 To git thar and git him a little land. 
 
3O LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 But Brown moved out on the old Jones farm, 
 And he rolled up his Breeches and bared his arm, 
 And he picked all the rocks from off'n the groun', 
 And he rooted it up and he plowed it down, 
 Then he sowed his corn and his wheat in the land. 
 
 Five years glid by, and Brown, one day 
 
 (Which he'd got so fat that he wouldn't weigh), 
 
 Was a settin' down, sorter lazily, 
 
 To the bulliest dinner you ever see, 
 
 When one o' the children jumped on his knee 
 
 And says, "Van's Jones, which you bought his land." 
 
 And thar was Jones, standin' out at the fence, 
 And he hadn't no waggin, nor mules, nor tents, 
 Fur he had left Texas afoot and cum 
 To Georgy to see if he couldn't git sum 
 Employment, and he was a lookin' as hum- 
 Ble as ef he had never owned any land. 
 
 But Brown he axed him in, and he sot 
 
 Him down to his vittles smokin' hot, 
 
 And when he had filled hisself and the floor 
 
 Brown looked at him sharp and riz and swore 
 
 That, "whether men's land was rich or poor 
 
 Thar was more in the man than thar is in the land.' 1 ' 1 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 3! 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE, 
 
 The stray child of Poetry and Passion. Mrs. Osgood. 
 
 The life of this greatest of American Poets constitutes 
 the most romantic chapter in the history of modern 
 literature. 
 
 Born as he was, in the first decade of the nineteenth 
 century, and having died .within the memory of some of 
 the present generation, the date and place of his birth, 
 and even the manner of his death and entombment are 
 still matters of grave disputation. No little of this 
 biographical "muddle" is due to the artful conceal- 
 ments and startling mendacities of Rufus Wilmot 
 Griswold, his self-constituted literary executor, and 
 unfortunately his earliest biographer. A majority of 
 writers and readers taking their cue from Griswold, 
 have fixed upon Baltimore as the place, and 1811 as 
 the date of his birth. Poe, himself, in an article pub- 
 lished in a New York journal, avers that he was born 
 in Boston, January, 1809, a fact he is careful to subjoin, 
 of which "he was heartily ashamed, but for which he 
 was in no wise personally responsible. " Griswold asserts 
 that this is a hoax. Later investigations, however, 
 strongly corroborate Poe's statement. He was born in 
 
32 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 Boston while his father and mother, who were profes- 
 sional actors, were playing a dramatic engagement for 
 the sinful diversion of the descendants of those staid 
 Puritans, who prohibited Tennis playing by statute and 
 straitly forbade the husband to kiss his wife on Sunday 
 without saying grace before and after the sumptuous 
 smack. 
 
 Poe, however, always claimed to be a Southerner 
 because of his Southern lineage. His ancestors had 
 resided in Maryland for one hundred years before his 
 birth. His grand-father was a distinguished officer of 
 the famous Maryland line in Revolutionary days, and 
 was, besides, an intimate friend of LaFayette, whom 
 Carlyle jeeringly styles '^Grandison Cromwell, the hero 
 of two hemispheres." Poe's father was a lawyer of 
 Baltimore, who married Elizabeth Arnold, an English 
 actress of good repute, and of considerable distinction 
 in her profession. His family were at first greatly 
 offended by this mesalliance, as they esteemed it, but 
 shortly afterwards received his wife into their circle. 
 
 While yet a child, Poe, together with his elder brother 
 William Henry Lennox, and his only sister Rosalie, 
 were reduced to orphanage and destitution. His mother 
 died in Baltimore December, 1811, and his father 
 perished in the memorable conflagration of the Rich- 
 mond Theater, December 26th, of the same year. Some 
 people of a morbid theological bias saw in this last 
 named occurrence the vengeful hand of a retributive 
 Providence. But we suffer that to pass without chal- 
 lenge or controversy. The Baltimore relatives took 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 33 
 
 charge of his brother and sister, while Poe, himself, 
 was adopted by Mr. John Allan, a wealthy and childless 
 citizen of Richmond, Va. This gentleman of the old 
 school found his foster-child a wayward lad, self-willed, 
 but at the same time a boy of brilliant promise. . While 
 yet quite young he carried him to England and placed 
 him for five years in the select school of Rev. Dr. 
 Bransby, an Episcopal clergyman, at Stoke Newington. 
 Poe had many vivid memories of those early school days 
 and reproduced some of his experiences in his masterly 
 story of "William Wilson." Dr. Bransby was a fair 
 specimen of old-time pedagogy, a sort of curious com- 
 pound of Dominie Samson in Waverly, and Dr. Prim- 
 rose in " The Vicar of Wakefield." He was doubtless 
 proud of his American pupil, who was facile princeps 
 amongst his English fellow students. Poe had a knack 
 of heading his classes and was their recognized leader 
 in out-door sports and exercises. 
 
 At the end of five years he returned with his god- 
 parents to Richmond, where he spent a short time in 
 school in that city. Thence he was transferred to the 
 University of Virginia, matriculating at the immature 
 age of sixteen years. He remained at this venerable 
 institution but a single year, exhibiting both brain and 
 brawn, and as usual, carrying off the prizes for Latin 
 and French. Being a petted child of fortune, it is not 
 surprising that his conduct was not the most exemplary. 
 
 President Maupin, in answer, however, to the false 
 charges of Griswold of general bad behavior, says that 
 there was no accusation against him on the records of 
 
34 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 the Faculty. It is, notwithstanding, pretty certain that 
 he was fond of both long and short cards and contracted 
 gambling debts, which Mr. Allan refused to pay the 
 cause 01 the first serious rupture between the son and 
 father. For a time he turned his back on the paternal 
 mansion. During this season of estrangement he coquet- 
 ted with the " sacred nine " and published a volume of 
 Juvenile Poems for private circulation. One of 'these 
 juvenalia he many years afterwards read before the 
 Boston Lyceum. His transcendental audience applauded 
 it with "three times three," "especially those knotty 
 passages," says Poe, which he himself d : d not under- 
 stand. Unluckily he divulged the hoax over a bottle 
 of champagne with Whipple the critic, Gushing the 
 diplomat, and other personal friends. When the Middle- 
 sex Junta of literary artisans learned that they had been 
 victimized they pelted Poe with the choicest epithets of 
 the fish market. His only reply was, that his poem 
 deserved all that was said of it. He still farther increased 
 the furious outcry by asserting that he had written and 
 printed the offending poem when he was only ten years of 
 age. This, of course, was a bit of mischievious exag- 
 geration which served his main purpose. $ 
 
 But we take up afresh the thread of our narrative. A 
 partial reconcilement between the father and son resulted 
 in the appointment of Mr. Poe to a cadetship in the 
 Military Academy at West Point, upon the recom- 
 mendation of General Winfield Scott. His stay at the 
 Military Academy was made unpleasant to the young 
 cadet by his. invincible aversion to the constraint ot its 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 35 
 
 drill and discipline. His reckless disobedience to orders 
 led to his dismissal from the service. Ingram, one of 
 his best biographers, suggests that it was " the old story 
 of Pegasus hitched to the plow." We rather prefer the 
 similar antique story of Hercules holding the distaff of 
 Omphale. His undignified leave-taking of West Point 
 is followed by two years of oblivion. His enemies have 
 spoken of his enlistment in the regular army and subse- 
 quent desertion as pertaining to that period. Another 
 story is, that he and his god-father again quarrelled, 
 and Poe in a freak of enthusiasm set out to help the 
 Greeks in their struggle for freedom. Others say that 
 Warsaw was his objective point, his purpose being 
 to assist the Poles in their desperate contest with Russia. 
 In this same connection we have an account of sundry 
 adventures in St. Petersburg and London, that are 
 purely apochryphal. It is possible that the whole 
 story was a "Comedy of Errors" growing out of the 
 confounding of the great Poet with his less distin- 
 guished brother, William Henry Lennox Poe. It is 
 clear, however, that for some reason, Poe was himself 
 strangely reticent in regaid to this period of his life. 
 .Meanwhile Mr. Allan had married his second wile, a 
 Miss Patterson, who brought him a son and heir, and 
 Poe found himself practically disowned, and ultimately 
 cut off without a shilling. 
 
 Our first distinct glimpse of him after these two years 
 is as a competitor for two prizes offered by a Baltimore 
 paper, the Saturday Visitor, for the best poem and the 
 best tale. He was awarded both prizes, an event which 
 
36 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 not only relieved him from pressing pecuniary need, 
 but secured him the favorable notice of Mr. John P. 
 Kennedy, the author of "Swallow Barn" and other 
 publications of solid merit. 
 
 Griswold with his usual snap and snarl attributes his 
 success in this literary venture to his beautiful chiro- 
 graphy. The certificate of the committee fully disproves 
 that gratuitous assertion. The tale that obtained the 
 prize was one of the best of his earliest productions, 
 afterwards published in his * ' Tales of the Grotesque 
 and Arabesque," and the Poem which won the other 
 prize was "The Coliseum" which was a classical gem. 
 While sojourning at Baltimore Poe perpetrated a practi- 
 cal hoax which cost him a deal of trouble, i 1 e announced 
 that on the morning of April 1st, he would with the 
 help of his newly invented flying machine, fly from one 
 shot tower to another, a distance of about three hundred 
 feet. The announcement excited great expectations 
 with the simple-minded and unsuspecting. An immense 
 throng assembled to witness the feat, but Poe did not 
 appear. In the afternoon he published a card of regrets 
 stating that he could not keep his engagement because 
 unfortunately one of his wings got wet. 
 
 The disappointment roused the ire of the rabble and 
 grave threats were made of personal violence. At this 
 juncture Poe was indebted to the kind offices of Mr. 
 Kennedy for an editorial position on the Southern Lite- 
 raiy Messenger, when he was fairly launched on the 
 turbulent sea of literature. It was soon discovered that 
 "no prentice hand" was on the helm, and the Messenger's 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 37 
 
 circulation jumped from seven hundred to five thousand 
 subscribers. During this engagement Poe wedded his 
 beautiful cousin, Virginia Clemm, who clung to him 
 with true wifely devotion, until sorrow and sickness 
 bore her from his arms to the " distant Aiden." 
 Shortly after this marriage Poe removed to New York 
 and there began a literary career strangely chequered 
 but that gave him in the end a world-wide reputation. 
 At this point we drop the narrative and proceed to dis- 
 cuss him under the three-fold aspect of Romancist, Critic 
 and Poet. 
 
 America has produced no such story writer as Edgar 
 Allan Poe. There have been single examples of great 
 excellence, such as The Spy of Cooper, the George 
 Balcombe of Beverly Tucker, the Richard Hurdis of 
 Simms, the Scarlet Letter of Hawthorne, and perhaps 
 a dozen others of equal merit, but the A. Gordon Pym 
 of Poe, which went through several English editions, 
 the shorter tales of the " Grotesque and Arabesque," 
 and many others of a later date gave him pre-eminence 
 as a raconteur at home and abroad, and resulted in the 
 founding of a new school of fiction on both continents. 
 
 From the general mass of these stories we select The 
 Gold Bug, the Murders of the Rue Morgue and Ligeia, 
 for special consideration. "The Gold Bug" was a 
 prize tale based upon the tradition of Captain Kyd and 
 his buried treasures. That bold buccaneer with his 
 marvelous adventures was for long years the theme of 
 newspaper scribblement, and of fireside gossip along 
 the Atlantic slope just as Lafitte and his piratical exploits 
 
38 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 were afterwards a topic of discussion along the Gulf coast. 
 It was quite natural therefore, that this story should win 
 thousands of readers at a time when the three R's were 
 little appreciated and less practiced than in this age of 
 common schools. We distinctly remember, when a 
 boy, that we invested all our pocket money in its pur- 
 chase, and that we read it with a zest, little if any, short 
 of our interest in the strange wayfaring of Lemuel 
 Gulliver. After the lapse of nearly fifty years we read 
 it again and again with a relish that time has not sensibly 
 abated. Indeed as judged by the tone of contemporary 
 criticism, American and European, it still holds its place 
 as one of the masterpieces of the world's romance. In 
 this story Poe displays that unrivalled analytic faculty, 
 which characterized his other tales, of "William Wil- 
 son" and that more striking story, "The Fall of the 
 House of Usher." In this he distanced all competitors 
 amongst American tale writers, not one of whom 
 deserved to be named in the same breath with the single 
 exception of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Even Hawthorne's 
 best tales, including Wakefield, probably his very best, 
 were tame and uneventful in comparison. 
 Long after the doggerel refrain 
 
 " My name was Captain Kyd 
 As I sailed, as I sailed," 
 
 has faded from the popular memory, will the "Gold 
 Bug" be read with intense interest by successive gene- 
 rations amongst the civilized peoples of the world ! 
 
 Another story that Poe published about the same 
 time produced a wider and profounder interest. We 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 39 
 
 refer to the " Murders of the Rue Morgue." In the 
 presence of this mysterious wholesale butchery the 
 crime of Eugene Aram, and the midnight murder of 
 Crowinshield "pale their ineffectual fires." The sen- 
 sation of horror is greatly heightened by the discovery 
 that the sole factor in this murderous work was a run- 
 away Ourang'who eloped with his master's razor. 
 
 Its publication was hailed with delight on both sides 
 of the Atlantic. It was immediately translated into a 
 number of foreign languages, and in France it received 
 .the warm endorsement of the Revue des deux Mondes. 
 
 In the construction of the plot and the unfolding of 
 the mystery Poe exhibited that wonderful " ratioci- 
 native process" which Lowell spoke of by contradiction 
 in terms as " innate experiences," but which is better 
 expressed by the old fashioned word, Genius. It was, 
 indeed, that peculiar intuition which enabled Poe to 
 forecast the plot and denouement ol " Barnaby Rudge," 
 while as yet only the initial chapters had been pub- 
 lished. This achievement drew from Dickens a letter 
 of acknowledgment; which was highly complimentary 
 to the American story writer. 
 
 A greater production than either of the two just no- 
 ticed was "Ligeia," which Poe always esteemed his 
 best literary work in that line. Its suggestion, if not its 
 inspiration, as he always insisted, came from a dream. 
 Like the fabled " Vision of Mirza, " which Addison de- 
 scribes in one of the earlier numbers of The Spectator, 
 or Coleridge's opiate dream of Kubla Khan it was one 
 ot those singular fancies "begot 'twixt sleeping and 
 
4O LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 waking," which has always been a perplexity to psy- 
 chologists. Ingram says that the theme of "Ligeia" 
 was well suited " to the dream haunted brain of Poe, 
 and in his exposition of the thoughts suggested by its 
 application, he has been more than usually successful." 
 Even Richardson admits that in the post mortem expe- 
 riences that it relates " there is a stolid, fixity of faith 
 that rises pet aspera ad astra, and at length exclaims, 
 ' Eureka ! ' all is life life life within life the lesser life 
 within the greater, and all within the spirit Divine." 
 
 This element of supernaturalism is a distinctive fea- 
 ture of Poe's prose and poetry, and is one of their chief 
 excellencies ; indeed, we may add, the prime secret of 
 their attractiveness. 
 
 Those who are familiar with the prose tales of Poe 
 will readily recall a number of his stories like "The 
 Pit and the Pendulum," the "Fall of the House of 
 Usher," "The Facts in the case of M. Valdemar, " 
 "The MS Found in a Bottle," etc., etc., that are 
 even more interesting to the average reader than the 
 three already considered. 
 
 Individually, we have been more absorbed and at 
 times thrilled by the narrative of A. Gordon Pym, 
 than by anything in the shape of a tale that has come 
 from the pen of Poe. It occupies a broader field than 
 Robinson Crusoe, has more startling developments, 
 and is not less noted for its verisimilitude. This last 
 feature is so perfect that thousands are half persuaded 
 that it is a veritable history of naval adventures in the 
 Antarctic ocean. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 4! 
 
 To bolster up the specious theory that Poe was 
 incapable of a long sustained effort, Richardson in his 
 intensely Yankee History of American Literature, pro- 
 nounces this story along with his unfinished Tragedy of 
 Politian a manifest failure. Not so is it regarded in 
 Europe, nor in this country by capable and conscientious 
 critics. For ourself we are at a loss to understand in 
 what notable respect it is at all inferior to the great work 
 of Defoe. 
 
 While much of the literary work of Poe is fragment- 
 ary, there is no reason to infer his incapacity for more 
 elaborate and extended effort. Those who are familiar 
 with the details of his life readily understand that this 
 habit was largely the result of necessity rather than the 
 product of deliberate choice. To what extent our litera- 
 ture has suffered from this cause is a matter of mere 
 conjecture. It is as well at this point as elsewhere, to 
 say that Griswold, who managed by trick or otherwise 
 to obtain possession of his posthumous papers, is sus- 
 pected of suppressing some of these writings. Amongst 
 them was a finished manuscript entitled, "Phases ot 
 American Literature," which if prepared with Poe's 
 usual painstaking industry, would have been of immense 
 value. So that Griswold is not only chargeable with the 
 suggestio falsi but with the supptessio veri as well. 
 
 Richardson, in his History of American Literature, 
 has the candor to place Poe in the front rank of Ameri- 
 can romancists, and denies that either Brockden Brown, 
 Cooper or Paulding are entitled to the same rank with 
 him and Hawthorne. This concession from a New 
 
42 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 England source is a weighty testimony to the extraor- 
 dinary merits of Edgar Allan Poe as a master of fictive 
 literature. 
 
 AS A CRITIC. 
 
 No American, if indeed any English reviewer has 
 equalled Poe as a critic. What Francis Jeffries did for 
 English literature, Edgar Allan Poe, with fewer facili- 
 ties, accomplished for American literature, with this 
 notable difference, that Jeffries was utterly lacking in 
 constructive ability as to poetry, and, as a consequence, 
 was occasionally wide of the mark. That pestilent fel- 
 low, R. H. Stoddard, whom Poe threatened with cor- 
 poreal punishment lor his impertinence, asserts that 
 Poe was not a critic, whereas the London Quarterly 
 Review says that he was ' ' potentially the greatest critic 
 that ever lived," having an ear for rhythm unmatched 
 in all the ages. 
 
 This special faculty Poe first developed in the pages 
 of the Southern Literary Messenger. His review of 
 " Norman Leslie," and his exposure of the geographical 
 blunders and historical fallacies of "Stephens' Travels 
 in Egypt, Arabia Petrea and Palestine," constituted an 
 era in American review writing. It revealed the fact 
 that a veritable " Daniel had come to judgment," who 
 had both capacity and courage, who was neither to be 
 purchased by publishers' bribes nor cajoled by the 
 blandishments of authors. Prof. Anthon and others, 
 proprietors of the New York Revieiv, made haste to 
 secure his services in the critical department of that 
 publication. 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 43 
 
 Poe's advent as a critic was ot an hour too soon. 
 The country was flooded with literary trash, and his 
 marvelous insight and outlook made him a terror to 
 evil-doers in every department of literature. Especially 
 was he dreaded and denounced by poets of the " Laura 
 Matilda" school, who figured in the " Annuals " then 
 so much in vogue. People who had gone into ecstacies 
 over the pious platitudes of Mrs. Sigourney, the prin- 
 cipal of the blue stocking sisterhood, with headquarters 
 under the ancestral elms of New Haven, were shocked 
 by his critical blasphemies The " turn-down-shirt- 
 collarness " of Boston was amazed at his iconoclastic 
 fury. The bare-faced imitations, if not downright pla- 
 giarisms, of Longfellow, enshrined in gilt-edged and 
 morocco-bound octavos, were dragged into the light. 
 Even Hawthorne, despite his " Scarlet Letter" and 
 " House of the Seven Gables," was made to do penance 
 for the platitudes of his "Twice Told Tales." As for 
 that larger class who were represented by the lyrical 
 gush of Halleck's " Marco Bozzaris, " and the epic bom- 
 bast of Seba Smith's " Powhatan," they were ground 
 to impalpable powder between the upper and nether 
 millstones. At the same time Poe recognized the 
 remarkable gifts of Margaret Fuller, and gave the New 
 England litetati some adequate conception of the in- 
 trinsic merits of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 These conscientious but caustic criticisms gave mortal 
 offense to Griswold, and like literary pretenders. But 
 the critical work of Poe which produced the greatest 
 sensation was a series of articles which he contributed 
 
44 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 to Godey's Lady's Book, entitled "The Literati of 
 New York." They caused a flutter, only equaled by 
 Dickens' Notes on America. Mr. Godey, the publisher, 
 was menaced with withdrawal of patronage and libel 
 suits without number. But he had the manliness to 
 stand by his contributor. His circulation was greatly 
 enlarged because of these obnoxious criticisms, and the 
 libel suits never materialized. Thomas Dunn English 
 nee Brown, a Grub street writer, was highly indignant 
 because Poe twitted him with his utter ignorance of 
 English grammar. His towering passion made him 
 the butt of the clubs and coffee houses, and his reply to 
 the critic cost him several hundred dollars because of its 
 slanderous aspersions. 
 
 James Russell Lowell, an author of fair reputation 
 undertook a counter-blast in "A Fable for Critics," 
 which caused Mr. Poe, while conceding his general 
 literary ability, to point out his inexcusable ignorance 
 of the elementary rules of poetry particularly as they 
 pertain to rhythm. 
 
 As for the lesser deities of our American Parnassus, 
 Wm Ellery Channing, Jr., Cornelius Matthews, W. W. 
 Lord, Rufus Dawes, Lewis Gaylord Clark and other 
 inanities, who may be grouped under the head of 
 " Quacks of Helicon," he relegated them to Coventry. 
 
 The severest of these critical papers was one devoted 
 to Thomas Ward, who sported the pseudonym of 
 " Flaccus. " We offer it as a specimen brick. Poe is 
 discussing a poem entitled "The Great Descender," 
 in which is commemorated "Sam Patch," who ended a 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 45 
 
 worthless career by a jumping feat, we forget whether 
 at the Niagara or Passaic Falls. "We never could 
 understand," says Poe, " what pleasure men of talent 
 can take in concocting elaborate doggerel of this order. 
 Least of all can we comprehend why, having perpetrated 
 the atrocity, they should lay it at the door of the muse. 
 We are, moreover, at a loss to know by what right, 
 human or divine, twddale of this character is intruded 
 into a collection of what professes to be poetry. Mr. 
 Ward is pleased to denominate Mr. Patch a ' martyr of 
 science.' That Mr Patch was a genius, we do not 
 doubt ; so is Mr. Ward. But the science displayed in 
 jumping down the falls is a point above us. There 
 might have been some science in jumping up. " Poe 
 says that, even considered as a rhymed jeu d ' esprit, it 
 is a wretched failure. 
 
 " Mr. Ward," continues Poe, "is constantly talking 
 about ' thunder guns/ ' thunder trumpets ' and ' thun- 
 der shrieks.' He has a bad habit, too, of styling an 
 eye ' a weeper, ' as, for example, at page 208 : 
 ' Oh, curl in smiles that mouth again, 
 And wipe that weeper dry. ' 
 
 Somewhere else he calls two tears ' ' two sparklers " 
 very much in the style of Mr. Richard Swiveller, who 
 was fond of denominating Madeira ' 'the rosy. " Farther 
 on he adds: "Who calls Mr. Ward a Poet? He is a 
 third rate or ninety-ninth rate poetaster. He is a gentle- 
 man of elegant leisure, and gentlemen of elegant leisure 
 are for the most part neither men, women nor Harriet 
 Martineaus. " 
 
46 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 It will be perceived that as a Reviewer, Mr. Poe was 
 in the parlance of the prize ring "a hard hitter." But 
 he had too much of the Cavalier spirit <4 to strike below 
 the belt." No English or American Critic was more 
 appreciative of real merit, and when possible he always 
 gave the seeming transgressor the benefit of the doubt. 
 
 Indeed his critical estimates were largely tempered 
 with mercy. Witness his statement, that Beverly 
 Tucker's "George Balcombe," was the greatest Ameri- 
 can-novel, and his striking leniency towards several of 
 his bitterest personal enemies, and most unscrupulous 
 maligners. 
 
 Some devout believer in special Providence has said, 
 that whenever a man is needed for some special work 
 he is sure to be forthcoming. History, both sacred 
 and profane, we think justifies this statement. But 
 whether it be fact or fancy there is little doubt, as we 
 have before intimated, that a well equipped critic like 
 Poe was urgently needed at the close of the first forty 
 years of the present century. It was emphatically as 
 respects literature an age of fudge and fustian alike in 
 prose and verse. Nor does it admit of serious doubt 
 that whatever the merit, and it is at least considerable, 
 of our current literature, no little of it is due to the 
 directness and thoroughness of Poe's criticism of his 
 contemporaries. He accomplished a reformation in 
 American literature the nobler issues and richer fruits 
 of which we have not yet fully realized. The Knicker- 
 bocker of that day was the patron of common-place, and 
 the North American Review of that date was run in the 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 47 
 
 interest of a literary clique, selfish and partisan to a 
 degree well nigh incredible. We do not claim that Poe 
 was either infallible or impeccable, lor he had not less 
 than other illustrious writers his human weaknesses and 
 limitations. But this we are warranted in saying, that 
 by precept and example he has indicated the way by 
 which American literature can free itself from colonial 
 vassalage and attain as it has already done, in part, a 
 self-respecting literary independence. Nor otherwise 
 may we hope ever to realize 
 
 "The glory that was Greece 
 And the grandeur that was Rome." 
 
 By way of addendum to this sketch of Poe as a critic 
 we will farther say, that the much talked of International 
 Copyright law will inure more to the emolument of 
 American Publishers and native authors than to the 
 advantage of the reading public. This policy is another 
 phase of the Protectionist theory which deserves to be 
 scouted as legalized robbery It will result, in so far as 
 it has any practical effect, in loading our library shelves 
 with inferior wares, and thereby inducing a yet greater 
 depravation of the popular taste. 
 
 AS A POET. 
 
 After all, the permanent renown of Poe will rest chiefly 
 not on his eminent ability as a critic, nor yet on his 
 matchless skill as a romancist. A century hence his 
 masterly critiques will be well-nigh forgotten ; a few of 
 his best stories will be still read with the same interest 
 that we now read the Tom Jones of Fielding, or the Caleb 
 
48 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 Williams, of Godwin, but his principal poems will be 
 of perennial interest, because they are in themselves 
 examples of perennial beauty and striking incarnations 
 of eternal truth. 
 
 The entire mass of his poetry is not large, but it is, 
 in an almost unparalleled degree, superb in quality as 
 to its conception and thoroughly artistic as to its execu- 
 tion. To compare Poe to Longfellow is like comparing 
 " Hyperion to a Satyr " The author of Hiawatha, even 
 if the poem was not of more than doubtful originality, 
 is gradually losing his hold, except upon simpering 
 school girls and sentimental under-graduates. His 
 Evangeline and a very few of his shorter poems may 
 linger, but the meretricious jingle of the metrical rhap- 
 sody yclept Hiawatha, cannot save it from the fate of 
 Barlow's Columbiad and Trumbull's McFingal. On'the 
 other hand, the world will, as the years go by, more 
 and more recognize the truth of Victor Hugo's estimate 
 when he says that Edgar Allan Poe was the ' ' Prince of 
 American literature." 
 
 It is fortunate that Poe found time in the intervals of 
 more pressing literary work to prepare his thoughtful 
 essays on " The Poetic Principle, " "The Rationale of 
 Verse," and on the "Philosophy of Composition." 
 They are well known to contain some peculiar views of 
 the writer that are worthy of deep consideration. With 
 the greater portion of these views we have no quarrel. 
 We accept his postulate that a didactic poem, such as 
 "Armstrong on Health," Pope's "Essay on Man" 
 and Darwin's "Zoonomia," is palpably absurd. What 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 49 
 
 is said by these several authors in rhyme and rhythm 
 might be better expressed in plain prose. But his Pro- 
 crustean limitations of all poems to two hundred lines, 
 or even a half hour's reading, is a rule not without ob- 
 vious exceptions. A definition or theory of poetry 
 which would exclude the Iliad or Paradise Lost must 
 be radically defective. And yet there is more in this 
 unique suggestion than appears at a mere glance. The 
 Iliad is largely a compilation made by Pisistratus from 
 the minstrel songs of wandering Homeridae. Homer 
 is not less a mythical personage than the Keltic Ossian. 
 As respects Paradise Lost, if we except the three first 
 cantos it falls immeasurably below the L' Allegro, II 
 Penseroso, Lycidas and Comus of the same immortal 
 author. 
 
 It is highly probable that poems of greater length 
 than can be disposed of in a half hour's reading will not 
 be tolerated by the literary public of the next century. 
 Poe in this matter has provoked severe criticism, and 
 yet it may be that, as in other instances, he is simply 
 anticipating the later judgments of mankind. 
 
 His other proposition, that beauty is the great end 
 of poetry, to the exclusion of all ethical considerations, 
 is too sweeping a generalization. Mere moralizing is 
 not the special function of the poet ; that belongs prop- 
 erly to the Priesthood, Pagan or Christian and its va- 
 rious adjuncts. And yet Poetry and her sister arts of 
 Sculpture, Painting and Music must not be divorced 
 from the idea of duty and righteousness. 
 
 Poe himself admits as much in the closing paragraph 
 
5O LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 of his discussion of the Poetic Principle. " It has been 
 my purpose," he says, " to suggest that while this prin- 
 ciple itself is strictly and simply the human aspiration 
 for supernal beauty, the manifestation of the principle 
 is always found in an elevating excitement of the soul, 
 quite independent of that passion which is the intoxica- 
 tion of the heart, or of truth, which is the satisfaction 
 of the reason. " 
 
 He further says that, in regard to passion, "its ten- 
 dency is to degrade rather than elevate the soul. Love, 
 on the contrary love, the true, the divine Eros the 
 Uranian as distinguished from the Dionean Venus is 
 unquestionably the purest and truest of all poetical 
 themes." 
 
 His illustrations from Byron, Longfellow, Willis, 
 Tennyson and others are apt and instructive 
 
 His other essays on " The Rationale of Verse " and 
 the 4< Philosophy of Composition " relate chiefly to the 
 technique of versification, and may be profitably studied 
 by all who are interested in the science of English 
 verse. We need only remark that the former is the 
 work of a master. The latter purports to be a revela- 
 tion of the genesis of " The Raven," to which we shall 
 make incidental allusion when we come to the analysis 
 of that greatest poem of modern times. 
 
 It is a fact that with the exception of what are known 
 as his Juvenile Poems, Poe had won a lasting reputation 
 as a raconteur before he was appreciated as a Poet. In 
 order of time the "Gold Bug-" and his other best stories 
 
EDGAR ALLAN FOE. 5 I 
 
 preceded the publication of his great master-pieces of 
 Poetry. 
 
 His earlier poems, it is true, were prophecies of his 
 later achievements. Indeed Lowell speaks of them as 
 the best of their class, and Stoddard describes some of 
 them as absolutely perfect. The lines "To Helen" 
 "The Coliseum," and some portions of Politian and 
 Al Aaraaf, are certainly of a higher order than any- 
 thing then known in American poetry. The two first 
 named especially, were worth a volume of such com- 
 monplace as Bryant, Halleck and Drake, were wont to 
 write. But his later poems which we shall presently 
 consider are ' ' the notes of the Dying Swan. ' ' It was not 
 until fate had done its worst, and there lay all around 
 him the wreck of blighted hopes and blasted fortunes, 
 that his soul was wrought to its highest tension, and he 
 was uplifted to the "highest heaven of invention." As 
 he stood 
 
 "By the dark tarn of Auber 
 In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir " 
 
 fronting "a legended tomb" with the simple mono- 
 gram " Ulalume." 
 
 As when aforetime in " the dreary midnight " of his 
 deepest sorrow, he talked gibberish with "the un- 
 gainly fowl" as erst the melancholy Hamlet with the 
 besmirched grave diggers. At such times as these he 
 caught more than glimpses of " the Dantean and Mil- 
 tonic vision of the mighty right and the mighty wrong," 
 and was henceforth admitted to the "glorious fellow- 
 
52 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 ship" of the Homers and Shakespeares and Goethes of 
 all the ages. 
 
 There is a striking difference of opinion amongst the 
 ablest critics as to the comparative merits of these later 
 poems, such as " Annabel Lee" "The Bells" "For 
 Annie" " Ulalume " and "The Raven." We have 
 neither space nor inclination to speak of any but the 
 second and fifth in this list. 
 
 Critical writers of no mean reputation, regard the 
 first two in the list as Poe's best poems. Without 
 meaning to depreciate them, we must utterly dissent 
 from this estimate. As our own Hayne has said in a 
 well-written tribute to Poe : 
 
 " With sober eye and pinions furled 
 The sombre Raven roams the world." 
 
 It is instinctively associated with the memory of Poe, 
 and has been read and admired in the four quarters of 
 the globe. 
 
 It has been commented upon most favorably and en- 
 thusiastically by such poets as Tennyson and Swinburne, 
 in England ; by Victor Hugo and Lemaitre, in France. 
 Germany and Spain have bestowed upon it and its author 
 their meed of praise. Boston critics characterize it as 
 weird and incomprehensible. Weird it unquestionably 
 is ; so is the Macbeth of Shakespeare, and the Apoca- 
 lypse of St. John, but for a critic to call it incompre- 
 hensible in a depreciatory sense, is simply to publish 
 himself an ass. 
 
 It is true that distinguished writers have disagreed as 
 to the correct interpretation of " The Raven." So like- 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 53 
 
 wise eminent divines have given variant expositions of 
 the 7th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. Are 
 we, therefore, to conclude that St. Paul's epistolary 
 masterpiece is a bundle of incongruities ? The naked 
 truth is that all great products of human genius, as well 
 as all great products of Divine inspiration, have a mani- 
 fold significance. No two observers see the same land- 
 scape, nor do any two readers, even if twin brothers, 
 get the same teaching, whether from parable or poem. 
 
 " The Raven " has a history that is highly suggestive 
 of its meaning. 
 
 A European writer has said that the " Raven House " 
 will be remembered as long as the house in which De 
 Lisle wrote the Marseillaise hymn. It was situated on 
 the Bloomingdale road at a point then secluded, but 
 now within the corporate limits of New York. Poe 
 had engaged rooms in a suburban boarding house, 
 hoping that rest and quietude would restore the failing 
 health of his cherished "Lenore." His expectations 
 were disappointed. This frail child-wife steadily de- 
 clined, and one stormy night, in " bleak December," 
 he saw her pale, pulseless, and for a time breathless. 
 He touched her and thought her dead. At this sorrow- 
 ful crisis he wrote "The Raven." Contrary to his 
 habit, he published it in the American (Whig) Review 
 for February, 1845, under the pseudonym of " Ouarles." 
 His purpose, evidently, was to keep his secret alike 
 from friends and foes. 
 
 This was not merely a mischievous aim to mystify the 
 multitude, as he was wont at times to do, but was done 
 
54 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 because he esteemed this domestic sorrow as sacred. 
 With a similar intent he afterwards wrote as he did of 
 the artistic construction of "The Raven." Laying all 
 that aside as a matter of secondary importance, we come 
 to the main question, What is the central idea of the 
 poem ? We reply without hesitancy, it is the question 
 of the Ages. It is not the subordinate problem of Matt- 
 lock, Is life worth living ? That was the perplexity of 
 Hamlet, and in some degree of Cato Uticensis, in the 
 tragedy of Addison. Instead, it is the question of Job, 
 " If a man die, shall he live again ? " It is answered by 
 Job in that rapturous Eureka: "I know that my Re- 
 deemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day 
 upon the earth, and though after my skin worms de- 
 stroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." It is 
 a slander on inspiration to say that in this Job had only 
 reference to his subsequent reinstatement in his former 
 worldly prosperity. 
 
 Furthermore, this great question underlies "The 
 Tragedy of Faust." I lay no great stress on the fact 
 that Goethe, in the Prologue in Heaven, introduces a 
 colloquy between the Lord and Mephistopheles, almost 
 identical in verbiage with that between God and Satan 
 in the book of Job, showing most clearly that the 
 sacred Drama was in the mind of the sage of Weimar. 
 The musings of Faust in that high vaulted Gothic 
 chamber are not unlike the sombre meditations of Poe 
 in the ' 'Raven Room. " Faust too has sought ' 'surcease 
 from sorrow " not sorrow for a " lost Lenore " but for 
 heart weariness " in many a quaint and curious volume 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 55 
 
 of forgotten lore." He has mastered Philosophy and 
 Medicine and Jurisprudence, and to his cost Theology. 
 And now he is heartily disgusted, and concludes. 
 
 "That no dog in such a fashion would longer live." 
 
 After communion with the earth spirit and divers collo- 
 quies with Wagner and others, he is again alone. This 
 time he Werther-like is intent on self-destruction. Just 
 as he puts the goblet to his lips brimful of a deadly 
 potion, he hears from a neighboring chapel or convent 
 a chorus of voices singing the Easter hymn Christ is 
 risen. It is like balm to his chafed spirit. The suicidal 
 purpose is instantly foregone. He lives to a hundred 
 years. Instead of going straight to Hell, according to 
 the old German tradition of Dr. Faustus, he is at last 
 spirited away by a company of angels to Heaven where 
 he is ministered to by the once cruelly wronged Gretchen. 
 Once more this great question is deeply pondered by 
 lone, in Sergeant Talford's more recent classical drama. 
 Indeed, the question in one form or another, pervades 
 the best literature of the world. 
 
 We recur to "The Raven," where this question is 
 more strikingly dominant. Not as a quiet undertone 
 merely, but as the very keynote of this grand poem. 
 
 Poe, as Mrs. Clemm testifies, was habitually impres- 
 sible by the supernatural. At this juncture he seemed 
 in the very presence of death ; and no doubt, in a higher 
 sense than the German Faust or the Greek lone, he was 
 nervously grappling with this problem of eternal destiny. 
 
 We, of course, are not unaware that in his "Philoso- 
 phy of Composition " he expressly states that the thesis 
 
56 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 of the poem is ' ' unending sorrow. " It is at least doubt- 
 ful whether the whole story of the genesis of "The 
 Raven," as related in that paper, is not a studied mys- 
 tification. In this opinion we are not singular, very 
 many perhaps a majority of writers only conceding 
 the substantial truthfulness of that document. 
 
 It is a truism that most men "have builded wiser 
 than they knew. " The old Hebrew Prophets could not 
 always interpret their own message. 
 
 We have referred to Poe's special environment at the 
 time of its production. The clearest conception of this 
 may be obtained from the masterful illustrations of 
 Gustave Dore and a careful study of the poem. 
 
 Knowing the exquisite nervous organism of the great 
 poet, we are not surprised that he was "filled with fan- 
 tastic terrors "by " the rustling of the purple curtain." 
 It was not the first or the last time that Poe stood in 
 the border-land ot emotional insanity. Nor is the rap- 
 ping at his chamber door, and the later tapping at his 
 window lattice, other than his own weird fancies. These 
 experiences of a "sorrow-laden soul," coupled with an 
 intense imaginative faculty, are essentially identical with 
 the " knockings in Macbeth " and the " air-drawn dag- 
 ger " that shook the strong nerves of the Thane of 
 Cawdor when he moved towards the chamber of Duncan. 
 
 One of the best of Dore's illustrations is of that scene 
 where, having partially rallied from his distraught con- 
 dition, he throws the door wide open, and peering into 
 the dismal outer darkness, speaks only "the whispered 
 word Lenore." His attitude, his upraised hands, his 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 57 
 
 wild stare into that night of storm, sheds a flood of tene- 
 brific light on the tragic situation. Brooding over the 
 loss of his wife, which then seemed imminent the 
 question of immortality is uppermost in his thoughts. 
 How wildly plaintive is his appeal to the " grim and 
 ghastly Raven " perched upon the bust of Pallas, just 
 above his chamber door. Tell me tell me "is there 
 balm in Gilead" to soothe and heal this else immedicable 
 woe? In the next stanza the question of reunion in 
 Heaven is brought forward with the tremendous adju- 
 ration : 
 
 " By the Heaven that bends above us by that God we both 
 
 adore 
 
 Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aiden 
 It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the Angels name 
 
 Lenore 
 Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the Angels name 
 
 Lenore ? 
 
 Quoth the Raven, ' Nevermore ! ' ' 
 
 This reply instantly drives him to frenzy, and up- 
 starting with a shriek of agony, he rejoins : 
 
 "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian 
 
 shore. 
 Leave no black plume as a token of the lie thy soul hath 
 
 spoken." 
 
 To our mind it is perfectly evident that it was this 
 " black lie " that lay like a mighty millstone on his 
 heart that was suggestive of the despairing outcry of the 
 next stanza : 
 
58 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 " And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the 
 
 floor, 
 Shall be lifted nevermore ! " 
 
 This, we confess, gives a coloring of truth to the state- 
 ment that "The Raven " is a type of unending sorrow. 
 But this terrible revulsion of feeling ought not and can 
 not hide from our view the fact that the poet's intui- 
 tions challenged and spurned the refrain of that ' ' shorn 
 and shaven" prophet whether "bird or devil" 
 perched above his chamber door. At the worst this 
 despair was but a momentary eclipse of faith. 
 
 Elsewhere he realizes that this same Lenore is lifted 
 far above the mists of the earth-life : 
 
 " From grief and groan to a golden throne beside the King 
 of Heaven." 
 
 Similar expressions of his belief in the life everlasting 
 may be found in his lines "To one in Paradise," "Anna- 
 bel Lee," and in many of his Prose writings. Nothing 
 can be clearer than that he was neither a Materialist nor 
 a Pessimist. 
 
 That our interpretation of " The Raven " will be con- 
 troverted we expect mainly, if not exclusively, for the 
 reason that in his "Philosophy of Composition" he 
 himself says, that it is emblematic of ' ' mournful and 
 never-ending remembrance." However interpreted, 
 and in regard to that we are not deeply concerned, it 
 will be evermore reckoned as the great American Poem. 
 
 Having devoted so much space to its consideration, 
 we shall barely refer to his next greatest poem, "The 
 Bells." 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 59 
 
 This was one of the latest, as well as best produc- 
 tions of his genius. In its earliest form it consisted of 
 but eighteen lines, but it was revised, and afterwards 
 expanded to its existing proportions. All the critics 
 regarded it as a marvel of rhythmical skill, and like "The 
 Raven " as thoroughly unique as it is original. It bears 
 the unmistakable imprint of its great author. A pro- 
 fessional elocutionist of more than local reputation 
 assured us that no man in America could properly 
 render "The Bells." It would require a greater diversity 
 of gifts than Poe himself possessed, to bring out all of 
 its hidden meanings and its greater mystic beauties. 
 And yet perhaps, none of the poems of Poe is more 
 frequently recited on the stage and platform. Nor any of 
 them, it may be, more heartily enjoyed and more vocifer- 
 ously applauded. 
 
 An analysis of it would carry us far beyond our allotted 
 limits. In summing up with reference to the merits of 
 Edgar Allan Poe as a Poet, we cannot convey a better 
 idea of his present status in the literary world than to 
 refer to the estimate of Mr. Jules Lemaitre, a distin- 
 guished French writer. Lemaitre, in his "Dialogues 
 of the Dead," does not hesitate to class him with 
 Plato and Shakspeare, and on some lines to assign him 
 a higher position than the great English dramatist. 
 Richardson, who in his late utterly partisan History of 
 American Literature rarely misses an opportunity to 
 disparage Poe, alleges that the extravagant admiration 
 of the French people for the author of " The Raven " 
 is a taste national rather than catholic. So far is this 
 
6O LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 from being true, that the best English authorities pro- 
 nounce him ' ' the greatest American genius. " Germany 
 and Spain and Italy have already ratified this decision. 
 When the Boston literary clique shall have recovered 
 from Poe's scathing strictures on "Longfellow and 
 Other Plagiarists," New England, too, will help to 
 swell the general acclaim, and then the whole country 
 will accept the statement of Victor Hugo, already 
 quoted, that POE is the PRINCE OF AMERICAN LITERA- 
 TURE. 
 
 AS A MAN. 
 
 Baudeliere, the French poet, says in substance of 
 Edgar Allan Poe, that he seemed an imperial wanderer 
 from some lost Atlantis, whose lot was strangely cast 
 in " bleak and desolate America." He w r as clearly out 
 of harmony with his Providential environment. Amer- 
 ican literature was at that period, if not strictly non- 
 existent, at least in a chrysalis condition. There was 
 neither a Maecenas to encourage by his munificence, nor 
 a literary constituency sufficient to sustain professional 
 authorship by its patronage. His first important literary 
 engagement, as previously stated, was the editorship of 
 the Southern Literary Messenger. For this he received 
 a salary of five hundred dollars, a yearly income hardly 
 equal to the earnings of a second-class house carpenter. 
 At a later period he received better wages, but never 
 after his marriage did his utmost exertions provide 
 otherwise than scantily for " Diddie " and " Muddie," 
 his invalid wife and his infirm mother-ui-law. As a con- 
 sequence he was always financially straitened, and in 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 6 1 
 
 some emergencies he, like Jaffier in ' ' Venice Preserved, " 
 was forced to eat the bitter bread of dependence. And 
 yet under this terrible stress he was scrupulously honest 
 and exact, even to a farthing, in his business transac- 
 tions. We, in common with all the world, are apprised 
 that Griswold impeached his business integrity. But 
 Graham, Willis and Clarke, with whom he was most 
 intimately associated, bear witness to his unswerving 
 fidelity to his engagements. 
 
 For months he was not merely contented to do the 
 hack-work of the editorial office of the New York Mirror, 
 but he did it cheerfully. Reared from his childhood in 
 the midst of luxury in the family of his god-father, Mr. 
 Allan, of Richmond, Va., and then disowned and dis- 
 inherited, he was seldom known to indulge in fruitless 
 repinings. Yet his sad experiences, chiefly the death 
 of the loved Lenore, gave, if not a pessimistic tinge at 
 heart, a mournful undertone to some of his best poems. 
 
 Physically, he was not large, but singularly athletic. 
 His forehead was lofty and his side-head well developed 
 in the region of ideality. His eyes were large and lus- 
 trous. His dress was scrupulously neat, and his whole 
 bearing graceful and dignified. Indeed, he was as 
 courtly as Chesterfield in manner, and as knightly in 
 spirit as Sir Philip Sydney, on the field of Zutphen. In 
 the domestic sphere, he was womanly in tenderness 
 and devotedness, not only to his wife, but to his mother- 
 in-law. In social life his Norman blood betrayed itself 
 in frankness of speech and suavity of manner. A dis- 
 tinguished female personage has said, that as a conver- 
 
62 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 sationalist, he had no peer amongst his contemporaries. 
 Griswold, himself confesses, that at times he spake with 
 an eloquence that was " supra-mortal." He was not a 
 Monologist as was Coleridge, nor a Pedant as was some- 
 times the the " Autocrat of the Breakfast table." Nor 
 did he indulge in censoriousness like Sam Johnson, or 
 Walter Savage Landor. His conversation seemed unpre- 
 meditated and was characterized by an avoidance of all 
 that might mar "the general joy" of the table or the 
 fireside. 
 
 The slanderous allegations of Griswold, which were 
 reproduced in the January Lippincott, are a series of 
 Munchausenisms. Poe's later biographers, as Ingram, 
 Gill, Miss Rice and James Wood Davidson, have taken 
 up these charges seriatim and disproved them by a 
 mass of testimony absolutely overwhelming. He was 
 never expelled from the University of Virginia, was not 
 dismissed from the Southern Literary Messenger for 
 drunkenness, but resigned to accept a more lucrative 
 position on the New York Review \ never quarelled with 
 Graham or Willis, as these gentlemen testify. The 
 men and women who knew him best and longest, assert 
 that he was the soul of honor, having all the instincts 
 of a gentleman. 
 
 After all, the single blur on his escutcheon was his 
 inebriety. In the main he was abstemious in eating and 
 drinking. But in the "latter lonesome days" of his 
 chequered life he indulged in wine-drinking to his own 
 personal shame and detriment. Months usually inter- 
 vened between these paroxysms of debauchery. That 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 63 
 
 they occurred at all was due in a great measure to his 
 exceptional susceptibility to the influence of intoxicants. 
 So great was this susceptibility that a single convivial 
 glass was to him a Circean cup that embruted him and 
 occasionally almost demonized him. A clergyman says 
 that he knew a solitary glass of ale to reverse his mental 
 polarity so that, whereas before drinking he was talking 
 with inimitable eloquence on literature and science, in a 
 very few minutes afterwards he was reduced to the verge 
 of drivelling idiocy. It is noteworthy that Poe never 
 resorted to artificial stimulants to aid him in his literary 
 labors. Coleridge and De Quincy, the former a whilom 
 Unitarian minister and the latter a writer of Theological 
 Essays, had recourse to opium as a spur to their flagging 
 faculties. Byron was indebted for much of his inspira- 
 tion to Holland gin. Even the " gentle Elia " was a 
 frequent winebibber, but Poe never yielded to the 
 temptation unless when suffering from a melancholia 
 near akin to downright madness. And yet for this 
 infirmity he was hounded to his grave and cruelly de- 
 famed after his death. 
 
 In all this we do not mean to defend Mr. Poe against 
 fair-minded criticism. It was a sad spectacle this man 
 of transcendent gifts wallowing at intervals in a ' ' sensual 
 sty." In the vast range of literature there is scarcely 
 an example that better serves to point a moral, or to 
 enforce the precept of Solomon (himself not above 
 reproach) " Look not upon the wine when it is red 
 for at last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an 
 adder." If in this matter he grievously sinned, " most 
 
64 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 grievously did he answer it." And now let not this 
 frailty be remembered in his epitaph in other than that 
 Christly spirit which said to the adulterous woman, 
 " Neither do I condemn thee go and sin no more." 
 
 As with reference to the date and place of his birth, 
 so likewise somewhat of mystery pertains to the man- 
 ner of his death. The old story, revived by Stoddard, 
 of a protracted debauch, ending in mania a potu, is 
 exploded. For months previous to his death he had 
 rigidly abstained from drinking. That a few days before 
 that event he had been guilty of excesses, is barely 
 possible. The evidence rather favors the opinion that 
 the denouement of this blood-curdling tragedy was an 
 insane paroxysm aggravated by exposure, followed by 
 nervous exhaustion and congestion of the brain. Dr. 
 Moran, who attended him in his last hours, proposed 
 wine, which he promptly refused, adding those memo- 
 rable words, "Its horrors who can tell!" His last 
 coherent utterance was: "All is over Eddie is no 
 more." 
 
 Standing in thought in that Hospital ward beside his 
 lifeless form, we recall the lines "For Annie. " 
 
 " Thank Heaven ! 
 The fever called living 
 Is conquered at last." 
 
 If any proof were needed of the old dogma of total 
 depravity, it is furnished by the fact that Griswold, 
 whom Stoddard styles Poe's "life-long friend" two 
 days after his death, wrote in the columns of the New 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 6$ 
 
 York Tribune, a most scurrilous attack upon the dead 
 Poet, shielding himself behind -a rascally "Anony- 
 mosity. " A meanness so flagrant that a European 
 writer indignantly asked if there was no law in America 
 " to keep curs out of the cemeteries." The revenges of 
 time have already more than vindicated the memory of 
 Poe. No American author is so highly esteemed in Eng- 
 land, France and Germany, the great centers of modern 
 civilization. When a few years ago a handsome monu- 
 ment was erected to him, at Baltimore, many of the 
 greatest living writers of both hemispheres paid their 
 tribute to his phenomenal genius. Amongst them was 
 Tennyson, the venerable English Laureate, who was 
 one of his most ardent admirers. 
 
 As for Griswold, whose Ghoulish enmity Poe incurred 
 by his caustic, but conscientious review of the " Poets 
 and Poetry of America," he has long since found his 
 just recompense in the hearty contempt of the world of 
 letters. One eminent author has likened him to "mine 
 ancient" honest lago. We prefer rather to characterize 
 him as the Ananias of literary biography. Begging 
 pardon of that phenomenal liar of the mother church at 
 Jerusalem for the possible wrong done him by the sug- 
 gestion, we dismiss Griswold with the rabble that train 
 after him with the ancient words of exorcism, Apage 
 Satanos. 
 
 Poe's contemporaries, and some who long survived 
 him, were perplexed about his religious creed. A few 
 have doubted if he had any creed, at least of the Chris- 
 tian sort. 
 
66 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 It would be difficult to find in his writings any satis- 
 factory clue to his individual convictions in regard to 
 dogmatic Theology. Because of some utterances in his 
 " Eureka " it has been claimed that he was inclined to 
 the Theosophy of the East say some sort of Brah- 
 minism or Buddhism. We think undue stress is laid 
 on the speculative views of that prose-poem. Because 
 he accepts the Nebular hypothesis, and then makes the 
 Newtonian law of gravitation a factor in the destruction 
 of the material universe, we are not to conclude that his 
 Theology was essentially anti-Christian. There are some 
 expressions scattered through his writings which would 
 indicate that he believed in the impersonal God of Pan- 
 theism. By parity of reasoning, however, we might 
 convict Alexander Pope, who was a staunch Romanist, 
 of the same heresy. Poe, as a result of his study of 
 Oriental literature, had a relish for Oriental fancies, but 
 we are persuaded that in his calmer and better moods 
 he was not the doctrinal reprobate that his enemies 
 alleged. 
 
 The whole tenor of his best poetry is against this 
 hypothesis. Besides, it we have not utterly failed in 
 our interpretation of " The Raven;" then the great 
 dogmas of Immortality and Eternal Judgment, and their 
 correlative truths, met with his hearty acceptance. 
 Most assuredly he did not blaspheme like Shelley in his 
 " Notes to Queen Mab, " which daring impiety Leigh 
 Hunt thought was avenged by the "most religious sea " 
 in the bay of Spezzia. Nor did he scoff like Byron in 
 his "Cain, a Mystery" and in "Don Juan." Still, can- 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 6? 
 
 dor constrains us to admit that Poe was in a painful 
 degree a stranger to the religious sentiments which per- 
 vade the writings of Wordsworth and Tennyson, and 
 which are the chief charm of the poetry of such con- 
 temporary American bards as Bryant, Whittier and 
 Longfellow. 
 
 This admission will, of course, be fatal with that class 
 of moralists whom Poe describes as ' ' keeping them- 
 selves erect by perpetually swallowing pokers." Some 
 of them are sincere, but not a few of them are of the 
 Pecksniff tribe whom Hudibras so facetiously character- 
 izes. Men who 
 
 " Compound for sins they are inclined to 
 By damning those they have no mind to." 
 
 To many of these perfunctory anathemas, the proper 
 reply is in the words of the master, ' ' Who art thou that 
 judgest another man's servant?" We know but in part 
 even as to ourselves, how much less as to others. So 
 that it may often happen that 
 
 "The sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven 
 By man is cursed alway." 
 
 Such harsh moral judgments may find approval in an 
 age of (< cant and conventicles, " but as in the case of Poe 
 are sure to be reversed in a period of greater moral and 
 intellectual enlightenment. 
 
68 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 We append one of Poe's earliest and one of his 
 latest Poems. 
 
 To HELEN, 
 
 HELEN, thy beauty is to me 
 
 Like those Nicean barks of yore, 
 
 That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, 
 
 The weary, way-worn wanderer bore. 
 To his own native shore. 
 
 On desperate seas long wont to roam, 
 Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, 
 
 Thy Naiad airs have brought me home 
 To the glory that was Greece 
 And the grandeur that was Rome. 
 
 Lo ! in yon brilliant window-niche 
 How statue-like I see thee stand ! 
 
 The agate lamp within thy hand, 
 
 Ah ! Pysche, from the regions which 
 Are Holy Land ! 
 
 ULALUME, 
 
 THE skies they were ashen and sober ; 
 
 The leaves they were crisped and sere 
 The leaves they were withering and sere; 
 
 It was night in the lonesome October 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. 69 
 
 Of my most immemorial year; 
 It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 
 
 In the misty mid region of Weir 
 It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 
 
 In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 
 
 Here once, through an alley Titanic, 
 
 Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul 
 
 Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul. 
 These were days when my heart was volcanic 
 
 As the scoriae rivers that roll 
 
 As the lavas that restlessly roll 
 Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek 
 
 In the ultimate climes of the pole 
 That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek 
 
 In the realms of the boreal pole. 
 
 Our talk had been serious and sober, 
 
 But our thoughts they were palsied and sere 
 Our memories were treacherous and sere 
 
 For we knew not the month was October, 
 
 And we marked not the night of the year 
 (Ah, night of all nights in the year !) 
 
 We noted not the dim lake of Auber 
 
 (Though once we had journeyed down here) 
 
 Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber, 
 
 Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 
 
 And now, as the night was senescent 
 
 And star-dials pointed to morn 
 
 As the star-dials hinted of morn 
 At the end of our path a liquescent 
 
 And nebulous lustre was born, 
 
70 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 Out of which a miraculous crescent 
 Arose with a duplicate horn 
 
 Astarte's bediamonded crescent 
 
 Distinct with its duplicate horn. 
 
 And I said " She is warmer than Dian : 
 She rolls through an ether of sighs 
 She revels in a region of sighs : 
 
 She has seen that the tears are not dry on 
 
 These cheeks, where the worm never dies, 
 
 And has come past the stars of the Lion 
 To point us the path to the skies 
 To the Lethean peace of the skies 
 
 Come up, in spite of the Lion, 
 
 To shine on us with her bright eyes 
 
 Come up through the lair of the Lion, 
 With love in her luminous eyes." 
 
 But Psyche, uplifting her finger, 
 
 Said " Sadly this star I mistrust 
 Her pallor I strangely mistrust : 
 
 Oh, hasten ! oh, let us not linger ! 
 
 Oh, fly ! let us fly! for we must." 
 
 In terror she spoke, letting sink her 
 
 Wings until they trailed in the dust 
 
 In agony sobbed, letting sink her 
 
 Plumes till they trailed in the dust 
 Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust. 
 
 I replied "This is nothing but dreaming: 
 Let us on by this tremulous light ! 
 Let us bathe in this crystaline light ! 
 
 Its Sibylic splendor is beaming 
 
EDGAR ALLAN POE. /I 
 
 With Hope and in Beauty to-night : 
 
 See ! it flickers up the sky through the night ! 
 Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming 
 
 And be sure it will lead us aright 
 We safely may trust to a gleaming 
 
 That cannot but guide us aright, 
 
 Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night." 
 
 Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, 
 And tempted her out of her gloom 
 And conquered her scruples and gloom ; 
 
 And we passed to the end of the vista, 
 
 But were stopped by the door of a tomb 
 By the door of a legended tomb ; 
 
 And I said " What is written, sweet sister, 
 On the door of this legended tomb ?" 
 She replied "Ulalume Ulalume 
 'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume !" 
 
 Then my heart it grew ashen and sober 
 
 As the leaves that were crisped and sere 
 As the leaves that were withering and sere, 
 
 And I cried "It was surely October 
 On this very night of last year 
 That I journeyed I journeyed down here 
 That I brought a dead burden down here 
 On this night of all nights in the year, 
 Ah, what demon has tempted me here ? 
 
 Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber 
 This misty mid region of Weir. 
 
 Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber, 
 This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir." 
 
72 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 A BIOLOGICAL THERMIDOR." 
 
 Grant Allen, the English biographer of Charles Dar- 
 win, has said that from the date of the publication of 
 that notable book, "The Origin of Species," the scien- 
 tific world has been in the midst of a ''biological Thermi- 
 dor.'' To those who are familiar with French history 
 during the closing years of the eighteenth century this 
 phase is both significant and startling. It is suggestive 
 of the guillotine ; it smacks of the Menadic insurrection 
 and of Phrygian caps of liberty ; it thrills with the stir- 
 ring notes of the Marseillaise, and what else contributed 
 to make the first French Revolution "the bloodiest 
 picture in the book of time." 
 
 So during the twenty five years and more which have 
 elapsed since Darwinism became a topic of scientific dis- 
 quisition and popular discussion we have had heavy 
 fighting all along the line of the Christian evidences, the 
 principal point of attack and defense being as to "man's 
 place in nature." This, indeed, has been the Ther- 
 mopylae of the struggle. 
 
 According to the latter-day scientists man is in no 
 just sense the product oi creative skill or energy. On 
 the contrary, he is a lineal descendant of an unsightly 
 mud-fish that in the ages of the long ago floundered at low 
 tide on the shores of an immemorial sea. From this 
 
A BIOLOGICAL THERMIDOR. 73 
 
 lowly beginning he has been slowly elevated to his pres- 
 ent physical proportions and intellectual endowments. 
 
 Mr. Darwin, in the last chapter of his "Descent of 
 Man," ventures the opinion that his immediate progeni- 
 tor was most probably a hairy quadruped with peaked 
 ears and a pronounced caudal appendage, which made the 
 trees his dwelling-place. Ernest Haeckel, the German 
 anthropologist, thinks that our nearest ancestor was the 
 " speechless man/' whose living representatives are 
 seen to-day in the cretins of Switzerland and other 
 mountainous countries, and also in the various idiotic 
 and deformed specimens of humanity which are occa- 
 sionally found in all countries. Entertaining such views 
 of man's origin, it is not to be wondered at that he is 
 in their estimation a decidedly vulgar and even diminu- 
 tive fraction in the grand calculus of creation.. 
 
 In broad contrast with these views is the scriptural 
 presentation of our humanity. According to the sacred 
 Scriptures, man is the first-born of every terrestrial 
 creature ; a being of royal descent and destiny ; a being 
 so illustrious that he was divinely invested with domin- 
 ion over the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, 
 and the fishes of the sea ; moreover, a being whose 
 birth-hour was celebrated by the angels who kept their 
 first estate, and whose cradle was rocked by the same 
 mighty hand that meted out the heavens with a span 
 and garnished them with resplendent beauty and inef- 
 fable glory. 
 
 This first man was not the primeval man of Sir John 
 Lubbock's crude imagining, but rather the Adam of 
 
74 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 "Paradise Lost," having angels for his evening guests 
 and God for his daily companion. Here we might rest 
 the argument, but instead we address ourselves to the 
 threefold inquiry: When, where, and how did man 
 originate? As to the when and where of this inquiry 
 we shall study brevity possibly at the expense of clear- 
 ness and force. As yet, however, the data bearing on 
 these points are insufficient in number and certitude ; 
 and any conclusions we might reach would be of neces- 
 sity provisional. The same, in part, might be stated of 
 the whole theory of evolution. While it is in its mere 
 outline as old as the Greek philosophy, yet in its later 
 aspects it is of recent birth. Pritchard, the reputed 
 father and founder of anthropology, has died within 
 the memory of some now living. Lamarck himself 
 wrote in the first year of the present century; and 
 Robert Chambers, author of "The Vestiges of Crea- 
 tion, *' belongs to the Victorian era of English history. 
 It is safe to say that as a science it is still in leading- 
 strings, and that its wisest advocates are but "squatters" 
 in the Far West of learning. It follows that it ill becomes 
 an expert, much less a self-confessed layman, to dogma- 
 tize in regard to the when, where, or how of the genesis 
 of man. I remember well when there was a deal of 
 palaver and pother in scientific circles with reference to 
 to the Guadaloupe man and the sub-cypress Indian of 
 the Mississippi Valley. It was claimed by a few scien- 
 tists that these were the skeletons of a pre-Adamite 
 race, but the claim was disputed by the great body of 
 professional geologists. More recent discoveries as of 
 
A BIOLOGICAL THERMIDOR. 75 
 
 the Neanderthal skull at Dusseldorf, Germany, and of 
 the numerous human fossils in Southern France and in 
 other widely-separated osseous deposits in the New and 
 Old Worlds have given a fresh impulse to the discus- 
 sion of the antiquity of man. It is now generally 
 thought that the Aurignac race was contemporary in 
 Southern Europe with the mammoth and the cave bear. 
 All efforts, however, to find the tertiary man have been 
 abortive. So much is this true that no reputable 
 anthropologist asserts that there are any satisfactory 
 proofs of man's existence beyond the quaternary period 
 of the earth's history. Some attribute this lack of proof 
 to the warped and broken condition of the geological 
 record, and are confident that unmistakable traces of 
 this primitive man will yet be found in the earliest strata 
 of the tertiary age. To us it appears that at the pres- 
 ent stage of scientific discovery this hypothesis is so 
 thoroughly without legs that its opponents may fairly 
 insist on a finding more decisive than a Scotch verdict. 
 And yet there must be some modification of theological 
 views as to the antiquity of man. While I do not 
 accept the statement of Professor John Tyndall that 
 man is a being of strictly secular growth, [ do accept 
 the statement that he is not a thing of yesterday. Nor 
 do I esteem it a heresy to say that he is not a thing of 
 six thousand years ago. This opinion in no wise con- 
 flicts with a fair interpretation of Genesis, and is more 
 in harmony with Bible history. If, as is now univer- 
 sally believed, the days of creation were immense geo- 
 logical eras, then, although man was created late in the 
 
/6 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 evening of the sixth day, yet it leaves ample room for 
 the ten thousand years of man's inhabitance of the 
 earth, which, according to Professor Dana, is all that 
 geology requires. 
 
 Moreover, the historical fact mentioned in the Bible 
 that there existed in the Valley of the Nile a high state 
 of civilization in the days of Joseph is not easily recon- 
 ciled with the received chronology. Besides, to show 
 how little reliance may be placed on this chronology, 
 you have only to remember that there is a discrepancy 
 of one thousand years between the Hebrew and Sama- 
 ritan chronologies. We may be well content, therefore, 
 to leave this problem as to the when of man's creation 
 to future developments for its approximative solution. 
 In no event will that solution affect the authenticity or 
 credibility of the sacred Scriptures. Nor is the second 
 inquiry as to where man was created a vital question. 
 Upon this point, however, there are two widely-diver- 
 gent theories. A majority hold with much tenacity to 
 the theory that all branches of the human family pro- 
 ceeded from a common geographical center, usually 
 located on the table-lands of Western and Central Asia. 
 Starting from this point, they have by successive migra- 
 tions peopled the various continents and islands of the 
 globe. The ablest expounder o r this theory is Quatre- 
 fages, the eminent French anthropologist. He makes 
 it plausible, but it is evidently embarrassed by almost 
 insuperable difficulties. On this dubious hypothesis of 
 a common origin is largely based the belief of the physi- 
 cal unity of the races. Without staying to weigh or 
 
A BIOLOGICAL THERMIDOR. 77 
 
 determine its scriptural and scientific value, we submit 
 another theory whose greatest advocate was the illustri- 
 ous Swiss naturalist, Louis Agassiz. He maintained 
 that, just as there were several distinct centers for the 
 creation of animals and plants, so likewise there were 
 nine distinct realms for the creation of man. This 
 theory he elaborated and illustrated by a multitude of 
 facts drawn from all parts of the earth. For example, 
 the island-continent of Australia has a fauna and flora 
 unlike any other in either hemisphere. With the excep- 
 tion of the opossum of North America, there is not a 
 single marsupial in the world outside of Australia nor 
 is there a solitary aboriginal mammal in Australia that 
 is found elsewhere. The same fact holds with reference 
 to the flora of Australia. Not a single vegetable species 
 known to Europe, Asia, Africa, or America is indige- 
 nous to her soil. The same or similar facts obtain every- 
 where. The polar bear of the arctic regions, the llama of 
 Peru, the armadillo of Brazil, the tiny humming-bird of 
 the American coast these and thousands of similar 
 instances illustrate the theory of Agassiz in regard to 
 plants and the lower animals. Not less is this theory 
 vindicated by the broad line of demarkation between 
 the New and the Old World monkeys and the geographi- 
 cal limitations of the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang 
 the highest in the scale of anthropoid apes. 
 
 At the date of the discovery of America there was 
 not a single animal found on this continent that was 
 known to the zoology of the Old World. These differ- 
 ences are accounted for, as some suppose, by the differ- 
 
78 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 ence of environment. In our judgment, the doctrine 
 of distinct centers of creation is more accordant with 
 these facts of observation. Indeed, several eminent 
 scientists have conceded that, but for its seeming con- 
 flict with the scriptural dogma of the brotherhood of 
 man, the opposite view would have no following apart 
 from the infidel evolutionists who believe in uniform 
 development "from protoplasm to Shakespeare. " That 
 the Bible does inculcate the brotherhood of man may 
 be admitted without accepting the theory of the physi- 
 cal unity of the races. That brotherhood, properly 
 interpreted, does not rest on the basis of derivation 
 from a single pair or a single geographical center ; but 
 on a like moral nature, on a common sense of moral 
 responsibility, a common theistic conception, a common 
 intuition of immortality, and, most of all, on the scrip- 
 tural declarations that Jesus Christ, "by the grace of 
 God, tasted death for every man," and that "he is the 
 Saviour of all men, especially of them that believe." 
 All this is precious truth that may be consistently held 
 without the acceptance of such narrow and utterly mis- 
 leading statements as originated with Anacharsis Clootz 
 during the " Reign of Terror," and have found a respon- 
 sive echo amongst the cranky philanthropes of the pres- 
 ent century. The fruits of such teaching are realized in 
 Negrophilism, which is but a phase of anarchism, and 
 in other disruptive tendencies that perpetually threaten 
 society with a return of "chaos and old night." 
 
 We come now to a question of broader significance 
 than those to which we have already referred. That 
 
A BIOLOGICAL THERMIDOR. 79 
 
 question relates to the how of man's genesis. This 
 branch of our inquiry is of vital import. There is no 
 disguising the fact that it presents a life-and-death issue 
 between natural science and revealed religion. If, as 
 the disciples of Darwin claim, that distinguished scient- 
 ist not only established the fact of organic evolution, 
 but developed also the process ; or, as one of them puts 
 it in Aristotelian phrase, discovered the TTO>$ as well as 
 the on then one or the other must inevitably go to 
 the wall. Most of our readers can recall Topsy, the 
 slave girl in " Uncle Tom's Cabin," who, when asked, 
 "Who made you?" innocently replied: "I wasn't 
 made ; I jest growed." 
 
 This reply of Topsy embodies the germ-thought of 
 evolution. As intimated in the former part of this 
 article, this theory is by no means a speculative novelty. 
 It existed thousands of years before Charles Darwin 
 started upon his three years' voyage as the naturalist ot 
 the "Beagle." 
 
 The philosophers who disputed with Paul in the mar- 
 ket-place at Athens, while differing in details, were fully 
 agreed that matter, even in its grossest forms, had in 
 itself the promise and potency of all terrestrial things. 
 Lucretius, in his poem, " De Rerum Natura," set forth 
 a similar philosophy. So little of originality is there in 
 Darwin's boasted discovery that Le Conte has said that 
 if there had been no Agassiz there could have been no 
 Darwin. So likewise others of his ardent disciples. Nor 
 does it admit of sober questioning that for his views of 
 natural selection he was indebted to his abler contem- 
 
8O LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 porary, Alfred Russell Wallace. While, therefore, he 
 was not the moral monster that some have depicted 
 him, still less was he the great discoverer that Sir 
 Charles Lyell and others claim him to have been. Car- 
 lyle is not wide of the mark when he said that, like all 
 the Darwins, from Erasmus, the author of "Zoonomia, " 
 to the latest generation he was rather weak than wicked. 
 But we are now less concerned with the author him- 
 self than with his theory of organic evolution. Evolu- 
 tion, in its popular acceptation, is unquestionably true 
 within certain well-defined limits. As has been said by 
 an eminent writer, it is " continuous, but paroxysmal." 
 This paradox, while it seems, as do all paradoxes, to 
 involve a contradiction in terms, is the very gist of this 
 age-long and world-wide controversy. Any other the- 
 ory of organic evolution is embarrassed by two insuper- 
 able difficulties. These are spontaneous generation and 
 transmutation of species, either or both of which are 
 utterly lacking in proof. It is safe to say that there is 
 not in all the thousands of years of the historic period 
 a scintilla of evidence in support of either hypothesis. 
 Even such pronounced evolutionists as Huxley, Tyndall 
 and Spencer confess that this is true as respects spon- 
 taneous generation. But they think it probable that, 
 by some as yet undiscovered combination of oxygen, 
 nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen, with the help of elec- 
 tricity, a living organism may be evolved. Those who 
 are acquainted with the experiments and manipulations of 
 the laboratory, with reference to this result, will know 
 the intrinsic worthlessness of this scientific conjecture. 
 
A BIOLOGICAL THERMIDOR. 8 1 
 
 In ' 'The Vestiges of Creation" it was roundly asserted that 
 a living organism had been produced by the transmis- 
 mission of the electric current through a solution of 
 silicate of iron. This organism was christened Acarus 
 Crossii, in honor of the discoverer ; but later investiga- 
 tion, with the aid of a powerful microscope, proved that 
 the new-comer was simply an old-fashioned inhabitant 
 of the beetle family that abounds in the debris of dilapi- 
 dated houses and other waste places. For anything 
 brought to light by the most diligent researches of the 
 scientist the venerable axiom, "Ad ovo omnia" still 
 " holds the fort " against all adversaries. 
 
 Here, then, as before stated, is an insuperable diffi- 
 culty in the way of evolutionism. Until this chasm is 
 bridged we are not prepared to accept the Spencerian 
 postulate that "creation is unthinkable." There is 
 more philosophy in Voltaire's saying that if there was 
 no God it would be necessary to invent one, if for no 
 other purpose but to meet the exigences of this nebu- 
 lous theory, " sent into this breathing world scarce half 
 made up." 
 
 But if the argument for spontaneous generation breaks 
 down, what better can be said of transmutation of species 
 by the law of natural selection or the survival of the fittest ? 
 In nothing is the inconclusiveness of Darwinian logic 
 more conspicuous than in his reasoning from the effects 
 of artificial selection, in producing varieties amongst 
 domesticated fowls and cultivated plants, to the genera- 
 tion of human species. Because, forsooth, the numer- 
 ous varieties of pigeons the swift-winged carrier, the 
 
82 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 dizzy tumbler, the self-satisfied fan-tail, and others are 
 all developed from the blue-rock pigeon by artificial 
 selection, therefore he argues that natural selection has 
 by a practically-incalculable series of changes evolved 
 the highest style of man from the jelly-fish. If this be 
 science, away with it ; if this be logic, cast it to the 
 dogs. The supreme silliness of this inferential reason- 
 ing will appear in this that by the counteractive law of 
 reversion to type, this same flock of pigeons, if turned 
 loose on a desolate island in mid-ocean, would return to 
 the primitive Columba livia of the naturalist; illustrat- 
 ting the law of the fixity of species, which is unrepeal- 
 able except by an act of the Divine Lawgiver who 
 enacted it for the conservation of the harmony of the 
 animal and vegetable kingdoms. Of like tenor is his 
 argument drawn from the artificial fertilization of orchids. 
 As in the former instance, he insists that by the same 
 law of natural selection the humblest reed shaken by an 
 evening zephyr has through vast eons been developed 
 into the Norwegian fir, the brave old English oak, and even 
 the red- woods that a learned geologist tells us were stran- 
 ded on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada at the close of 
 the glacial epoch. If this be the credence of scientists, 
 let us hear no more of the superstitious credulity of the 
 "Judaeus Apella " of the Roman satirist, and let these 
 gentlemen cease their harping about an " unknowable 
 God" and an " unthinkable creation." 
 
 But we propose now to test this scientific dogma of 
 transmutation of species by what Huxley has styled 
 "the method of Zadig," which, after all, is the old 
 
A BIOLOGICAL THERMIDOR. 83 
 
 common-sense method, which is at once inductive and 
 deductive. Zadig was an Oriental sage who figures in 
 one of Voltaire's novels. His method may be aptly 
 illustrated by an incident. A Bedouin chief walks out 
 from his tent in the morning, and observes the unmis- 
 takable foot prints of a camel in the desert sand. He 
 says to Hamed: " A camel passed our tent last night." 
 "How do you know?" says Hamed; "did you see 
 him?" " No," rejoins the chief, "but here you see his 
 foot-prints, and I know it as well as if I had seen him." 
 This, says Huxley, is the method of true science, and 
 and we endorse the statement. Now for the application. 
 In the Silurian age of geology the seas swarmed with 
 mollusks of marvelous number and variety, with occa- 
 sional ctustacea like the cray-fish, or, as we called it in 
 boyhood, the craw-fish a sort of a fresh-water lobster. 
 Toward the close of this age there were a few trilobites, 
 which evolutionists claim to be intermediate or transi- 
 tional forms, but which Agassiz styled ' ' prophetic 
 types." All of them, however, were invertebrates. 
 After the lapse, it may be of thousands of years we 
 reach the Devonian age of the geologist. Here we find 
 an abrupt change in the forms of animal life. Hugh 
 Miller, with his hammer and other equipment, was 
 prosecuting his geological studies in the old red sand- 
 stone of Scotland, and in its earliest strata, when he came 
 unawares upon a vertebrate fish. Nor was it of an 
 inferior type of organism, but on the contrary a ganoid 
 of complex structure and of enormous size eighteen 
 feet in length. When the great geologist made this dis- 
 
84 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 covery he reverently exclaimed: " Here I see the foot- 
 prints of the Creator." Was not this reasoning after 
 the method of Zadig ? What say the infidel evolution- 
 ists to Hugh Miller's logic ? Do they suggest that there 
 are missing links between the mollusks of the former 
 age and the ganoids of the Devonian ? Let these miss- 
 ing links be brought into court, or else let the captious 
 critic hold his peace. Mark their inconsistency. They 
 find by careful searching a few chipped flints, with an 
 occasional arrow-head or stone hatchet in the Abbeville 
 drift, and they straightway rightly conclude that these 
 are proofs of man's presence and skill. But when 
 Hugh Miller finds the astereolepis in the old red sand- 
 stone with its symmetrical form, its well-constructed 
 eye as perfect for its purpose as the best optical instru- 
 ment manufactured at Dresden or Vienna these same 
 gentlemen pooh-pooh the suggestion that here is over- 
 whelming evidence of a special creation. This identical 
 proof runs through the whole geological record from the 
 dawn of animal life to the psychozoic age, when man 
 appears as perfect in physical structure as he is seen 
 to-day in London or Paris. 
 
 We know full well that Huxley, in his discussion 
 with Gladstone, insists that the several dynasties of 
 fishes, reptiles, mammals, etc., were not successive, as 
 taught in the first chapter of Genesis. Modern research, 
 he argues, has shown that they were largely simultane- 
 ous ; but as yet the only evidence he adduces''' is the 
 casual discovery of the wing of an insect in the silurian 
 rocks, and a few other supposed facts quite as insignifi- 
 
A BIOLOGICAL THERMIDOR. 85 
 
 cant. But .let us now, as we best may, ascertain from 
 the testimony of the rocks " man's place in nature." 
 
 From the carboniferous age, when the earth was 
 covered with gigantic ferns, we find a dim foreshadow- 
 ing of the coming of him who was afterward made in 
 the image of God. The immense coal-deposits and the 
 vast iron-beds in close proximity pointed to this Age of 
 Iron. Why else were these two minerals, so indispensa- 
 ble to the higher human civilization, garnered up in the 
 bowels of the earth, except as preparatory to God's 
 crowning creation and " time's noblest offspring?" So 
 likewise with the domestic mammals the cow, with 
 distended udders for nourishment ; the horse, with his 
 symmetry and fleetness for journeying ; the ass, with 
 his capacity for burden-bearing; the sheep, with his 
 fleece for clothing of greater value than that which 
 Jason and his brother Argonauts sought through tem- 
 pestuous seas and wearisome years. Was it mere hap- 
 hazard that just as these useful animals appeared upon 
 the stage the fierce carnivora were swept away by some 
 cataclysm, or else gradually shut up in the jungles of 
 India or in the sun-scorched deserts of Africa ? Is there 
 here no proof of design, no evidence of special ends in 
 creation ? Was there in all this no gracious provision 
 made for the comfort and well-being of man, in whose 
 likeness there should be revealed "in the fullness of 
 time" the sublime mystery of the incarnation? 
 
 The acknowledged scientists of the present age such 
 as Alfred Russell Wallace, President Dawson of the 
 British Scientific Association, and many others would 
 
86 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 respond affirmatively. One, and by no means the least, 
 in this body of savans has said that whenever he saw a 
 jockey mount for the Derby cup he realized that the horse 
 was from the beginning predestined for the service of man. 
 
 We have said that when man was created he was, as 
 far as we may judge, perfect in his anatomical structure 
 and well equipped every way for his divine mission of 
 subduing the earth. The " Pithecoid man " is a super- 
 stition of the infidel scientists. There is no trace ol 
 him in either the Mosaic or geologic record. When the 
 Neanderthal skull was first examined it was thought 
 there were some marks of Simian affinity. Especially 
 was it alleged that the low forehead and the corrugated 
 brow were evidences of savagism. The same was for a 
 time said of the other fossil remains of man ; but even 
 such writers as Oscar Schmidt, of the University of 
 Strasburg, now admit that these remains of " the oldest 
 man " known to us display "a high grade of develop- 
 ment." So much, or rather so little, for the existence 
 of a missing link which shall unite the gorilla with the 
 degraded tribes of Western Africa. 
 
 It may be well, in the summing up of the argument, 
 to subjoin a few of the most notable admissions of the 
 most eminent evolutionists that may serve to rebuke 
 and silence that flippancy of tongue which characterizes 
 a class of shallow thinkers who prate about the super- 
 stition of creationists. Professor Tyndall, who is a 
 worthy successor of Michael Faraday, says: ''Those 
 who hold the doctrine of evolution are by no means 
 ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they yield 
 
A BIOLOGICAL THERMIDOR. 8/ 
 
 no more to it than a provisional assent." Stripped of 
 vagueness, that theory implies that the genius of Shake- 
 speare, the wisdom of Plato, and the art of Raphael 
 were once latent in a fiery cloud of primeval mist. 
 "Surely these notions," says Tyndall, "embody an 
 absurdity too monstrous to be received by any sane 
 mind." Such utterances of this leading scientist are 
 enough at least to exclude the insufferable dogmatism 
 of Ernest Haeckel and his school. Alfred Russell Wal- 
 lace, who is fairly entitled to the credit of the natural 
 selection theory, while he admits its satisfactoriness up 
 to the genesis of man, is constrained to allow that at 
 this point it fails, and that the creation of man calls for 
 Divine intervention. Here, according to the Horatian 
 precept, is a "nodus" that requires the presence and 
 hand of a God to unravel. 
 
 From this conclusion there is no door of escape 
 except by unearthing the pre-glacial man. Hitherto 
 his existence is a matter of pure conjecture. Nor does 
 it avail to speak in this connection of a mutilated geo- 
 logical record, seeing that from the beginning of the 
 tertiary era to the diluvial period there has been no 
 serious disturbance of the stratified rocks, and conse- 
 quently only slight breaks in the continuity of that 
 record. It follows inevitably that the so-called man-ape 
 is a fiction of like sort with the fabulous centaurs and 
 mermaids of Greek mythology. And yet it is obvious 
 that without this "missing link" there is an end of 
 organic evolution so far as it relates to the human 
 species the homo sapiens of Linneus. 
 
88 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 Between the lowest phase of savagism and the highest 
 form of the anthropoid there is a wide and an impass- 
 able gulf of separation. It is not simply a question of 
 the comparative volume of brain, or of the presence or 
 absence of the much-talked-of hippocampus minor, or 
 of the prehensile big toe of the newborn child. These 
 are subordinate issues that have not a feather's weight 
 in this controversy. The " arc of human thought " is 
 wider than "the angle of perception," or else it might 
 stagger in the face of these perplexities. Of hardly 
 more significance is the argument which Professor 
 Joseph Le Conte has based on homologous structures 
 and embryological data. The former are in a large 
 measure fanciful, and the analogies, when true, are such 
 as might be expected to obtain between all vertebrated 
 animals. As for the latter, they are of such little worth 
 that Von Baer, the most eminent embryologist of this 
 or any previous age, has repudiated the assertion that 
 "the embryos of the higher types actually pass through 
 forms permanent in the lower ones." On the contrary, 
 he says that " the type of each animal seems from the 
 first to fix itself in the embcyo and to regulate its whole 
 development." These are all essentially side issues that 
 do not reach the core of the main question. Granting 
 all that is claimed for them by their most learned advo- 
 cates, there are vaster issues which are not compassed 
 by this purblind logic. The superiority of man is indeed 
 best seen not in his peculiar and superb anatomy, but in 
 that sense of responsibility to God which Daniel Web- 
 ster says, is the most awful thought that his mind ever 
 
A BIOLOGICAL THERMIDOR. 89 
 
 conceived. It is found not so much in his shape or 
 gesture, grand as these confessedly are, but, as Kant 
 has said, in " a moral law within us " only comparable 
 in its vastness to the "starry firmament outspread above 
 us. " We are well apprised that Herbert Spencer includes 
 this and much more besides in his scheme of cosmical 
 evolution. And thus God is thrust out of his own uni- 
 verse, and man is the inhabitant of a world doomed to 
 eternal orphanage. Wiser than this philosophy is the 
 simple faith of the savage, who 
 
 Sees God in clouds and hears him in the wind. 
 
 If demonstrably true, it would be better to bury the 
 dreadful secret deeper ' ' than plummet-line has ever 
 sounded." Most assuredly, then, there is no just occa- 
 sion for the foolish jesting of these " learned Thebans " 
 at the expense of their opponents, who still cling to the 
 eternal verities, and who still reverence the eternal 
 sanctities of Theism. It is no trivial matter to despoil 
 humanity of its faith in a personal God who cares for 
 oxen and notes the fall of a sparrow a God so loving 
 and merciful that he lights up the dark valley of death 
 with the torch of eternal hope, and promises to his 
 "ransomed ones" a new heaven and a new earth, 
 wherein dwelleth righteousness. Better the horrid hells 
 of Dante's Inferno than ihe blood-curdling visions and 
 specters of this terrible nightmare of Materialism. Most 
 beautifully and touchingly does the bard of Hope apos- 
 trophize : 
 
9O LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 For this hath science searched on weary wing, 
 By sea and shore, each mute and living thing. 
 O star-eyed Science ! hast thou wandered there 
 To waft us home the message of despair ? 
 Then let us read, nor loudly, nor elate, 
 The doom that bars us from a better fate ; 
 And, sad as angels for the good man's sin, 
 Weep to record and blush to give it in. 
 
 When we recall the fact that the English army 
 "swore terribly in Flanders," then the unpremeditated 
 oath of " Uncle Toby " may seem a venial transgres- 
 sion. Not so, however, the sin of him who " sets his 
 mouth against the heavens/' and even scoffingly asks: 
 " How doth God know? and is there knowledge with 
 the Most High?" 
 
ESSAYS. 
 
THE CARDINAL AND THE PREACHER. 93 
 
 THE CARDINAL AND THE PREACHER, 
 
 Plutarch has furnished us with numerous striking, 
 historical parallels. A volume equally large might be 
 filled with broad, historical contrasts. 
 
 Thomas Wolsey sprung from the ranks of the common 
 people, and, by dint of genius and enterprise, rose by 
 rapid strides to the Arch-Bishopric of York. The mu- 
 nificence of his sovereign, Henry the VIII endowed him 
 with the revenues of a large number of ecclesiastical 
 livings scattered throughout the realm. So enormous 
 was Wolsey's income that he built Hampton Court and 
 gave it to Henry for a Royal residence. He founded, 
 likewise,. Christ's Church College at Cambridge, and, in 
 the spirit of the Roman Maecenas, bestowed large bene- 
 factions upon men of letters. His devotion to the Church 
 amounting almost to ultramontanism, secured for him a 
 Cardinal's hat. Not contented with this elevated, sacer- 
 dotal rank, he became an aspirant for Pontifical honors. 
 The quarrel of his sovereign with Leo X, together with 
 the jealousy of his fellow courtiers, and the bitter antag- 
 onism of the Spanish and French Cardinals defeated his 
 ambitious aims. This disappointment was itself a crush- 
 ing blow ; but his subsequent refusal to abet the matri- 
 monial infidelities of the " Royal Blue Beard/' who had 
 hitherto been his friend and patron, drew upon the 
 
94 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 unfortunate Cardinal the persecutions of Anne Boleyn, 
 the mistress of the hour. 
 
 It was at this most eventful period of his life, when 
 abandoned by his Royal master, stripped of his honors, 
 and hounded to the death by heartless foes, that Shakes- 
 peare puts into his mouth those memorable words of 
 counsel to Cromwell, his staunch retainer : 
 
 "Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition, 
 
 For by that sin the angels fell, 
 
 Let all the ends thou aimest at, 
 
 Be thy country's, thy God's and truth's, 
 
 Then, if thou fall'st, O Cromwell, thou fall'st 
 
 A glorious martyr." 
 
 Lear, worn, weary and homeless, and crazed by the 
 cruel treatment of Regan and Goneril, was in a less 
 sorrowful plight than the downtrodden Cardinal, when, 
 after a wearisome travel, he approached the gates of 
 Leicester Abbey. Addressing the Abbot, he said : 
 
 "Father Abbot, an old man, broken in the 
 
 storms of state, 
 
 Comes to lay his bones among ye ; 
 A little earth for pity's sake." 
 
 A few days after his arrival he died with no attendants 
 but the holy brethren, who ministered to him the sacra- 
 ments of his Church, and the consolations of religion. 
 How has the mighty fallen ! But yesterday he had as 
 the motto of his signet ring : ' 'Ego et Rex meus." ' ' Now 
 lies he there and none so poor as to do him reverence." 
 
 The moral of this most thrilling history may be summed 
 
THE CARDINAL AND THE PREACHER. 95 
 
 up in a single text : " Seek not the honor that cometh 
 from men, but the honor that cometh from God." 
 
 Look on that picture, and then on this : When the 
 history of American Methodism shall be fully written, 
 few names will occupy a more prominent place than that 
 of Lovick Pierce. 
 
 Like the illustrious ecclesiastic, of whom we have just 
 written, he sprung from obscurity, but, unlike him, his 
 educational advantages were exceedingly limited. In 
 despite of this, however, he early reached the highest 
 distinction as a preacher. It is true that he never attained 
 to Episcopal honors, nor did he ever wield a commanding 
 influence in the General Conference. Like Edmund 
 Burke, he was ill adapted to the leadership of deliberative 
 assemblies. 
 
 Indeed, it is but just to say that he was deficient in the 
 faculty of organization, and possessed only moderate 
 administrative ability. As Whitfield, the prince of pul- 
 pit orators, founded no sect, so Lovick Pierce consum- 
 mated no great reform in the economy of Methodism. 
 Eminently conservative, as he was, in reference to the 
 fundamental doctrines of the Church, he was evermore 
 full of plans for the improvement of its polity. Nearly 
 all of these proposed reforms were lost in the Committee 
 on Revisals. 
 
 We come now to speak of Lovick Pierce, simply as a 
 preacher of the Everlasting Gospel ; and in this respect 
 he has had few equals, and no superiors in the American 
 pulpit. He had neither the thorough scholarship, nor 
 the analytical power of Stephen Olin ; John Summerfield 
 
g6 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 surpassed him greatly in the mere art of persuasion. 
 Bishop Bascombe excelled him in the thunderous oratory 
 that reminds us of an ocean swell. Yet as a preacher, in 
 the Pauline acceptation of the term, he was not a whit 
 behind the chiefest of his contemporaries. 
 
 It would be difficult to say, definitely, wherein lay the 
 secret of his immense pulpit power. It certainly was not 
 due to the vastness of his literary resources, for these 
 were circumscribed ; nor could it be attributed to any- 
 thing that savors of sensationalism, for no man despised 
 more heartily the tricks of the pulpit mountebank, who 
 is more intent on winning applause than on winning 
 souls. 
 
 Somewhat of his rare excellence as a preacher may be 
 justly ascribed to his imposing presence. His voice was 
 a natural, not an acquired orotund, his articulation was 
 uniformly distinct, and his modulation perfect. His 
 manner of delivery was sometimes vehement, but never 
 offensively boisterous. Add to all this what the French 
 term, " Onction," and the old Methodists' "Liberty," 
 and you have our idea of his elocution. 
 
 One grand element of his success was his apostolic 
 saintliness of character. He believed and preached the 
 doctrine of holiness, as handed down to us by Fletcher 
 and the Wesleys. 
 
 With him, however, it was something more than a 
 mere theory, he illustrated it in his daily life. I have 
 yet to see the man who more studiously avoided every 
 colloquial impropriety, whether slang or vulgarity, who 
 was more prayerful in spirit, and more circumspect in all 
 
THE CARDINAL AND THE PREACHER. gj 
 
 his deportment. While at times he had an air of morose- 
 ness, there underlay this harsh exterior a sympathy as 
 genial as the breath of spring-time, and as far-spreading 
 as the blue sky above. His charity had no bounds. 
 Never was there a more appreciative listener to the com- 
 monplaces of the pulpit or a more enraptured hearer of 
 the platitudes of Commencement Orators and Essayists. 
 
 Next to his personal purity and thorough consecration 
 to his ministerial work, was his mastery of the Holy 
 Scriptures. No one more fully realized Mr. Wesley's 
 conception of, " Homo unius libri" The Bible was the 
 armory whence he drew the weapons, which, on many 
 a hard-fought field, were mighty to the pulling down of 
 strongholds. We would not intimate that he was alto- 
 gether neglectful of polite literature. He was indeed 
 familiar with the standard English authors, and was 
 always abreast with the current phases of philosophy. 
 
 But, beyond all else, he studied the Bible not de- 
 tached portions, as the manner of some is, but every 
 part and parcel of it. He knew the Pentateuch as well 
 as the four Gospels. He was as fully conversant with 
 the weird visions of Ezekiel, and the mystic imagery of 
 the Apocalypse, as with the simpler Messianic prophe- 
 sies of Isaiah. 
 
 He had well nigh committed to memory the Psalms 
 of David, yet he was hardly less familiar with the Prov- 
 erbs of Solomon. If any portion of the Divine Revela- 
 tion was more highly esteemed and carefully studied 
 than any other, it was the Epistles of St. Paul. His 
 understanding of the Pauline system was critically exact 
 
98 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 and his Exegesis of the Epistles to the Romans and 
 Hebrews was more than masterly, it savored of the 
 supernatural. With such resources as these, it was no 
 matter of marvel that he was a master of assemblies. 
 
 Only secondary to these two elements was his won- 
 derful gift as an extemporaneous speaker. He had, as 
 was well understood, an invincible aversion to written 
 sermons. Now and then he has been known to inveigh 
 against them with an earnestness that left no room for 
 doubt as to the strength of his convictions. Let it not 
 be supposed, however, that he at all countenanced the 
 notion of extemporaneous thinking. On the contrary, 
 he was diligent in preparation for his pulpit work. 
 
 I have personal knowledge on this point, on more 
 than one occasion. Still he had so trained himself to 
 extemporaneous speaking that his spoken style was far 
 better than his written style. The former was terse, at 
 times epigrammatic, always sparkling; the latter was 
 labored, involved, and, frequently turgid. It is to be 
 deplored that he did not cultivate writing until advanced 
 life. Richard Baxter, a laborious pastor, and a life long 
 invalid, left material for forty folio volumes ; Dr. Pierce 
 scarcely left sufficient material for a single duodecimo. 
 
 During his earlier ministry his toil and travel were 
 immense. Like St. Paul, he was in perils both in 
 the city and the wilderness. His districts embraced 
 a larger geographical area than the Apostle trav- 
 ersed in his first missionary tours. These abundant 
 labors left him but little opportunity for strictly lit- 
 erary work, and furnish ample apology for his appar- 
 
THE CARDINAL AND THE PREACHER. 99 
 
 ent short comings. Besides, he fell on evil days, 
 when Methodism was every where spoken against; 
 when the spirit of a confessor and the courage of 
 a martyr was needed to confront the enemies of Meth- 
 odism. Luckily for himself and the Church, he was 
 cast in the same heroic mould as Francis Asbury and 
 William McKendree. He faltered not for a single mo- 
 ment in the face of opposition, but steered right onward 
 to the goal. The usual order of Divine Providence is, 
 <( That one soweth and another reapeth," but he sur- 
 vived this era of depression, and lived to see Methodism 
 the dominant religious Organization of this Continent 
 and the leading religious denomination of the Protes- 
 tant world. It was, indeed, gratifying to witness the 
 distinguished consideration with which he was treated in 
 his old age, in all the Annual and General Conferences 
 of the Church. This was no constrained tribute to rank, 
 or wealth, .or power; but the spontaneous recognition of 
 intellectual and moral worth of the highest order. 
 
 Dr. Pierce did not lag superfluous, on the stage. He 
 wrote or preached almost to his dying day. It is true 
 that the last weeks of his life were marked by great ner- 
 vous prostration. At times he seemed bowed down 
 with sorrow, but the reaction was always speedy. It 
 was in one of his jubilant moods he sent that message to 
 the Churches, "Say to the brethren I am lying just 
 outside the Gates of Heaven." An utterance worthy to 
 be mentioned in the same breath with Paul's exclama- 
 tion, in the depths of the Mamertine prison, " I am now 
 ready to be offered." Not less inspiring than the last 
 
IOO LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 words of Wesley, " the best of all is, God is with us." 
 Not a great while before his departure it was my priv- 
 ilege to visit and talk with him in his death-chamber. 
 In response to my enquiry about his health, he said : 
 "I am lying here a wreck upon the coast of time, 
 trying to look into the Eternal Future." It is some- 
 what singular that the great Webster used almost 
 this identical language to a friend during his last 
 illness. That friend replied: "Say not Mr. Webster 
 a wreck, but a pyramid on the coast of time." My 
 reply was different, I said : ' ' Doctor for many years 
 you have been getting ready for this hour." After 
 a little conversation his eye brightened, and he said : 
 "I have some well-matured views on the subject of 
 faith, which I desire to submit to you." I said: "I 
 have but a little while to remain, as I must leave on the 
 next train-" He glanced at the clock and said : " I see 
 you haven't sufficient time to hear me. " He, however, 
 gave me an outline of his views, and I urged him to 
 have them written and published for the edification of 
 the church. Thereupon he gave me his blessing, and I 
 withdrew. He lived some weeks after this interview. 
 There is a beautiful fitness, or rather I ought to say a 
 wise Providence, in the death-scenes of great and good 
 men. Elijah, the wild-eyed Tishbite, who rebuked 
 kings and smote false prophets and idolatrous priests, 
 with the edge of the sword, must needs have a chariot 
 of flame and steeds of fire to bear him aloft to the Para- 
 dise of God. It was a fitting close to a most stormy 
 career. But for Lovick Pierce there was appointed a 
 
THE CARDINAL AND THE PREACHER. IOI 
 
 more quiet hour. Calmly, as to a night's repose, he lay 
 down to his final rest. He nestled his weary head on 
 the bosom of Jesus, and with hardly a pang or a strug- 
 gle, his ransomed spirit went "sweeping through the 
 gates," to his exceeding great reward. 
 
 What think ye of the Cardinal and the Preacher? 
 How apposite the language of David ; ' ' I have seen the 
 wicked, in great power, spreading himself like a green 
 bay-tree, yet he passed away, and lo ! he was not ; yea, 
 I sought for him and he could not be found. Mark the 
 perfect man and behold the upright, for the end of that 
 man is peace." 
 
102 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 THE WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS. 
 
 . We have no disposition to revive the controversy 
 respecting the comparative merits of the Ancients and 
 Moderns. That controversy was, throughout its various 
 phases, an unprofitable logomachy, and found its fitting 
 consummation in Dean Swift's " Battle of the Books." 
 We are quite sure, however, that there still exists a 
 popular misapprehension on this point, and this Essay- 
 is prompted by a sincere desire to correct this tendency 
 to depreciate the world's "gray fathers," who laid the 
 foundations of Science and Philosophy, and whose 
 kingly spirits still "rule us from their urns." 
 
 It would be difficult to estimate too highly the superb 
 discoveries of modern science, or the wonderful achieve- 
 ments of modern art. 
 
 But let us not hastily conclude that antiquity can boast 
 of no triumphs of genius, equally grand and imposing. 
 The discovery of Neptune by La Verrier, or the inven- 
 tion of the Telescope by Galilleo, is not more wonderful 
 than the Astronomical discoveries of Thales, the Mile- 
 sian, or the burning lenses of Archimedes, by which he 
 fired the Carthaginian galleys, in the harbor of Syracuse. 
 If we turn to mechanical philosophy, we shall find that the 
 Thames Tunnel or the Brooklyn Bridge are not greater 
 marvels of skill and industry than the Stonehenge of 
 Salisbury plain, or those immense Aqueducts, whose 
 
THE WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS. 1 03 
 
 broken arches are still scattered over the wide waste of 
 the campagna di Roma. The dome of St. Peters, that 
 noblest conception of Michael Angelo, is utterly eclipsed 
 by the Parthenon, crowning the brow of the Acropolis, 
 and the venerable Cathedral, of York or Milan, is not 
 equal to the magnificent temples, whose ruins strew the 
 banks of the Nile at Carnac and Luxor. 
 
 In order, however, that we may have a proper appre- 
 ciation of the wisdom of the ancients, it will be necessary 
 to examine their attainments in the three departments of 
 ist, the Fine Arts; 2d, General Literature; 3d, Phi- 
 losophy. We shall be disappointed if a candid examina- 
 tion of these several heads does not increase our admira- 
 tion for classical antiquity. By the Fine Arts we intend, 
 ta present, Music Painting and Sculpture. We purposely 
 exclude Architecture from the discussion, as the relative 
 inferiority of the moderns is admitted on all sides. With 
 the doubtful exception of the Gothic arch, there is noth- 
 ing excellent in the style of our architecture that is not 
 borrowed from antiquity. 
 
 It is otherwise in regard to Music. Here it must be 
 confessed that the moderns have made great advance- 
 ment. The musical instruments of the Greeks and 
 Romans, and of the earlier Egyptains and Hebrews, 
 were exceedingly rude in their construction. The fabu- 
 lous story of Orpheus, who tamed savage beasts and 
 drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, or the scriptural 
 narration of the effects of David's harp on the evil spirit 
 of Saul, cannot blind us to the fact that the ancients had 
 not even a system of musical notation. They could not 
 
IO4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 boast of a single production like the Requiem of Mozart; 
 and it is certain that Asaph and his brethren, when 
 chanting the lofty strains of Hebrew Psalmody, could 
 not be compared to an oratorio of Handel as rendered at 
 Exeter Hall, or even at the Boston Academy of Music. 
 In the sister arts of painting and sculpture, the Greeks 
 were superior to any modern nation. The specimens of 
 their art, however, which have escaped the Vandalism 
 of successive conquerors, as well as the corroding tooth 
 ol time, are few in number, and, it is probable, not the 
 best of their class. The colossal statues of Jupiter, at 
 Olympia, and of Minerva, at Athens, are only known 
 by the descriptions of contemporary writers, but it is a 
 fair conclusion that these master-pieces of Phidias as 
 much surpassed the Apollo Belvidere, as this latter 
 statue surpasses the finest productions of Canova or 
 Thorwaldsen. With regard to painting, we should 
 hesitate to claim as much in behalf of antiquity. Unless 
 we knew more of the merits of Zeuxis and Apelles, we 
 would not be warranted in asserting that the masters of 
 the Italian and Spanish schools of painting were, in any 
 wise, behind their Greek predecessors. Upon the whole, 
 we conclude that either because of more delicate sensi- 
 bilities among the Greeks, or the greater beauty of their 
 skies, or the richer garniture of their landscapes or else 
 from some occult cause, yet to be ascertained they 
 have greatly excelled all other races in the perception 
 and expression of beauty. What couiage was to the 
 the Roman, and utility is to the Englishman that was 
 Beauty to the fellow-countrymen of Plato and Pericles. 
 
THE WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS. 10$ 
 
 In general literature, we shall speak only of Poetry 
 and Oratory. 
 
 It has been so long fashionable to consider Homer 
 the Prince of Bards, that it may seem presumptuous in 
 us to challenge the correctness of this opinion. And 
 yet we shall venture to express our preference for John 
 Milton. We have always admired the tale of Troy 
 divine, but in a less degree than the- tale of "Man's first 
 disobedience," as recited in the pages of Paradise Lost. 
 The ground-work of the former poem the wrath of 
 Achilles is, indeed, in true dignity, immeasurably 
 below those grand events which are recorded in the lat- 
 ter. In naked sublimity, the author of the Iliad is 
 unsurpassed ; but, in varied excellence, he must yield 
 to that blind old Patriot, who fell on evil days and evil 
 tongues. 
 
 As we claim for Milton the foremost place amongst 
 epic poets, so we maintain that Shakespeare is the mas- 
 ter-spirit of dramatic literature. We appreciate fully 
 the great excellence of the three illustrious writers of 
 Greek tragedy. Sophocles, Eschylus and Euripides 
 have single passages that compare favorably with the 
 best lines of Shakespeare ; but restricted, as they were, 
 by the inexorable unities of Aristotle, they have not 
 equaled, in any drama, the Macbeth of the English poet, 
 or the Faust of his German rival. 
 
 It is possible that very many of our readers will not 
 concur in the views last expressed, but we submit them 
 as the deliberate and matured convictions of our own 
 mind. In regard to Oratory, there is less room for 
 
106 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 doubt -or disputation. From our boyhood we have 
 been educated to regard the best orations of Demos- 
 thenes and Cicero as models of Senatorial and Forensic 
 eloquence. There have not been wanting splendid 
 specimens of oratory in the British Parliament, the 
 American Congress and the French Chamber of Depu- 
 ties ; but not one of our great modern orators includ- 
 ing Burke, Clay, Webster and Mirabeau has ever 
 equaled the Athenian orator when . 
 
 He fulmined over Greece 
 To Macedon and Artaxerxes throne, 
 
 and so electrified his audience that, with one voice, they 
 exclaimed, "Let us march against Philip." Nor has 
 one of them ever equaled the accomplished Cicero, when 
 he literally drove the low-browed conspirator from the 
 Senate Chamber by the force of his invective ; or as when, 
 on another occasion, he scourged with unsparing severity 
 the guilty Proconsul of Sicily. 
 
 There is one species of modern eloquence, however, to 
 which there was nothing analogous in classical antiquity. 
 We refer, of course, to the eloquence of the Pulpit. Here 
 are themes transcending the loftiest topics of the Forum 
 and Senate Chamber, and in all ages of the Christian era, 
 they have been worthily expounded and illustrated. In 
 the primitive ages they were grandly enforced by Cyprian 
 of Carthage, Ambrose of Milan, and the golden-mouthed 
 orator of Byzantium. At a later period they were embel- 
 lished by the genius of Abelard and enriched by the 
 learning of Arminius and Melancthon. These sublime 
 and yet simple truths are adapted to all classes of men. 
 
THE WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS. IO/ 
 
 Falling from the lips of Bossuet and Massillon, they 
 bewitched the dissolute courtiers bf Louis the Great, and 
 when proclaimed by Whitfield, or Wesley, or Edwards, 
 they have stirred the popular heart like the blast of a 
 trumpet. In this detpartment modern oratory has won 
 its most brilliant triumphs, and here it is destined to 
 achieve yet greater results. 
 
 We now approach our concluding topic, and the one 
 which desarves the largest share of attention. 
 
 The philosophy of the ancients differs from that of 
 the moderns, rather in matters of detail than in its funda- 
 mental principles. Plato and Aristotle may be truthfully 
 said to have attained the ultima thule of philosophical 
 inquiry, if not the uttermost limits of speculative thought. 
 After the lapse of two thousand years they are still 
 acknowledged law-givers in metaphysics. Every school 
 of modern philosophy derives its tenets either from the 
 Stagarite or the Academician. Every theory, from the 
 pure idealism of Berkley to the gross materialism of 
 Condillac, has a similar origin. The common-sense 
 philosophy of Reid and Stewart, no less than the trans- 
 cendentalism of Hegel and Fichte, is of ancient date, as 
 Sir VVm. Hamilton has demonstrated. 
 
 Bacon, it is said, subverted the philosophy of the 
 schoolmen, but who is ignorant of the fact that the spirit 
 of Aristotle still survives in every University .in Europe. 
 Locke and his disciples rebelled likewise against the 
 authority of Plato, but the reaction was speedy and 
 overwhelming, and has even passed the limits of sober 
 speculation in the pages of Kant and the wilder vagaries 
 
IO8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 of Schelling. It is, indeed, one of the most curious 
 facts in the history of mankind, that, while in practical 
 knowledge they have made great strides in the pathway 
 of progress, they have not, for two thousand years, 
 advanced a hand's breadth in metaphysical research. 
 Ever and anon we have the announcement of a new 
 philosophical theory heralded by a flourish of trumpets, 
 but when probed to the bottom, it is discovered to be 
 flatly absurd, or else a fragment of the old world's wis- 
 dom. The two highest developments of philosophical 
 thought in modern times are contained in Sir William 
 Hamilton's philosophy of the Unconditioned and M. 
 Cousin's Eclecticism. And yet it is safe to affirm that 
 there is hardly a syllable of either that was not taught 
 on the banks of the Illisus and in the classic groves of 
 Academus. 
 
 Let it not be inferred, that we think meanly of mod- 
 ern philosophy. On the contrary, we believe that it 
 has a special task to accomplish of vast importance to 
 the race. It has a work of reconcilement between the 
 jarring systems and warring sects of philosophy, which 
 is distinctly foreshadowed in the professorial lectures of 
 Victor Cousin. 
 
 It may appear altogether impracticable to harmonize 
 systems so utterly dissimilar, if not fiercely antagonistic 
 as those represented respectively by John Locke and 
 Immanuel Kant. 
 
 But let us not despair of some permanent adjustment 
 of this " Conflict of Ages." Each system contains a 
 vital truth. And it is fair to conclude that if a more 
 
THE WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS. 
 
 searching analysis is resorted to that the seeming diver- 
 sity will disappear in the light of a higher unity. Such 
 a discovery would do more for metaphysical science than 
 the mariner's compass for the art of navigation or the 
 printing press for popular enlightenment. 
 
 When modern philosophy, however, has achieved 
 this task, it has yet another of more vital concernment 
 to humanity. It needs also to be baptized with the 
 spirit of Pentecost. 
 
 It must recognize Christianity as an important factor 
 in the problem of man's present development and final 
 destiny. Disdaining alike the specious sophisms of 
 Hume, and the vulgar sneers of Voltaire, it must learn 
 of him who was "meek and lowly of heart." The 
 divorcement of Reason and Revelation is unnatural 
 yea, monstrous and in all ages the consequence has 
 been a "vain philosophy," offensive to God and 
 unprofitable to men. When along with the ethics of 
 the Sermon on the Mount, we combine the theology of 
 St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and bring their joint 
 influence to bear on our philosophy, then may we expect 
 more glorious developments than mortal eyes have ever 
 witnessed. 
 
 It is not extravagant to assert that such a sanctified 
 philosophy would give an impulse to the mind of man 
 that would be felt in every department of learning as 
 well as every branch of enterprise. 
 
 That strange yet beautiful incident related in the 
 Gospel, of the visit of the Magi to the manger of Bethle- 
 hem, bearing their tribute of gold, frankincense and 
 
IIO LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 i 
 
 myrrh, but serves to symbolize the proper subordina- 
 tion of all earthly philosophy, to Him who is the incar- 
 nated wisdom as well as embodied power of God. It is 
 likewise prophetical of that auspicious era when the 
 guiding star of philosophy shall conduct the votaries of 
 truth, not to the humble birth-place of the Messiah, but 
 to the mount of his crucifixion. 
 
 When that era has arrived, then will the religion of 
 Jesus be the inspiration of modern art, and literature, 
 and philosophy. And then, too, may we justly claim 
 to have transcended in these several departments of 
 intellectual achievement the Wisdom of the Ancients. 
 
OUR AMERICAN CIVILZATION. Ill 
 
 OUR AMERICAN CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Guizot, equally renowned as a literateur and states- 
 man, has enriched the literature of the world with an 
 admirable history of civilization. Buckle, the English 
 scholar, projected a still grander enterprise, which was 
 to embrace all forms of civilization, whether occidental 
 or oriental, ancient or modern. He only lived to com- 
 plete the introduction, leaving the main task to some 
 unknown successor. Neither of these eminent writers 
 bestowejd much thought or labor on that unique style of 
 civilization which may be characterized as American. 
 
 De Tocqueville alone, of domestic or foreign writers, 
 has attempted anything like a philosophical dissertation 
 on its vices and its virtues, its defects and its excel- 
 lencies. 
 
 We shall not undertake, in the brief limits assigned to 
 this article, to do more than suggest a line of inquiry 
 and reflection that may be pursued with advantage by 
 some one of greater leisure and better qualifications 
 than we can boast. 
 
 The unprecedented development of the material 
 resources of this mighty continent, the rapid extension 
 of our commerce, the vast strides of our manufacturing 
 industry, and, perhaps, more than all else, the continued 
 expansion of our national territory have greatly modi- 
 fied, if they have not completely moulded, American 
 
I 1 2 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 civilization into forms which have no analogue in any 
 other quarter of the globe. Indeed, our civilization, 
 like our language and population, is essentially a com- 
 posite civilization. There is doubtless a substratum of 
 Anglo-Saxonism underlying the whole superstructure of 
 our governmental and social polity. But there has been 
 engrafted on this primitive stock a variety of forms and 
 usages, and institutions even that are utterly alien to the 
 soil and climate of England. So that while there are 
 numerous points of contact and resemblance between 
 British and American civilization, yet the two are, in 
 very many respects, strikingly dissimilar. A broader 
 contrast cannot well be imagined than exists between an 
 English Parliament and an American Congress, or an 
 English parish church and an American meeting-house, 
 or a London cockney and a Broadway swell, or a burly 
 Yorkshire farmer and a rollicking Kentucky stock- 
 raiser. 
 
 The characteristic feature of American civilization is 
 the love of adventure, the passion for excitement, the 
 delight in that which is sensational and demonstrative. 
 From this has proceeded three of the principal vices of 
 American society the inordinate thirst for money the 
 blind adoration of fashion, and the too eager pursuit of 
 pleasurable excitement. The Israelites of the olden 
 time worshipped a golden calf under the very shadow of 
 Mt. Sinai, the Ancient Egyptians paid divine honors to 
 Anuois, the watch-dog of the tomb; but Americans 
 worship the eagle, the so-called bird of freedom, not 
 merely as it is emblazoned on the national ensigns, but 
 
OUR AMERICAN CIVILIZATION. 113 
 
 as it is stamped on the national coins. This love of 
 money stimulates the alarming mania for speculation in 
 stocks, in real estate, and in almost all articles of mer- 
 chandise. This, in its turn, produces those rapid 
 changes in the fortunes of individuals, which are seldom 
 witnessed in Europe. In those older countries fortunes 
 are rarely realized or lost in a year ; but here there is 
 but a step from poverty to affluence. The family which 
 yesterday lodged on the third floor of a tenement, 
 to-day is installed in a brown-stone residence on Fifth 
 Avenue. 
 
 French writers speak frequently of Parvenues, but 
 Shoddyism is peculiar to our American vocabulary, and 
 the Shoddyite is, as much as the bison, a peculiarity of 
 our American Fauna. It is not difficult to perceive 
 that these sudden upheavals of the lower strata of 
 society must greatly affect its general tone, and greatly 
 multiply the Muggins and Jenkins tribe in our highest 
 circles. It is therefore to be feared that we may ulti- 
 mately be cursed with that worst form of aristocracy 
 an aristocracy of wealth. Better for us to have a 
 genuine nobility like the English Howards and Rus- 
 sels than a spurious nobility like the Vanderbilts and 
 Spragues and Astors, who have grown rich by gambling 
 in stocks and other equally questionable modes of acqui- 
 sition. The English nobility are the hereditary guardians 
 of the national honor. They have illustrated British 
 genius in the Senate House, and British valor on a 
 hundred battle fields. They have been, moreover, the 
 patrons of literature and art, and the steadfast friends 
 
114 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 of religion and government. Nothing of this kind may 
 be expected of a moneyed aristocracy, which, in many 
 cases, has sprung from private fraud or official pecula- 
 tion, and which can lay claim to neither culture nor 
 piety. Another vice of our civilization is a servile 
 devotion to fashion in all its innumerable phases. 
 
 Within reasonable limits this disposition is deserving 
 of praise, rather than censure ; but when comfort and 
 decency are both disregarded, the disposition merits the 
 sternest rebuke from the pulpit and the press. The 
 gentler sex may be more open to criticism, but neither 
 sex is guiltless in the premises. It argues ill for the 
 correct taste of our people, that they affect the glare 
 and glitter of the French styles more than they do the 
 sober and subdued styles of England and Germany. 
 Hence, it sometimes happens that our city belles are 
 unconscious copyists of the Parisian demi monde, and 
 that the Plebian Grisette, and not the Imperial Eugenie, 
 gives the cue to the costumes and head-gear of our 
 fashionable maids and matrons. Whatever is endorsed 
 by Demorest, or brought forth in the tawdry fashion 
 plates of Godey, is straightway adopted. Nor is this 
 love of fashion confined to high-born and titled dames 
 and damsels, but milkmaids make it a matter of con- 
 science to be flounced and furbelowed in the latest 
 style, and servant girls are seen tripping to church or a 
 ball in all the glo/} of the Grecian bend. We despair, 
 however, of eradicating the evil, and therefore desist 
 from the attempt. 
 
 While these oddities and absurdities are to be con- 
 
OUR AMERICAN CIVILIZATION. 115 
 
 demned for their silliness, there is another tendency of 
 our civilization which should be reprobated, because of 
 its inherent viciousness. We refer now to the too eager 
 pursuit of pleasurable excitement. There are several 
 manifestations of this spirit, chief amongst which are 
 the passion for sensational literature, and for what is 
 termed the spectacular drama. The former finds its 
 principal gratification in the columns of the Ledger, or 
 the pages of the novel of the Southworth school. More 
 recently we have had a class of story writers who have 
 assailed the very foundations of public morality. The 
 nasty suggestiveness of "The Quick or the Dead," and 
 the metaphysical twaddle of "Robert Elsmere " are 
 more demoralizing to youthful readers than the older 
 fiction of Paul De Kock and Madame Dudevant. If 
 the taste is still more depraved, it feasts on the horrors 
 and indecent revelations of the " Day's Doings" or of 
 the National Police Gazette. The publisher who can get 
 his consent to cater to this morbid literary appetite will 
 have no lack of patronage, while publications of sterling 
 merit languish and die. The only available remedy for 
 this sore evil is to educate the public taste to a nicer 
 appreciation of what is really excellent in literature, and 
 at the same time to enlighten the moral sense to a clearer 
 perception of the right and wrong in human conduct. 
 The most startling development of this propensity is the 
 insensate rage for that class of theatrical exhibitions of 
 which the Black Crook and White Fawn are the fitting 
 types and representatives. We cannot find language 
 severe enough with which to stigmatize this shameless 
 
Il6 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 outrage on public morals. The orgies of Bacchus, or 
 the Saturnalia of the Romans, in the most dissolute 
 period of the Empire, presented a scene less offensive to 
 a cultivated taste and a refined moral sensibility than do 
 these spectacles, in which painting and music are made 
 tributary to the lower instincts of humanity. It is the 
 imperative duty of a Christian community to suppress 
 these exhibitions, as corrupting to the youth of both 
 sexes, and sure to lead many of them to the commission 
 of flagrant immoralities, if not to the perpetration of 
 felony itself. 
 
 We might specify other features of bur civilization 
 which merit animadversion, but we refrain. And yet 
 these vices and defects have many counterbalancing 
 virtues and excellences. Few countries on the globe 
 surpass our own in reverence for religion in respect 
 for woman, and in unfeigned loyalty to truth and equity. 
 It only needs a combined effort on the part of the wise 
 and good to eradicate a majority of the evils complained 
 of. When this is accomplished, and when to this is 
 added greater thoroughness of culture in all departments 
 of learning, we may expect a nobler type of civilization 
 on this continent than the old world can boast. For 
 while it may be true that the line of human progression 
 is not a gradually ascending Bright line, but is best 
 denoted by a series of parabolic curves, still the future 
 may show that American civilization has reached a 
 higher plane than any which has preceded it. Thus the 
 poetry of Berkley may prove a sure word of prophecy 
 " Time's noblest offspring is the last." 
 
THE LEGEND OF THE WANDERING JEW. I I/ 
 
 THE LEGEND OF THE WANDERING JEW. Goethe in 
 his Autobiography has furnished us with the correct 
 version of this remarkable myth. It seems to have had 
 a sort of traditional existence, both among Christians 
 and Jews, from a period shortly after the crucifixion of 
 our Saviour. It has been interwoven with both sacred 
 and profane literature to an extent hardly appreciated, 
 except by men of thorough scholarship. The Patristic 
 writings contain frequent allusions to it, and according 
 to present recollection, it forms the basis of some of 
 the best modern fictions. It furnishes the key-note to 
 Bulwer's Zanoni, Croly's Salathiel, and Eugene Sue's 
 Juif Errant, 
 
 The legend relates that there resided at Jerusalem a 
 certain Ahasuerus, a shoemaker by trade, who was a 
 personal favorite of Christ and his Apostles. They 
 often turned aside to commune on earthly as well as 
 on Heavenly things with his humble but intelligent 
 craftsman. He seems to have had a great deal of mere 
 human sympathy for our Saviour, but no just apprecia- 
 tion of his Messianic claims. 
 
 He is said, however, to have remonstrated against the 
 wandering life of Jesus, and to have often urged him, in 
 his matter-of-fact way, to abandon his profession of a 
 mendicant philosopher and become a fellow-craftsman 
 with himself. The legend further states that Ahasuerus 
 admonished the Saviour that his course would, in spite 
 of himself, make him the head of a party, and that in 
 the end he would be victimized by the political and 
 
Il8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 religious rulers of Judea. As Christ, after his arrest 
 and condemnation, went to the mount of crucifixion, 
 he passed the shop of Ahasuerus at the gate of the city, 
 who, seeing the multitude, came forth and reproached 
 him most bitterly and vehemently for disregarding the 
 counsels he had formerly given him. At this moment 
 the lovely Veronica threw her mantle over the marred 
 visage of the Redeemer as if to hide his face from grief 
 and shame. When she lifted off the mantle Ahasuerus 
 saw depicted upon it the countenance of the sufferer trans- 
 figured and radiant with unearthly beauty. At the same 
 instant, Jesus, pausing on the way, said to him, "Aha- 
 suerus, thou shalt be a wanderer in the earth until thou 
 seest me coming in that form." The guilty man was 
 overwhelmed by the announcement, and from that hour 
 he has passed like night, from land to land, the type of 
 everlasting unrest. 
 
 We have always thought that this legend originated 
 from the saying of Christ to Peter with reference to the 
 beloved disciple " What if I will that he tarry till I 
 come.'' John himself tells us that there was a current 
 saying amongst the disciples that he should not see 
 death before the second advent. This, we think, gives 
 an ample historical basis for the Christian legend. 
 
 The idea embodied in this myth is not peculiar to any 
 form of religious faith. We find its analogue in the 
 stone of Sisyphus, the wheel of Ixion, and the sieve- 
 drawing daughters of Danaus. It is the living illustra- 
 tion of the scriptural truth that there is "no rest for the 
 wicked," no poppy or mandrigora that can soothe a 
 
THE LEGEND OF THE WANDERING JEW. Up 
 
 defiled consience ; no Lethean draught that can steep 
 the senses of the unrepentant sinner in forgetfulness. 
 It is a grand, yet at the same time a terrible truth. Retri- 
 bution treads evermore on the heels of guilt. It way- 
 lays every devious path dogs every retreating footstep, 
 and haunts its victim with the pertinacity of an aveng- 
 ing Nemesis. The Christian doctrine of the atonement 
 alone reveals a purchased redemption and a gracious 
 deliverance for the weary wanderer after rest. Without 
 it, man is a homeless exile from happiness and Heaven. 
 The sworded Cherubim guard the way of the tree of 
 life. And thus, like Ahasuerus, burdened with the 
 malison of an insulted Redeemer, he wanders on and 
 on and on until the feverish dream of life is ended. 
 And then even the disembodied spirit starts upon the 
 broad journeyings of eternity without a friendly guide, 
 and destined never to reach the shining goal of infinite 
 and endless blessedness. Let him that readeth pause 
 and ponder. 
 
I2O LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 CHRIST AND 
 
 We are now-a-days grievously afflicted with a species 
 of moral knight-errantry which it would be unjust to the 
 hero of Cervantes to call Quixotism. Not every man 
 who has a crotchet is qualified for either political or 
 moral leadership. 
 
 There was a marked difference between Luther the 
 monk and Joe Smith, the mercantile bankrupt, as reli- 
 gious reformers, nor is there less disparity between Adam 
 Smith and Henry George as Political Economists. 
 The different behavior of Judas Gaulonitis and Jesus of 
 Nazareth touching the payment of the tribute money to 
 Caesar will, however, best illustrate our thought. Judas, 
 in a mood of patriotic frenzy, raised a revolt on the tax 
 question and lost his head both literally and metaphor- 
 ically. 
 
 Jesus, when the tribute was demanded of him, sent 
 Simon Peter to the seashore to fetch the Roman Stator 
 from the fish's mouth, and thus satisfied the claim of the 
 tax-gatherer. The sequel showed the wisdom of his 
 discrimination between things sacred and secular. The 
 Judas movement proved a military fiasco, not unlike the 
 adventure of the younger Napoleon at Strasburg, or the 
 ill-starred expedition of Lopez for the conquest of Cuba. 
 The Jesus movement, on the contrary, was a tidal wave 
 of gracious influence which has fertilized the moral 
 
CHRIST AND CJESAR. 121 
 
 
 
 waste-places of the earth, and has steadily uplifted 
 humanity through all the Christian Centuries. 
 
 On another occasion, when Peter in his impulsiveness 
 drew his sword and smote off the ear of Malchus, Christ 
 promptly rebuked the impetuous swordsman. If Peter's 
 example had been followed by the other disciples, the 
 infant Christianity might have exploded in a third-class 
 riot. It is evident from these illustrations that the great 
 Teacher did not affect such convulsive methods of moral 
 reform or of political regeneration. In this logical con- 
 nection, he uttered a saying weightier even than his 
 personal example. " Render unto Caesar the things 
 that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are 
 God's." He thereby proclaimed a perpetual divorce- 
 ment between Church and State, and set the seal of his 
 condemnation upon every phase of Erastianism or Ultra- 
 montanism, whether in Council, Conference or General 
 Assembly. 
 
 During the three years of His public ministry He 
 spoke no word that in anywise countenanced the Theo- 
 cratic concept of human government. While He was 
 fully cognizant of the drunkenness, debauchery and 
 similar evils that existed amongst all classes, He at no 
 time propounded such reformatory plans, and proced- 
 ures as are petted and patronized by the current philan- 
 thropism of the present age. His righteous soul was 
 neither insensible nor indifferent to these manifold evils, 
 but he knew that such human methods were tentative 
 and disappointing in their outcome. He was building 
 for all time. His plans had a vaster scope and a pro- 
 
122 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 
 
 founder significance. On many occasions He reproved 
 the twelve for their misapprehension of the meaning 
 of His Messiahship, and of the nature of His coming 
 kingdom. In reply to the questionings of Pilate, He 
 said: " My kingdom is not of this world." He affirmed, 
 with emphasis, that it came "not with observation;" 
 aye, more as if to define more clearly its spiritual nature, 
 He added, "the kingdom of God is within you." He 
 foresaw, however, the unseemly disputations and horrid 
 wars that have since marred the history of the Church, 
 and it was with reference to these that He likewise 
 said, "I come not to send Peace on the earth, but a 
 sword." Not that such scenes of strife and bloodshed 
 were of divine appointment, but rather the product of 
 man's perverseness. Very many of them the evil fruit 
 of individual selfishness and worldliness, and yet more 
 the offspring of priestly arrogance and ministerial obtru- 
 siveness. 
 
 Hildebrand was no more a bigot than Laud, and in 
 their lesser sphere the Mathers of New England were 
 not a whit behind the English Prelate or the Roman 
 Pontiff. It is a blunder to suppose that offensive sacer- 
 dotalism is confined to any class of the clergy, Catholic 
 or Protestant. In all the churches there are clerical 
 reformers who seem to forget that society has a self- 
 regulative faculty and can on occasion safely dispense with 
 their supervision. The Apostles adjudged it wise to 
 give themselves "continually to the word of God and 
 Prayer," while " the serving of tables " was committed 
 to seven deacons of good report. Their successors 
 
CHRIST AND C^SAR. 123 
 
 would do well to respect their example, and leave the 
 work of statesmanship to those who are presumably 
 better qualified for the task. In saying this we would 
 not unfairly circumscribe the sphere of the Christian 
 ministry. In the main, these men of God keep within 
 the letter and spirit of the Great Commission. A very 
 large majority, and these the more genuinely and thor- 
 oughly cultured, restrict their pulpit discussions to such 
 themes as Paul discussed at Athens and Rome, on 
 Mars Hill and in his own hired house. If others are 
 toying with "oppositions of Science, falsely so called," 
 their profiting does not appear to any, much less to 
 "all." If a few even turn aside from the Gospel to 
 what they esteem "live issues," their congregations 
 suffer loss. 
 
 This latter class of divines are much given to foolish 
 boasting over the achievements of " Nineteenth Century 
 Civilization." Forgetting, if indeed they ever knew, 
 that the present culture of England, Germany and 
 France is not comparable to that of Athens, when the 
 hucksters of the market place corrected the Greek pro- 
 nunciation of the Roman Atticus. 
 
 A late writer has said that the foremost scientist of 
 the present day compared with the Stagarite and the 
 Athenian "is an intellectual barbarian." This state- 
 ment needs but little qualification as respects the highest 
 culture. It is true that in some branches of applied 
 science there has been notable progress, but it may be 
 gravely questioned if Michael Faraday had equal mastery 
 of the philosophy of Physics with Friar Bacon, of Brazen 
 
124 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 Nose notoriety. Nor is it quite certain that with all our 
 technological training we are even abreast of the 'men 
 who built the Pyramids and constructed the hanging 
 gardens of Babylon. 
 
 Not a few of our modern discoveries are probably but 
 the recovery of lost arts. 
 
 So, likewise, many of the ethical and social theories 
 now paraded and propagated with a show of wisdom are 
 but the revival of fallacies that have long since been 
 tested and abandoned. 
 
 Some of these modern reformers roundly assert that 
 the Church, by which is meant some sort of ecclesiasti- 
 cism, must dominate everything. This dogma embodies 
 the essence of ultramontanism, and would satisfy the 
 demands of the most ambitious Pontiff that ever occu- 
 pied the chair of St. Peter at Rome. Practically it 
 would subordinate everything and everybody to clerical 
 domination, and we should have not a single Pope, but 
 every clergyman in Christendom would be a Pope within 
 his own petty parish. If we accept this theocratic view 
 of government it will require a hair-splitting process to 
 differentiate the Protestantism of the nineteenth from 
 the Romanism of the twelfth century. 
 
 This sentiment is manifestly of the same character 
 with that which kindled the fires of Smithfield ; pro- 
 duced the Thirty Years War ; invented the racks and 
 thumb-screws of the Inquisition, and, in the seventeenth 
 century, led to the hanging of Quakers and Witches on 
 American soil. It is the exponent of a medieval reli- 
 gionism which, if unrebuked and unchecked, will work 
 
CHRIST AND CAESAR. 125 
 
 out its legitimate results in the early years of the twen- 
 tieth century. The surest guarantee against the evils 
 to which we have referred is the practical observance of 
 Christ's teaching in regard to the separation of Church 
 and State. 
 
 The Christian ministry will best insure its success by 
 the strict avoidance of all intermeddling with such mat- 
 ters as properly belong to Caesar's domain. 
 
 The attempt to influence legislative bodies in secular 
 matters, whether it assume the shape of petition or 
 remonstrance, is sure to be resented. For this reason 
 alone, a majority of the late North Georgia Annual 
 Conference wisely refused to memorialize the State 
 Legislature in regard to the extension of the school 
 term. The impression sought to be made that this 
 majority were hostile to popular education was at least 
 disingenous on the part of those who for years have 
 been either outspoken enemies or else unconscious 
 obstructionists of the public school system. Nor does 
 it argue well for their statesmanship that they utterly 
 failed to understand that the original resolution, if not 
 partisan, was at least thoroughly political. The merest 
 tyro in State-craft is presumed to know that the taxing 
 power is the highest function of Civil Government. 
 The resolution, as first reported by the committee on 
 education, involved this taxing power to the extent of 
 millions of dollars. 
 
 The "sympathy resolution," which was accepted as a 
 substitute, was at most a piece of surplusage that neither 
 helped nor hindered legislative action. Some increase 
 
126 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 of the appropriation to the public schools was assured 
 before the assemblage of the legislature. The late 
 school commissioner, Dr. Orr, had paved the way for 
 this forward movement by a personal and persistent 
 canvass of the State, running through a series of years. 
 Indeed, it may be fairly said that he would have 
 achieved success at an earlier period if he had not been 
 embarrassed by the carping criticism of some who have 
 latterly posed as educationists. Dr. Orr was wise 
 enough to appreciate the difficulties growing out of the 
 impoverishment of the South, partly by Federal spolia- 
 tion and hardly less by the disastrous rule of know- 
 nothings, knaves and negroes. He never at any time, 
 however, wholly despaired of ultimate success. Whether 
 this legislative provision, or even a much larger appro- 
 priation, will materially benefit the improvident black 
 proletariat in our midst, is more than questionable. 
 The efforts in this direction of the English Government 
 during the last half-century, both in the West Indies 
 and South Africa, have proved humiliating failures. 
 This is the testimony of that most judicious observer, 
 James Anthony Froude, who cannot be suspected of 
 any leaning in favor of Domestic Slavery. 
 
 The experiment in Hayti has been not less favorable 
 to the advocates of Negro education. In many parts 
 of Hayti and Jamaica, after a wasteful expenditure of 
 money and missionary labor, the results are quite 
 unsatisfactory. There is among the Negroes an alarming 
 drift towards Vaudooism and to gross licentiousness in 
 morals. The presence in the Southern States of a large 
 
CHRIST AND CAESAR. I2/ 
 
 white population will of necessity modify these results. 
 But so far elementary education has not sensibly pre- 
 vented the growth of crime among the freedmen. 
 
 Nor has the effect of the higher Negro education in 
 the Southern States done little more than to make them 
 self-assertive and aggressive. There are, of course, indi- 
 vidual exceptions, but the main body who have mastered 
 "a little Latin and less Greek " have become ward pol- 
 iticians and place-hunters. Asa "bread-winner" the 
 the educated Negro is far below the plane of the old 
 plantation darkies. 
 
 For ourself, we are willing to leave this whole matter 
 to the Berners, Clays, Glenns, and others who are 
 better fitted by training for the work of legislation. The 
 fact that there is a moral side to the educational ques- 
 tion, is of no weight in the controversy. Every political 
 issne, from Tariff Reform to the schedule of a narrow 
 guage railway, may impinge somewhere on a moral 
 question. So that it will be readily seen that this kind 
 of logic will open a wide door to a pragmatism which 
 will secularize the pulpit and in no small degree destroy 
 its proper influence with the laity. 
 
 Nor will this wise abstinence of the clergy from the 
 discussion of questions that properly belong to another 
 forum affect in anywise their rights of citizenship. It 
 will neither curtail their freedom of speech at right 
 times and places, nor impair their franchise to vote 
 according to their convictions. We arc quite sure that 
 no responsible layman has any desire to invade their 
 jurisdiction as originally defined by the divine founder 
 
128 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 of the Church. On the other hand, enlightened public 
 opinion will condemn such intermeddling with State 
 matters as was recently attempted by a bevy of North- 
 ern Methodist preachers with teferenceto the late inaugu- 
 ration ceremonies in Washington. There is but another 
 step and we reach that stage of Puritanism when attend- 
 ance on church services was made compulsory, and 
 Blindman's Buff was fiercely denounced as a perilous fire- 
 side amusement. 
 
 This introduces the further statement that very much 
 of this ministerial aggressiveness has its origin and 
 inspiration from the Methodist pulpits of New England, 
 which largely represent the lower stratum of society in 
 that region. 
 
 It will be remembered that when the redoubtable 
 Don Quixote mounted his world famed Rosinante and 
 went forth in quest of adventures that the worshipful 
 Sancho Panza astride of Dapple was seen ambling along 
 at his heels. 
 
 Something of a like kind is often witnessed in the 
 South at the present day. The Methodist Preachers' 
 meeting of New York or Boston starts a moral crusade 
 in behalf of Woman Suffrage, or Moral Purity, or it 
 may be a constitutional amendment for enforcing Sun- 
 day observance. Again, some prominent Northern 
 Clergyman will howl in the most approved fashion 
 about the perils of illiteracy, or the growth of Roman- 
 ism. This Peripatetic philanthropism sets out on a con- 
 tinental tour, embracing the lately " rebellious States." 
 Straightway a class of Southern disciples, who think by 
 
CHRIST AND CLESAR. 1 29 
 
 proxy begin to echo the refrain through the press, and 
 even from the pulpit. 
 
 Soon societies and associations are organized tracts 
 distributed and a lot of elsewise unsalable books are 
 hawked through the country to the emolument of New 
 England authors and publishers. In this way many 
 fairly intelligent people are ready to conclude that we 
 are continually on the verge of a crisis that will shake 
 the continent from Alaska to the Florida Keys. 
 
 Our science of government is just now in the condi- 
 tion of Geology when the Huttonian and Wernerian 
 factions were striving for the mastery. We greatly 
 need some broad-minded Statesman who will do for the 
 former science what Sir Charles Lyell did for the latter. 
 Men like Dr. Josiah Strong, author of "Our Country", 
 are not less moral cranks than is Rev. Ira Hicks, a 
 meteorlogical dunder-head with his Jovian Periods, and 
 other trumpery of a defunct Astrology. 
 
 One of the sorest evils of the times is over much 
 legislation. Abbe Sieyes, the constitution builder of 
 Revolutionary France was a renegade Romish Priest. 
 He is, however none the less a fitting type of many of 
 our Modern ministerial reformers, who seek to regene- 
 rate the world, neither by blood nor water, but by 
 legislative tinkering. Sieyes is said to have kept his 
 portmanteau full of ready-made National Constitutions 
 so his successors of this day carry about a full stock of 
 schemes for remodelling society and bringing in a politi- 
 cal millenium. Hitherto their prophecies have been 
 Delphic oracles ' ' that palter with us in a double sense. " 
 
130 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 Not argument nor ridicule but time alone will cure the 
 evil under discussion. We write these things solely for 
 the honor of Christ and the welfare of the church. 
 
 It is no disparagement of the acknowledged piety and 
 learning of the clergy to say that few of their number 
 are likely to contribute anything really valuable to the 
 solution of the various social and political problems of 
 the times. 
 
 A wiser method therefore is to obey Paul's exhortation 
 to Timothy PREACH THE WORD. That was the secret 
 of the earliest triumphs of Christianity, and will be the 
 secret of its latter-day glory. Indeed, if the Gospel to 
 which the clergy have solemnly consecrated their lives 
 is not shorn of its old-time power, then it has in itself a 
 redemptive force far exceeding that of any sort of semi- 
 political propagandi^m. 
 
 The history of the Church abounds with warnings 
 against "entangling alliances" with the affairs of the 
 Commonwealth. Such alliances, like the forbidden fel- 
 lowship of Christ and Belial, are never helpful to true 
 moral reform and always hurtful to the spirituality of 
 the Church. 
 
 Let our ministers therefore give earnest heed to the 
 Master's teaching, " Render unto Caesar the things that 
 are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." 
 Should they prefer the same practical lesson in a differ- 
 ent form, we remind them of the classical adage, "Let 
 the cobbler stick to his last." 
 
UNSUCCESSFUL REVOLUTIONS. 
 
 UNSUCCESSFUL REVOLUTIONS. 
 
 Dr. McCosh, in his learned treatise on Typical Forms 
 and Special Ends in Creation, remarks that there are 
 many germs, both in the animal and vegetable king- 
 doms, that never develop into perfect forms. As an 
 illustration of this law of the organic world he refers 
 to the roe of a codfish and the boughs of an English 
 apple-tree. 
 
 The same great law applies to the religious and politi- 
 cal movements which have marked the history of man- 
 kind. For one religious reformer who, like Luther or 
 Loyola, has stamped the institutions of an age or a con- 
 tinent with the impress of his own genius, there are a 
 score who have labored in vain and at last have died and 
 "made no sign." So, likewise, with those political 
 reformers who have headed revolutionary movements. 
 The track of the centuries is strewn with the wrecks of 
 these gigantic enterprises. William of Orange and our 
 own immortal Washington were successful, and pos- 
 terity has canonized their memories ; but Sidney perished 
 on the scaffold, Kossuth was driven into exile, and 
 Davis was thrust into the inner prison ; and while now 
 spending his last years at Beauvoir, he is still under the 
 "ban of the empire." 
 
 It can not have escaped the attentive student of his- 
 tory that, in political revolutions, failure is the rule and 
 
132 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 success is the exception. This fact may, in part, be 
 accounted for on the ground that all experience shows 
 that men will suffer great evils rather than " abolish the 
 forms to which they are accustomed. 7 ' The masses, 
 everywhere, are slow to relinquish ancient usages ; and 
 in some instances this obstinate conservatism has defeated 
 the most salutary reforms. It required centuries of mis- 
 rule, characterized by every species of feudal oppression, 
 to arouse the Parisian populace to vengeance : it needed 
 also the Star Chamber, the levy of ship-money, and the 
 arbitrary arrests of Charles Stuart, to awaken the storm 
 that swept away for a season every vestige of the Eng- 
 lish monarchy. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, 
 that revolutions are frequently unpopular, and, as a con- 
 sequence, unsuccessful. We propose to consider a few 
 prominent examples of this class. 
 
 The Hungarian revolution of 1848 was one which 
 riveted the gaze of Europe and America. Hungary 
 had always been distinguished for its steadfast loyalty 
 to the House of Hapsburg. Nowhere is there recorded 
 a more touching scene than that of Maria Theresa and 
 and her infant heir before the Hungarian Diet. Pressed 
 as she was by a foul conspiracy of crowned heads, she 
 appealed to the nobles and deputies of Hungary for 
 succor and support. In response to her trustful appeal, 
 those stern-browed representatives of a gallant people 
 grasped their sword hilts and simultaneously exclaimed, 
 "We will die for Maria Theresa our king !" 
 
 We may be sure that only a long series of cruel exac- 
 tions could utterly stifle this sentiment of loyalty. 
 
UNSUCCESSFUL REVOLUTIONS. 133 
 
 Hungary was misgoverned her chartered rights were 
 invaded her ancient privileges were disregarded until 
 the name of a Hapsburg became the synonym of 
 treachery, and the Austrian Government itself a stench 
 in the nostrils of the Magyar. 
 
 Inspired by the eloquence of Louis Kossuth, the 
 Hungarians flew to arms; and nobly did they battle for 
 the constitutional liberties of Fatherland. But the dis- 
 affection of Croatia, and the treason of Gorgey com- 
 pleted the overthrow of Kossuth and his compatriots. 
 Haynau glutted his appetite for murder, and the waters 
 of the Drave and the Danube were dyed with the blood 
 of heroes. 
 
 Ireland, too, has made more than one unsuccessful 
 attempt at revolution. From the day when Cromwell 
 slaughtered her innocents, she has been impatient of 
 Saxon domination. In 1798, she planned a general 
 uprising which might have succeeded but for treachery 
 in the camp and the unaccountable failure of the French 
 to second her efforts. The enterprise was crushed in its 
 inception ; and Norbury repeated on Irish soil the bloody 
 assizes of Jeffries. 
 
 And yet Ireland is unsubdued. She still seizes, every 
 opportunity to shake the yoke from her neck ; and who 
 can tell but that, through native courage or foreign 
 diplomacy, Irish nationality will yet triumph, as Italian 
 nationality has triumphed after its slumber of a thous- 
 and years? 
 
 Poland is another of the downtrodden nations. How 
 has she fallen from her high estate since kings competed 
 
134 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 for her crown, and John Sobieski, her chivalric monarch, 
 led the van of Christendom in its conflict with the infidel 
 Turk ! Dismembered and despoiled by kingly intrigue, 
 she has at different periods struggled to burst the bonds 
 of her thraldom. But Kosciusko bled in vain : order 
 still reigns in Warsaw ; and her nobles and sons languish 
 in exile, or perish by piecemeal in the mines of Siberia. 
 Poland is blotted out from the map of Europe. But it 
 may happen in the movements of the political chess- 
 board that the reconstruction of the kingdom of Poland 
 may be necessary to checkmate the Czar. As in a for- 
 mer century Poland preserved Western Europe from 
 the yoke of Islamism, so in another century it may 
 serve as a huge break-water against the inroads of Rus- 
 sian absolutism. 
 
 Another example of unsuccessful revolution was the 
 struggle of the Confederate States for a separate nation- 
 ality. The events of that struggle are too fresh in our 
 memories to require recital. The lack of earnest co-opera- 
 tion on the part of the border States, and the presence 
 of a distinct and disaffected race in our midst, were the 
 chief causes of failure. Never was a cause more heroic- 
 ally maintained against overwhelming odds ; and, 
 although vanquished in the end, the South need not be 
 ashamed of her military achievements. The fame of 
 Jackson and Lee, and Johnston, will live in story and 
 in song as long as the Father of Waters rolls his tribute 
 waves to the Gulf. 
 
 Being defeated, the South quietly submitted to the 
 authority of the Federal Government. Her swords 
 
UNSUCCESSFUL REVOLUTIONS. 135 
 
 were beaten into plowshares, and her spears into prun- 
 ing-hooks. Her Lee, who once marshaled her mightiest 
 army devoted his remaining years to the task of colle- 
 giate instruction ; her Forrest, so dauntless in the com- 
 bat, embarked in the sugar and cotton trade ; her Gordon, 
 covered over with honorable scars, has ably served in 
 the councils of the nation and is now the honored Chief 
 Magistrate of his native State. Others of her favorite 
 leaders are at the bar or on the bench, while the rank and 
 file of her disbanded armies are laboring to repair the 
 injuries which ruthless war has inflicted on their section. 
 Amongst these noble men there is no silly bravado no 
 unmanly whimpering. Faithful to their oaths, they 
 are honest in their support of the constitution and laws. 
 Earnest as they were in their efforts for Southern inde- 
 pendence, they are now equally so in their purpose 
 to uphold the Union. A prescriptive policy on the 
 part of the National Government may in some degree 
 alienate them from that Government, but it will not 
 drive them into revolution. On the other hand, a liberal 
 policy will bind them to the Government with ' ' hooks 
 of steel." They will rally to its defense whenever its 
 honor is impeached, or its safety imperiled. In this 
 way the Federal Union will be stronger in the hearts of 
 the Southern people than at any former period. The 
 mutual wrongs and sufferings of both sections shall be 
 remembered with regret. The fame for valor and endu- 
 rance which each has worthily won, will be the common 
 property of all. National unity shall no longer be a 
 myth, but a reality ; and from the Aroostook to the 
 
136 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 Rio del Norte, every foot " shall keep step to the music 
 of the Union." 
 
 Heaven forbid that through the perverseness or the 
 more desperate wickedness of selfish politicians all this 
 should be reversed ; that, instead of this spectacle of 
 fraternity and prosperity, we should have strife and dis- 
 cord, until the ship of State itself shall founder amidst 
 the darkness and tempest of another more sanguinary 
 and more successful revolution. 
 
STONEWALL JACKSON. 
 
 STONEWALL JACKSON, 
 
 A MONOGRAPH. 
 
 It is no small proof of the divine origin of Christ- 
 ianity that it is so exactly adapted to every condition of 
 life and to every honorable business pursuit in which 
 men can engage. While, therefore, it has won its noblest 
 victories amongst the common people, it has not failed 
 to exert a marked influence on the more cultivated minds 
 of Christendom. And while, too, it is essentially a 
 religion of peace, yet some of its most illustrious 
 examples have been amongst men of arms, whose lives 
 have been spent amidst the dissipations of the camp 
 and the excitements of the battlefield. 
 
 Foremost amongst these Christian warriors, was Lieu- 
 tenant-General T. J. Jackson, of the late Confederate 
 Army. With more tenderness than Cromwell more 
 genius than Havelock more prudence and circumspec- 
 tion than Gustavus Adolphus he combined in his own 
 person the better intellectual and moral qualities of all 
 of them, and died as he. lived, without an imputation 
 on his Christian integrity, and without a stain on his 
 soldierly honor. 
 
 The first military service of Jackson was at the siege of 
 Vera Cruz, as second lieutenant of artillery. He is 
 represented to have handled his, battery with marked 
 
138 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 skill and efficiency. In the subsequent brief but glori- 
 ous campaign, he fought with signal gallantry and during 
 its progress, was breveted Major for his ' ' mei itorious 
 conduct." 
 
 Soon after the restoration of peace, his health having 
 partially failed, he resigned his commission in the army. 
 At a later period he was elected to the chair of Chemis- 
 try and Natural Science in the Virginia Military Insti- 
 tute. He occupied this position at the commencement 
 of our revolutionary struggle and was one of the earliest 
 to tender his sword to Virginia, when that State had 
 resolved to share the fortunes of the South in the com- 
 ing contest. Here the career of Stonewall Jackson 
 properly begins. Instead, however, of attempting a 
 recital of his military achievements, we propose rather 
 a brief study of his character as a warrior, a Christian, 
 and a man Under each of these three aspects we shall 
 find much that claims our admiration and deserves our 
 imitation. 
 
 As a warrior, Stonewall Jackson was not unlike Frede- 
 rick of Prussia. Indeed, his tactics throughout his 
 famous Valley campaigns remind us of some of the 
 masterly strategic movements of Frederick during his 
 seven years' struggle with the most formidable coalition 
 of modern times. 
 
 Jackson mobilized his forces more thoroughly than any 
 captain since the days of Hannibal. He depended less 
 on quartermasters and commissaries than any other 
 commander, Federal or Confederate. He encumbered 
 himself with no interminable wagon trains, but much 
 
STONEWALL JACKSON. 139 
 
 of the time subsisted on supplies captured from the 
 enemy. So notorious was this fact that General Banks 
 won the unenviable sobriquet of "Stonewall Jackson's 
 Commissary." 
 
 This was partly the secret of those rapid marches, 
 almost magical in their execution, and literally marvel- 
 lous in their results By dint of his indomitable energy, 
 he time and again forestalled his adversary, secured the 
 vantage ground, and thus insured the victory. It not 
 infrequently occurred that when his opponent was 
 expecting him in front, he came thundering like an 
 avalanche on his unguarded flank or rear. 
 
 It would be interesting to know how much Sherman 
 was indebted for the idea of his brilliant flank move- 
 ments to what he had read or heard of Jackson's opera- 
 tions in Virginia. We regard it as morally certain 
 that he was a copyist, successful, it is true, but not equal 
 to the great original. Jackson was not less distinguished 
 for his stubborn fighting qualities'than for his strategy. 
 He exhibited these at Falling Water, when, in the first 
 months of the struggle, he kept Patterson's entire army 
 at bay with a single regiment. It was his steady, per- 
 sistent fighting, against the heaviest odds, that secured 
 for him the title of Stonewall on the battlefield of Manas- 
 sas. It has been alleged that Jackson was the only man 
 in the army, who, if he had been living, would have 
 carried and held Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg. It was 
 in these desperate struggles for important positions that 
 his intrepidity was most conspicuous ; and, whether 
 true or false, the South will always believe that if her 
 
I4O LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 favorite hero had not previously fallen in her defense, 
 Lee would have triumphed at Gettysburg, and, as a 
 consequence, planted his standard on the dome of the 
 Federal Capitol. 
 
 Jackson was never satisfied with a doubtful victory. 
 He struggled harder to complete than to commence it. 
 When the tide of battle turned in his favor, he redoubled 
 his efforts, pressed his antagonist more vigorously, and, 
 as we have elsewhere said, generally managed to con- 
 vert a defeat into a disastrous rout. 
 
 It only needs to be remarked that he never suffered a 
 serious reverse, much less a downright defeat. His 
 presence was a sure presage of victory, and both at 
 Manassas and at Sharpsburg he changed the fortunes 
 of the fight by his single arm. When his military 
 record is fully understood, he will rank in the world's 
 estimation with the foremost chieftains in the annals of 
 warfare. 
 
 But Jackson was more than a soldier ; he was a Christ- 
 ian of the noblest stamp. In his theology he is said to 
 have been as thorough a Calvinist as the sturdiest sup- 
 porter of the solemn League and Covenant. It has 
 even been insinuated that he was a Fatalist in his creed. 
 We are satisfied that he could never h'ave embraced a 
 dogma so flatly absurd. There is no doubt, however, 
 that he was a firm believer in a special Providence that 
 subordinates all second causes to its own ends and directs 
 all events to the accomplishment of its own beneficent 
 purposes. 
 
 This faith may have inspired him with a more unwaver- 
 
STONEWALL JACKSON. 14! 
 
 ing trust under the pressure of calamities, and with a 
 sublimer courage in the midst of perils. Certain it is 
 that a similar conviction animated the Ironsides of Crom- 
 well when they fought at Worcester and Marston Moor, 
 and stimulated the Huguenots when they followed 
 the snow-white plume of Navarre in the memorable bat- 
 tle of Ivry. A perversion of this sentiment gave to 
 Islamism its most brilliant victories, and made the sword 
 of Khaled almost as mighty as the sword of Gideon. 
 We may differ from these speculative tenets of Jackson, 
 but we must admire the devotional character of his 
 religion. Suwarrow is said to have spent the e_rly 
 hours of the morning in prayer, and Lord Nelson wrote 
 in his diary the beautiful prayer which he offered just 
 before the victory of Trafalgar. 
 
 If we may credit the testimony of his most intimate 
 friends, Stonewall Jackson was likewise a man of prayer. 
 On the eve of every great battle he was accustomed to 
 retire to his tent, or to some green and sheltered nook 
 of the forest, and there commend his country and its 
 cause to God. At such times he wrestled as Jacob did 
 at Peniel, or as John Knox afterwards did when, in an 
 agony of supplication, he exclaimed, "Oh! Lord God, 
 give me Scotland, or I die." The skeptic may scoff at 
 these strong cries and earnest prayers of this great and 
 good man, but the enlightened patriot will esteem them 
 of greater worth than a host of armed men 
 
 It remains for us to speak of him as a man. "No 
 man, " says a hackneyed proverb, ' ' is a hero to his valet 
 de chambre" Jackson was an exception to this general 
 
142 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 truth Those with whom he was in most frequent and 
 familiar converse were most impressed by his greatness. 
 Ordinarly, however, he was simple even to plainness in 
 his dress, and when rigged out in his faded uniform and 
 black slouched hat, he looked more like a thrifty Vir- 
 ginia farmer than the Jupiter Tonans of the Confederate 
 army. There was that in Jackson, nevertheless, which 
 challenged the respect and claimed the obedience of 
 men. With no great attention to the details of discipline, 
 he notwithstanding kept his troops in the best fighting 
 trim. His original "Stonewall" brigade, which received 
 its mould and fashion from his own master-mind, will 
 rank in history with the Tenth Legion of Caesar, and 
 the Old Guard of Napoleon. 
 
 No man could have exercised such an influence over 
 large bodies of men, unless he was endowed with those 
 personal qualities which endear as well as awe. Jackson 
 possessed those qualities in no ordinary degree. Under 
 his rugged exterior there was concealed a heart almost 
 womanly in its tenderness. Not otherwise can we 
 account for the fact that beardless boys many of them 
 but raw recruits would follow him in his winter march to 
 the Potomac, and that the same class at Manassas and 
 Chancellorsville fought under his leadership with the 
 steadiness of veterans. So enthusiastic, indeed, was 
 the attachment of our whole army in Virginia to this 
 great man, that whenever he rode along the lines, they 
 made the welkin ring with their hearty huzzas. How 
 mysterious the Providence that deprived the South of 
 his services at a time when they were most needed ! 
 
STONEWALL JACKSON. 143 
 
 Near the close of the battle at Chancellorsville, he 
 received his death-wound whether from friend or foe 
 is still a vexed question. 
 
 His last hours were in beautiful harmony with his life. 
 They are suggestive, too, of the most touching memo- 
 ries. As the great Napoleon lay dying in his sea-girt 
 prison his mind wandered back to Austerlitz and Lodi, 
 and his last utterance, Tete d' Armee, bespoke the hero 
 of a hundred victories ; so Jackson, as his mind wan- 
 dered in the delirium of death, thought himself once 
 more amidst the shouting of the captains and the neigh- 
 ing of war-steeds. ''Tell A. P. Hill to prepare for 
 action," said the dying hero. But there were^tenderer 
 emotions welling up in his heart. He thought of his 
 gallant troops, weary and faint with the fatigues of the 
 march or the strife of the battle. "Send provisions 
 forward to the men," he murmured as he lay in a half- 
 conscious state. " A change came o'er the spirit of his 
 dream," and now his mind reverted to his quiet village 
 home ; and turning to one of his attendants, he said 
 audibly, " Bury me at Lexington, in the Valley of Vir- 
 ginia." Afterwards he grows weaker with every breath 
 the shadows of the grave thicken around him when a 
 vision of surpassing beauty and brilliancy breaks on the 
 departing soul of the Christian hero. A noble river flows 
 at his feet. On the farther bank are trees of beauty, and 
 flowers of matchless hue and fragrance. He seems for 
 a moment to gaze wistfully on the scene, and then utters 
 softly those sweet last words, ' ' Let us cross over the 
 river and rest in the shade of the trees." The eagle 
 
144 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 A 
 
 eye is now quenched and the lion heart is still ; hence- 
 forth the war-worn chieftain is numbered with God's 
 " saints in glory everlasting." How much grander 
 such a departure than that which Scott has conceived 
 for the hero of Flodden Field, when 
 
 ''With dying hand above his head 
 He shook the fragment of his blade, 
 And shouted victory !" 
 
 How much more impressive even than the last moments 
 of Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham, or than those of 
 Nelson as he died on the quarter-deck of his flag-ship ! 
 By a majority of his countrymen his death was regarded 
 as a fatal blow to the Confederacy. His name alone 
 was a "tower of strength" to the cause; his presence 
 was as inspiring as the bugle blast of Roderick Dhu, 
 while his wonderful ability could not be replace! or 
 substituted. Even his enemies honored his memory 
 with tears and plaudits. As for the sorrow of the South, 
 it can only be likened to that which marked the untimely 
 death of William of Orange, of which it was so eloquently 
 said ' ' that strong men wept like women, and the little chil- 
 dren cried in the sheets." 
 
OUR INDIAN TRIBES THEIR DESTINY. 145 
 
 OUR INDIAN TRIBES THEIR DESTINY, 
 
 Less than three centuries have elapsed since the cava- 
 lier settlement at Jamestown and the landing of the 
 Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth. And yet in that period 
 what vast changes have been wrought on the American 
 continent. 
 
 This was then a new world to the European. Immense 
 forests covered its broad area, and populous tribes of 
 Indians fished and hunted where now are bustling marts 
 and waving harvest fields. In the present territory of 
 New York were found the powerful Six Nations, the 
 -earliest example of an American Confederacy. Penn- 
 sylvania and a portion of the adjacent States were occu- 
 pied by the peaceful Delawares. New England had its 
 remnant of Pequods and Naragansetts, South Carolina 
 was in possession of the Catawbas and Tuscaroras, the 
 latter of whom subsequently migrated northward. Geor- 
 gia and Alabama were inhabited by the warlike Creeks 
 and more civilized Cherokees. The Chickasaws were 
 still farther towards the setting sun, and the boundless 
 prairies west of the Mississippi were the abode of Apa- 
 ches, Camanches, Sioux, and the degraded Crow and 
 Digger tribes. 
 
 It is impossible to ascertain the aggregate number of 
 these numerous tribes. Very probably they did not 
 -exceed the present population of New York. 
 
146 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 From a variety of causes, however, they have steadily 
 diminished, until now they are less than a half million. 
 A feeble remnant of once powerful tribes have been 
 colonized in the Indian Territory. These have been 
 inscructed in the arts of civilization, and have their 
 churches and school houses. They send their delegate 
 to Congress, and are pensioned from the national treas- 
 ury. Theirs is, at best, however, a sickly existence,, 
 and they seem less at ease than when they built their 
 rude wigwams on the banks of the Etowah, and kindled 
 their council fires on the shores of the Savannah. 
 
 The great body of Indians are in the northwest, and 
 these tribes are far more savage and far more ferocious 
 than any of the eastern tribes. They are now making a 
 desperate yet fruitless struggle against the advancing: 
 tide of western civilization. 
 
 The occasional Indian disturbances in the northwest 
 only constitute a single chapter in the history of the 
 aborigines of this continent. Indian wars form the 
 staple of our colonial history ; and from the organiza- 
 tion of the Federal Government until the present hour 
 we have had strife and bloodshed whenever and wherever 
 the two races have been brought into contact. How- 
 ever well we may philosophize about the brotherhood 
 of man, the records of frontier warfare, accompanied as 
 it has been, by the indiscriminate slaughter of men, 
 women, and children, show the fixed antagonism if not 
 inextinguishable enmity that exists between the red man 
 and the white man. 
 
 It may be that the selfishness of the white man has. 
 
OUR INDIAN TRIBES THEIR DESTINY. 147 
 
 as much to do in precipitating these conflicts as either 
 the treachery of the Indian or the mere instincts of his 
 race. 
 
 No conscientious man can wholly approve of the 
 policy of the Government towards the Indian tribes. 
 In the main generous and conciliatory, it has, neverthe- 
 less, at times, been alternately perfidious and vindictive. 
 Claiming, by virtue of discovery, the right of eminent 
 domain in the soil, we have, as suited our convenience, 
 and even caprice, expelled the Indian from his ancient 
 inheritance. This has sometimes chafed him to despera- 
 tion, and Wyoming and Roanoke massacres have been 
 the result. Then swift retribution has followed, and the 
 wasted tribes have been pressed backward across the 
 Father of Waters, and even to the eastern gorges of the 
 Rocky Mountains. 
 
 We are not blind to the bad qualities of the race. 
 The lordly savage which drawing-room poets depict in 
 Hiawathian numbers, or that juvenile artists portray in 
 all the glory of flaunting feathers and embroidered moc- 
 casins, is a very different being from the dark-browed 
 bandit that prowls over the plains of Dacotah and Mon- 
 tana, that he may prey on the defenseless settlers. The 
 one is a flesh and blood reality, the other is, with rare 
 exceptions, a figment of the fancy. 
 
 And yet there have been noble specimens of untutored 
 greatness amongst these children of the forest. They 
 have had, except the Cherokees and a few other tribes, 
 no written language, and consequently no literature. 
 For the fine arts they exhibit no aptitude. Still, they 
 
148 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 have had their orators, like Logan, whose eloquence stirs 
 the soul, or like Weatherford, who speaks of the fallen 
 braves at Emuckfau and Tohopeka as thrillingly as 
 Pericles of the dead at Marathon. Nor have they failed 
 to produce warriors of the highest genius. Red Jacket 
 could not plan a campaign like Marlborough, nor did 
 Osceola understand the principles of fortification like 
 Vauban, and yet both of them, with an undisciplined 
 and badly equipped soldiery, kept at bay the tried vet- 
 erans of our army. 
 
 But the race, with its vices and its virtues, is doomed. 
 A few more years will witness its extinction. Not many 
 years ago that ill-starred genius, the Milford Bard, 4 r ^w 
 a most striking picture of the last Indian leaping into 
 the waters of the Pacific. It was more touching even 
 than Campbell's representation of the Last Man, for he 
 was full of hope, 
 
 And could defy the darkening universe 
 To quench his immortality, 
 Or shake his trust in God. 
 
 But the last Indian could only look regretfully to the 
 lost hunting-grounds and desolate graves of his fathers, 
 and in the frenzy of despair plunge into the weltering 
 waste of waters. We should be glad to indulge a more 
 hopeful view of the destiny of these tribes. We know 
 the humanizing effects of schools and colleges. Above 
 all do we cherish a profound conviction of the elevating 
 influences of Christianity. But, at the same time, we 
 remember the paralyzing influence of perhaps five thou- 
 
OUR INDIAN TRIBES THEIR DESTINY. 149 
 
 sand years of unmitigated barbarism. This, in connec- 
 tion with the deficient brain and the nomadic tendencies 
 of the race, make us doubtful of any permanent improve- 
 ment of their condition. 
 
 The Mound-builders, who preceded them, have van- 
 ished from the light of the sun, the Aztecs and Incas 
 who established anomalous civilizations in Mexico and 
 Peru, have disappeared from the earth. So, too, we 
 are constrained to believe that the countrymen of the 
 gallant Tecumseth and the faithful Mclntosh will, ere 
 long, be numbered with the extinct races of mankind. 
 
 We may as well accept the stubborn fact that the 
 inferior races must go to the wall. This lesson is taught 
 us in the fate of other races than those to which we 
 have just alluded. We are constantly treading on the 
 dust of dead empires and the debris of extinct civiliza- 
 tions However much it may shock our sensibilities, 
 yet the work of elimination will go forward until we 
 reach the " terminal dynasty " which Hugh Miller has 
 so eloquently described. Not only the Indian the 
 Feugian, the South Sea Islander, the Eskimo, but the 
 Negro and all other races that form the rear-guard of 
 humanity must finally perish. 
 
 It is true that the census returns in this country show 
 a rapid increase in the Negro population, especially 
 during the last two decades. Whether these statistics 
 have been doctored for a partisan purpose, and to what 
 extent is yet an open question. Of one thing we are 
 quite sure, that the weaker must in the long run give 
 place to the stronger. The marvellous fecundity of the 
 
150 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 Negress may postpone but cannot permanently defeat 
 this ultimatum. 
 
 Meanwhile Christian charity should induce us to do 
 what is proper to be done for the betterment of their 
 physical and moral condition, as we may have oppor- 
 tunity, and according to the measure of our ability. 
 
TIME FAITH ENERGY. 
 
 TIME FAITH ENERGY. 
 
 Every student of English literature will remember the 
 beautiful application which Bulwer makes of these words 
 in one of his earliest and best novels. They are indeed 
 magical words, and we would, if possible, infuse the 
 spirit of them into the minds and hearts of our Ameri- 
 can youth. 
 
 They constitute the conditions of permanent success 
 and superior excellence in all the departments of human 
 exertion. 
 
 One of these terms Faith must not be taken in a 
 narrow theological sense, but in its broader acceptation, 
 as that faculty or tendency of the mind which is the 
 exact opposite of the processes of the logical under- 
 standing. As thus defined, it is a characteristic of all 
 great minds. It as much distinguished Columbus in his 
 search for a new world, as it djd Abraham in his pilgrim- 
 age to Canaan. It characterized Alexander in his strug- 
 gle after universal empire, as well as David when he 
 undertook the conquest of the neighboring Philistines 
 or Edomites. 
 
 So that to the list of those elders whom Paul com- 
 memorates in the epistle to the Hebrews might be truth- 
 fully added those master spirits of profane history, who 
 grasping some transcendental truth of physics or morals, 
 or politics, have embodied it in an illustrious action or 
 
152 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 made it the corner-stone of some system of government 
 or philosophy. 
 
 No one, therefore, may hope to achieve great :esults 
 who is an utter stranger to this ' ' vision and faculty- 
 divine. " He may be happy and usefjl in his gen'era- 
 tion, but without it he shall sleep at last with the rude 
 forefathers of his native hamlet. 
 
 Nor is Energy less necessary to eminent success thart 
 Faith. This is the working capacity which all right- 
 minded men honor, even in the swarthy laborer who> 
 hammers iron or trundles a wheel-barrow. It is an 
 excellent substitute for genius. Many a young man 
 has signally failed, not for lack of capacity, but because 
 he was deficient in energy. Hugh Miller, who wrought 
 through the day in the stone-quarries of Cromarty, and 
 consumed half the night in classical studies, is an exam- 
 ple of that energy which we commend. Such industry 
 will succeed in spite of every disadvantage of fortune,, 
 and will sometimes elevate him that practices it to the 
 foremost rank amongst his contemporaries We need 
 this quality in the South more than all else at the pres- 
 ent juncture. Our people have been impoverished far 
 beyond their own present appreciation. But though 
 the field be lost, all is not lost We have our manhood 
 left us. We have brawn and brain which, if vigorously- 
 exercised and well-directed, will yet make this beautiful 
 land to bloom like Eden and blossom as the garden of 
 the Lord. 
 
 Time is another condition of success. We live in a 
 "fast age." We do everything in a hurry, and seem 
 
TIME FAITH ENERGY. 153 
 
 to have utterly forgotten tf\z festtna lente of the ancients. 
 The consequence is that our scholarship is superficial 
 our public works, with few exceptions, appear designed 
 for ornament rather than use, and the reading of the ma- 
 jority is confined to shilling novels and peivny pamphlets. 
 One can scarcely believe that we are of the same lineage 
 with the Aschams.and Erasmuses of a past generation, 
 or that we are of the same race, with those who built 
 the pyramids, or those later giants who reared the vast 
 cathedrals, and wrote the huge folios of mediaeval 
 Europe. The great works of genius, like the Iliad of 
 Homer, and the Principia of Newton, are the product 
 of patient and protracted intellectual toil. They require 
 line upon line, here a little and there a little. And so, 
 too, it is by persistent strokes of the chisel that the 
 shapeless block of marble is fashioned into the master- 
 piece of the sculptor, and by persevering labor that the 
 painter's canvass is made to glow with, the touching 
 scene of The Last Supper Time, Faith, Energy. Let 
 these talismanic words be the motto of our young men, 
 and we need not then despair of the fortunes' of the 
 South, nor of the welfare of this great Republic, one 
 and indivisible. 
 
 PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. Addison was the first English 
 critic who popularized Milton's Paradise Lost, and 
 Macaulay is entitled to the credit of having first intro- 
 duced Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress to the favorable 
 notice of the magnates of the English realm. 
 
 F'jr more than two hundred years it had been the 
 
154 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 favorite book of the working classes. It was always 
 found side by side with the Holy Bible, in the library 
 of the humble cottager, but it was rarely seen in the 
 mansions of the wealthy. 
 
 Since the publication of Macaulay's essay on John 
 Bunyan, in the pages of the Edinburgh Review, there 
 has been a marked change in the fortunes of this pro- 
 duction of the immortal dreamer. It is now published 
 in the handsomest style of the book making art, and 
 embellished with sketches by the best living artists. It 
 is, moreover, fashionable to speak of it as an English 
 classic, and even to prefer it to the latest novel. 
 
 This argues well for the literary taste of the age, for 
 no where is there to be found more sound wisdom, 
 more chaste, yet beautiful imagery, and greater purity 
 of style than in this unrivalled allegory. 
 
 It ought to be a constant study, not only with divines 
 and professsedly religious people, but with all who are 
 fond of choice reading, and who wish to acquire a cor- 
 rect English style. 
 
 Next to our authorized version of the Holy Scriptures, 
 and the Spectator, we know of nothing in the language 
 comparable to it in this respect. 
 
 As a history of Christian experience, it will be fully 
 appreciated only by those who have themselves floun- 
 dered, like Christian, in the slough of despond, or in 
 their happier moods have trod with him the delectable 
 mountains Blessed be the memory of good John Bun- 
 yan, who was favored with this heavenly vision in the 
 dungeon of Bedford jail. 
 
A NATIONAL PARASITE. 1 55 
 
 A NATIONAL PARASITE. 
 
 Naturalists have much to say of parasitic plants and 
 animals. The mistletoe is one of the most familiar 
 instances of the former class, and the hermit-crab is one 
 of the most notable examples of the latter class. The 
 mistletoe, instead of gathering its nourishment from the 
 soil, draws its supplies from the oak and chestnut. 
 With equal disinterestedness the hermit-crab, instead of 
 building its own houses, utilizes the cast-off shells of 
 various mollusca. In both cases there is, as scientists 
 teach, a rapid degeneration. 
 
 Parasitism is not, however, confined to the vegetable 
 and animal kingdoms. There are frequent examples 
 amongst the lower and higher human races. Every 
 unproductive consumer, whether duke or dead*beat, is 
 a social parasite Every landlord or employer, who 
 grinds the poor, and, by one or another crooked device, 
 appropriates without just compensation the blood and 
 sweat of the toiling millions, is none the less a parasite 
 because of his plethoric money-bags. 
 
 Aggressive syndicates, land monopolies, tax exempt- 
 ed capital, whether in bonds or railways, all go to 
 augment the burdens of the bread-winners. They per- 
 petuate an evil which menaces the peace and prosperity 
 of the commonwealth. They are in no small measure 
 
156 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 responsible for the growth of communism, and pave the 
 way for Chicago bomb throwing and French revolutions. 
 
 Moralize as we may on the comeliness of law and 
 order, emphasize as we may choose the sacredness of 
 vested rights, these "wise saws" are but paper bar- 
 riers, when the smouldering passions of a hungry popu- 
 lace break forth with desolating force and fury. These 
 issues are not yet imminent in this country. But for 
 this we are less indebted to the sagacity of our rulers 
 than to that broad heritage which furnishes ample room 
 for our constantly swelling population. Our civil war, 
 followed by the emancipation of five millions of slaves, 
 the accumulation of a vast national debt, the establish- 
 ment of an enormous pension list, has cast a heavy 
 burden on the taxpayers of the country. 
 
 The negroes, unfitted morally and intellectually for 
 the exercise of freedom, were distinctly recognized as 
 " wards of the nation." Even while the sulphur smoke 
 of battle still 'floated in the air, this blighting curse of 
 parasitism was entailed on coming generations. The 
 Freedman's Bureau was inaugurated, with its periodical 
 disbursement of food and clothing. In many instances 
 it was a well bestowed charity. But in an immense 
 majority of cases it was directly promotive of idleness. 
 As practically administered it was the offering of a 
 premium to thriftless vagabondism that did quite as 
 much to demoralize the negroes; *as the patriotic carpet- 
 baggers and pious school-marms who followed in the 
 wake of conquering armies. From that time forward, 
 sundry efforts in the shape of constitutional amend 
 
A NATIONAL PARASITE. 1 57 
 
 i 
 
 ments and civil rights bills, and at short intervals mili- 
 tary intervention in the domestic affairs of the Southern 
 States, served to perpetuate this ruinous policy. Men 
 who, in respect to other questions, are of unimpeacha- 
 ble sanity, when they touch this issue appear to have 
 eaten of ' ' that insane root which takes the reason pris- 
 oner. " 
 
 The latest aspect of this craze is the educational bill 
 of Senator Blair. If this were an isolated measure, it 
 might be treated with some forbearance. But such a 
 conception argues an exceedingly narrow view of the drift 
 of the scheme it inaugurates and an utter misapprehen- 
 sion of the intent of its principal advocates. Properly 
 understood, it is the smallest part of an administrative 
 policy, as well defined as the American system of Mr. 
 Clay. It means centralization, and, as a logical 
 sequence, Caesarism. It leads to the paternal govern- 
 ment of Bismarck, which is only sustained by the mem- 
 ories of Sadowa and Sedan, the personal qualities of 
 the Kaiser, and a military establishment which is an 
 incubus on German industries and a perpetual menace 
 to neighboring nationalities. It is at best a blear-eyed 
 statesmanship or a wilful betrayal o f public liberty. 
 This is a strong statement, and yet we are ready for its 
 vindication. 
 
 Let us for the present consider the matter apart from 
 its obvious relations to other issues the tariff the 
 reckless squandering of the public domain, the wasteful 
 extravagance of river and harbor appropriations, and 
 the pension list, all of which are a convenient pretext 
 
158 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 for oppressive taxation. An exorbitant tariff system 
 has put one hundred millions of surplus revenue in the 
 Federal treasury. Instead of applying this money to 
 the extinguishment of our national debt, it is gravely 
 proposed to divert it from this legitimate channel and 
 disburse it to the States for educational purposes on 
 the basis of illiteracy. On its very face it is a studied 
 appeal to the cupidity of the Southern States. 
 
 Senator Beck, of Kentucky, sees in it the Trojan 
 horse of the Iliad. To. us it appears as a nineteenth 
 century rehearsal of a highly dramatic incident of the 
 Gospel. We refer to the time when the devil, by some 
 mysterious agency spirited away the Son of God to the 
 summit of an exceeding high mountain, and showed 
 him in an instant of time the kingdoms of the world, 
 and the glory of them ; proffering the whole as the 
 reward for a single act of devil worship only a pepper- 
 corn by way of fealty. And yet, as a quaint divine has 
 said the devil did not own a foot of land. 
 
 So with the sponsors of this educational bill. They 
 offer large sums on condition that the States will raise a 
 like amount. All this vast treasure we will give you, 
 when in very truth the general government is a pauper 
 not less than the leperous Lazarus of our Savior's 
 parable. Not a dollar in its treasury that the people of 
 the States did not put there, and the South more than 
 its proportionable share. Its ultimate tendency is to 
 confer on the general government the power to control 
 the matter of education in all the States We know 
 right well that according to the provisions of the pend- 
 
A NATIONAL PARASITE. I 59 
 
 ing bill, the policy is temporary, designed to meet an 
 emergency. But is any advocate of the measure so 
 stupid or so wilfully blind as not to see that Congress, 
 once having acquired the power, will exercise it with 
 only such limitations as it may accept ? Given a sweep- 
 ing Republican victory, and the next step will be for 
 the Secretary of the Interior to prescribe the text books 
 and to withhold the appropriations from all but mixed 
 schools. The sagacity of men who cannot see the moral 
 certainty of this result is on a par with the folly of that 
 silly bird who thrusts his head into the desert sands and 
 leaves his bulk exposed to an a posteriori argument any- 
 thing but pleasant, and shamefully humiliating to the 
 dignity even of an ostrich. 
 
 Where, we ask, is the reason or necessity for submit- 
 ting to this fresh assault on local self-government ? In 
 what school of politics did the Democratic Senators, 
 who voted for the passage of the bill, learn that the 
 States were incapable of managing this matter? What 
 is more, is the scheme either right or politic ? Is it 
 based on one of the powers delegated to the Federal 
 government? One Southern Senator answers affirma- 
 tively in reliance upon the "general welfare" clause, a 
 construction that evidently makes the government one of 
 unlimited powers a construction that even Timothy 
 Pickering, the typical Federalist, would have disavowed. 
 This from a man who, in ante-bellum days, was on the 
 question of States rights "a Hebrew of the Hebrews;" 
 who, during the war, was such a pronounced stickler 
 for State sovereignty, that he more than once embar- 
 
I6O LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 rassed and hindered the war policy of the Confederate 
 government. Nor was he more fortunate in his appeal 
 to the practice of the government with reference to 
 internal improvements. An appeal to precedent is 
 allowable in the. forum. Stare decisis is a wise judicial 
 maxim. But the merest pettifogger knows that it is 
 out of place in the Senate chamber. Ours is in theory, 
 and until these evil days was in practice, a government 
 of constitutional limitations. Besides, the analogy 
 which he proposes between appropriations for educa- 
 tional purposes and river and harbor appropriations, is 
 fanciful and far-fetched. 
 
 The Senator referred to is no mean disputant, and we 
 have rarely seen him at such manifest disadvantage as 
 when Bayard, of Delaware, exposed the absurdity of 
 this analogy. The Delaware Senator admonished him, 
 that as long ago as 1826, the United States Supreme 
 Court had affirmed the constitutionality of the river and 
 harbor appropriations, on the ground that the Federal 
 government had the power to regulate commerce be- 
 tween the States. This decision, he further remarked, 
 had been acquiesced in by all departments of the gov- 
 ernment for a half century. It was like a third form 
 boy at Rugby having his Latin syntax corrected by 
 Thomas Arnold. But if there were no constitutional 
 obstacle to the bill, its obvious impolicy ought to insure 
 its defeat. 
 
 We have elsewhere said some things which we take 
 this occasion to restate. 
 
 The credit or discredit of the authorship of this 
 
A NATIONAL PARASITE. l6l 
 
 measure is shared between the late President Garfield 
 and Judge Tourgee. The latter gentleman, according 
 to his own confession, had gone on a "fool's errand" 
 to North Carolina just after the war. By his party 
 associates even he had come to be regarded as an educa- 
 tional bore but he succeeded at last in winning the ear 
 and confidence of Mr. Garfield. In an interview with 
 the President, Tourgee convinced that official that just 
 such a scheme of National Education as was afterwards 
 incorporated in the Blair Bill was the apecific and sov- 
 reign remedy for the political and social disabilities of 
 the Southern Freedman. That by this measure also, 
 the Republican party would be able to secure a free 
 ballot and a fair count in Southern elections. By this 
 new phase of reconstruction Tourgee likewise argued 
 that no less than seven of the South Atlantic and Gulf 
 States would in process of time be transformed into 
 negro republics. Mr. Garfield, who was at least, a 
 shrewd partisan, readily saw that this pet project of 
 Tourgee, was a vast stride towards centralization. Aus- 
 tria could devise no better plan for counteracting the 
 spread of liberal principles in the empire than to place 
 the whole matter of education in the hands of the Jesuit 
 Fathers. Nor could human ingenuity devise a better 
 plan for destroying the peace and prosperity of the 
 South than to give the control of the primary education 
 of the masses, white and black, to the Federal Govern- 
 ment so long as the radical party was in power. Of 
 course the ostensible pretext of this unconstitutional 
 interference with a matter properly belonging to the 
 
1 62 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 jurisdiction of the State Governments was humanitarian 
 rather than political. It was, they alleged, to forestall 
 a conflict of races when every dollar they have expended 
 and every effort they have made whether on the line of 
 Missionary or Educational work has widened the breach, 
 and rendered true reconcilement more difficult and 
 impracticable. If they really desire harmony between 
 the races and the enlargement of the South's prosperity, 
 let them mind their home affairs. If they must needs go 
 abroad they may find ample employment on " the dark 
 continent " where the debased inhabitants eat serpents 
 and lizzards, and worship a Mumbo Jumbo idol. And 
 yet one of these Northern churches appropriates barely 
 three thousand dollars of missionary money to Africa, 
 and at the same time votes sixty thousand dollars to the 
 South, where their presence is an obvious impertinence. 
 Is it uncharitable to ask if they are in search of human 
 souls or Republican votes? 
 
 Unless we shut our eyes to the facts of History, we 
 shall be constrained to answer this question affirmatively. 
 That church before and after the civil war has been 
 preaching a Gospel of hate, except when for selfish 
 ends it was seeking a unification of the Northern and 
 Southern branches of Methodism. 
 
 Such a line of policy as the disbursement proposed is 
 really without precedent in the history of the govern- 
 ment. Many years ago there was a surplus revenue 
 accruing from the sale of the public lands. It was pro- 
 posed to distribute this fund, for which the government 
 had no present need, not as a free gratuity, but as an 
 
A NATIONAL PARASITE. 163 
 
 indefinite loan. Some of our purest and wisest states- 
 men resisted the measure, as both unconstitutional and 
 inexpedient. South Carolina refused outright to receive 
 her quota. She was unwilling to be subsidized, or, what 
 was scarcely less incompatible with her dignity, to 
 become a pensioner of the Federal treasury. It is a 
 burning shame that such manly independence is no 
 longer dreamed of in our political philosophy. 
 
 But its impolicy is more striking for another vital 
 consideration. While we distinctly recognize the evils 
 of illiteracy among the negroes, we are equally satisfied 
 that universal education is no adequate remedy for uni- 
 versal suffrage. "There is no political alchemy," as 
 Huxley. wisely observed, "by which you can extract 
 golden conduct from leaden instincts." The negro's 
 intellectual and moral advancement is limited by the 
 intellectual and moral capabilities of his race. The law 
 of conformity to type will bring him to his proper level, 
 as certainly as the law of gravitation brings a stone to 
 the earth. 
 
 Negro suffrage, not less a crime than a blunder, can 
 only be corrected by such a modification of the law as 
 the public welfare shall demand. Meanwhile, let us bear 
 the ills we have rather than fly to others we know not of. 
 What may be done for the negro's education will be 
 best done by the State governments, without Federal 
 interference. 
 
 Let him be taught that his highest well-being is to be 
 secured by self-development, not by parasitism. Let 
 him learn to discriminate between a becoming self-reli- 
 
164 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 ance and an offensive self-assertion. Let him be admon- 
 ished that his struggle for equality, much more for 
 supremacy, is an inevitable failure. That the social and 
 political distinctions which he resents as disparagements, 
 and even grievances, are based on ethnical differences 
 that no human enactments can obliterate. 
 
 The wretched class legislation of the past twenty 
 years, inspired by malice and intended to humiliate the 
 South, has been a positive injury to the negro as well 
 as a flagrant wrong to the white race. Senator Blair's 
 bill is of a piece, so far as its manifest tendencies are 
 concerned, with the cotton tax, the kuklux laws, the 
 confiscation and disfranchisement laws of a Radical 
 majority. The spirit that prompted the dismember- 
 ment of the mother of States still seeks to blot out State 
 lines and destroy State sovereignty by a gradual absorp- 
 tion of the rights " reserved to the States respectively, 
 or to the people." 
 
 Twenty years more of similar misrule wiU not only 
 revolutionize the government, but it will utter destroy 
 whatever of real manhood yet remains in the negro 
 race. 
 
 The History of Liberia sheds abundant light on this 
 vexed question. Colonized under the auspices of the 
 American Government with the best class of Africo- 
 Americans, it has been a miserable abortion. For a 
 time there was some faint prospect of success, but more 
 recently it has gone from bad to worse until socially, 
 commercially and politically, it is an eye-sore to the 
 civilized nations, and is treated with deserved contempt 
 
A NATIONAL PARASITE. 165 
 
 even by the barbarous natives. Everywhere indeed, 
 the attempt to found Negro States has signally failed. 
 If Garfield's project for Africanizing the South Atlantic 
 and Gulf States through the agency of a Blair Bill, or 
 a similar congressional enactment could be consummated 
 the fruits would be the same as when Negro Supremacy 
 was foisted by Federal bayonets on South Carolina. Sena- 
 tor Hampton in his Forum article has shown what a 
 Political Bedlam was developed in a very few years by 
 that iniquitous policy. From the Governor to the 
 humblest tax-gatherer there was fraud and outright 
 roguery to a degree that exhausted the State Treasury 
 and threatened the downtrodden white population with 
 universal bankruptcy. And yet there is a class of 
 Republican Statesmen North, and their pliant hench- 
 men South, who are eager to repeat this experiment on 
 a much larger scale. They may achieve a temporary 
 success, but their final discomfiture is inevitable. 
 
 By a gracious provision of nature "moral monsters 
 cannot propagate," and a like seminal impotency is the 
 characteristic of every public policy bottomed on such 
 flagrant injustice as distinguishes the measures and mas- 
 ter spirits of the present dominant party. 
 
 Let it be continued, and it is but a question of time 
 when, instead of an independent body of American citi- 
 zens, the whole race, with rare exceptions, will become 
 "a proletarian rabble kept at the public expense.'' 
 
1 66 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 MODERN INFIDELITY ITS LATEST PHASE, 
 
 Shelley, in his notes to Queen Mab, characterizes our 
 Saviour as an ambitious man, who aspired to the throne 
 of David. 
 
 To compass this cherished object, he falsely claimed 
 to be the Messiah of the Jewish prophecies. His life, 
 therefore, was, according to this theory, a piece of inge- 
 nious acting, inspired by fraud, and controlled by the 
 basest selfishness. 
 
 We instinctively shudder at the bold blasphemy of 
 such a declaration, and yet even this is more tolerable 
 than the patronizing air of Ernest Renan and kindred 
 writers. These affect a reverence for Christ, while, like 
 Iscariot of old, they betray him with a kiss. They salute 
 him with "Art thou well, my brother?" whilst they 
 smite him in the most vital part with the secret blade 
 of Joab. 
 
 The infidelity of the school of Voltaire and Paine has 
 fallen into general disrepute, as much on account of its 
 shameless indecency as because of its manifest absurdity. 
 The world is not yet so degenerate that it will listen 
 patiently to the teachings of an author who alleges that 
 the virgin mother was recreant to her plighted troth, 
 and that the Holy Child was the offspring of an illicit 
 amour. Nor will it respect the sayings of any man or 
 party that maintains, contrary to all the evidence, that 
 
MODERN INFIDELITY ITS LATEST PHASE. 1 67 
 
 Mary Magdalene and Mary, the wife of Cleopas wit- 
 nesses of the resurrection were women of doubtful 
 veracity and more than doubtful virtue. Such reckless 
 defamation defeats its own purpose, and is sure to recoil 
 with terrible force against the cause it is designed to 
 uphold. This plan of attack has been, therefore, aban- 
 doned by the more wary opponents of Christianity. It 
 is now the fashion for avowed infidels to be convulsed 
 with raptures at the epic grandeur of Isaiah and Habak- 
 kuk, and to be melted by the elegiac tenderness of 
 Jeremiah. Nor do they hesitate to rank the inimitable 
 Parables and Sermons of Christ with the grandest utter- 
 ances of Plato and Aristotle. 
 
 Conspicuous, as we have already intimated, amongst 
 this class, is Renan, whose work, entitled "The Apos- 
 tles," has suggested these reflections. ' ' The Apostles, " 
 as respects the plan of it, bears a close analogy to 
 Neander's ' 'Planting of Christianity. " It takes for its basis 
 the Acts of the Apostles as supplemented and explained 
 by the Pauline Epistles. While it contains many grave, 
 historical inaccuracies, it may be safely admitted that 
 portions of the Sacred Record are discussed with fair- 
 ness and ability. This especially applies to those pages 
 devoted to the missionary labors of Paul and Barnabas. 
 It sheds considerable light, also, on the distracting con- 
 troversy between the Jewish and Gentile converts, 
 which, in particular localities, brought the early Church 
 to the verge of utter overthrow In this connexion, he 
 gives a full account of the establishment of the Church 
 of Antioch, the mother Church of the Gentiles. In 
 
1 68 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 regard to this event, which constitutes an era in the 
 development and expansion of the Church, he makes 
 the following observations : 
 
 " The Church of Antioch owed its foundation to some 
 original believers from Cyprus and Cyrene, who had 
 already been zealous in preaching. Up to this time 
 they had only addressed themselves to the Jews. But 
 in the city where pure Jews Jews who were proselytes, 
 'people fearing God' or half-Jews, half-pagans, and pure 
 pagans lived together, confined preachings, restricted to 
 a group of houses, became impossible. That feeling of 
 religious aristocracy on which the Jews of Jerusalem so 
 much prided themselves, had no existence in these large 
 cities, where civilization was altogether of the profane sort, 
 where the atmosphere was more expanded, and where 
 prejudices were less firmly rooted. The Cypriot and 
 Cyrenian missionaries were then constrained to depart 
 from their rule. They preached to the Jews and to the 
 Greeks indifferently. 
 
 " The reciprocal dispositions of the Jewish and of the 
 pagan population appeared at this time to have been very 
 unsatisfactory. But circumstances of another kind proba- 
 bly sub-served the new ideas. The earthquake, which 
 had done serious damage to the city on 23d March, of 
 the year 37, still occupied their minds. The whole city 
 was talking about an impostor named Debborius, who 
 pretended to prevent the recurrence of such accidents 
 by ridiculous talismans. This sufficed to direct preoc- 
 cupied minds towards supernatural matters. However 
 that may have been, great was the success of the Christ 
 
MODERN INFIDELITY ITS LATEST PHASE. 169 
 
 ian preaching. A young, innovating, and ardent Church, 
 full of the future, because it was composed of the most 
 diverse elements, was quickly founded. All the gifts of 
 the Holy Spirit were there poured out, and it was then 
 easy to perceive that this new Church, emancipated from 
 the strict Mosaism which traced an irrefragable circle 
 around Jerusalem, would become the second cradle of 
 Christianity. Assuredly, Jerusalem will remain forever 
 the capital of the Christian world nevertheless, the point 
 of departure of the church of the Gentiles, the primal 
 focus of Christian missions, was, in truth, Antioch. It 
 is there, for the first time, that a Christian church was 
 established, divorced from the bonds of Judaism ; it is 
 there that the great propaganda of the Apostolic age 
 was established ; it was there that St. Paul assumed a 
 definite character. Antioch marks the second halting- 
 place of the progress of Christianity, and, in respect of 
 Christian nobility, neither Rome, nor Alexandria, nor 
 Constantinople can be at all compared with it." 
 
 It is, however, evidently the purpose of Renan to 
 eliminate every element of the supernatural from the 
 history of the primitive Church. He labors assiduously 
 to accomplish this end, and spares no quibble, and no 
 device that may help the undertaking. With this intent 
 he has investigated at much length the Scriptural narra- 
 tive of the conversion of St Paul. He concedes the 
 vast significance of that remarkable event, and recog- 
 nizes its wonderful influence on the fortunes of the infant 
 Christianity. Hence, he is at great pains to strip it of 
 all semblance of the miraculous, and to drag it down to 
 
I/O LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 the level of a natural, although an extraordinary, occur- 
 rence. He ventures to revive, at this late date, the 
 preposterous theory of German Rationalism, which 
 Strauss himself discarded as less tenable than the 
 received opinion of Christendom. We shall not attempt 
 to follow Renan through the wearisome details of what 
 he styles his argument on this question. The bare state- 
 ment of that argument is the readiest mode of refuting 
 it. Can it be credited, may we not ask, that the facts 
 recorded by Luke of that marvellous journey to Damas- 
 cus which facts Paul affirmed before the great council 
 of his nation at Jerusalem facts which he reiterated 
 before Agrippa in the Judgment Hall at Csesarea which 
 he doubtless insisted on in his first and second answers 
 before Caesar facts, too, that he avouched by his mar- 
 tyrdom that these facts, in part and whole, were a 
 tissue of lies, and were either the concoction of a delib- 
 erate fraud, or the hallucination of downright madness? 
 
 Does it comport, we again inquire, with reason itself 
 to believe that a thunder-storm gathering suddenly above 
 the declivities of Mount Hermon wrought a conversion 
 that has literally changed the currents of the world's 
 history ? Aye, more, is it true, as Renan inculcates, 
 that Paul was stunned and blinded by a lightning stroke, 
 and that his vision of the crucified Nazarene was simply 
 the result of opthalmic inflammation, and that the voice 
 of rebuke, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me!" 
 was the mere product of his confused consciousness? 
 
 We have selected this instance of the conversion of 
 St. Paul as a fair example of the style of reasoning 
 
MODERN INFIDELITY ITS LATEST PHASE. I/ I 
 
 which pervades this book from the High Priest of mod- 
 ern infidelity. It will serve very well to show what 
 is the logic of skepticism, and to what desperate shifts 
 and expedients even great minds are driven when they 
 break away from the moorings of Christian theology. 
 If these, and such as these, are the most formidable 
 objections to the Bible, then, indeed, may its friends 
 laugh to scorn the efforts of its mightiest assailants. 
 
 It is, however, a noteworthy fact that infidelity is as 
 much of a changling as Proteus, the fabulous sea-god of 
 classic mythology. In one century it dogmatizes with 
 Chubb and Bolingbroke, and in another it syllogizes 
 with Hume. In one generation it sneers with Voltaire 
 and raves with Tom Paine, whilst in the next it praises 
 with Strauss, and almost worships with Renan. 
 
 There is, indeed, amongst these enemies of the Faith 
 a most striking confusion of tongues so much so, in 
 sooth, that it is easy to set one in battle array against 
 another. Like equal quantities on opposite sides of an 
 Algebraic equation, they neutralize each other, and the 
 sum total is zero. Let it not be supposed that Renan 
 and others of his class do not have a system of religious 
 belief. He calls this system the absolute religion of which 
 he asserts Mormonism, Buddhism and Christism to be 
 convenient modifications. This is certainly high-sounding 
 phraseology, but when carefully analyzed it is discovered 
 to be a most pitiful play on words. Their boasted 
 absolutism is a veritable sham. It has not the vitality 
 of a galvanized corpse, and is, in our judgment a form 
 of infidelity less plausible than atheism, or even nihilism. 
 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 Before dismissing this subject, we feel it is but due to 
 Renan to cite the subjoined passage from his work : 
 
 "Are we then to conclude that religion is destined 
 gradually to die away like the popular fallacies concern- 
 ing magic, sorcery, and ghosts ? By no means. Religion 
 is not a popular fallacy ; it is a great intuitive truth, felt 
 and expressed by the people. All the symbols which 
 serve to give shape to the religious sentiment are imper- 
 fect, and their fate is, to be one after another rejected. 
 But nothing is more remote from the truth than the 
 dream of those who seek to imagine a perfect humanity 
 without religion. The contrary idea is the truth. The 
 Chinese, a very inferior branch of humanity, have hardly 
 any religious sentiment. But if we suppose a planet 
 inhabited by a race whose intellectual, moral and physi- 
 cal force were the double of our own, that race would 
 be at least twice as religious as we. I say ' at least, ' for 
 it is likely that the religious sentiment would increase 
 more rapidly than the intellectual capacity, and not in 
 merely direct proportion. Let us suppose a humanity 
 ten times as powerful as we are ; it would be infinitely 
 more religious. It is even probable that at this degree 
 of sublime elevation, being freed from material cares 
 and egotism, endowed with perfect judgment and appre- 
 ciation, and perceiving clearly the baseness and nothing- 
 ness of all that is not true, good or beautiful, man would 
 be wholly a religious being, and would spend his days 
 in ceaseless adoration, passing from ecstasy to ecstasy 
 of religious rapture, and living and dying in the loftiest 
 delight of the soul. Egotism is the measure of inferi- 
 
MODERN INFIDELITY ITS LATEST PHASE. 1/3 
 
 ority, and decreases as we recede from the animal nature. 
 A perfect being would no longer be selfish, but purely 
 religious. The progress of humanity, then, cannot 
 destroy or weaken religion, but will develop and 
 increase it." 
 
 Such a testimony from such a quarter is not to be 
 despised or undervalued. It shows there are generous 
 longings and genial sensibilities underlying the cold and 
 repulsive surface of Kenan's moral and intellectual 
 character. It ought to teach us, too, ' 'Charity for all, " 
 for are not all, the humblest and the weakest, the children 
 of one Great Father, " who knoweth our frame, and who 
 remembereth that we are dust?" 
 
1/4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 ENGLISH LIBERALISM, 
 
 As late as 1753, a bill was pending in the British Par- 
 liament to authorize the naturalization of the Jews. This 
 measure of simple justice was furiously assailed in the 
 rural districts, and even the city of London sent up a 
 very large memorial condemning the movement as dis- 
 honoring to the church and damaging to the commerce 
 of the country. 
 
 Little more than a hundred years thereafter Benjamin 
 D' Israeli, the accomplished scholar and statesman was 
 elevated to the Premiership over the heads of men whose 
 ancestors came in with the Conqueror. Those who 
 are familiar with the story of Isaac, of York, as related 
 by Sir Walter Scott, will see in this single event that 
 the world moves, and that in the direction of universal 
 enfranchisement. Henceforth Jewish descent has been 
 no bar in England to the highest civic promotion. 
 
 It is true, as Emerson says in his " English Traits " 
 that the " Middle Ages still lurk in the streets of Lon- 
 don. The Knights of the Bath yet swear to defend injured 
 ladies; the Gold-stick-in-waiting survives." But there 
 are many things of later development and growth, and 
 amongst them what we choose to term English Liberal- 
 ism. The germ of this vast popular movement is found 
 in the Bill of Rights of 1688. 
 
ENGLISH LIBERALISM. 175 
 
 There were occasional displays of it under the Tudors 
 and Stuarts, but it was not until the accession of Wil- 
 liam of Orange that it became formidable by reason of 
 the numerical strength of its adherents. The American 
 Revolution gave a fresh impetus to the movement, and 
 the French Revolution of 1789, by bringing the hitherto 
 despised and down-trodden peoples of Europe face to 
 face with their titled oppressors, made it forever impos- 
 sible to govern a nation in the interests of a class, and 
 that, perhaps, the most weak and worthless class in the 
 community. 
 
 Since that period, the statesmanship of EngLnd has 
 applied itself to the work of reforming the abuses of the 
 past, and of shaping the policy of the government so 
 as to subserve, in the language of Bentham the "greatest 
 good of the greatest number." 
 
 One of the earliest of these measures of progress was 
 the Catholic -Emancipation Act. 
 
 The policy of England had for centuries been intensely 
 prescriptive towards these hated religionists. Whilst 
 downright persecution with fagot and sword was not 
 resorted to for many years, yet, by means of the Test 
 Act and kindred abominations, the sincere Catholic was 
 subjected to penalties and disabilities that were alike 
 contrary to the spirit of Christianity and to a sound 
 public policy. 
 
 The contest, it will be remembered, was exceedingly 
 bitter. Anti-popery riots were fomented in several of 
 the cities, and in a few localities a bigoted clergy houn- 
 ded on the rabble in their vindictive courses. Right 
 
1/6 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 and reason in the end prevailed, and this great measure 
 of religious toleration was adopted. 
 
 The next onset of the Liberal party was against the 
 representative system which had so long obtained. 
 Under this system., which was fraudulent in the extreme, 
 the rotten boroughs returned a large minority to Parlia- 
 ment. Old Sarum and its congeners were represented, 
 while, at the same time, some of the most populous 
 commercial and manufacturing cities were excluded 
 from the halls of legislation. Less than two hundred 
 electors returned over three hundred members to Par- 
 liament. The Reform Bill of 1832 struck at the root 
 of this evil. It provided for a more equitable appor- 
 tionment of representatives than had ever previously 
 existed. As might be supposed, the bill was stoutly 
 opposed by all who were interested in perpetuating the 
 abuses sought to be remedied by its adoption. It was 
 asserted with some show of reason that the extension 
 of the Elective Franchise was a dangerous experiment. 
 Some of the more violent of its opponents predicted 
 that this tampering with the basis of representation was 
 a prelude to anarchy and the forerunner of national dis- 
 grace and disaster. 
 
 These political Cassandras were not credited. The bill 
 was passed triumphantly and thus a precedent was estab- 
 lished for still greater modifications as circumstances 
 might warrant. 
 
 But a few years elapsed until liberalism achieved 
 another splendid victory in the unconditional repeal of 
 the Corn Laws. 
 
177 
 
 These laws were professedly enacted for the protection 
 of the agricultural interests of the kingdom. Upon this 
 rspecious pretext the price of breadstuffs was enhanced 
 beyond measure. At the same instant that famine, like 
 a, fleshless fiend, stalked through the lanes of London 
 and Liverpool, and along the byways of Yorkshire 
 .and Lancashire, thousands of bushels of wheat were rot- 
 ting in the cribs of Illinois and Ohio for want of a market. 
 
 Against this political abomination, orators declaimed 
 and poets sang. Barry Cornwall, by his rhymes, did 
 -as much to enlighten the public mind as Sir Robert Peel 
 by his unanswerable logic. "Long time in even scale 
 the battle hung," but at length truth won the mastery, 
 -and the industrial classes of England were delivered from 
 -a most grievous burden. This result demonstrated the 
 fact that the old landholding class was no longer invinci- 
 ble that the manufacturing class was hereafter to be 
 respected and consulted in the administration of national 
 affairs. 
 
 Another exhibition of the strength of liberalism 
 was in the defeat of the Tory ministry on the Irish 
 -Church Establishment resolutions of Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 We have already referred to this, and we must be 
 permitted to say now that we regard it as the most 
 important of all the victories as yet secured by the pro- 
 gressive party. 
 
 Ever since the permanent conquest of Ireland, it has 
 suffered all the evils of misgovernment. The landhold- 
 ing system, connected as it is with absenteeism, and this 
 last with the heartless rapacity of Middlemen, who grind 
 
178 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 the poor tenantry to powder, is the very worst that can 
 be imagined. Now, superadd to this the odious Tithe 
 exactions for the support of a clergy that have no sym- 
 pathy with their Catholic parishioners, and you have at 
 once the cause and the justification of all those efforts at 
 revolution from the united Irishmen of '98 to the Fenians 
 of '68. 
 
 The naked question presented by Mr. Gladstone's 
 resolutions was, whether this Irish Church Establish- 
 ment should still be fastened on the Catholic population 
 of Ireland for the emolument of a hungry swarm of 
 ecclesiastics ? 
 
 To the immortal honor of an English and a Protestant 
 House of Commons, they thundered "No" with an 
 emphasis that shook the walls of old Westminster. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that this vote portends 
 no good to the English Establishment itself. That 
 immense corporation may find it needful to cease its 
 discussion of ritualism, and to forget the transcendantal 
 follies of the Bishop of Natal, while all parties within 
 the pale of the Establishment combine to resist the 
 coming onslaught of the dissenting and non-conformist 
 religious bodies. 
 
 This struggle is inevitable, and without pausing to 
 consider the merits of the controversy, we venture the 
 prediction that the English will share the fate of the 
 Irish Establishment. It may even yet come to pass 
 that a Baptist or Presbyterian clergyman shall officiate 
 as a Royal Chaplain, and that some future sovereign 
 
ENGLISH LIBERALISM. 179 
 
 may worship without a prayer-book, and at other altars 
 than those of the present Established Church. 
 
 Besides these greater constitutional changes there 
 have been very many minor changes in the laws of the 
 realm which clearly indicate the prevailing drift towards 
 Democratic institutions. The game laws which bore so 
 oppressively on the common people from the era of the 
 Plautagenets to the day when Shakespeare was arraigned 
 for deer-stalking, and even until recent times, have been 
 amended in the interests of humanity. The Penal Code 
 has been so softened in the stringency and severity of 
 its provisions that it no longer deserves to be charac- 
 terized as a Code better suited to "a community of 
 Anthropophagi " than to a Christian commonwealth. 
 The horrors of the old Fleet prison, where men were 
 once buried for life, because of business reverses, are 
 virtually unknown. Nor has there been for quite a 
 number of years any just ground for complaint because 
 of onerous taxation of a civil or ecclesiastical sort. One 
 by one the progress of English Liberalism has abolished 
 those laws which originated in an age when Kings were 
 regarded as delegates from Heaven and parliaments 
 were considered omnipotent. 
 
 But the greatest issue of English politics since Magna 
 Charta is the question of Home Rule as respects Ire- 
 land. It is not strictly a new question, but as formu- 
 lated by Mr. Gladstone in his Home and Colonial policy 
 it has assumed grander proportions than at any former 
 period of British history. 
 
 It is a singular fact that John Bright, whose recent death 
 
l8O LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 has been the subject of much newspaper comment, was 
 intensely hostile to the autonomy of Ireland. Not 
 more strange, however, than his stern opposition to the 
 Southern cause during our late civil war. If the South 
 had been contending mainly for domestic slavery his 
 Quakerism might have justified his course. But for the 
 Tribune of the English working classes to array himself 
 against the principle of local self government was a 
 piece of the same glaring inconsistency as his opposition 
 to the Irish policy of the Gladstone ministry. 
 
 Indeed Mr. Bright's political conduct during the lat- 
 ter years of his life was a sore disappointment to his 
 earlier friends and admirers. Beyond any great states- 
 man of modern times he may be said to have survived 
 his usefulness. We say this in full view of the fact that 
 he was but the other day gracefully eulogized by the 
 leaders of both the great political parties in the House 
 of Commons. He had, indeed, nobly sustained the 
 liberal movement in the darkest period of its history, 
 but his defection, when Gladstone was struggling to 
 establish Home Rule in Ireland, a boon already granted 
 to Canada, and substantially to Australia, was a most 
 appalling weakness in a great party leader. 
 
 It is highly probable that with the death of Gladstone 
 there will be a temporary reaction in favor of the New 
 Toryism. But this fluctuation will be transient. The 
 Liberal movement is likely to go forward until the 
 House of Lords as at present constituted is abolished, 
 and such other constitutional changes effected as will 
 scarcely leave a vestige of the English Monarchy. 
 
ENGLISH LIBERALISM. l8l 
 
 Let it not be inferred that we endorse fully either the 
 principles or the policy of the Liberal party. We 
 honestly believe that it has done a vast deal of good in 
 the past, but we confess" that we have grave apprehen- 
 sions in regard to its future course. If it shall become a 
 mob of reckless agitators, seeking to unsettle the ground- 
 work of both Church and State, we may then look for 
 political convulsions to be speedily followed by anarchy 
 or despotism. 
 
 There is danger of this result, and some of the more 
 far-sighted and conscientious of the leaders of the party 
 are beginning to realize it. If these can succeed in 
 arresting this tendency to excess before it acquires an 
 uncontrollable momentum, then will the cause of con- 
 stitutional liberty be safe. 
 
 Let us hope that the just equilibrium of law and 
 liberty may be maintained ; that the one may not degene- 
 rate into license, nor the other become the synonymn 
 of oppression. They are by no means incompatible, 
 as the history of our own Republic for the first half 
 century of its existence abundantly testifies. And if 
 party spirit and sectional animosity have in these last sad 
 years divorced these equally divine principles of liberty 
 and law, let the true-hearted men of all sections unite 
 in restoring the Government to its rightful position. 
 
 Such an example of wise conservatism in America 
 cannot fail to impress and influence the politics of Eng- 
 land. The silly projects of mere disorganizers will be 
 visited with public condemnation. And then, by a law 
 of reaction, as beneficent as it is powerful, we too, shall 
 
1 82 . LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 be saved from the revolutionary madness which threat- 
 ens the destruction of whatsoever is most sacred in the 
 memories of the past, and most inspiring in the pros- 
 pects of the future. 
 
 "THOU SHALT NOT KILL." Eugene Sue has fur- 
 nished us, in one of his most popular works, a marvelous 
 account of the Thugs of India. Josephus, in his histori- 
 cal writings, tells us of the Sicarii, a band of professional 
 assassins who were upheaved by the social convulsions 
 attendant upon the overthrow of the ill fated Jerusalem. 
 
 These statements of the romancist and the historian 
 are enough to make the flesh crawl and the nerves tingle ; 
 but they are hardly worse than the terrible reality in 
 some localities North and South, in the bustling marts 
 of the Atlantic coast, and in the vast solitudes of the 
 Western wilderness. 
 
 There seems to be a species of homicidal mania prevail- 
 ing throughout the country. Blood-shedding has become 
 a sort of national pastime. In a large minority of instan- 
 ces, these offenders against peace and good order are 
 allowed to go ' ' unwhipped of justice. " In a few cases, 
 they are not even restrained of their liberty, but are 
 released on "straw bail," and thus suffered to prey on 
 other communities without let or hindrance. In some 
 cases, these crimes result from political agitation, but 
 usually they proceed from mercenary motives, or else 
 from sheer recklessness of both legal penalties and moral 
 obligation. We can scarcely look into the columns of 
 
THOU SHALT NOT KILL. 183 
 
 a daily paper without stumbling on some fresh deed of 
 horror that would do no discredit to the flush times of 
 Arkansas or Texas, when the revolver and bowie-knife 
 were a part of a man's ordinary wearing apparel. 
 
 Long ago Beccaria taught us that it was not the severity 
 but the certainty of punishment which prevented crime. 
 In truth, the severity of a code may defeat its own enforce- 
 ment, and thereby embolden evil doers by the prospect 
 of impunity. 
 
 The laws, therefore, should be mild, making proper 
 allowance for the infirmities of human nature. But where 
 plainly enacted, they should be executed with unvary- 
 ing certainty. We despair of seeing this result in the 
 administration of the criminal law in this country until 
 the public conscience is enlightened and educated to a 
 just appreciation of the sanctity of human life. Until 
 this is effected, life will be unsafe, and property of all 
 descriptions will partake of the same insecurity. It is 
 easy to see that, in such a condition of affairs, capital 
 will seek investment elsewhere, and the tide of immi- 
 gration will be diverted into other channels. 
 
 We should like for the press generally to ventilate 
 this subject, and the pulpit, too, should contribute its 
 vast influence in the same direction, for only by such a 
 combination of effort can the flood of iniquity be stayed, 
 and the safety of life, liberty and property be assured. 
 
184 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 "THE EARTH TREMBLED/" 
 
 On the night of the 3ist of August, 1886, occurred! 
 the first violent earthquake shock on the Atlantic coast: 
 since the earliest settlement of the North American 
 continent. Slight tremors of very short duration hadi 
 been felt at long intervals since the landing at James-- 
 town. These, however, excited only a passing com- 
 ment. But on the memorable night referred to the? 
 earth movement would have done no discredit to Chilii 
 or Ecuador. Charleston, or possibly Summerville,. 
 twenty miles away, was the center of this seismic con- 
 vulsion. In the city and village alike, there was great 
 destruction of property and serious loss of life. Through- 
 out the entire area covered by the shock there was muchi 
 consternation and a number of deaths resulting fromi 
 fright. These shocks were continued at Charleston andl 
 other localities distant more than one hundred miles fromi 
 the center for days and weeks after the first disturbance. 
 The novelty of the occurrence led to much newspaper 
 discussion as to its cause, and some valuable additions; 
 were made to our earthquake literature. 
 
 The most plausible theory of its cause is that there 
 was a seaward slip of the Piedmont escarpment. This; 
 immense land slide required some weeks to adjust itself,, 
 and hence the slighter shocks that prolonged the suspense 
 and deepened the anxiety of the nervous, and of the 
 
THE EARTH TREMBLED. 185 
 
 superstitious. Another theory propounded in this con- 
 temporaneous discussion was, that the disturbance was 
 produced by submarine volcanic action off the South 
 Atlantic coast. So intimate, indeed, is the connexion 
 between volcanoes and earthquakes that one writer has 
 defined an earthquake as "an uncompleted effort to 
 establish a volcano." Another of equal celebrity has 
 asserted that "the forces of explosion and impulse in 
 both are identical." 
 
 In the special instance under consideration both 
 theories are embarrassed by the fact that hardly any 
 appreciable change in the tides was observed at Charles- 
 ton or its vicinity. Yet another theory was suggested 
 that met with a good degree of popular acceptance, but 
 was received with little favor in scientific circles. We 
 refer to the alleged influence of the Sun and Moon. 
 
 Prof. Milne, of Tokio, Japan, has said as respects 
 the influence of the Sun and Moon that the period of 
 maximum stress of these two bodies is when they are 
 nearest our planet "that is in perigee and perihelion 
 and again when acting in conjunction or at the syzygies " 
 While he says that earthquakes are slightly more numer- 
 ous at these periods, yet he is evidently in doubt as to 
 their exerting any very considerable power in producing 
 them. 
 
 Humboldt, who surpassed Prof. Milne in general 
 intellectual culture, and who enjoyed equal or greater 
 facilities for studying seismic phenomena, "regarded 
 both volcanoes and earthquakes as the result of a com- 
 mon cause " This conclusion he formulated in the 
 
1 86 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 statement that they proceeded from ' ' the reaction of 
 the fiery interior of the earth on its rigid crust." 
 
 Both of them are produced by the sudden and violent 
 expansion of the vapors which are generated by intense 
 heat in the bowels of the earth. Actual experiment 
 demonstrates that the temperature of the earth increases 
 in proportion as we approach its center. This explains 
 the fact that artesian wells of the greatest depth afford 
 the warmest water, and it accounts, besides, for the 
 various temperatures of thermal springs, from the Warm 
 Springs of Virginia to the Hot Springs of Arkansas. 
 
 At a certain depth the entire mass of the earth is in 
 a state of furious combustion. This, of necessity, pro- 
 duces explosive gases, which occasion the subterranean 
 thunder that precedes and accompanies earthquakes, as 
 well as the oscillations which constitute the earthquake 
 itself. In some places these gases acquire sufficient 
 intensity to break the crust of the earth, and volcanoes 
 are formed either constant as Stromboli, or intermit- 
 tent as Vesuvius and Hecla. These volcanoes, as has 
 often been suggested, are so many safety-valves through 
 which the accumulated gases are discharged, and it is 
 probable that but for their existence the globe itself 
 would be rocked at short intervals by such earthquake 
 spasms as destroyed Lisbon in 1755, and were felt 
 simultaneously on the shores of the Baltic and in the 
 ports of Nova Scotia. 
 
 The movements of earthquakes are either vertical, 
 horizontal, or rotary. In a few instances on record 
 these movements have been combined, and in all such 
 
THE EARTH TREMBLED. 1 87 
 
 cases the destruction of life and property has been fearful. 
 It is a singular fact, however, observed by Humboldt 
 and other distinguished naturalists, that the magnetic 
 needle is rarely affected by an impending earthquake. 
 Nor is it always the case that there are any atmospheric 
 phenomena that portend the coming shock. It sometimes 
 approaches with the stealthy tread of a midnight burglar, 
 as in Asia Minor in the reign of Justinian, where thou- 
 sands were crushed by the bowing walls of temples, 
 whither they had repaired for Divine worship. 
 
 Most usually, however, the earthquake is attended by 
 a hollow subterranean noise that is sometimes heard at 
 the distance of five hundred miles from the immediate 
 scene of danger. 
 
 The fright occasioned by this noise and the accom- 
 panying shock, when first experienced, amounts almost 
 to frenzy. The affrighted inhabitants flee to some place 
 of supposed safety, and the midnight air is filled with 
 the prayers and shrieks of women, intermingled with 
 the curses of desperate men, defiant in their wickedness. 
 Even the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air 
 partake of the general alarm, and increase the confusion 
 by their plaintive outcries. But by a law of our nature 
 familiarity with danger breeds indifference, if not con- 
 tempt. So that it comes to pass that men carouse 
 without trepidation in the vine-valleys of Vesuvius, and 
 gamble without fear under the shadow of Cotopaxi. 
 They buy and sell, and get gain in the market-places of 
 Lima and Guayaquil with as much composure as in Boston 
 or London. Indeed, there are portions of Ecuador 
 
1 88 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 where a shock is of daily occurrence, and the earth- 
 quake is less dreaded than a hail-storm. Farmers in 
 Peru and Chili, we are told, regard earthquakes as pro- 
 motive of fruitfulness and harbingers of plenty. And 
 yet there is hardly any agency so destructive of human 
 life as earthquakes. The bloodiest battles of ancient or 
 modern times were not fatal to such immense numbers 
 as perished in the earthquake which was felt in Calabria 
 nearly two hundred years ago. 
 
 In the earthquake of November ist, 1755, already 
 referred to, which completely destroyed Lisbon, no less 
 than fifty thousand persons were hurried into eternity 
 in the brief space of five minutes. So terrible was the 
 calamity that the British Parliament passed resolutions 
 of sympathy, and voted a large sum for the relief of the 
 sufferers. 
 
 Many lives were lost in other localities, and we may 
 form some idea of the wonderful force of the shocks 
 when we state that they were distinctly felt throughout 
 an area of seven hundred thousand square miles, or one- 
 twentieth of the earth's surface. 
 
 It appears, from information gathered from all quart- 
 ers, that earthquakes are not confined to any particular 
 continent or even region of the earth. They are, it is 
 true, most frequent in the tropics, and the equatorial 
 district of South America is peculiarly subject to their 
 visitations. But it is well to remember that the Valley 
 of the Mississippi has not escaped them, and that only 
 a few years ago New England experienced a severe shock 
 synchronous with an earthquake in the Pyrennies. 
 
THE EARTH TREMBLED. 189 
 
 If at any time the Eastern cities of America should 
 be visited by a very severe earthquake there would 
 be a much greater loss of life and property than lately 
 occurred in Charleston. In such an event the magnifi- 
 cent residences on Fifth Avenue, and the mercantile 
 palaces of Broadway, New York, would overwhelm the 
 thousands who might take refuge in the streets 
 
 Such a calamity may be far distant, and still our late 
 experiences must somewhat disturb our serenity. The 
 laws of nature are uniform and stable, but a thousand 
 unseen agencies modify their action. 
 
 LaGrange the eminent Astronomer has shown that 
 the most violent pertubations whether in earth, air or 
 ocean do not seriously affect the equilibrium of our 
 planet or of our solar system. The fluctuations that 
 occur are confined within narrow limits and never comu- 
 lative to such an extent as to imperil the stability of the 
 system itself. And yet there are probably latent forces 
 in the physical universe that may one day involve 
 results best described by the imagery of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures The darkening sun, the reeling earth, the wan- 
 ing moon are at least amongst the possibilities of the 
 illimitable future. 
 
 PLURALITY OF WORLDS. It is a most interesting 
 employment to study the revolutions in scientific opin- 
 ion, and to note the rise and downfall of theories in the 
 domain of physics and metaphysics, in the lapse of even 
 a single century. For thousands of years the Ptolemaic 
 astronomy was in the ascendency, and perhaps, but for 
 
LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 the fortunate invention of the telescope, might have 
 still maintained its foothold. So, likewise, the scholas- 
 tic philosophy intrenched itself in every University of 
 Europe, and only yielded to the Baconian system after 
 a stubborn and dubious contest. In the department of 
 geology the Wernerian and Huttonian cosmogonies 
 alternately mastered the situation until a compromise 
 was effected by the genius and learning of a later period. 
 In the sixteenth century, and indeed until the age of 
 Euler, the great German philosopher, the corpuscular 
 theory of light, as propounded by Newton, and endorsed 
 by the scientific world, was everywhere the received 
 doctrine. 
 
 We might swell the catalogue to a wearisome length, 
 but we shall content ourselves with an additional example. 
 The doctrine of a plurality of worlds was a half century 
 ago regarded as a verity, which it were both impious 
 and absurd to question. 
 
 Boarding-school girls wrote with much assurance about 
 the inhabitants of belted Jupiter, and commencement 
 orators waxed eloquent as they descanted upon the 
 civilization of the supposed dwellers on the surface of 
 the planet Mars ; and older writers and declaimers besides 
 spoke as flippantly of the man in the moon as if he was 
 their next door neighbor. 
 
 In a few years astronomers began to doubt the truth 
 of this theory, and on further examination many distin- 
 guished savans utterly discarded it. It was ascertained 
 that Jupiter, for example, with a density not greater 
 than water, was wholly unsuited for human occupancy 
 
PLURALITY OF WORLDS. IQI 
 
 that the moon was but little more than a vast volcanic 
 plain, without fruits or flowers, or springs of water that 
 Saturn was too cold for any animal known to our globe, 
 except the walrus or the Polar bear in fine, that Mars 
 alone of all the planetary bodies possessed the requisite 
 conditions for the support of human life, and that in the 
 case of Mars there was one slight difficulty, to-wit : that 
 it probably had no atmosphere. With such data as these 
 it was easy for sciolists to jump to the opposite extreme. 
 For a series of years it was fashionable for hangers-on 
 at scientific associations to ridicule the notion of a 
 plurality of worlds. Men who could not calculate an 
 eclipse sneered at Dick and Chalmers as the merest pre- 
 tenders, and confidently asserted that amongst the 
 myriads of worlds there were none to worship the All- 
 Father except in our own little corner of His boundless 
 Empire. All other suns and planets were either with- 
 out form and void, or else had not reached that stage 
 of cosmical development which fitted them for the 
 inhabitance of human beings. It was not possible that 
 this dreary hypothesis could long bear sway over the 
 minds of scientific men. It was repugnant both to 
 reason and religion. Accordingly, it has been giving 
 way for some years, until now a learned writer, in a late 
 number of the Dublin University Magazine, announces 
 the gratifying fact, that "the doctrine of the plurality 
 of worlds may be regarded as the universal creed of the 
 astronomer." 
 
 Here again are we reminded of the Apostolic injunc- 
 
1 92 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 tion, " Beware lest any man spoil you through philoso- 
 phy and vain deceit." 
 
 The wisdom of the Great Creator is vindicated, who 
 has not fashioned this stupendous array of worlds merely 
 to ornament a winter's night, but to be the bright abode 
 of sentient, and even intelligent existence. 
 
 We, too, may gather from it a lesson of humility, 
 when we contemplate the magnitude of the universe and 
 the unnumbered millions of moral intelligencies, many 
 of them it may be greatly superior to ourselves, who peo- 
 ple the various provinces of that mighty kingdom, whose 
 extent is infinite, and whose duration is commensurate 
 with eternity. 
 
SHAKEN OF A MIGHTY WIND. 193 
 
 SHAKEN OF A MIGHTY WIND/' 
 
 One of the earliest and most vivid of my personal recol- 
 lections is of the grand meteoric shower of November 
 I3th, 1833. A similar occurrence is recorded as happen- 
 ing in Northern Europe near the close of the last century. 
 But no metedrogical display has equalled that of 1833, 
 in extent and duration from the beginning of the historic 
 period. 
 
 With reference to the origin of these meteors there 
 have been divers conjectures, most of which are at best 
 haphazard speculations. A number of Astronomers 
 have regarded them as fragments of an exploded Planet 
 smaller in size, but of a like sort with the hundred and 
 odd Asteroids that have been discovered between the 
 orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Kepler himself thought 
 that a large Planet was needed in this vast interplanetary 
 space to perfect the rhythm of the skies, and the fabled 
 music of the spheres. The subsequent discoveries of 
 Piazzi and Olbers and their successors have fully justified 
 this opinion. The old Astronomical fancy of a lost 
 Pleiad likewise finds its vindication, it may be in these 
 asteroids and in the far more numerous meteroids which 
 have since been seen in all parts of the world. Whether 
 they be as suggested, the disjecta membra of some errant 
 and wrecked orb doomed and damned for some earlier 
 
194 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 Adamic transgression, they certainly occupy a definite 
 place in our system. 
 
 Their periodical recurrence with greater or lesser bril- 
 liancy in May and November and likewise in August 
 and December, establish the fact that at these dates 
 our earth in its annual travel comes in frequent contact 
 with a meteoric zone. It may require another century 
 of investigation with the aid of mightier instruments 
 than that of the Link observatory to determine whether 
 as is probable, these Meteoric exhibitions result from a 
 vast volume of nebulous matter revolving around the 
 sun, and itself the nursery of embryonic planets. 
 
 Whatever our conclusion on these vexed questions, 
 it was certainly not only the privilege of a life-time, but 
 of a millenium to be an eye-witness of such a stupen- 
 dous and resplendent spectacle. I distinctly remember 
 being aroused about 4 o'clock in the morning by the 
 weird outcries of the domestic servants. They seemed 
 posessed with the idea that the day of judgment was at 
 hand and I readily recall the efforts of my father to 
 quiet the uproar by assuring them that there was no 
 cause of alarm. 
 
 Of course, I knew nothing of its scientific import. 
 My impressions were those of elation rather than fright. 
 To me the whole scene was about what I have since 
 conceived of the Pyrotechnic displays of the Vauxhall 
 Garden or a full-fledged Chinese Feast of Lanterns. A 
 boy reader will best understand the aspect of things 
 when I add that aside from the fiz and the pop it was 
 like a thousand Christmases condensed into one. 
 
SHAKEN OF A MIGHTY WIND. 195 
 
 Scientific observers have since told us that these 
 meteoroids all seemed to proceed from a point in the 
 constellation Leo. For this reason they have been since 
 called Leonids. My boyish remembrance accords with 
 this statement of the scientists. Usually they issued 
 singly, but at times they had the appearance of a stream 
 of fire. A few that I observed were very large, one or 
 more not unlike the nucleus of Halley's Comet in 1835, 
 when it was receding from the sun. 
 
 They nearly all seemed falling directly to the earth 
 and it was a matter of childish wonderment to me that 
 they did not cover the ground as I had seen falling snow 
 flakes do at other times. The splendor of these celes- 
 tial fire-works gradually waned as the dawn approached 
 very much to my personal regret. 
 
 A great many stories are still current in regard to the 
 general consternation produced by this marvellous phe- 
 nomenon. 
 
 It is related that Volney the infidel, was at one time 
 in the midst of a terrific storm on one of our North- 
 western Lakes. It was a strange sight to see the author 
 the "Ruins of Empires" become suddenly devotional 
 as he fell on his knees and begged for deliverance. So 
 on the night of November I3th, 1833, many a stalwart 
 blasphemer resorted to prayer when the Heavens were 
 ablaze with what seemed burning worlds falling earth- 
 ward. 
 
 In some instances persons were frightened into con- 
 vulsions, and several deaths were reported from different 
 parts of the country. 
 
196 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 In my boyhood there was a story current of a wealthly 
 slaveholder in Western Georgia, who was besides some- 
 thing of a Philosopher. He resided in the center of a 
 large negro quarter and being awakened by the shrieks 
 and yells of nearly one hundred slaves, he hurriedly 
 equipped himself in pants and slippers and stepped out 
 on his front piazza. He was soon surrounded with a 
 large number of slaves who were frantic with terror. 
 For a time he surveyed the Heavens with a degree of 
 painful apprehension. Noticing in the crowd an old 
 negro preacher, in whose piety he had much confidence, 
 he addressed him on this wise: " Uncle Joe, do you 
 watch the ' seven stars ' and ' the ell and yard ' and 
 when you see them start come into the 'big house' and 
 we will have a word of prayer." 
 
 Of course the Pleiades were immovable, nor did the 
 empyreal suns that blaze in the belt of Orion " shoot 
 madly from their spheres." As a consequence, the 
 hypothetical "word of prayer" was unspoken. The 
 return of daylight blotted out the meteors and calmed 
 the superstitious fears of master and slave. 
 
 Most Astronomers tell us that another such spectacle 
 will probably never be witnessed again through all the 
 generations of men. St. John, who was a prisoner in 
 Patmos, says : "I beheld when he had opened the sixth 
 seal " that " the sun became black as sack-cloth of hair, 
 and the moon became as blood ; And the stars of Heaven 
 fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely 
 figs when she is SHAKEN OF A MIGHTY WIND." 
 
SOME WONDERS OF ASTRONOMY. 1 97 
 
 SOME WONDERS OF ASTRONOMY. 
 
 The public mind has occasionally been much interested 
 in discussions and speculations as to the philosophy of 
 eclipses and comets. It is wonderful, that notwithstand- 
 ing astronomy has 'measured the eccentric orbit of the 
 one, and computed with precision the times and seasons 
 of the other, that the bare announcement of either is 
 sufficient to perplex and alarm very many who would 
 not like to be classed with the vulgar. 
 
 In the popular creed, an eclipse is still the harbinger 
 of calamity, and a comet is viewed with a feeling little 
 short of consternation. The remedy for this will not 
 be found in the researches of the learned, but rather in 
 the wider diffusion of scientific knowledge. 
 
 A solar eclipse is caused by the moon passing between 
 the earth. and the sun, and can only occur in the first 
 quarter of the moon, for only at this period are these 
 two bodies in conjunction. A lunar eclipse, on the 
 other hand, is occasioned by the shadow of the earth 
 falling on the disc of the moon, and this can only hap- 
 pen when the moon is full. 
 
 If the orbit of the moon exactly coincided with the 
 plane of the ecliptic, there would be a lunar eclipse at 
 every full moon. But in consequence of the different 
 inclinations of the orbits of the earth and moon, the 
 latter planet is frequently either above or below the 
 
198 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 cone of the earth's shadow, and there is no eclipse or 
 a partial one. 
 
 Solar eclipses are in any given locality for the most 
 part partial, while a few are annular, (so called from 
 annulus, a ring) ; in this form of eclipse, a narrow rim 
 of solar light is seen around the dark body of the moon. 
 A small number of eclipses are total, during which there 
 is an obscuration of the direct light of the sun, and a 
 sort of " disastrous twilight" invests earth and sea and 
 sky. It may be well to remark, however, that the same 
 eclipse may be total in Australia, partial in Canada, and 
 annular in France the extent of the eclipse depending 
 on the standpoint of the spectator. 
 
 T t was a total eclipse which was observed with so 
 much interest on the /th of August, 1869. Quite a 
 number of scientific commissioners were dispatched to 
 different points for the purpose of noting and studying 
 this striking phenomenon. Among these, was a party 
 of gentlemen under the supervision of Professors Broun 
 and Charbonnier, of the University of Georgia, who 
 repaired to Bristol, Tennessee, only a few miles distant 
 from the line of total obscuration. From the carefully 
 prepared report of Professor Broun we extract the fol- 
 lowing admirable description of the eclipse : 
 
 ' ' Two observers were directed to watch the effect of 
 the diminution of light on terrestrial objects ; also to 
 note the stars and planets visible to the naked eye, and 
 to observe what kind of type could be read, and to note 
 the action of animals, etc. Professor Charbonnier and 
 myself directed our attention to the sun with the tele- 
 
SOME WONDERS OF ASTRONOMY. 199 
 
 scopes. Each had an assistant to mark time. Just at 
 the calculated time, though no evidence whatever of the 
 position of the moon could be previously seen, I observed 
 a slight tremulous motion on the western limb, I28d. 
 i6m. from the vertex, immediately at the point where 
 it was known by calculation, the first point of contact 
 would occur. In a few moments it became visible to 
 the crowd assembled around. The dark spots of the 
 sun were carefully observed, and the time of first con- 
 tact and total immersion of the most important of them 
 noted. No change whatever was observed either in the 
 penumbra or umbra of any of the spots during the 
 approach or recession of the moon. As the moon 
 gradually covered the sun from view, its outline was 
 projected back on the disc of the sun not in a regular 
 well defined curved, but in quite a roughened, serrated 
 outline, indicative of its mountains and valleys. 
 
 Just before total obscuration occurred, the crescent of 
 the sun gradually and rapidly faded to a delicate thread 
 of silver light. My attention was concentrated on this 
 line of fading light, to detect, if possible, what astrono- 
 mers designate as Bailey s beads ; that is, the sudden 
 breaking up of this thread of light into a number of 
 segments, or distinct points of light, like disjointed 
 silver beads. I detected no indication whatever of such 
 separate points of light. The extinction of this thread 
 of light was sudden and instantaneous. I am inclined 
 to the opinion that one would anticipate naturally, from 
 the serrated character of the moon's disc projected on the 
 sun that such would be the case, and with his mind thus 
 
2OO LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 prepared to observe such an effect, it would not be diffi- 
 cult to mistake the optical effect produced by refraction 
 of light through different media, for separate points or 
 beads. 
 
 On the eve of total obscuration, directions were given 
 to the crowd to be silent so as to hear the beats of the 
 chronometer. The instant the silver line of light dis- 
 appeared a universal exclamation of amazement and 
 wonder burst from the crowd at the superb spectacle of 
 beauty immediately revealed. The disc of the moon 
 projected on the sky of livid hue was plainly seen of a 
 dark, grayish color, caused by the reflected earth-light, 
 surrounded by a bright halo of gradually fading silver- 
 light, extending through a breadth of at least half the 
 sun's diameter. Through the bright halo of light there 
 radiated off from the sun great mountain peaks of rose- 
 ate light of exquisite beauty. One of the largest was 
 plainly discernible with the naked eye and pointed 
 towards the horizon. Its base resting on the disc of the 
 moon was of extreme brilliance, like a living coal of fire 
 while its mass appeared radiating off from the sun as a 
 gushing fountain of rose-colored light, shading off in 
 intensity towards its apex in delicate violet hues. The 
 wonderful beauty of this "solar cloud," which sub- 
 tended an angle of more than three minutes, and conse- 
 quently was nearly a hundred thousand miles in height 
 -was so great that when I directed the large equatorial 
 towards it, it riveted my attention for a full half minute, 
 and hence I failed to do all I had marked out in the 
 critical two minutes and a half. At the time of total 
 
SOME WONDERS OF ASTRONOMY. 2OI 
 
 obscuration, Mercury, Venus and Arcturus were plainly 
 discernible with the naked eye 
 
 In the total eclipse of 1868, one of these rose-colored 
 protuberances was observed with an apparent altitude 
 of 80,000 miles. These protuberances were formerly 
 supposed to be similar in character to our terrestrial 
 clouds; but Dr. Jannsen, the chief of the French expe- 
 dition, sent to the East to observe the total eclipse of 
 August, 1868, examined their light with the spectro- 
 scope, and found them to be masses of incandescent 
 gas, consisting largely of hydrogen Mr. Lockyer, of 
 England, who has examined them with care, pronounces 
 them to be accumulations of a gaseous envelope sur- 
 rounding the sun. 
 
 After the lapse of two minutes and thirty-three seconds, 
 suddenly an intensely diamond-bright ray of light shot 
 out from near the point of first contact, dazzling in its 
 effect, and immediately dissipating the livid gloom that 
 overshadowed the earth and giving cheer to the affrighted 
 animals and wondering spectators that surrounded us. 
 The thermometer exposed to the rays of the sun was 
 observed to fall from g2d. to 62d. during the time that 
 elapsed from the first contact to the total obscuration. 
 The barometer indicated a fall of only i-2Oth of an inch. 
 
 The observers appointed to note terrestrial objects, 
 reported that the rapid approach of the dark shadow 
 over the western landscape, which spread out before us 
 with its symmetrical hills and shaded valleys, was plainly 
 discernible. Its effect on reaching the observer, was 
 described as almost like a physical object striking the 
 
2O2 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 body, so plainly was its passage marked. In a few 
 seconds, (for it traveled at about one mile per second,) 
 it wrapped in its mantle of gloom the high ridge of the 
 Alleghany mountains, about fifteen miles distant, which 
 enclosed the southeast view. Hogs and cattle feeding 
 near by, were observed at the moment of total obscura- 
 tion to start affrighted and to hurry homeward ; the whip- 
 poorwills came out from their retirement, and began 
 their evening song ; bats flew around for some moments, 
 and chickens were seen hastening to their roost. 
 
 The dusky, livid color, that overspread the face of 
 nature; the death-like pallor of the spectators; the 
 silver-bright corona around the dark, grayish body of 
 the moon, and the rose-colored protuberances of gush- 
 ing light, all contributed to make it a scene of awe and 
 sublime beauty, producing a sense of profound reverence 
 and deep humility, long to be remembered as one of the 
 most distinguished moments of a life-time." 
 
 It will be noticed that Professor Broun recognized in 
 the serrated outlines of the moon's body, as projected 
 on the sun's disc, the elevations and depressions which 
 are undoubtedly so many lofty mountain-ranges and 
 deep valleys on the surface of the moon He did not, 
 however, notice the bright spots on the dark body of 
 the moon that were observed on several occasions by 
 Schroeter, Herschel, and other eminent savans, and 
 which they attributed either to volcanic fires or else to 
 openings through the entire diameter of the moon, 
 allowing the transmission of the sun's light. 
 
 We should be glad if we had space to present in this 
 
SOME WONDERS OF ASTRONOMY. 2O3 . 
 
 connection the report of the celebrated Halley of a total 
 eclipse which occurred in England in the beginning of 
 the eighteenth century. During the eclipse at Bristol, 
 the sky was clear ; but in the eclipse observed by Hal- 
 ley, the sky was overcast by heavy clouds. This cir- 
 cumstance seems to have greatly heightened the sublimity 
 of the spectacle. The obscuration was ten-fold greater ; 
 and there was not only the ghastly, livid light of Profes- 
 sor Broun's report, but a gloom which might be literally 
 styled a "horror of great darkness. '' On both occa- 
 sions, however, there was enough to inspire those senti- 
 ments of " profound reverence and deep humility" to 
 which there is a devout allusion in the above extract. 
 
 It is but a step from eclipses to another marvel of 
 astronomy comets. If the former have alarmed the 
 multitude still more have the latter been interpreted as 
 evidences of Divine displeasure, or other impending 
 calamity. 
 
 In the light of the present age it is hardly credible 
 that less than five hundred years ago a distinguished 
 Roman Pontiff should have issued a Papal Bull against 
 the comet of 1456 In spite of the thunders of the 
 Vatican this lurid monster went sweeping to its perihe- 
 lion and then away to its aphelion beyond the uttermost 
 orbit of Neptune. 
 
 According to the estimate of Lardner, founded on a 
 previous calculation of Arago, there are probably four 
 millions of comets within the limits of our system. 
 Less than three hundred, however, have been actually 
 observed ; and of these, only three Encke's, Biela's, 
 
2O4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 and Halley's are well known to astronomy. They are 
 doubtless planetary bodies, revolving in highly elliptical 
 orbits, and yet of such extreme tenuity that they pass 
 in close proximity to the satellites of Jupiter without 
 sensibly affecting their motions. They are indeed such 
 thin vapors, that the faintest star is clearly perceived 
 through the densest portion of them. Some one has 
 computed that the tail of the comet of 1860, which 
 stretched through ninety degrees of the heavens, might 
 have been compressed into a Saratoga trunk. 
 
 The most wonderful phenomenon of this sort was the 
 comet of 1843. A portion of its tail was first visible in 
 the northern hemisphere immediately after sunset. For 
 some time it was confounded with the zodiacal light ; 
 but it was subsequently ascertained to be a comet of 
 immense size, that passed its perihelion at a rate little 
 less than the velocity of light. The diameter of its 
 nucleus was nearly one hundred thousand miles, and its 
 tail was found by measurement to be one hundred and 
 eighty millions of miles. It disappeared after about one 
 month, and r rom the eccentricity of its orbit approach- 
 ing a hyperabola, it can only return after thousands of 
 years. 
 
 Various theories have been propounded in regard to 
 the origin of comets, and the uses they subserve in the 
 economy of the heavens Some have suggested that 
 they are nebulous masses undergoing condensation pre- 
 paratory to forming suns and planets, and that thus the 
 work of creation is still progressing in the distant provin- 
 ces of the Divine empire. Others maintain that they 
 
SOME WONDERS OF ASTRONOMY. 2O5 
 
 are the aliment by which the sun is himself nourished 
 and replenished. The latter opinion was held by Sir 
 Isaac Newton, and only a short time before his death 
 he predicted that his hypothesis would become an estab- 
 lished fact before the lapse of many years. 
 
 The appearance of a comet is always accompanied by 
 fears that it will collide with the earth at some point of 
 its orbit, and thus produce great geological and atmos- 
 pheric changes and convulsions. Whiston had ascribed 
 the Noachian deluge to a former visitation of the great 
 comet of 1680, and the populace seized upon this state- 
 ment to torment themselves with groundless apprehen- 
 sions. People shuddered when they learned that when 
 the comet of 1843 crossed the earth's orbit, that body 
 was only fourteen days behind. What if they had 
 encountered in mid-heaven ? The reply to this inquiry- 
 was appalling. It may serve to allay the fears of very 
 nervous people to learn that Professor Nichol expresses 
 the belief that our earth did actually pass through the 
 tail of a comet in November, 1837. At that time, "the 
 sky became red and inflamed as blood ; corruscations 
 darted across it not, as usual, streaming from one dis- 
 trict, but shifting constantly, and sweeping the whole 
 heavens." 
 
 Beyond these atmospheric tumults, it is probable no 
 appreciable impression would be made on our globe or 
 its inhabitants by contact with the largest comet which 
 visits our system. 
 
 In the natural order of events we may expect soon 
 another lurid visitor to come within the range of our 
 
206 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 telescopes. Let there be no silly apprehensions. For 
 the same mighty hand that led ancient Israel like a 
 flock, even now guides the erratic comet in its "long 
 travel of a thousand years." 
 
 BLESSINGS OF TRAVEL." Sir John Lubbock, 
 Bart., M. P., D. C. L., LL. D. F. R. S., once pub- 
 lished a very readable essay on ' ' The Blessings of 
 Travel. " It is hardly conceivable that a man who flour- 
 ished such an academic tail should be mistaken about 
 anything and yet our own Emerson has characterized 
 traveling as the ' ' Fool's Paradise. " Very much depends 
 on temperament and habit, as well as on the observer's 
 standpoint. Emerson was only less a recluse than his 
 intimate friend, Henry David Thoreau Both of these 
 men were, in law parlance, adscnptus glebes. Thoreau 
 was seldom outside of his township, and Emerson 
 attempted only two transatlantic voyages one on a 
 visit to his kindred spirit, Thomas Carlyle. A season 
 of fellowship with the sage of Chelsea might amply 
 repay the discomfort of an ocean voyage even when as 
 yet the Inman steamer was undreamed of by naval archi- 
 tects. It may be said in vindication of Emerson's above 
 quoted phrase, that an English writer once described a 
 journey irom Cornhill to Cairo without ever getting 
 beyond the sound of Bow-Bells. We ourself have been 
 importuned by a publisher to write a book of travel, from 
 Dan to Beersheba, although said publisher well knows 
 that we have never set foot on the soil of Holy Land. 
 Why might not such a literary feat be accomplished as 
 
THE BLESSINGS OF TRAVEL. ' 2O/ 
 
 well as are historical account of a great battle, say Water- 
 loo, which the describer confessedly had never witnessed. 
 Indeed we have so many books of travel that an ordi- 
 nary reader is as familiar with the geography of Palestine 
 as if he had climbed Lebanon on the back of an ass or 
 traversed the land from end to end on the hump of a 
 dromedary. In this way he has all the advantages of 
 such an itinerary without its expense and annoyance in 
 the shape of dishonest Sheiks and treacherous guides. 
 Like all things of an earthly sort, foreign travel has 
 its blessings and its drawbacks. For the tired brain and 
 the tortured nerves there is solace and refreshment in 
 the varied scenes of land and sea. There is inspiration 
 besides, in wandering amid the ruins of the Coliseum 
 or in strolling leisurely through the galleries of the 
 Louvre. We question, however, if the educative value 
 of travel is no overrated. Mere sight-seeing, at home 
 or abroad, is an intellectual pastime that adds nothing 
 to our meutal resources. Nor is it yet demonstrated 
 that the enlargement of horizon which is said to follow 
 from foreign travel is anything but a sentimental con- 
 ceit. People of cosmopolitan tastes fill no large space 
 in the world's history. Marco Polo despite his lifelong 
 wanderings is not reckoned amongst the " few immortal 
 names." Simeon Stylites, who perched upon a single 
 pillar for thirty years was probably a wiser man than 
 " Walking Stewart" who traveled a continent without 
 the help of steam or sail. In our experience, travelled 
 celebrities are usually inflated and turn up their snouts 
 at home scenes and everyday people. We have known 
 
2O8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 several divines who could not preach a sermon without 
 occasional reference to what they heard at Naples or 
 saw at Jerusalem, or smelt at Shanghai. One of these, 
 from frequent allusions to what he saw in the Holy City, 
 was nicknamed " Old Jerusalem." A father whose son 
 had spent three years at European Universities, asked 
 me if he ought to remain longer. I advised him to call 
 him home by the first steamer, remarking that another 
 year would disqualify him for American life. We 
 re-affirm in a single sentence, what he have endeavored 
 to express in a dozen or more paragraphs, that the chief 
 benefit to accrue from foreign travel is physical and 
 mental recreation beyond this the game is hardly 
 worth the candle. 
 
WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR. 2Op 
 
 WHO is MY NEIGHBOR? 
 
 A LAY SERMON. 
 
 The antagonism of races is seldom so fierce as the 
 opposition of religious sects. 
 
 Some of the bloodiest wars which have devastated 
 the earth have been prompted by religious partisanship, 
 and have been waged with a fanaticism as cruel as death 
 and as remorseless as the grave 
 
 Indeed, the hereditary feud between Saxon and Celt 
 was neither so bitter nor so implacable as the ancient 
 rivalry between Jew and Samaritan. Gerizim was set 
 against Zion, and the temple of Manasseh against the 
 temple of Solomon. To hate the Samaritan worship 
 and to denounce the Samaritan himself as a Cuthite was 
 a part of the Jew's religion ; and, as might be supposed, 
 this scorn and execration was rapid with compound 
 interest. To such an extreme did this mutual hatred 
 grow that St. John tells us, in the fourth gospel, they 
 had no dealings with each other. Any interchange, 
 even of the common courtesies of life, was strictly for- 
 bidden. 
 
 In nothing was the superiority of Christ as a religious 
 teacher more manifest than in his rising above these 
 narrow prejudices of caste and creed. Although accord- 
 ing to the flesh he was of the seed of Israel and was in 
 
2IO LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 hearty sympathy with Judaism, yet he not only preached 
 to the Samaritans, but on one occasion sharply rebuked 
 John and James, the "sons of thunder, " who wished to 
 call down fire from Heaven to consume certain villages 
 of the Samaritans. 
 
 And so, when a certain lawyer sought to perplex 
 him with the question, Who is my neighbor? he 
 astounded the multitude about him by uttering the 
 beautiful parable of the GOOD SAMARITAN. 
 
 He describes a Jewish traveler going down the rocky 
 gorge which leads from Jerusalem to Jericho. It was, 
 says Farrar, "an ill-omened way," and was then, as 
 now, infested by marauding banditti. In the course of 
 his journey he was assaulted, stripped of his raiment, 
 shamefully beaten and left mangled and half dead. In 
 a little while, continues the parable, a priest, who had 
 probably been to Jerusalem to minister in his course, came 
 that way, and seeing the wounded man, without offer- 
 ing an encouraging word or helping hand, passed by on 
 the other side. Almost in the same hour a Levite, who 
 was fresh from the services of the temple, came and 
 looked on him, and having satisfied a prurient curiosity, 
 he also passed by, leaving the poor sufferer to his fate. 
 By chance, or what is a better rendering, by coincidence, 
 a Samaritan on his journey saw him and had compassion 
 on him, pouring oil and wine into his gaping wounds to 
 soothe and heal them, and chen, dismounting, placed him 
 upon his beast and carried him to a neighboring inn, 
 where he spent the night in nursing him. On the mor- 
 row, he gave the host two pence, with instructions to 
 
WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR. 211 
 
 provide for him still further, and then resumed his jour- 
 ney. "Now," inquired our Saviour, "which of the 
 three was neighbor to him that fell amongst the thieves?" 
 The lawyer was constrained to reply, " He that showed 
 him kindness." Then added the great teacher, "Go 
 
 THOU AND DO LIKEWISE." 
 
 Some of the fathers, and not a few of the modern 
 expositors, regard the parable as furnishing an outline 
 of the history of redemption. They spiritualize every 
 feature of it, making the inn to represent the church, 
 and the two pence the sacraments, or, as some interpret, 
 the two covenants. While the parable admits of a 
 general application to the the work of salvation through 
 Christ, yet much that has been written in this direction 
 is but solemn trifling. Such an exegesis as that of 
 Trench and others places in the background, if it does 
 riot leave entirely out of view, the main purpose of our 
 Saviour, which was to inculcate a philanthropy as broad 
 as the brotherhood of man, unrestricted by clime or 
 condition. 
 
 Every fellow-man who is in distress is my neighbor 
 so far as to entitle him to my helpful sympathy. Phi- 
 lanthropy is not regulated by degrees of latitude or 
 longitude, nor is it circumscribed by the partition walls 
 of partyism, political or ecclesiastical. There is, how- 
 ever, a marked difference between mere sentiment and 
 genuine sensibility. The former is an effervescence of 
 emotion ; the latter is a deep-flowing current of feeling 
 that results in something practical. 
 
 Sterne could moralize most beautifully over a caged 
 
212 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 starling, or the carcass of a dead ass, and yet was a 
 heartless domestic tyrant. Even in the days of the 
 Empire, when noble captives were butchered to make 
 a holiday, a Roman audience would rise and applaud 
 rapturously and roundly that immortal line of Terence : 
 
 " Homo sum et humani a me nil alienum puto" 
 
 At the present time, also, we find scores who weep at 
 the mock distresses of Desdemona or the simulated sor- 
 rows of Lear, who never once performed a disinterested 
 action. Some of these are not unlike the priest of the 
 parable. They avoid a close contact with poverty, dis- 
 ease and misery. If by accident brought into unpleas- 
 ant proximity to some wounded wayfarer, they leave 
 him weltering in his blood, and pass on to the house of 
 mirth or the hall of feasting. 
 
 There is another class of these sickly sentimentalists 
 who, like the Levite, go to the house of mourning, and 
 when there, are by no means sparing of kindly words, 
 but who never touch, even with a finger, the burden 
 which is pressing the very life out of the sufferer. 
 
 ' 'Be ye warmed and filled" is the extent of their 
 brotherly kindness. 
 
 But there is also a class of whom the Good Samaritan 
 is a just type. Men and women ''who feel another's 
 woe " not in seeming, but in reality whose hearts and 
 hands are open as day to melting charity. Man, although 
 depraved, is not utterly devilish. In well-nigh every 
 human breast there is a sealed fountain of noble sym- 
 pathies and genial impulses. Let but the rock of selfish- 
 
WHO is MY NEIGHBOR. 213 
 
 ness be rightly smitten, and it sends forth streams of 
 blessing in every direction. This virtue, so vividly illus- 
 trated in the conduct of the Samaritan, is essentially a 
 Christian virtue. Paganism could boast of no hospitals 
 for the maimed and diseased no asylums for the aged 
 and infirm. Deformity and disease were reckoned marks 
 of Divine displeasure. The countrymen of Leonidas 
 cast helpless children to the wolves and bears of Tay- 
 getus, and the compatriots of Aristides exposed their 
 infirm grandsires to certain death on the island of 
 Eubea 
 
 Christianity has reformed this altogether, and has 
 made the visitation of the sick, the care of the helpless 
 and the supply of the needy more acceptable to God 
 than slaughtered hecatombs. Not only can it point to 
 Howard and Obelin, who inaugurated grand enterprises 
 of chanty, but it has its thousands of quiet workers in 
 every department of benevolent effort. 
 
 Nor is the end yet The leaven of Divine truth is 
 gradually permeating the mass of humanity, and the 
 time will be when ' ' wars shall cease to the end of the 
 earth. " Then shall commerce bind the nations together 
 with cords of love ; and then religion, too, shall shed 
 its selectest influences on every kindred, and tongue and 
 people. 
 
 We can conceive of no better enforcement of the 
 Saviour's teachings than that sweet, poetical legend of 
 Leigh Hunt : 
 
 " Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase) 
 Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, 
 
214 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 And saw within the moonlight in the room 
 
 Making it rich and like a lily in bloom 
 
 An angel writing in a book of gold. 
 
 Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, 
 
 And to the presence in the room he said, 
 
 ' What writest thou ?' The vision raised its head, 
 
 And with a look made all of sweet accord, 
 
 Answered, 'The names of those who love the Lord.' 
 
 'And is mine one?' said Abou. ' Nay, not so,' 
 
 Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low, 
 
 But cheerily still, and said, ' I pray thee then 
 
 Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.' 
 
 The angel wrote and vanished. The next night 
 
 It came again with a great wakening light, 
 
 And the names of those whom love of God had blest ; 
 
 And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest." 
 
YB '13854 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 01 
 
 NC 
 
 f euco*y*