GIFT OF 
 MICHAEL REESE 
 
 \ 
 N V 7j 
 
THE 
 
 PROSE WORKS 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 NEW AND REVISED EDITION. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 V 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 
 C&e HtoersiUe Press, 
 
 1881. 
 
Entered according to Acts of Congress, in the years 1847, 1850. 1855, 1856, 1860, and 1869, 
 . by JAMES MCNROB & Co., PHILLIPS, SAMPSON, & Co., and R. W. EMERSON, in the 
 Clerk s Office of the District Oourt of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS: JOHN WILSON & SON, 
 CAMBRIDGE. 
 

 
 ; 
 
 31 
 
 v/,2 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. H. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 Pica 
 " I. USES OF GREAT MEN 
 
 II. PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER 
 
 PLATO: NEW READINGS 43 
 
 III. SWEDEXBORG J OR, THE MYSTIC 
 
 IV. MONTAIGNE; OR, THE SCEPTIC 79 
 
 V. SHAKESPEARE; OR, THE POET , \ .... 101 / 
 
 VI. NAPOLEON ; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD . . .119 
 VII. GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER ...... 139 
 
 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 I. FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND ...... 159 
 
 II. VOYAGE TO ENGLAND 170 
 
 III. LAND 174 
 
 IV. RACE 179 
 
 V. ABILITY 194 
 
 VI. MANNERS 208 V 
 
 VII. TRUTH . . .215 
 
 ^VIII. CHARACTER : 220 v 
 
 IX. COCKAYNE . 228 
 
 X. WEALTH 233 
 
 XI. ARISTOCRACY . . 242 
 
 XII. UNIVERSITIES 255 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 XIII. RELIGION 263 
 
 XIV. LITERATURE 271 
 
 XV. THE " TIMES " 285 
 
 XVI. STONEHENGE ........ 291 
 
 XVII. PERSONAL 300 
 
 XVIII. RESULT 304 
 
 XIX. SPEECH AT MANCHESTER 309 
 
 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 ** I. FATE . 315 
 
 ^ II. POWER 341 
 
 III. WEALTH 359 
 
 IV. CULTURE 383 
 
 V. BEHAVIOR . 403 
 
 VI. WORSHIP 421 
 
 VII. CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY .... 445 
 
 VIII. BEAUTY 4G5 
 
 IX. ILLUSIONS 481 
 
REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 VOL. II. 1 
 
I. 
 
 USES OF GREAT MEN 
 
UNIVERSITY, 
 
 USES OF GREAT MEN. 
 
 IT is natural to believe in great men. If the companions 
 of our childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their con 
 dition regal, it would not surprise us. /All mythology opens 
 vrith demigods, and the circumstance is nigh and poetic ; that 
 is, their genius is paramount. In the legends of the Gautama, 
 tjie first men ate the earth, and found it deliciously sweet. 
 
 * Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is iip- 
 h eld by the veracity of good men : they make the earth whole 
 some. They who lived with them found life glad and nutri 
 tious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such 
 society ; and actually, or ideally, we manage to live with su 
 periors. We call our children and our lands by their names. 
 Their names are wrought into the verbs of language, their 
 works and effigies are in our houses, and every circumstance 
 of the day recalls an anecdote of them. 
 
 [The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and 
 the most serious occupation of manhood. We travel into for 
 eign parts to find his works, if possible, to get a glimpse of 
 him. But we are put oft with fortune instead. You say, tho 
 English are practical ; the Germans are hospitable ; in Valen 
 cia, the climate is delicious ; and in the hills of the Sacramento, 
 there is gold for the gathering. Yes, but I do not travel to 
 find comfortable, rich, and hospitable people, or clear sky, or 
 iiiL:< ts that cost too much. But if there were any magnet that 
 would point to the countries and houses where are the persons 
 who are intrinsically rich and powerful, I would sell all, and 
 buy it, and put myself on the road to-day. , 
 
 The race L r <>es with us on their creditT"rhe knowledge that 
 
 in the city is a man who invented the railroad, raises tin- m <i- 
 
 it of all the citizens. But enormous populations, it they be 
 
 rs, are disgusting, like moving cheese, like hills of ants, 
 
 or of fleas, the more, the worse.\ 
 
6 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 Our religion is the love and cherishing of these patrons. 
 The gods of fable are the shining moments of great men. We 
 run all our vessels into one mould. Our colossal theologies of 
 Judaism, Christism, Buddhism, Mahometism, are the necessary 
 and structural action of the human mind. The student of 
 history is like a man going into a warehouse to buy cloths or 
 carpets. He fancies he has a new article. If he go to the 
 factory, he shall find that his new stuff still repeats the scrolls 
 and rosettes which are found on the interior walls of the pyra 
 mids of Thebes. Our theism is the purification of the human 
 mind. Man can paint, or make, or think nothing but man. 
 He believes that the great material elements had their origin 
 from his thought. And our philosophy finds one essence col 
 lected or distributed. 
 
 If now we proceed to inquire into the kinds of service we 
 derive from others, let us be warned of the danger of modern 
 studies, and begin low enough. We must not contend against 
 love, or deny the substantial existence of other people. I 
 know not what would happen to us. We have social strengths. 
 Our affection towards others creates a sort of vantage or pur 
 chase which nothing will supply. I can do that by another 
 which I cannot do alone. I can say to you what I cannot first 
 say to myself. Other men are lenses through which we read 
 our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality 
 from his own, and such as are good of their kind ; that is, lie 
 seeks other men, and the otherest. The stronger the nature, 
 the more it is reactive. Let us have the quality pure. A 
 little genius let us leave alone. A main difference betwixt 
 men is, whether they attend their own affair or not. Man is 
 that noble endogenous plant which grows, like the palm, from 
 within outward. His own affair, though impossible to others, 
 he can open with celerity and in sport. It is easy to sugar to 
 be sweet, and to nitre to be salt. We take a great deal of 
 pains to waylay and entrap that which of itself will fall into 
 our hands. I count him a great man who inhabits a higher 
 sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and 
 difficulty ; he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true 
 light, and in large relations ; whilst they must make painful 
 corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error. 
 His service to us is of like sort. It costs a beautiful person 
 no exertion to paint her image on our eyes ; yet how splendid 
 is that benefit ! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN. 7 
 
 quality to other men. And every one can do his best thing easi 
 est. " Pen de moyens, beaucoup duffel" He is great who is / 
 what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others. 
 
 But he must be re-luted to us, and our life receive from him" 
 some promise of explanation. I cannot tell what I would 
 know ; but I have observed there are persons who, in their 
 character and actions, answer questions which I have not skill 
 to put. One man answers some question which none of 
 his contemporaries put, and is isolated. The past and pass 
 ing religions and philosophies answer some other question. 
 Certain men affect us as rich possibilities, but helpless to them 
 selves and to their times, the sport, perhaps, of some instinct 
 that rules in the air ; they do not speak to our want. But 
 the great are near ; we know them at sight. They satisfy ex 
 pectation, and fall into place. What is good is effective, gen 
 erative ; makes for itself room, food, and allies. A sound 
 apple produces seed, a hybrid does not. Is a man in his 
 place, he is constructive, fertile, magnetic, inundating armies 
 with his purpose, which is thus executed. The river makes its 
 own shores, and each legitimate idea makes its own channels 
 and welcome, harvests for food, institutions for expression, 
 weapons to light with, and disciples to explain it. The true 
 artist has the planet for his pedestal ; the adventurer, after 
 years of strife, has nothing broader than his own shoes. 
 
 ( hir common discourse respects two kinds of use or service 
 from superior men. Direct giving is agreeable to the early 
 belief of men ; direct giving of material or metaphysical aid, 
 as of health, eternal youth, fine senses, arts of healing, magi 
 cal power, and prophecy. The hoy believes there is a teacher 
 who can sell him wisdom. Churches believe in imputed merit. 
 But, in strictness, we are not much cogni /ant of direct serving. 
 Man is endogenous, and education is his unfolding. The aid 
 we have from others is mechanical, compared with the discov 
 eries of nature in us. \Vhat is thus learned is delightful in 
 the doinir, and the effect remains. Right ethics are central, 
 and go from the soul outward, (iift is contrary to the law of 
 the universe. Servinu 1 <>thrs is serving us. I must absolve 
 me to myself. * Mind thy affair/ says the spirit : coxcomb, 
 would you meddle with the skies, or with other people ? In 
 direct service is left. Men have a pictorial or ivpre-sentaf ivo 
 quality, and serve us in the intellect. Behmen and Swedni- 
 bi iru r saw that thiiiLTs were representative. Men are also n-p- 
 resentativti first, of things, and secondly, of ideas. 
 
8 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 As plants convert the minerals into food for animals, so 
 each man converts some raw material in nature to human use. 
 The inventors of fire, electricity, magnetism, iron, lead, glass, 
 linen, silk, cotton ; the makers of tools ; the inventor of deci 
 mal notation ; the geometer ; the engineer ; the musician, 
 severally make an easy way for all, through unknown and im 
 possible confusions. Each man is, by secret liking, connected 
 with some district of nature, whose agent and interpreter he 
 is, as Linna3us, of plants ; Huber, of bees ; Fries, of lichens ; 
 Van Mons, of pears ; Dalton, of atomic forms ; Euclid, of 
 lines ; Newton, of fluxions. 
 
 A man is a centre for nature, running out threads of rela 
 tion through everything, fluid and solid, material and element 
 al. The earth rolls ; every clod and stone comes to the me 
 ridian : so every organ, function, acid, crystal, grain of dust, 
 has its relation to the brain. It waits long, but its turn 
 comes. Each plant has its parasite, and each created thing 
 its lover and poet. Justice has already been done to steam, 
 to iron, to wood, to coal, to loadstone, to iodine, to corn, and 
 cotton : but how few materials are yet used by our arts ! The 
 mass of creatures and of qualities are still hid and expectant. 
 It would seem as if each waited, like the enchanted princess in 
 fairy tales, for a destined human deliverer. Each must be 
 disenchanted, and walk forth to the day in human shape. In 
 the history of discovery, the ripe and latent truth seems to 
 have fashioned a brain for itself. A magnet must be made 
 man. in some Gilbert, or Swedenborg, or Oersted, before the 
 general mind can come to entertain its powers. 
 
 If we limit ourselves to the first advantages ; a sober grace 
 adheres to the mineral and botanic kingdoms, which, in the 
 highest moments, comes up as the charm of nature, the 
 glitter of the spar, the sureness of affinity, the veracity of an 
 gles. Light and d.nrkness, heat and cold, hunger and food, 
 sweet and sour, solid, liquid, and gas, circle us round in a 
 wreath of pleasures, and, by their agreeable quarrel, beguile 
 the day of life. The eye repeats every day the first eulogy on 
 things, "He saw that they were good." We know where to 
 find them ; and these performers are relished all the more, af 
 ter a little experience of the pretending races. We are enti 
 tled, also, to higher advantages. Something is wanting to 
 science, until it has been humanized. The table of logarithms 
 is one thing, and its vital play in botany, music, optics, and 
 architecture, another. There are advancements to numbers, 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN. 9 
 
 anatomy, architecture, astronomy, little suspected at first, 
 when, by union with intellect and will, they ascend into the 
 life, and reappear in conversation, character, and politics. 
 
 But this comes later. We speak now only of our acquaint 
 ance with them in their own sphere, and the way in which 
 they seem to fascinate and draw to them some genius who oc 
 cupies himself with one thing, all his life long. The possibil 
 ity of interpretation lies in the identity of the observer with 
 the observed. Kurh material thing has its celestial side; has 
 its translation, Through humanity, into the spiritual and neces 
 sary sphere, where it plays a part as indestructible as any 
 other. And to these, their ends, all things continually ascend. 
 The gases gather to the solid firmament : the chemic lump ar 
 rives at the plant, and grows ; arrives at the quadruped, and 
 walks; arrives at the man, and thinks. But also the constitu 
 ency determines the vote of the representative. He is not 
 only representative, but participant. Like can only be known 
 by like. The reason why he knows about them is, that he is 
 of them ; he has just come out of nature, or from being a part 
 of that thing. Animated chlorine knows of chlorine, and incar 
 nate zinc, of zinc. Their quality makes his career ; and he 
 can variously publish their virtues, because they compose him. 
 Man, made of the dust of the world, does not forget his origin; 
 and all that is yet inanimate will one day speak and reason. 
 Unpublished nature will have its whole secret told. Shall 
 we say that quartz mountains will pulverize into innumerable 
 Werners, Von Buchs, and Beaumont s ; and the laboratory of 
 the atmosphere holds in solution I know not what Berzeliuses 
 and Davys] 
 
 Thus, we sit by the fire, and take hold on the poles of the 
 earth. This qna.n omnipresence supplies the imbecility of 
 our condition. In one of those celestial days, when heaven 
 and earth meet and adorn each other, it seems a poverty that 
 we can only spend it once : we wish for a thousand heads, a 
 thousand bodies, that we might celebrate its immense beauty 
 in many ways and places. Is this fancy 1 ? Well, in good 
 faith, we are multiplied by our proxies. How easily we adopt 
 their labors ! Every ship that comes to America got its chart 
 from Columbus, Every novel is a debtor to Homer. Every 
 carpenter who shaves with a foreplane borrows the genius of ;i 
 forgotten inventor. Life is girt all round with a x.odiac of 
 sciences, the contributions of men who have perished to add 
 their point of light to our sky. Engineer, broker, jurist, 
 1* 
 
10 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 physician, moralist, theologian, and every man, inasmuch as 
 he has any science, is a definer and map-maker of the latitudes 
 and longitudes of our condition. These road-makers on every 
 hand enrich us. We must extend the area of life, and multi 
 ply our relations. We are as much gainers by finding a new 
 property in the old earth, as by acquiring a new planet. 
 
 We are too passive in the reception of these material or 
 semi-material aids. We must not be sacks and stomachs. To 
 ascend one step, we are better served through our sympathy. 
 Activity is contagious. Looking where others look, and con 
 versing with the same things, we catch the charm which lured 
 them. Napoleon said, "You must not fight too often with 
 one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war." Talk 
 much with any man of vigorous mind, and we acquire very 
 fast the habit of looking at things in the same light, and, on 
 each occurrence, we anticipate his thought. 
 
 Men are helpful through the intellect and the affections. 
 Other help, I find a false appearance. If you affect to give 
 me bread and fire, I perceive that I pay for it the full price, 
 and at last it leaves me as it found me, neither better nor 
 worse : but all mental and moral force is a positive good. It 
 goes out from you, whether you will or not, and profits me 
 whom you never thought of. I cannot even hear of personal 
 vigor of any kind, great power of performance, without fresh 
 resolution. We are emulous of all that man can do. Cecil s 
 saying of Sir Walter .Raleigh, " I know that he can toil terri 
 bly," is an electric touch. So are Clarendon s portraits, of 
 Hampden ; " who was of an industry and vigilance not to be 
 tired out or wearied by the most laborious, and of parts not 
 to be imposed on by the most subtle and sharp, and of a per 
 sonal courage equal to his best parts," of Falkland ; " who 
 was so severe an adorer of truth, that he could as easily have 
 given himself leave to steal, as to dissemble." We cannot 
 read Plutarch, without a tingling of the blood ; and I accept 
 the saying of the Chinese Mencius : " A sage is the instructor 
 of a hundred ages. When the manners of Loo are heard of, 
 the stupid become intelligent, and the wavering, determined." 
 
 This is the moral of biography ; yet it is hard for departed 
 men to touch the quick like our own companions, whose names 
 mny not last as long. What is he whom I never think of 1 
 whilst in every solitude are those who succor our genius, and 
 stimulate us in wonderful manners. There is a power in love 
 to divine another s destiny better than that other can, and, by 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN. 11 
 
 heroic encouragements, hold him to his task. What lias 
 friendship so signal as its sublime attraction to whatever vir 
 tue is in us I We will never more think cheaply of ourselves, 
 < of life. \Ve are piqued to some purpose, and the industry 
 of the diggers on the railroad will not again shame us. 
 
 I" ndrr this head, too, falls that homage, very pure, as I 
 think, which all ranks pay to the hero of the day, from Corio- 
 lanus and (Iracchus, down to Pitt, Lafayette, Wellington, 
 Webster, Lamartine. Hear the shouts in the street ! The 
 people cannot see him enough. They delight in a man. Here 
 is a head and a trunk ! What a front ! what eyes ! Atlantean 
 shoulders, and the whole carriage heroic, with equal inward 
 force to guide the great machine ! This pleasure of full ex- 
 ion to that which, in their private experience, is usually 
 cramped and obstructed, runs, also, much higher, and is the 
 secret of the reader s joy in literary genius. Nothing is kept 
 back. There is fire enough to fuse the mountain of ore. 
 Shakespeare s principal merit may be conveyed, in saying that 
 he, of all men, best understands the English language, and 
 can say what he will. Yet these unchokcd channels and 
 floodgates of expression are only health or fortunate consti 
 tution. Shakespeare s name suggests other and purely intel 
 lectual benefits. 
 
 Si-nates and sovereigns have no compliment, with their 
 medals, swords, and armorial coats, like the addressing to a 
 human being thoughts out of a certain height, and presup 
 posing his intelligence. This honor, which is possible in per 
 sonal intercourse scarcely twice in a lifetime, genius per 
 petually pays; contented, if now and then, in a centurv. the. 
 proffer is accepted. The indicators of the values of matter 
 arc degraded to a sort of cooks and confectioners, on the ap 
 pearance of the indicators of ideas. Genius is the naturalist 
 or geographer of the supersensible regions, and draws their 
 map; and, by acquainting us with new iields of activitv, cools 
 our affection for the old. These are at once accepted as the 
 reality, of which the world we have conversed with is the 
 show. 
 
 We go to the gymnasium and the swimming-school to see 
 the power and beauty of the body : there is the like pleasure, 
 and a higher benefit, from witnessing intellectual feats of all 
 kinds ; as, feats of memory, of mathematical combination, 
 great power of abstraction, the transniutinirs of the imagina 
 tion*, even versatility, and concentration, as these acts e.\p<>so 
 
12 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 the invisible organs and members of the mind, which respond, 
 member for member, to the parts of the body. For, we thus 
 enter a new gymnasium, and learn to choose men by their 
 truest marks, taught, with Plato, " to choose those who can, 
 without aid from the eyes, or any other sense, proceed to truth 
 and to being." Foremost among these activities, are the sum 
 mersaults, spells, and resurrections wrought by the imagina- 
 tion. When this wakes, a man seems to multiply ten times 
 or a thousand times his force. It opens the delicious sense 
 of indeterminate size, and inspires an audacious mental habit. 
 We are as elastic as the gas of gunpowder, and a sentence in 
 a book, or a word dropped in conversation, sets free our fancy, 
 and instantly our heads are bathed with galaxies, and our feet 
 tread the floor of the Pit. And this benefit is real, because 
 we are entitled to these enlargements, and, once having passed 
 the bounds, shall never again be quite the miserable pedants 
 we were. 
 
 The high functions of the intellect are so allied, that some 
 
 imaginative power usually appears in all eminent minds, even 
 in arithmeticians of the first class, but especially in meditative 
 men of an intuitive habit of thought. This class serve us, so 
 that they have the perception of identity and the perception 
 of reaction. The eyes of Plato, Shakespeare, Swedenborg, 
 Goethe, never shut on either of these laws. The perception 
 of these laws is a kind of metre of the rnind. Little minds 
 are little, through failure to see them. 
 
 Even these feasts have their surfeit. Our delight in reason 
 degenerates into idolatry of the herald. Especially when a 
 mind of powerful method has instructed men, we find the 
 examples of oppression. The dominion of Aristotle, the 
 Ptolemaic astronomy, the credit of Luther, of Bacon, of 
 Locke, in religion, the history of hierarchies, of saints, 
 and the sects which have taken the name of each founder, 
 are in point. Alas ! every man is such a victim. The inv 
 becility of men is always inviting the impudence of power. It 
 is the delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to blind the be^ 
 holder. But true genius seeks to defend us from itself. True 
 genius will not impoverish, but will liberate, and add new 
 
 ( senses. If a wise man should appear in our village, he would 
 create, in those who conversed with him, a new consciousness 
 of wealth, by opening their eyes to unobserved advantages j 
 he would establish a sense of immovable equality, calm us 
 with assurances that we could not be cheated ; as every on* 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN. 13 
 
 would discern the checks and guaranties of condition. The / 
 rich would see their mistakes and poverty, the poor their ) 
 escapes and their resources. 
 
 But nature brings all this about in due time. Rotation is 
 her remedy. The soul is impatient of masters, and eager for 
 change. Housekeepers say of a domestic who has been valu 
 able, She had lived with me long enough. We are tendencies, 
 or rather, symptoms, and none of us complete. We touch 
 and go, and sip the foam of many lives. Rotation is the law 
 of nature. When nature removes a great man, people explore 
 the horizon for a successor ; but none comes, and none will. 
 His class is extinguished with him. In some other and quite 
 different field, the next man will appear ; not Jefferson, not 
 Franklin, but now a great salesman ; then a road-contractor ; 
 then a student of fishes ; then a buffalo-hunting explorer ; or 
 a semi-savage Western general. Thus we make a stand against 
 our rougher masters ; but against the best there is a finer 
 remedy. The power which they communicate is not theirs. 
 When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, 
 but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor. 
 
 I must not forget that we have a special debt to a single 
 class. Life is a scale of degrees. Between rank and rank of 
 our great men are wide intervals. Mankind have, in all ages,* 
 attached themselves to a few persons, who, either by thel 
 quality of that idea they embodied, or by the largeness of their 
 reception, were entitled to the position of leaders and lawgiv-k 
 ers. These teach us the qualities of primary nature, admit 
 us to the constitution of things. We swim day by day on a 
 river of delusions, and are effectually amused with houses and 
 towns in the air, of which the men about us are dupes. But 
 life is a sincerity. In lucid intervals we say, Let there be an 
 entrance opened for me into realities ; I have worn the fool s 
 cap too long. We will know the meaning of our economies 
 and politics. Give us the cipher, and, if persons and things 
 are scores of a celestial music, let us read off the strains. We 
 have been cheated of our reason ; yet there have been sane men, 
 who enjoyed a rich and related existence. What they know, 
 they know for us. With each new mind, a new secret of 
 nature transpires ; nor can the Bible be closed, until the last 
 great man is born. These men correct the delirium of the 
 animal spirits, make us considerate, and engage us to new aims 
 and powers. The veneration of mankind selects these for the 
 highest place. Witness the multitude of statues, pictures, 
 
14 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 and memorials which recall their genius in every city, village, 
 house, and ship : 
 
 " Ever their phantoms arise before us, 
 Our loftier brothers, but one in blood ; 
 At bed and table they lord it o er us, 
 
 - With looks of beauty, and words of good." 
 
 How to illustrate the distinctive benefit of ideas, the service 
 rendered by those who introduce moral truths into the general 
 mind 1 I am plagued, in all my living, with a perpetual 
 tariff of prices. If I work in my garden and prune an apple 
 tree. I am well enough entertained, and could continue in 
 definitely in the like occupation. But it comes to mind that 
 a day is gone, and I have got this precious nothing done. I 
 go to Boston or New York, and run up and down on my af 
 fairs : they are sped, but so is the day. I am vexed by the 
 recollection of this price I have paid for a trifling advantage. 
 I remember the peau (Fane, on which whoso sat should have 
 his desire, but a piece of the skin was gone for every wish. I go 
 to a convention of philanthropists. Do what I can, I cannot 
 keep my eyes off the clock. But if there should appear in the 
 company some gentle soul who knows little of persons or 
 parties, of Carolina or Cuba, but who announces a law that 
 disposes these particiilars, and so certifies me of the equity 
 which checkmates every false player, bankrupts every self- 
 seeker, and apprises me of my independence on any conditions 
 of country, or time, or human body, that man liberates me ; I for 
 get the clock ; I pass out of the sore relation to persons ; I am 
 healed of my hurts ; I am made immortal by apprehending 
 my possession of incorruptible goods. Here is great competi 
 tion of rich and poor. We live in a market, where is only so 
 much wheat, or wool, or land ; and if I have so much more, 
 every other must have so much less. I seem to have no good, 
 without breach of good manners. Nobody is glad in the glad 
 ness of another, and our system is one of war, of an injurious 
 superiority. Every child of the Saxon race is educated to wish 
 to be first. It is our system ; and a man comes to measure 
 his greatness by the regrets, envies, and hatreds of his com 
 petitors. But in these now fields there is room : here are no 
 self-esteems, no exclusions. 
 
 I admire great men of all classes, those who stand for facts, 
 and for thoughts ; I like rough and smooth, " Scourgers of 
 God," and "Darlings of the human race." I like the first 
 Caesar ; and Charles V., of Spain ; and Charles XII., of Swe- 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN. 15 
 
 den ; Richard Plantagenet ; and Bonaparte, in France. I ap 
 plaud a sufficient man, an officer.equal to his office ; captains, 
 ministers, senators. I like a master standing firm on legs of 
 iron, well-born, rich, handsome, eloquent, loaded with advan 
 tages, drawing all men l>y fascination into tributaries and sup 
 porters of his power. Sword and staff, or talents sword-like 
 or stall-like, carry on the work of the world. But I find him 
 greater, when lie can abolish himself, and all heroes, by letting 
 in this clement of reason, irrespective of persons; this sub- 
 tilizcr, and irresistible 1 upward force, into our thought, destroy 
 ing individualism; the power so great, that the potentate is 
 nothing. Then he is a monarch, who gives a constitution to 
 his people; a pontilf, who preaches the equality of souls, and 
 releases his servants from their barbarous homages ; an em 
 peror, who can spare his empire. 
 
 But I intended to specify, with a little minuteness, two or 
 three points of service. Nature never spares the opium or 
 nepenthe ; but, wherever she mars her creature with some de 
 formity or defect, lays her poppies plentifully on the bruise, 
 and the sufferer goes joyfully through life, ignorant of the 
 ruin, and incapable of seeing it, though all the world point 
 their finger at it every day. The worthless and offensive 
 members of society, whose existence is a social pest, invariably 
 think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get- 
 over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of 
 their contemporaries. Our globe discovers its hidden virtues, 
 not only in heroes and archangels, but in gossips and nurses. 
 Is it not a rare contrivance that lodged the due inertia in 
 every creature, the conserving, resisting energy, the anger at 
 being waked or changed 1 Altogether independent of the in 
 tellectual force in each, is the pride of opinion, the security 
 that we arc right. Not the feeblest grandame, not a mowing 
 idiot, but uses what spark of perception" and faculty is left, to 
 chuckle and triumph in his or her opinion over the absurdities of 
 all the rest. Difference from me is the measure of absurdity. 
 Not one has a misgiving of being wroiiLT. Was it not a bright 
 thought that made tilings cohere with this bitumen, fastot 
 of cements ? But, in the midst of this chuckle of self-gratula- 
 tion, some figure goes by, which Thersites too can love and 
 admire. This is he that should marshal us the way we were 
 going. There is no end to his aid. Without Plato, we should 
 almost lose our faith in the possibility of a reasonable book. 
 
16 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 We seem to want but one, but we want one. We love to as 
 sociate with heroic persons, since our receptivity is unlimited ; 
 and,, with the great, our thoughts and manners easily become 
 greaj}. We are all wise in capacity, though so few in energy. 
 There needs but one wise man in a company, and all are wise, 
 so rapid is the contagion. 
 
 Great men are thus a collyriuni to clear our eyes from ego 
 tism, and enable us to see other people and their works. But 
 there are vices and follies incident to whole populations and 
 ages. Men resemble their contemporaries, even more than 
 their progenitors. It is observed in old couples, or in persons 
 who have been housemates for a course of years, that they 
 grow alike ; and, if they should live long enough, we should 
 not be able to know them apart. Nature abhors these com 
 plaisances, which threaten to melt the world into a lump, and 
 hastens to break up such maudlin agglutinations. The like 
 assimilation goes on between men of one town, of one sect, of 
 one political party ; and the ideas of the time are in the air, 
 and infect all who breathe it. Viewed from any high point, 
 this city of New York, yonder city of London, the Western 
 civilization, would seem a bundle of insanities. We keep each 
 other in countenance, and exasperate by emulation the frenzy 
 of the time. The shield against the stingings of conscience, 
 is the universal practice, or our contemporaries. Again ; it is 
 very easy to be as wise and good as your companions. We 
 learn of our contemporaries what they know, without effort, 
 and almost through the pores of the skin. We catch it by 
 sympathy, or, as a wife arrives at the intellectual and moral 
 elevations of her husband. But we stop where they stop. 
 Very hardly can we take another step. The great, or such as 
 hold of nature, and transcend fashions, by their fidelity to 
 universal ideas, are saviors from these federal errors, and defend 
 us from our contemporaries. They are the exceptions which 
 we want, where all grows alike. A foreign greatness is the 
 antidote for cabalism. 
 
 Thus we feed on genius, and refresh ourselves from too much 
 conversation with our mates, and exnlt in the depth of nature 
 in that direction in which he leads us. What indemnification 
 is one great man for populations of pygmies ? Every mother 
 wishes one son a genius, though all the rest should be mediocre. 
 But a new danger appears in the excess of influence of the 
 great man. His attractions warp us from our place. We 
 have become underlings and intellectual suicides. Ah ! yonder 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN. 17 
 
 in the horizon is our help ; other great men, new qualities, 
 counterweights and checks on each other. We cloy of the 
 honey of each peculiar greatness. Every hero becomes a hon; 
 at4ast_ Perhaps Voltaire was not bad-hearted, yet lie said of 
 the good Jesus, even, " I pray you, let me never hour that 
 man s name again." They cry up the virtues of George 
 Washington, "Damn George Washington!" is the poor 
 Jacobin s whole speech and confutation. But it is human v 
 nature s indispensable defence. The eentripetence augments 
 the centrifugenec. We balance one man with his opposite, and 
 the health of the state depends on the see-saw. 
 
 There is, however, a speedy limit to the use of heroes. 
 Every genius is defended from approach by quantities of 
 unavailableness. They are very attractive, and seem at a dis 
 tance our own ; but we are hindered on all sides from approach. 
 The more we are drawn, the more we are repelled. There is 
 something not solid in the good that is done for us. The best 
 discovery the discoverer makes for himself. It has something 
 unreal for his companion, until he too has substantiated it. It 
 set -ins as if the Deity dressed each soul which he sends into 
 nature in certain virtues and powers not communicable to 
 other men, and, sending it to perform one more turn through 
 the circle of beings, wrote " Not tr(in*t <-r tltlc" and " Good for 
 thif trip only" on these garments of the soul. There is some 
 what deceptive about the intercourse of minds. The bound 
 aries are invisible, but they are never crossed. There is such 
 
 ! will to impart, and such good-will to receive, that each - 
 threatens to become the other ; but the law of individuality 
 collects its secret strength ; you arc you, and I am I, and so 
 we remain. 
 
 For nature wishes everything to remain itself; and, whilst 
 every individual strives to grow and exclude, and to exclude 
 and grow, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the 
 law of its being on every other creature, Nature steadily aims 
 to protect each against every other. Kach is self-defended 
 Nothing is more marked than the power by which individuals 
 arc guarded from individuals, in a world where every benefac 
 tor becomes so easily a malefactor, only by continuation of his 
 activity into places where it is not due ; where children seem 
 inch at the mercy of their foolish parents, and where almost 
 all men are too social and interfering. We ri^htlv speak of 
 the guardian angels of children. How superior in their security 
 from infusions of evil persons, from vulgarity and second 
 
18 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 thought ! They shed their own ubundant beauty on the ob 
 jects they behold. Therefore, they are not at the mercy of 
 such poor educators as we adults. If we huff and chide them, 
 they soon come not to mind it, and get a self-reliance ; and if 
 we indulge them to folly, they learn the limitation elsewhere. 
 We need not fear excessive influence. A more generous 
 trust is permitted. Serve the great. Stick at no humiliation. 
 Grudge no office thou canst render. Be the limb of their 
 body, the breath of their mouth. Compromise thy egotism. 
 Who cares for that, so thou gain aught wider and nobler ? 
 Never mind the taunt of Boswellism : the devotion may easily 
 be greater than the wretched pride which is guarding its own 
 skirts. Be another : not thyself, but a Platonist ; not a soul, 
 but a Christian ; not a naturalist, but a Cartesian; not a poet, 
 but a Shakespearian. In vain, the wheels of tendency will not 
 stop, nor will all the forces of inertia, fear, or of love itself, 
 hold thee there. On, and forever onward ! The microscope 
 observes a monad or wheel-insect among the infusories circu 
 lating in water. Presently, a dot appears on the animal, 
 which enlarges to a slit, and it becomes two perfect animals. 
 The ever-proceeding detachment appears not less in all 
 thought, and in soricty. Children think they cannot live 
 without their parents. But, long before they arc aware of it, 
 the black dot has appeared, and the detachment taken place. 
 Any accident will now reveal to them their independence. 
 
 But great men: the word is injurious. Is there caste 1 ? 
 is there fate 1 What becomes of the promise to virtue 1 The 
 thoughtful youth laments the superfoctation of nature. Gen 
 erous and handsome, he says, is your hero ; but look at yon 
 der poor Paddy, whose country is his wheelbarrow ; look at 
 his whole nation of Paddies. Why are the masses, from the 
 dawn of history down, food for knives and powder 1 The idea 
 dignifies a few leaders, who have sentiment, opinion, love, self- 
 devotion ; and they make war and death sacred ; but what 
 for the wretches whom they hire and kill ? The cheapness of 
 man is every day s tragedy. It is as real a loss that others 
 should be low, as that we should be low ; for we must have 
 society. 
 
 Is it a reply to these suggestions, to say, society is a Pesta- 
 
 lozzian school : all are teachers and pupils in turn. We are 
 
 Vequally served by receiving and by imparting. Men who know 
 
 the same things are not long the best company for each other. 
 
USES OF GREAT MEN. 19 
 
 But bring to each an intelligent person of another experience, 
 and it is as if you let off water from a lake, by cutting a lower 
 basin. It seems a mechanical advantage, and great benefit it 
 is to each speaker, as he can now paint out his thought to 
 himself. We pass very fast, in our personal moods, from dig 
 nity to dependence. And if any appear never to assume tho 
 chair, but always to stand and serve, it is because we do not 
 see the company in a sufficiently long period for the whole ro 
 tation of parts to come about. As to what we call the masses, 
 and common men j there are no common men. All men are 
 at last of a size ; and true art is only possible, on the convic 
 tion that every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. Fair 
 play, and an open field, arid freshest laurels to all who have 
 won them ! But Heaven reserves an equal scope for every 
 creature. Each is uneasy until he has produced his private 
 ray unto the concave sphere, and beheld his talent also in its 
 last nobility and exaltation. 
 
 The heroes of the hour are relatively great : of a faster 
 growth ; or they are such, in whom, at the moment of success, 
 a quality is ripe which is then in request. Other days will de 
 mand other qualities. Some rays escape the common observer, 
 and want a finely adapted eye. Ask the great man if there 
 be none greater. His companions are ; and not the less great, 
 but the more, that society cannot see them. Nature never 
 sends a great man into the planet, without confiding the secret 
 to another soul. 
 
 One gracious fact emerges from these studies, that there 
 is true ascension in our love. The reputations of the nine 
 teenth century will one day be quoted, to prove its barbarism. 
 The genius of humanity is the real subject whose biography 
 is written in our annals. We must infer much, and supply 
 nnmy chasms in the record. The history of the universe is 
 symptomatic, and life is mnemonical. No man, in all the 
 procession of famous men, is reason or illumination, or that 
 essence we were looking for ; but is an exhibition, in some 
 quarter, of new possibilities. Could we one day complete the 
 immense figure which these flagrant points compose ! The 
 study of many individuals leads us to an elemental region 
 wherein the individual is lost, or wherein all touch by their 
 summits. Thought and feeling, that break out there, cannot 
 be impounded by any fence of personality. This is the key to 
 the power of the greatest men, their spirit diffuses itself. 
 A new quality of mind travels by night and by day, hi con- 
 
20 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 centric circles from its origin, and publishes itself by unknown 
 methods : the union of all minds appears intimate : what gets 
 admission to one, cannot be kept out of any other : the small 
 est acquisition of truth or of energy, in any quarter, is so 
 much good to the commonwealth of souls. If the disparities 
 of talent and position vanish, when the individuals are seen in 
 the duration which is necessary to complete the career of 
 each; even more swiftly the seeming injustice disappears, 
 when we ascend to the central identity of all the individuals, 
 and know that they are made of the substance which ordain- 
 eth and doeth. 
 
 The genius of humanity is the right point of view of history. 
 The qualities abide ; the men who exhibit them have now 
 more, now less, and pass away ; the qualities remain on anoth 
 er brow. No experience is more familiar. Once you saw 
 phoenixes : they are gone ; the world is not therefore disen 
 chanted. The vessels on which you read sacred emblems turn 
 out to be common pottery ; but the sense of the pictures is 
 sacred, and you may still read them transferred to the walls 
 of the world. For a time, our teachers serve us personally, 
 as metres or milestones of progress. Once they were augels 
 of knowledge, and their figures touched the sky. Then we 
 drew near, saw their means, culture, and limits ; and they 
 yielded their place to other geniuses. Happy, if a few names 
 remain so high, that we have not been able to read them 
 nearer, and age and comparison have not robbed them of a 
 ray. But, at last, we shall cease to look in men for complete 
 ness, and shall content ourselves with their social and delegat 
 ed quality. All that respects the individual is temporary and 
 prospective, like the individual himself, who is ascending out 
 of his limits, into a catholic existence. We have never come 
 at the true and best benefit of any genius, so long as we believe 
 him an original force. In the moment when he ceases to help 
 us as a cause, he begins to help us more as an effect. Then he 
 appears as an exponent of a vaster mind and will. The opaque 
 self becomes transparent with the light of the First Cause. 
 
 Yet, within the limits of human education and agency, we 
 may say, great men exist that there may be greater men. 
 The destiny of organized nature is amelioration, and who can 
 tell its limits 1 It is for man to tame the chaos ; on every 
 side, whilst he lives, to scatter the seeds of science and of 
 song, that climate, corn, animals, men, may be milder, and 
 the germs of love and benefit may be multiplied. 
 
II. 
 
 PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 
 
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 A MOXG books, Plato only is entitled to Omar s fanatical 
 j^\^ compliment to the Koran, when he said, " Burn the 
 libraries ; for, their value is in this book." These sentences 
 contain the culture of nations ; these are the corner-stone of 
 schools ; these are the fountain-head of literatures. A dis 
 cipline it is in logic, arithmetic," taste, symmetry, poetry, lan 
 guage, rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. There 
 was never such range of speculation. Out of Plato come all 
 things that are still written and debated among men of 
 thought. Great havoc makes he among our originalities. 
 We have reached the mountain from which all these drift 
 boulders were detached. The Bible of the learned for twenty- 
 two hundred years, every brisk young man, who says in suc 
 cession fine things to each reluctant generation, Boethius, 
 Rabelais, Erasmus, Bruno, Locke, Rousseau, Alfieri, Coleridge, 
 is some reader of Plato, translating into the vernacular, 
 wittily, his good things. Even the men of grander proportion 
 suffer some deduction from the misfortune (shall I say 1) of 
 coming after this exhausting generalizer. St. Augustine, 
 Copernicus, Newton, Bchmcn, Swedenborg, Goethe, are like 
 wise his debtors, and must say after mm. For it is fair to 
 credit the broadest generalizer with all the particulars dedu- 
 cible from his thesis. 
 
 Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato, at once the 
 glory and the shame of mankind, since neither Saxon nor Ro 
 man have availed to add any idea to his categories. No wife, 
 no children had he, and the thinkers of all civilized nations 
 are his posterity, and are tinned with his mind. How many 
 great men Nature is incessantly sending up out of night, to 
 be ///.? men, Plsitnnists ! the Alexandrians, a constellation of 
 genius; the Elizabethans, not less; Sir Thomas More, Henry 
 
24 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 More, John Hales, John Smith, Lord Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, 
 Ralph Cud worth, Sydenham, Thomas Taylor ; Marcilius Fici- 
 nus, and Picas Mirandola. Calvinism is in his Pheedo ; Chris 
 tianity is in it. Mahometanism draws all its philosophy, in 
 its hand-book of morals, the Akhlak-y-Jalaly, from him. Mys 
 ticism finds in Plato all its texts. This citizen of a town in 
 Greece is no villager nor patriot. An Englishman reads and 
 says, * how English ! a German, how Teutonic ! an Ital 
 ian, how Roman and how Greek ! As they say that 
 Helen of Argos had that universal beauty that everybody felt 
 related to her, so Plato seems, to a reader in New England, an 
 American genius. His broad humanity transcends all sectional 
 lines. 
 
 This range of Plato instructs us what to think of the vexed 
 question concerning his reputed works, what are genuine, 
 what spurious. It is singular that wherever we find a man 
 higher, by a whole head, than any of his contemporaries, it is 
 sure to come into doubt, what are his real works. Thus, 
 Homer, Plato, Raffaelle, Shakespeare. For these men mag 
 netize their contemporaries, so that their companions can do 
 for them what they can never do for themselves ; and the 
 great man does thus live in several bodies, and write, or paint, 
 or act, by many hands : and, after some time, it is not easy to 
 say what is the authentic work of the master, and what is 
 only of his school. 
 
 Plato, too, like every great man, consumed his own times. 
 What is a great man, but one of great affinities, who takes up 
 into himself all arts, sciences, all knowables, as his food ? He 
 can spare nothing ; he can dispose of everything. What is 
 not good for virtue, is good for knowledge. Hence his con 
 temporaries tax him with plagiarism. Bat the inventor only 
 knows how to borrow ; and society is glad to forget the in 
 numerable laborers who ministered to this architect, and re 
 serves all its gratitude for him. When we are praising Plato, 
 it seems we are praising quotations from Solon, and Sophron, 
 and Philolaus. Be it so. Every book is a quotation ; and 
 every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and 
 stone quarries ; and every man is a quotation from all his 
 ancestors. And this grasping inventor puts all nations under 
 contribution. 
 
 Plato absorbed the learning of his times, Philolaus, 
 Timseus, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and what else ; then his 
 master, Socrates ; and, finding himself still capable of a 
 
PLATO ; OK, THE PHILOSOPHER. 25 
 
 larger synthesis, beyond all example then or since, ho 
 
 travelled into Italy, to gain what Pythagoras had I m- him; 
 then into Egypt, and perhaps still farther east, to import the 
 other element, which Europe wanted, into the European mind. 
 This breadth entitles him to stand as the representative of 
 philosophy. lie says, in the liepublic. "Such a genius as 
 philosophers must of necessity have, is wont but seldom, in 
 all its parts, to meet in one man ; but its different parts 
 generally spring up in different persons." Kvery man, who 
 would do anything well, must come to it from a higher ground. 
 A philosopher must be more than a philosopher. Plato is 
 clothed with the powers of a poet, stands upon the highest 
 place of the poet, and, (though I doubt he wanted the de 
 cisive gift of lyric expression,) mainly is not a poet, because 
 he chose to use the poetic gift to an ulterior purpose. 
 
 Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their 
 cousins can tell you nothing about them. They lived in their 
 writings, and so their house and street life was trivial and com 
 monplace. If you would know their tastes and complexions, 
 the most admiring of their readers most resembles them. 
 Plato, especially, has no external biography. If he had lover, 
 wife, or children, we hear nothing of them. He ground them 
 all into paint. As a good chimney burns its smoke, so a 
 philosopher converts the value of all his fortunes into his 
 intellectual performances. 
 
 He was born 4. M), A. C., about the time of the death of 
 Pericles: was of patrician connection in his times and city; 
 and is said to have had an early inclination for war ; but, in 
 his twentieth year, meeting with Socrates, was easily dissuaded 
 from this pursuit, and remained f< r ten years his scholar, until 
 the death of Socrates. He then went to Megara; accepted 
 the invitations of Dion and of Dionysius, to the court of Sicily ; 
 and went thither three times, though very capriciously treated. 
 He travelled into Italy : then into Kirypt, where he stayed a 
 longtime; some say three, some say thirteen years. It is 
 said, he went farther, into R-ibylonia : this is uncertain. He- 
 turning to Athens, he gave- lessons, in the Academy, to those 
 whom his fame drew thither : and died, as we have received it, 
 in the act "of writing, at eighty-one years. 
 
 But the biography of Plato is interior. We are to account 
 for the supreme elevation of this man, in the intellectual hip- 
 tory of our race, how it happens that, in proportion to the 
 culture of men. they become his srholars ; that, as our Jewish 
 
 VOL. II. " 2 
 
REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 Bible has implanted itself in the table-talk and household life 
 of every man and woman in the European and American 
 nations, so the writings of Plato have preoccupied every school 
 of learning, every lover of thought, every church, every poet 
 -makin- it impossible to think, on certain levels, except 
 through him. He stands between the truth and every mans 
 minded has almost impressed language, and the primary 
 forms of thought, with his name and seal. I am struck n 
 readm" him, with the extreme modernness of Ins style and 
 irit Here is the germ of that Europe we know so well, m 
 t s long httor; of axis and arms : here are all its traits, already 
 discernible in the mind of Plato, -and m none before hn* 
 It has spread itself since into a hundred histories, but has 
 added no new element. This perpetual modernness is the 
 measure of merit, in every work of art ; since the **"** 
 was not misled by anything short-lived or i**:*"**"* *Z 
 real and abiding traits. How Plato came thus to be E ^ P^nd 
 philosophy, and almost literature, is the problem for us t olv e. 
 P This could not have happened, without a sound sincere , and 
 catholic man, able to honor, at the same time, the ideal or 
 laws of the mind, and fate, or the order of nature Ihe first 
 period of a nation, as of an individual, is the period of uncon 
 scious strength. Children cry, scream, and stamp with f.iry, 
 unable to express their desires. As soon as they can speak 
 and tell their want, and the reason of it, they become gentle. 
 In adult life, whilst the perceptions are obtuse, men and women 
 talk vehemently and superlatively, blunder and quarrel; their 
 manners are full of desperation; their speech ,s full of oaths 
 As soon as, with culture, things have cleared up a l.ttle, and 
 they sec them no longer in lumps and masses, but accurately 
 distributed, they desist from that weak vehemence and explain 
 iheir meaning in detail. If the tongue had not l>- / -"jf 
 for articulation, man would still be a beast m the forest. 
 same weakness and want, on a higher plane, ocoundady , the 
 education of ardent young men and women. Ah ! j ou d 
 understand rne ; I have never met with any one who compi e- 
 hcnds me : and they sigh and weep, write verses, and walk 
 alone, -fault of power to express their precise meaning. In 
 a month or two, through the favor of their good genius, they 
 meet some one so related as to assist their vo came estate .and, 
 good communication being once established they are thence 
 forward good citizens. It is ever thus. The prog.ess is t 
 accuracy, to skill, to truth, from blind force. 
 
PLATO; OR, THK NIILnsoi Iir.U. 27 
 
 There is a moment, in the history >f every nation, when, 
 proceeding out of tliis brute youth, the perceptive ).< \\ers 
 reui-li tlu-ir ripeness, and have not yet become microscopic : so 
 that man, at that instant, extends across the entire scale ; and, 
 with his feet still planted on the immense forces of night, OOTb 
 verses, by his eyes and brain, with solar and stellar creation. 
 That is the moment of adult health, the culmination of power. 
 
 Such is the history <>f Kuro|e, in all points : and such in 
 philosophy. Its early records, almost perished, are of the im 
 migrations from A-ia, bringing with them the dreams of bar 
 barians ; a confusion of crude notions of morals, and of natural 
 philosophy, gradually subsiding, through the partial insight of 
 single teachers. 
 
 I .et ore LVricles came the Seven "Wise Masters; and we have 
 the beginnings of geometry, metaphysics, and ethics: then 
 the partialists, deducing the origin of things from tlux or 
 water, or from air. or from fire, or from mind. All mix with 
 these causes my t holo- ic pictures. At last comes Plato, tin; 
 distributor, who needs no barbaric paint, or tattoo, or whoop 
 ing : for he can define. He leaves with Asia the vast and su 
 perlative: he is the arrival of accuracy and intelligence. " He 
 shall be as a god to me, who can rightly divide and define." 
 
 This defining is philosophy. Philosophy is the account 
 which tin 1 human mind gives to itself of the constitution of 
 the world. Two cardinal facts lie forever at the base ; the one, 
 and the two. 1. I nity, or Identity; and, 2. Variety. We 
 unite all things, by perceiving the law which pervades them ; 
 by perceiving the superficial differences, and the profound re 
 semblances. But every mental act, this very perception of 
 identity or oneness, recognix.es the diH erence of things. One- 
 and otherness. It is impossible to speak or to think, 
 without embracing both. 
 
 The mind is urged to ask for one cause of many effects; 
 then for the cause of that; and again the cause, diving still 
 into the profound : self-assured that it shall arrive at an abso 
 lute mid sufficient, one. a one that shall be all. "In the 
 midst of the sun is the light, in the midst of the light is truth, 
 and in the midst of truth is the imperishable beinir," say the 
 A edas. All philosophy, of cast ami west, has the same c"U- 
 tripetencf. Cru ed by an opposite necessity, the mind returns 
 from the one, to that which is not one, but other or many ; 
 from cause to effect ; and aHirms the necessary existence ( .f 
 variety, the. self-existence of both, as each is involved in the 
 
28 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 other. These strictly blended elements it is the problem of 
 thought to separate and to reconcile. Their existence is mu 
 tually contradictory and exclusive ; and each so fast slides into 
 the other, that we" can never say what is one, and what it is 
 not. The Proteus is as nimble in the highest as in the lowest 
 grounds, when we contemplate the one, the true, the good, 
 as in the surfaces and extremities of matter. 
 
 In all nations, there are minds which incline to dwell in the 
 conception of the fundamental Unity. The raptures of prayer 
 and ecstasy of devotion lose all being in one Being. This 
 tendency finds its highest expression in the religious writings 
 of the East, and chiefly, in the Indian Scriptures, in the Vedas, 
 the Bhagavat Geeta, and the Vishnu Purana. Those writings 
 contain little else than this idea, and they rise to. pure and 
 sublime strains in celebrating it. 
 
 The Same, the Same : friend nnd foe are of one stuff ; the 
 ploughman, the plough, and the furrow, are of one stuff ; and 
 the stuff is such, and so much, that the variations of form are 
 unimportant. " You are fit" (says the supreme Krishna to a 
 sage) " to apprehend that you are not distinct from me. 
 That which I am, thou art, and that also is this world, with 
 Us gods, and heroes, and mankind. Men contemplate distinc 
 tions, because they arc stupefied with ignorance." "The 
 words / and mine constitute ignorance. AY hat is the great end 
 of all, you shall now learn from me. It is soul, one in all 
 bodies, pervading, uniform, perfect, pre-eminent over nature, 
 exempt from birth, growth, and decay, omnipresent, made up 
 of true knowledge, independent, unconnected with unrealities, 
 with name, species, and the rest, in time past, present, and to 
 tome. The knowledge that this spirit, which is essentially 
 one, is in one s own, and in all other bodies, is the wisdom of 
 one who knows the unity of things. As one diffusive air, 
 passing through the perforations of a flute, is distinguished as 
 the notes of a scale, so the nature of the Great Spirit is single, 
 though its forms be manifold, arising from the consequences 
 of acts. When the difference of the investing form, as that 
 of god, or the rest, is destroyed, there is no distinction." 
 " The whole world is but a manifestation of Vishnu, who is 
 identical with all things, and is to be regarded by the wise, as 
 not differing from, but as the same as themselves. I neither 
 am going nor coming ; nor is my dwelling in any one place ; 
 nor art thou, thou ; nor are others, others ; nor am I, I." As 
 if he had said, All is for the soul, and the soul is Vishnu ; 
 
PLATO ; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 29 
 
 .and animals and stars arc transient paintings ; and light is 
 whitewash ; and durations arc deceptive ; and form is impris 
 onment ; and heaven itself a decoy. That which the soul 
 seeks is resolution into being, above form, out of Tartarus, and 
 out of heaven, liberation from nature. 
 
 If speculation tends thus to a terrific unity, in which all 
 things are absorbed, action tends directly backwards to diver 
 sity. The first is the course or gravitation of mind ; the 
 second is the power of nature. Nature is the manifold. 
 The unity absorbs, and melts or reduces. Nature opens and 
 creates. These two principles reappear and interpenetrate all 
 things, all thought; the one, the many. One is being ; the 
 other, intellect : one is necessity ; the other, freedom : one, 
 rest ; the other, motion : one, power ; the other, distribution : 
 one, strength ; the other, pleasure : one, consciousness ; the 
 other, definition : one, genius ; the other, talent : one, earnest 
 ness ; the other, knowledge : one, possession ; the other, trade : 
 one, caste ; the other, culture : one, king ; the other, democ 
 racy : and, if we dare carry these generalizations a step higher, 
 and name the last tendency of both, we might say, that the 
 end of the one is escape from organ i/at ion, pure science; 
 and the end of the other is the highest instrumentality, or use 
 of means, or executive deity. 
 
 Each student adheres, by temperament and by habit, to the 
 first or to the second of these gods of the mind. By religion, he 
 tends to unity ; by intellect, or by the senses, to the many. 
 A too rapid unification, and an excessive appliance to parts 
 and particulars, are the twin dangers of speculation. 
 
 To this partiality the history of nations corresponded. The 
 country of unity, of immovable institutions, the seat of a 
 philosophy delighting in abstractions, of men faithful in doc 
 trine and in practice to the idea of a deaf, unimplorable, im 
 mense fate, is Asia ; and it realizes this faith in the social in 
 stitution of caste. On the other side, the genius of Europe 
 is active and creative : it resists caste by culture ; its phi- 
 losuphy was a discipline; it is a land of arts, inventions, 
 trade, freedom. If the East loved infinity, the West delighted 
 in boundaries. 
 
 European civility is the triumph of talent, the extension of 
 system, the sharpened understanding, adaptive skill, delight in 
 forms, delight in manifestation, in comprehensible results. Peri 
 cles, Athens, (Ireece, had been working in this element with the 
 joy of genius not yet chilled by any foresight of the detriment of 
 
30 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 an excess. They saw before them no sinister political economy ; 
 no ominous Malthus ; no Paris or London ; no pitiless sub 
 division of classes, the doom of the pin-makers, the doom 
 of the weavers, of dressers, of stockingers, of carders, of spin 
 ners, of colliers ; no Ireland ; no Indian caste, superinduced 
 by the efforts of Europe to throw it off. The understanding 
 was in its health and prime. Art was in its splendid novelty. 
 They cut the Pentelican marble as if it were snow, and their 
 perfect works in architecture and sculpture seemed things of 
 course, not more difficult than the completion of a new ship 
 at the Medford yards, or new mills at Lowell. These things 
 are in course, and may be taken for granted. The Roman 
 legion, Byzantine legislation, English trade, the saloons of 
 Versailles, the cafes of Paris, the steam-mill, steamboat, steam- 
 coach, may all be seen in perspective ; the town-meeting, the 
 ballot-box, the newspaper and cheap press. 
 
 Meantime, Plato, in Egypt and in Eastern pilgrimages, im 
 bibed the idea of one Deity, in which all things are absorbed. 
 The unity of Asia, and the detail of Europe ; the infinitude of the 
 Asiatic soul, and the defining, result-loving, machine- making, 
 surface-seeking, opera-going Europe, Plato came to join, 
 and by contact, to enhance the energy of each. The excel 
 lence of Europe and Asia are in his brain. Metaphysics and 
 natural philosophy expressed the genius of Europe ; he sub- 
 structs the religion of Asia, as the base. 
 
 In short, a balanced soul was born, perceptive of the two 
 elements. It is as easy to be great as to be small. The 
 reason why we do not at once believe in admirable souls, 
 is because they are not in our experience. In actual 
 life, they are so rare, as to be incredible ; but, primarily, 
 there is not only no presumption against them, but the strong 
 est presumption in favor of their appearance. But whether 
 voices were heard in the sky, or not ; whether his mother or 
 his father dreamed that the infant man-child was the son of 
 Apollo ; whether a swarm of bees settled on his lips, or not ; 
 a man who could see two sides of a thing was born. The 
 wonderful synthesis so familiar in nature ; the upper and the 
 under side of the medal of Jove ; the union of impossibilities, 
 which reappears in every object ; its real and its ideal power, 
 was now, also, transferred entire to the consciousness of a 
 man. 
 
 The balanced soul came. If he loved abstract truth, he 
 saved himself by propounding the most popular of all prin- 
 
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 31 
 
 ciplos, the absolute good, which rules rulers, and judges the 
 judge. If he made traDBcendenta] distinctions, IK- fortified 
 himself l>y drawing all his illustrations i nun source s disdained 
 by orators and ]>olite conversers ; from mares and puppies ; 
 from pitchers and soup-ladles; from cooks and criers; the 
 shops of potters, horsr doctors, butchers, and fishmongers, 
 lie cannot furtive in himself a partiality, hut is resolved that 
 the two poles of thought shall appear in his statement. His 
 argument and his sentence are self-poised and spherical. The 
 two poles appear ; yes, and become two hands, to grasp and 
 appropriate their own. 
 
 Kvery great art ist has been such by synthesis. Our strength 
 is transitional, alternating; or, shall I say, a thread of two 
 strands. The sea-shore, sea seen from shore, shore seen from 
 sea: the taste of two metals in contact; and our enlarged 
 ] towers at the approach and at the departure of a friend ; the 
 experience of poetic oreatiyeness, which is not found in stay 
 ing at home, nor yet in travelling, but in transitions from one 
 to the other, which must therefore be adroitly managed to pre 
 sent as much transitional surface as possible ; this command of 
 two elements must explain the power and the charm of Plato. 
 Art expresses the one, or the same by the different. Thought 
 seeks to know unity in unity ; poetry to show it by variety; 
 that is, always by an object or symbol. Plato keeps the two 
 vases, one of ether and one of pigment, at his side, and in 
 variably uses both. Things added to tilings, as statistics, civil 
 history, are inventories. Things used as language are in 
 exhaustibly attractive. Plato turns incessantly the obverse 
 and the reverse of the medal of Jove. 
 
 To take an example: The physical philosophers had 
 sketched each his theory of the world ; the tluory of atoms, 
 of fire, of flux, of spirit ; theories mechanical and chemical in 
 their genius. Plato, a master of mathematics, studious of all 
 natural laws and causes, feels these, as second causes, to be no 
 theories of the world, but bare inventories and lists. To the 
 study of nature he therefore prefixes the dogma, " Let us 
 declare the cause which led the Supreme Ordaincr to product 1 
 and compose the universe. He was good ; and he who i- 
 has no kind of envy. llxempt from envy, he wished that all 
 things should be as much as possible like himself. "NVhos. 
 hi by wise men, shall admit this as the prime car 
 the origin and foundation of the world, will be in the truth." 
 " All things are for the sake of the good, and it is the cause 
 
32 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 of everything beautiful." This dogma animates and imper 
 sonates his philosophy. 
 
 The synthesis which makes the character of his mind ap 
 pears in all his talents. Where there is great compass of wit, 
 we usually find excellences that o >mbine easily in the living 
 man, but in description appear incompatible. The mind of 
 Plato is not to be exhibited by a Chinese catalogue, but is to 
 be apprehended by an original mind in the exercise of its 
 original power. In him the freest abandonment is united 
 with the precision of a geometer. His daring imagination 
 gives him the more solid grasp of facts ; as the birds of high 
 est flight have the strongest alar bones. His patrician polish, 
 his intrinsic elegance, edged by an irony so subtle that it 
 stings and paralyzes, adorn the soundest health and strengtl 
 of frame. According to the old sentence, " If Jove should 
 descend to the earth, he would speak in the style of Plato." 
 
 With this palatial air, there is, for the direct aim of several 
 of his works, and running through the tenor of them all, a 
 certain earnestness, which mounts, in the Republic, and in 
 the Phajdo, to piety. He has been charged with feigning sick 
 ness at the time of the death of Sacrates. But the anecdotes 
 that have come down from the times attest his manly inter 
 ference before the people in his master s behalf, since even the 
 savage cry of the assembly to Plato is preserved ; and the in 
 dignation towards popular government, in many of his pieces, 
 expresses a personal exasperation. He has a probity, a native 
 reverence for justice and honor, and a humanity which makes 
 him tender for the superstitions of the people. Add to this, 
 he believes that poetry, prophecy, and the high insight, are 
 from a wisdom of which man is not master ; that the gods 
 never philosophize ; but, by a celestial mania, these miracles 
 are accomplished. Horsed* on these winged steeds, he sweeps 
 the dim regions, visits worlds which flesh cannot enter : he 
 saw the souls in pain ; he hears the doom of the judge ; he 
 beholds the penal metempsychosis ; the Fates, with the rock 
 and shears ;*and hears the intoxicating hum of their spindle. 
 But his circumspection never forsook him. One would say, 
 he had read the inscription on the gates of Busyrane, - " Be 
 bold " ; and on the second gate, " Be bold, be bold, and 
 evermore be bold": and then again had paused well at the 
 
 third gate, "Be not too bold." His strength is like the 
 
 momentum of a falling planet ; and his discretion, the return 
 of its due and perfect curve, so excellent is his Greek love 
 
PLATO; OR, TIIK 1 IIILOSOIMIKR. 33 
 
 of boundary, ami his skill in definition. In reading loga 
 rithms, our is not more secure, than in following IMato in his 
 ili-hts. Nothing can lie colder than his head, when the 
 lightnings of his imagination are playing in the sky. He lias 
 tinished his thinking, before he brings it to the reader; and 
 ho abounds in the surprise s of a literary master. He has that 
 opulence which furnishes, at every turn, the precise weapon 
 he needs. As the rich man wears no more garments, drives 
 no more horses, sits in no more chambers, than the poor, 
 but has that one dress, or equipage, or instrument, which is 
 fit for the hour and the need ; so 1 lato, in his plenty, is never 
 restricted, but has the tit word. There is, indeed, no weapon 
 in all the armory of wit which he did not possess and use, 
 epic, analysis, mania, intuition, music, satire, and irony, down 
 to the customary and polite. His illustrations are poetry, 
 and his jests illustrat ions. Socrates profession of obstetric 
 art is good philosophy ; and his finding that word "cookery," 
 and "adulatory art," for rhetoric, in the Gorgias, does us a 
 substantial service still. No orator can measure- ill elleet 
 with him who can give good nicknames. 
 
 What moderation, and understatement, and checking his 
 thunder in mid volley ! He has good-naturedly furnished the 
 courtier and citi/en with all that can be said against the 
 schools. "For philosophy is an elegant thing, if any one mod 
 estly meddles with it ; but, if he is conversant with it more 
 than is becoming, it corrupts the man." He could well ; llbrd 
 to be generous, he, who from the sunlike centrality and 
 reach of his vision, had a faith without cloud. Such as his 
 perception, was his speech : he plays with the doubt, and 
 makes the most of it : he paints and quibbles ; and by and 
 by comes a sentence that moves the sea and land The admi 
 rable earnest comes not only at intervals, in the perfect yes and 
 no of the dialogue, but in bursts of light. " 1, therefore, Calli- 
 cles, am persunded by these accounts, and consider how 1 may 
 exhibit my soul before? the judge in a healthy condition. Where 
 fore disregarding the honors that most men value, and looking 
 to the truth, 1 shall endeavor in reality to live as virtuously 
 as I can ; and, when I die, to die so. And I invite all other 
 men. to the utmost of my power ; and you, lo<, I in turn 
 invite to this contest, which, I affirm, surpasses all contests 
 here." 
 
 He is a great average man : one who. to the be-t thinking, 
 adds a proportion and equality in his faculties, so that men sec 
 2* C 
 
34 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 in him their own dreams and glimpses made available, and 
 made to pass for what they are. A great common sense is 
 his warrant and qualification to be the world s interpreter. 
 He has reason, as all the philosophic and poetic class have : 
 but he has, also, what they have not, this strong solving 
 sense to reconcile his poetry with the appearances of the 
 world, and bnild a bridge from the streets of cities to the At 
 lantis. He omits never this graduation, but slopes his 
 thought, however picturesque the precipice on one side, to an 
 access from the plain. He never writes in ecstasy, or catches 
 us up into poetic raptures. 
 
 Plato apprehended the cardinal facts. He could prostrate 
 himself on the earth, and cover his eyes, whilst he adored that 
 which cannot be numbered, or gauged, or known, or named : 
 that of which everything can be affirmed and denied : that 
 " which is entity and nonentity." He called it super-essential. 
 He even stood ready, as in the Parmenides, to demonstrate 
 that it was so, that this Being exceeded the limits of 
 intellect. No man ever more fully acknowledged the Ineffa 
 ble. Having paid his homage, as for the human race, to the 
 Illimitable, he then stood erect, and for the human race af 
 firmed, And yet things are knowable ! that is, the Asia 
 in his mind was first heartily honored, the ocean of love and 
 power, before form, before will, before knowledge, the Same, 
 the Good, the One ; and now, refreshed and empowered by 
 this worship, the instinct of Europe, namely, culture, returns ; 
 and he cries, Yet things are knowable ! They are knowable, 
 because, being from one, things correspond. There is a scale : 
 and the correspondence of heaven to earth, of matter to mind, 
 of the part, to the whole, is our guide. As there is a science 
 of stars, called astronomy ; a science of quantities, called math 
 ematics ; a science of qualities, called chemistry ; so there is a 
 science of sciences, -I call it Dialectic, which is the Intellect 
 discriminating the false and the true. It rests on the observa 
 tion of identity and diversity ; for, to judge, is to unite to an 
 object the notion which belongs to it. The sciences, even the 
 best, mathematics and astronomy, are like sportsmen, 
 who seize whatever prey offers, even without being able to 
 make any use of it. Dialectic must teach the use of them. 
 " This is of that rank that no intellectual man will enter on 
 any study for its own sake, but only with a view to advance 
 himself in that one sole science which embraces all." 
 
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHIC. 35 
 
 " Tlie essence or peculiarity of man is to comprehend a 
 whole; or that which, ill tin.- diversity of sensai H.MS, can ho 
 comprised under a rational unity." "The soul which has 
 never perceived tin- truth, eannot pass into the human form." 
 1 announce to men the Intellect. 1 announce the good of he- 
 iniT interpen.-t rated hy the mind that made nature ; this bene 
 fit, namely, that it can understand nature, which it made and 
 maketh. Nature is good, hut intellect is better : as the law 
 giver is het ore the law-receiver. 1 give you joy, () sons of 
 men ! that truth is altogether wholesome ; that we have hope 
 to search out what might ho the very self of everything. Tho 
 misery of man is to he balked of the sight of essence, and to 
 lie stuifed with conjectures : hut the supreme good is reality ; 
 the supremo beauty is reality ; and all virtue and all felicity 
 depend on this science of the ival : lor courage is nothing eUe 
 than knowledge : the fairest fortune that can befall man, is to 
 he guided by his demon to that which is truly his own. This 
 also is tin- essence of justice, to attend every one his own : 
 nay. the notion of virtue is not to be arrived at, except 
 through direct contemplation of the divine essence. Courage, 
 then . for, " the persuasion that we must search that which 
 we do not know, will render us, beyond comparison, better, 
 braver, and more industrious, than if we thought it impossible 
 to discover what we do not know, and useless t<- searrh for it/ 
 iires a position not to be commanded, by his passion for 
 reality : valuing philosophy only as it is the pleasure of con 
 versing with real being. 
 
 Thus, full of the genius of Europe, he said, Culture. He 
 saw the institutions of Sparta, and reco-_ r ni/ed more genially, 
 one would say. than any since, the hope of education, lie 
 delighted in every accomplishment, in every graceful and use 
 ful and truthful performance ; above all, in the splendors of 
 genius and intellectual achievement, "The whole of life, 
 -aid (Jlauco, is, with the wise, the measure of hear- 
 ich disrourses as these. 1 What a price he sets on the 
 feats of talent, on the powers of Pericles, of Isocrates, of 
 Parmenid - ! What price, above price, on the talents them 
 selves! He culled the several faculties. gods, in his beautiful 
 personation. What value he Drives to the art of gymnastic in 
 education ; what to -V -metrv ; what to music ; what to astron 
 omy, wh> MI: and medicinal power ho celebrates ! In 
 th - TimaMis, he indicate- the hi-_di--t employment of the 
 "By n.s it . d, that God invented aiid bestowed sight 
 
36 REPRESENTATIVE i\IEN. 
 
 on us for this purpose, that, on surveying the circles of in 
 telligence in the heavens, we might properly employ those of 
 our own minds, which, though disturbed when compared with 
 the others that are uniform, are still allied to their circulations ; 
 and that, having thus learned, and being naturally possessed 
 of a correct reasoning faculty, we might, by imitating the uni 
 form revolutions of divinity, set right our own wanderings and 
 blunders." And in the Republic, " By each of these disci 
 plines, a certain organ of the soul is both purified and reani 
 mated, which is blinded and buried by studies of another kind ; 
 an organ better worth saving than ten thousand eyes, since 
 truth is perceived by this alone." 
 
 He said, Culture ; but he first admitted its basis, and gave 
 immeasurably the first place to advantages of nature. His 
 patrician tastes laid stress on the distinctions of birth. In the 
 doctrine of the organic character and disposition is the origin 
 of caste. " Such as were fit to govern, into their composition 
 the informing Deity mingled gold : into the military, silver ; 
 iron and brass for husbandmen and artificers." The East con 
 firms itself, in all ages, in this faith. The Koran is explicit on 
 this point of caste. " Men have their metal, as of gold and 
 silver. Those of you who were the worthy ones in the state 
 of ignorance, will be the worthy ones in the state of faith, as 
 soon as you embrace it." Plato was not less firm. Of the 
 five orders of things, only four can be taught to the generality 
 of men." In the Republic, he insists on the temperaments 
 of the youth, as first of the first. 
 
 A happier example of the stress laid on nature, is in the 
 dialogue with the young Theages, who wishes to receive lessons 
 from Socrates. Socrates declares that, if some have grown 
 wise by associating with him, no thanks are due to him ; but, 
 simply, whilst they were with him, they grew wise, not becaus 
 of him ; he pretends not to know the way of it. 
 verse to many, nor can those be benefited by associating with 
 me, whom the Demon opposes ; so that it is not possible for 
 me to live with these. With many, however, he does not pre 
 vent me from converging, who yet are not at all benefited by 
 associating with me. Suh, Theages, is the association wit! 
 me ; for, if it pleases the God, you will make great and rapid 
 proficiency ; you will not, if he does not please. Judge whether 
 it is not safer to be instructed by some one of those who have 
 power over the benefit which they impart to men, than by me, 
 who benefit or not, just as it may happen." As if he had said, 
 
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHIC. i ,7 
 
 I h:ive no system. I cannot be Miswcrahle fur you. You 
 will be what VIMI must. If there is love between us. incon- 
 
 oervably delicious aiid profitable will our intercourse be : it not, 
 
 your time is lost, and you will only annoy me. 1 shall 
 to you stupid, and the reputation 1 ha\e, false. Quite above 
 us, beyond the will of you or me, is this secret ailinity or re- 
 ])iilsion laid. All inv Li ood is magnet ic, and I educate, not by 
 MS, hut hy goinu about my busin< 
 
 He said. Cult tire : he said. Nature : and he tailed not to add, 
 There is nisi the divine. There is no thought in any mind, 
 but it quickly tends to convert itself into a power, and org:m- 
 i/.rs a huge instrumentidity of means. Plato, lover of limits, 
 loved the illimitable, saw the enlargement and nohilitv which 
 come from truth itself and good itself, and attempted, as if on 
 the part of the human intellect, onoe lor all, to do it adequate 
 homage, - - homage tit for the immense soul to receive, and yet 
 homage becoming the intellect to render. He said, then. Our 
 faculties run out into infinity, and return to ns thence. We 
 can define but a little way ; hut here is a fact which will not 
 be skipped, and which to shut our eyes upon is suicide. All 
 things are in a scale : and, begin where we will, ascend and 
 ascend. All things are symbolical : and what we call results 
 are beginnings. 
 
 A key to the method and completeness of Plato is his twice 
 bisected line. After he has illustrated the relation bet wt en 
 the absolute good and true, and the forms of the intelligible 
 world, he savs : " Let there be a line cut in two unequal 
 parts. Cut again each of these two parts. - one representing 
 the visible, the other the intelligible world, and these two 
 tions representing the bright part and the dark part of 
 these worlds, you will have, for one of the sections of the visi 
 ble world, images, that is, both shadows and reflections; for 
 the other section, the objects of these images, that is, plants, 
 animals, and the works of art and nature. Then divide Un 
 intelligible world in like manner ; the one section will be of 
 opinions and hypotheses, and the other section, of truths. 
 To these four sections, the four operations of the soul corre 
 spond, conjecture, faith, understanding, reason. As every 
 pool reflects the image of the sun, so every thought and thing 
 restores us an image and creature of the supreme (iood. The 
 universe is perforated by a million channels for his activity. 
 All things mount and mount. 
 
 All his. thought has this ascension ; in Pluedrus, teaching 
 
38 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 that beauty is the most lovely of all things, exciting hilarity, 
 and sheddiuo- desire and confidence through the universe 
 wherever it enters ; and it enters, in some degree, into all 
 thino-s : but that there is another, which is as much more 
 beautiful than beauty, as beauty is than chaos; namely, wis 
 dom which our wonderful organ of sight cannot reach unto 
 but which, could it be seen, would ravish us with its perfect 
 reality. He has the same regard to it as the source of excel 
 lence in works of art. " When an artificer, in the fabrication 
 of any work, looks to that which always subsists according to 
 the same; and, employing a model of this kind, expresses its 
 idea and power in his work; it must follow, that Ins pro 
 duction should be beautiful. But when he beholds that which 
 is born and dies, it will be far from beautiful. 
 
 Thus ever : the Banquet is a teaching in the same spirit, 
 familiar now to all the poetry, and to all the sermons of the 
 world, that the love of the sexes is initial ; and symbolizes, at 
 a distance, the passion of the soul for that immense lake of 
 beauty it exists to seek. This faith in the Divinity is never 
 out of mind, and constitutes the ground of all his dogmas. 
 Body cannot teach wisdom; -God only In the same mind 
 he constantly affirms that virtue cannot be taught ; that it i, 
 not a science, but an inspiration ; that the greatest goods are 
 produced to us through mania, and are assigned to us by a 
 
 ilV TMs g leads me to that central figure, which he has estab 
 lished in his Academy, as the organ through which every con 
 sidered opinion shall be announced, and whose biography he 
 has likewise so labored, that the historic facts are lost in t 
 lirht of Plato s mind. Socrates and Plato are the double 
 star which the most powerful instruments will not entirely 
 separate. Socrates, again, in his traits and genius is the best 
 example of that synthesis which constitutes Plato s extraordi 
 nary power. Socrates, a man of humble stem, but honest 
 enough of the commonest history ; of a personal homeli 
 ness "so remarkable, as to be a cause of wit in others, - the 
 rather that his broad good-nature and exquisite taste for a 
 ioke invited the sally, which was sure to be paid. I he play 
 ers personated him on the stage ; the potters copied his ugly 
 face on their stone jugs. He was a cool fellow adding to his 
 humor a perfect temper, and a knowledge of his man, b 
 who he might whom he talked with, which laid the companion 
 open to certain defeat in any debate, and in debate 
 
PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 39 
 
 moderately delighted. The younir men are prodigiously f>nl 
 
 of him, and invite him to their leasts, whither lie goes for 
 conversation. He can drink, too; has the strongest head in 
 Athens; and. after leaving the whole party under the table, 
 a\v:iy, as if nothing li:nl happened, to begin new dia 
 logues with somebody that is sober. In short, he was what 
 onr country-people call n /</ <>ne. 
 
 He atfeeted a good many citizen-like tastes, was monstrously 
 fond of Athens, hated trees, never willingly went beyond the 
 walls, knew the old characters, valued the bores and philis- 
 tines, thought everything in Athens a little better than any 
 thing in anv other place. He was plain as a (Quaker in habit 
 and speech, affected low phrases, and illustrations from cocks 
 and quails, soup pans and sycamore-spoons, grooms and far 
 riers, and unnameable offices, especially if lie talked with 
 any superfine person. He had a Franklin-like wisdom. Thus, 
 he showed one who was afraid to go on foot to (Hympia, that 
 it was no more than his daily walk within doors, if contin 
 uously extended, would easily reach. 
 
 Plain old uncle as he was, with his great ears, an im 
 mense talker, the rumor ran, that, on one or two occasions, 
 in the war with Fxrotia, he had shown a determination which 
 had covered the retreat of a troop ; and there was some story 
 that, under cover of folly, he had, in the city government, 
 when one day he chanced to hold a seat there, evinced a cour 
 age in opposing singly the popular voice, which had wellni-h 
 ruined him. He is very poor ; but then he is hardy as a 
 soldier, and can live on a few olives; usually, in the strictest 
 sense, on bread and water, except when entertained by his 
 friends. His necessary expenses were exceedingly small, and 
 no one else could live as he did. He wore no under garment ; 
 his upper garment was the same for summer and winter ; and 
 he went Kirefooted ; and it is said that, to procure the pleas 
 ure, which he loves, of talking at his ease all day with the 
 most el. -ant and cultivated young men, he will now and then 
 return to his shop, and carve stutues good or bad. for sale. 
 However that be. it is certain that he had grown to delight 
 in nothing else than this conversation ; and that, under his 
 hypocritical pretence of knowing nothing, he attarks and 
 brings down all the fine speakers, all the fine philo8Oph< 
 Athens, \vhether natives, or strangers from A>ia Minor and 
 the islands. Nobody can refuse to talk with him, he is so 
 honest, and really curious to know ; a man who was willingly 
 
40 REPRESENTATIVE HEN. 
 
 confuted, if he did not speak the truth, and who willingly con 
 futed other, asserting what was false ; and not less pleased 
 when confuted than when confuting ; for he thought not any 
 evil happened to men, of such magnitude as false opinion re- 
 SS the just and unjust. A pitiless disputant, who knows 
 nothing but the bounds of whose conquering intelligence no 
 man had ever reached; whose temper was imperturbable; 
 whose dreadful logic was always leisurely and sportive ; so 
 careless and ignomnt, as to disarm the wariest and draw 
 them, in the pleasantest manner, into horrible doubts and 
 confusion. Bat he always knew the way out ; knew ,t jet 
 would not tell it. No escape; he drives them to tembl< 
 choices bv his dilemmas, and tosses the H.pp.ases and Gor- 
 giases, with their grand reputations, as a boy tosses his balls 
 The tyrannous realist 1- Mcno has discoursed a thousand 
 times/at length, on virtue, before many companies and very 
 well as it atroeaWd to him ; but, at this moment, he cannot 
 eve,! tell whit it is, -this cramp-fish of a Socrates has so 
 
 ^This llrd-headed humorist, whose stmnge conceits, drollery, 
 and bonhommie, diverted the yoxmg patricians whilst the 
 r nor of his savings and quibbles gets abroad every dav 
 turns out, in the sequel, to have a prob.ty as ***"&*}* 
 lo<nc and to be either insane, or, at least, under co^cr oi 
 pC enthusiastic in his religion. When Reused before h 
 iud-es of subverting the popular creed he affiims tl 
 mortality of the soul, the future reward and punishment; 
 
 the iailer-but Socrates would not go out by treachery. 
 Whatever ^convenience ensue, nothing is to be preferred be 
 fore ustice. These things I hear like pipes and ** 
 sound makes me deaf to everything you say. 1_ fe me ot 
 this prison, the fame of the discourses there, and the dnnkmg 
 of the hemlock, are oue of the most prec.ous passages in t 
 
 ^^rltrdete, in one ugly body of ^11 and the 
 martyr, the keen street and market debate, -with the ^ sweetest 
 saint known to any history at that time, had forcibly s 
 the mind of Plato, so capacious of these contrasts ; and the 
 figure of Socrates, by a necessity, placed itself m the 
 
PLATO * OR, THE PHILOSOPHIC. 4L 
 
 ground of the scene, as the fittest dispenser of the intellectual 
 treasures he hud to communicate. It was a rare fortune, that 
 this .Ksop of the mob, and this robed scholar should meet, 
 to make each other immortal in their mutual faculty. The 
 strange synthesis, in the character of Socrates, capped the 
 synthesis in the mind of Plato. Moreover, by this means, he 
 \\as able, in the direct way, and without envy, to avail himself 
 of the wit and weight of Socrates, to which unquestionably his 
 own debt was great ; and these derived again their principal 
 advantage from the perfect art of Plato. / 
 
 It remains to say, that the defect of Plato in power is only 
 that which results inevitably from his quality. He is intellec 
 tual in his aim ; and, therefore, in expression, literary. Mount 
 ing into heaven, diving into the pit, expounding the laws of 
 the state, the passion of love, the remorse of crime, the hope 
 of the parting soul, he is literary, and never otherwise. It 
 is almost the sole deduction from the merit of Plato, that his 
 writings have not what is, no doubt, incident to this reg- 
 nancy of intellect in his work the vital authority which the 
 screams of prophets and the sermons of unlettered Arabs and 
 Jews possess. There is an interval ; and to cohesion, contact 
 is necessary. 
 
 I know not what can be said in reply to this criticism, but 
 that we have come to a fact in the nature of things : an oak 
 is not an orange. The qualities of sugar remain with sugar, 
 and those of salt, with salt. 
 
 In the second place, he has not a system. The dearest de 
 fenders and disciples are at fault. He attempted a theory of 
 the universe, and his theory is not complete or self-evident. 
 One man thinks he means this ; and another, that : he has 
 said one thing in one place, and the reverse of it in another 
 place. He is charged with having failed to make the transition 
 from ideas to matter. Here is the world, sound as a nut, 
 perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor 
 an end, not a mark of haste, or botching, or second thought ; 
 but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds and patches. 
 
 The longest wave is quickly lost in the sea. Plato would 
 willingly have a Platonism, a known and accurate expr 
 for the world, and it should be accurate. It shall be the 
 world passed through the mind of Plato, -nothing less. 
 Every atom shall have the Platonic tin-v ; every utom, every 
 relation or quality you knew before, you shall knew again, and 
 fiiid here, but now ordered; not nature, but art. And you 
 
42 REPRESENTATIVE ]\tEN. 
 
 shall feel that Alexander indeed overran, with men and horses, 
 some countries of the planet ; but countries, and things of 
 which countries are made, elements, planet itself, laws of planet 
 and of men, have passed through this man as bread into his 
 body, and become no longer bread, but body : so all this mam 
 moth morsel has become Plato. He has clapped copyright 
 on the world. This is the ambition of individualism. But 
 the mouthful proves too large. Boa constrictor has good will to 
 eat it, but he is foiled. He falls abroad in the attempt ; and 
 biting, gets strangled : the bitten world holds the biter fast 
 by his own teeth. There he perishes : unconquered nature 
 lives on, and forgets him. So it fares with all : so must it fare 
 with Plato. In view of eternal nature, Plato turns out to be 
 philosophical exercitations. He argues on this side, and on 
 that. The acutest German, the lovingest disciple, could never 
 tell what Platonism was ; indeed, admirable texts can be 
 quoted on both sides of every great question from him. 
 
 These things we are forced to say, if we must consider the 
 effort of Plato, or of any philosopher, to dispose of Nature, 
 which will not be disposed of. No power of genius has 
 ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. 
 The perfect enigma remains. But there is an injustice in as 
 suming this ambition for Plato. Let us not seem to treat 
 with flippancy his venerable name. Men, in proportion to 
 their intellect, have admitted his transcendent claims. The 
 way to know him, is to compare him, not with nature, but 
 with other men. How many ages have gone by, and he re 
 mains unapproached ! A chief structure of human wit, like 
 Karnac, or the mediaeval cathedrals, or the Etrurian remains, it 
 requires all the breadth of human faculty to know it. I think 
 it is trueliest seen, when seen with the most respect. His 
 sense deepens, his merits multiply, with study. When we 
 say, here is a fine collection of fables ; or, when we praise the 
 style ; or the common sense ; or arithmetic ; we speak as 
 boys, and much of our impatient criticism of the dialectic, 
 I suspect, is no better. The criticism is like our impatience 
 of miles, when we are in a hurry ; but it is still best that a mile 
 should have seventeen hundred and sixty yards. The great- 
 eyed Plato proportioned the lights and shades after the genius 
 of our life. 
 
PLATO: NEW READINGS. 
 
 THE publication, in Mr. Bonn s " Serial Library," of the 
 excellent translations of Plato, which we esteem one of 
 the chief benefits the cheap press has yielded, gives us an oc 
 casion to take hastily a few more notes of the elevation and 
 bearings of this fixed star ; or, to add a bulletin, like the 
 journals, of Plato at the latest dates. 
 
 Modern science, by the extent of its generalization, has 
 learned to indemnify the student of man for the defects of 
 individuals, by tracing growth and ascent in races ; and, by the 
 simple expedient of lighting up the vast background, generates 
 a feeling of complacency and hope. The human being has 
 the saurian and the plant in his rear. His ai ts and sciences, 
 the easy issue of his brain, look glorious when prospectively 
 beheld from the distant brain of ox, crocodile, ami fish. It 
 seems as if nature, in regarding the geologic night behind her, 
 when, in five or six millenniums, she had turned out five or six 
 men, as Homer, Phidias, Menu, and Columbus, was nowise 
 discontented with the result. These samples attested the 
 virtue of the tree. These were a clear amelioration of trilo- 
 bite find saurus, and a good basis for further proceeding. 
 With this artist, time and space arc cheap, and she is insensible 
 to what you say of tedious preparation. She waited tranquilly 
 the flowing periods of paleontology, for the hour to be struck 
 when man should arrive. Then periods must pass before the 
 motion of the earth can be suspected ; then before the map 
 of the instincts and the cultivable powers can be drawn. But 
 as of races, so the succession of individual men is fatal and 
 beautiful, and Plato has the fortune, in the history of man 
 kind, to mark an epoch. 
 
 Plato s fame does not stand on a syllogism, or on any mas 
 
44 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 terpiecesof the Socratic reasoning, or on any thesis, as for ex 
 ample, the immortality of the soul. He is more than an 
 expert, or a schoolman, or a geometer, or the prophet of a 
 peculiar message. He represents the privilege of the intellect, 
 the power, namely, of carrying up every fact to successive 
 platforms, and so disclosing, in every fact, a germ of expansion. 
 These expansions are in the essence of thought. The natural 
 ist would never help us to them by any discoveries of the ex 
 tent of the universe, but is as poor, when cataloguing the 
 resolved nebula of Orion, as when measuring the angles 
 acre. But the Republic of Plato, by these expansions, may be 
 said to require, and so to anticipate, the astronomy of La 
 place The expansions are organic. The mind does not create 
 what it perceives, any more than the eye creates the rose. In 
 ascribing to Plato the merit of announcing them, we only say, 
 here was a more complete man, who could apply to nature the 
 whole scale of the senses, the understanding, and the reason. 
 These expansions, or extensions, consist in continuing the spir 
 itual Bight where the horizon falls on our natural vision, and 
 by this e second sight, discovering the long lines of law which 
 shoot in every direction. Everywhere he stands on a path 
 which has no end, but runs continuously round the universe. 
 Therefore, every word becomes an exponent of nature. What 
 ever he looks upon discloses a second sense, and ulterior 
 senses. His perception of the generation of contraries oi 
 death out of life, and life out of death, that law by which, 
 in nature, decomposition is recomposition, and putretact 
 and cholera are only signals of a new creation; his die 
 ment of the little in the large, and the large in the small 
 studying the state in the citizen, and the citizen in the state ; 
 and leaving it doubtful whether he exhibited the Republic as 
 an allegory on the education of the private soul ; his beau 
 ful definitions of ideas, of time, of form, of figure, of the line, 
 sometimes hypothetically given, as his denning of virtue, COT 
 acre, justice, temperance ; his love of the apologue, and his apo 
 logues themselves ; the cave of Trophonius ; the ring of Gyges ; 
 tlfe charioteer and two horses ; the golden, silver, brass, and 
 iron temperaments; Theuth and Thamus ; and the visions 
 of Hades and the Fates, fables which have imprinted them 
 selves in the human memory like the signs of the zodiac ; his 
 soliform eye and his boniform soul ; his doctrine of assimil 
 tion his doctrine of reminiscence ; his clear vision of the la* s 
 of return, or reaction, which secure instant justice throughout 
 
PLATO: NEW HEADINGS. 45 
 
 the universe, instanced everywhere, hut specially in the doc 
 trine, "what comes from God to us, ivturns from us to God," 
 and in Socrates belief that the laws below are sisters of the 
 laws above. 
 
 More striking examples are his moral conclusions. Plato 
 aliirms the coincidence of science tuid virtue; lor vice can 
 never know itself and virtue; hut virtue knows hoth itsi-lf 
 and vice. The eye attested that justice was best, as long as 
 it was profitable ; Plato affirms that it is profitable through 
 out ; that the profit is intrinsic, though the just conceal his 
 justice from gods and men ; that it is better to sutler injus 
 tice, than to do it ; that the sinner ought to covet punish 
 ment ; that the lie was more hurtful than homicide ; and that 
 ignorance, or the involuntary lie, was more calamitous than in 
 voluntary homicide ; that the soul is unwillingly deprived of 
 true opinions ; and that no man sins willingly; that the order 
 or proceeding of nature was from the mind to the body ; and, 
 though a sound body cannot restore an unsound mind, yet a 
 good soul can, by its virtue, render the body the best possible. 
 The intelligent have a right over the ignorant, namely, the 
 right of instructing them. The right punishment of one out of 
 tune, is to make him play in tune ; the fine which the good, 
 refusing to govern, ought to pay, is, to be governed by a worse 
 man ; that his guards shall not handle gold and silver, but 
 shall be instructed that there is gold and silver in their souls, 
 which will make men willing to give them everything which 
 they need. 
 
 This second sight explains the stress laid on geometry. He 
 saw that the globe of earth was not more lawful and precise 
 than was the supersensible; that a celestial geometry was in 
 place there, as a logic of lines and angles here below ; that the. 
 world was throughout mathematical ; the proportions are con 
 stant of oxygen, a/ote. and lime ; there is just so much water, 
 and slate, and magnesia; not less are the proportions constant 
 of the moral elements. 
 
 This eldest Goethe, hating varnish and falsehood, delighted 
 in revealing the real at the base <>f the accidental : in discov 
 ering connection, continuity, and representation everywhere ; 
 hating insulation ; and appears like the god of wealth among 
 the cabins of vagabonds, opening power and capability in every 
 thing he touches. Kthical science was new and vacant, when 
 Plato could write thus: "Of all whose ar-juments are left 
 to the men of the present time, no one has ever yet condemned 
 
46 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 injustice, or praised justice, otherwise than as respects the 
 repute, honors, and emoluments arising therefrom ; while, as 
 respects either of them in itself, and subsisting by its own 
 power in the soul of the possessor, and concealed both from 
 gods and men, no one has yet sufficiently investigated, either 
 in poetry or prose writings, how, namely, that the one is the 
 greatest of all the evils that the soul has within it, and justice 
 the greatest good." 
 
 His deh nition of ideas, as what is simple, permanent, uni 
 form, and self-existent, forever discriminating them from the 
 notions of the understanding, marks an era in the world. He 
 was born to behold the self-evolving power of spirit, endless, 
 generator of new ends ; a power which is the key at once to 
 the centrality and the evanescence of things. Plato is so 
 centred, that he can well spare all his dogmas. Thus the fact 
 of knowledge and ideas reveals to him the fact of eternity ; 
 and the doctrine of reminiscence he offers as the most probable 
 particular explication. Call that fanciful, it matters not ; 
 the connection between our knowledge and the abyss of being 
 is still real, and the explication must be not less magnificent. 
 
 He has indicated every eminent point in speculation. He 
 wrote on the scale of the" mind itself, so that all things have 
 symmetry in his tablet. He put in all the past, without 
 weariness, and descended into detail with a courage like that 
 he witnessed in nature. One would say, that his forerunners 
 had mapped out each a form, or a district, or an island, m 
 intellectual geography, but that Plato first drew the sphere. 
 He domesticates the "soul in nature ; man is the microcosm. 
 All the circles of the visible heaven represent as many circles 
 in the rational soul. There is no lawless particle, and there is 
 nothing casual in the action of the human mind. The names 
 of things, too, are fatal, following the nature of things. All 
 the o-ods of the Pantheon are, by their names, significant of a 
 profound sense. The gods are the ideas. Pan is speech, or 
 manifestation; Saturn, the contemplative; Jove, the regal 
 soul ; and Mars, passion. Venus is proportion ; Calliope, the 
 soul of the world ; Aglaia, intellectual illustration. 
 
 These thoughts, in sparkles of light, had appeared often to 
 pious and to poetic souls ; but this well-bred, all-knowing Greek 
 geometer comes with command, gathers them all up into rank 
 and gradation, the Euclid of holiness, and marries the two 
 parts of nature. Before all men, he saw the intellectual values 
 
PLATO: XKW READINGS. 47 
 
 of the moral sentiment. He describes his own ideal, when he 
 
 paints in Tinueus a god loading tilings troni disorder into order. 
 He kimll.d a liiv so truly in the centre, that we see the 
 sphere illuminated, and can distinguish poles, equator, and 
 lines of latitude, every arc and node : a theory so avera.ired, so 
 modulated that you would say, the winds of ages had swept 
 through this rhythmic structure, and not that it was the brief 
 extempore blotting of one short-lived scribe. Hence it has 
 happened that a very well-marked class of souls, namely, those 
 who delight in giving a spiritual, that is, an ethico-intellect ual 
 expression to every truth, by exhibiting an ulterior end which 
 legitimate to it, are said to Platonize. Thus, Michel 
 Angelo is a Platonist, in his sonnets. Shakespeare is a Platon- 
 ist, when he writes, k> Nature is made better by no mean, but 
 nature makes that mean," or, 
 
 " He that can endure 
 To follow with allf srianrc a fallen lord, 
 Does conquer him that did his master conquer, 
 And earns a place in the >tory." 
 
 Hamlet is a pure Platonist, and t is the magnitude only of 
 Shakespeare s proper genius that hinders him from being classed 
 as the most eminent of this school. Swedenborg, throughout 
 his prose poem of "Conjugal Love," is a Platonist. 
 
 His subtlety commended him to men of thought. The 
 secret of his popular success is the moral aim, which endeared 
 him to mankind. " Intellect," he said, " is king of heaven 
 and of earth"; but, in Plato, intellect is always moral. His 
 writings have also the sempiternal youth of poetry. For their 
 arguments, most of them, might have been couched in son- 
 and poetry has never soared higher than in the Timtcus 
 and the Ph;edrus. As the poet, too, he is only contemplative. 
 He did not, like Pythagoras, break himself with an institution. 
 All his painting in the Republic must be esteemed mythical, 
 with intent to bring out, sometimes in violent colors, his 
 thought. You cannot institute, without peril of charlatanism. 
 
 It was a high scheme, his absolute privilege for the best. 
 (which, to make emphatic, he expressed by community of 
 women.) as the premium which he would set on grandeur. 
 There shall be exempts of two kinds: first, those who by <!- 
 merit have put themselves below protection, outlaws; and 
 secondly, those who by eminence of nature and desert are out 
 of tin; reach of your rewards : let such be free of the city, and 
 above the law. We confide them to themselves; let them do 
 
 
48 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 with us as they will. Let none presume to measure the irreg 
 ularities of Michel Angelo and Socrates by village scales. 
 
 In his eighth book of the Republic, he throws a little 
 mathematical dust in our eyes. 1 am sorry to see him, alter 
 such noble superiorities, permitting the lie to governors. Plato 
 plays Providence a little with the baser sort, as people allow 
 themselves with their dogs and cats. 
 
III. 
 
 SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 
 
 TOL. ii. 2 
 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 
 
 A MOXG eminent persons, those who are most dear to 
 /-\ men are not of the class which the economist calls pro 
 ducers : they have nothing in their hands ; they have not cul 
 tivated corn, nor made bread ; they have not led out a colony, 
 nor invented a loom. A higher class, in the estimation and 
 love of this city-building, market-going race of mankind, are 
 the poets who, from the intellectual kingdom, feed the 
 thought and imagination with ideas and pictuivs which raise 
 mrn out of the world of corn and inonev, and console them for 
 the Bh0rt-OOmingB of the dav, and the meanness of labor and 
 tratlie. Then, also, the philosopher has his value, who Hatters 
 the intellect of this laborer, by en-aging him with subtleties 
 which instruct him in new faculties. Others may build cit 
 ies ; he is to understand them, and keep them in awe. But 
 there is a class who lead us into another region, the world 
 of morals, or of will. What is singular about this region of 
 thought, is its claim. Wherever the sentiment of right comes 
 in, it takes precedence of everything else. For other things. L 
 make poetry of them ; but the moral sentiment makes poetry 
 of me. 
 
 I have sometimes thought that he would render the greatest 
 service to modern criticism, who shall draw the line of relation 
 that subsists between Shakespeare and Swedenhorir. The hu 
 man mind stands ever in perplexity, demanding intellect, 
 demanding sanctity, impatient equally of each without the 
 other. The reconciler has not yet appeared. If we tire of 
 the saints, Shakespeare is our city of refuge. Yet the instincts 
 presently teach, that the problem of essence must tnkc prece 
 dence of all others, the questions of Whence? What / and 
 Whither? and the solution of these must be in a life, and not 
 ill a book. A drama or poem is a proximate or oblique reply ; 
 
 
52 REPRESENTATIVE .MEN. 
 
 but Moses, Menu, Jesus, work directly on this problem. The 
 atmosphere of moral sentiment is a region of grandeur which 
 reduces all material magnificence to toys, yet opens to every 
 wretch that has reason the doors of the universe. Almost 
 with a fierce haste it lays its empire on the man. In the lan- 
 gua^e of the Koran, " God said, the heaven and the earth, and 
 all that is between them, think ye that we created them in 
 jest and that ye shall not return to us ?" It is the kingdom 
 of the will, and by inspiring the will, which is the seat of per 
 sonality, seems to convert the universe into a person ; 
 
 il The realms of being to no other bow, 
 Not only all are thine, but all are Thou." 
 
 All men are commanded by the saint. The Koran makes a 
 distinct class of those who are by nature good, and whose 
 goodness has an influence on others, and pronounces this 
 class to be the aim of creation : the other classes are admitted 
 to the feast of being, only as following in the tram of this. 
 And the Persian poet exclaims to a soul of this kind : - 
 
 " Go boldly forth, and feast on being s banquet; 
 Thou art the called, the rest admitted with thee." 
 
 The privilege of this class is an access to the secrets and 
 structure of nature, by some higher method than by experi 
 ence. In common parlance, what one man is said to learn by 
 experience, a man of extraordinary sagacity is said, without ex 
 perience, to divine. The Arabians say that Abul Kham, the 
 mvstic and Abu Ali Seena, the philosopher, conferred togeth 
 er ; and, on parting, the philosopher said, " All that he sees I 
 know " ; and the mystic said, " All that he knows, I see. 
 one should ask the reason of this intuition, the solution would 
 lead us into that property which Plato denoted as Reminis 
 cence, and which is implied by the Bramins in the tenet ot 
 Transmigration. The soul having been often born, or as the 
 Hindoos say, " travelling the path of existence through thou 
 sands of births," having beheld the things which are here, those 
 which are in heaven, and those which are beneath, there is 
 nothing of which she has not gained the knowledge: no won 
 der that she is able to recollect, in regard to any one thing, 
 what formerly she knew. " For, all things in nature being 
 linked and related, and the soul having heretofore known all, 
 nothin^ hinders but that any man who has recalled 
 or, according to the common phrase, has learned one 1 
 only, should of himself recover all his ancient knowledge, am 
 
; OR, TIIK MYSTIC. 53 
 
 find out again all the rest, if In- him* but OOUlge, and faint 
 not in the midst of liis researches. For inquiry and learning 
 is reminiaoenoe all." How much more, if lie that inquires he 
 a Imly and godlike soul . l- or, by being assimilated to the 
 original soul, hy whom, and after whom, all things subsist, the 
 soul of man does then easily (low into all things, and all things 
 How into it : they mix ; and he is present and sympathetic 
 with their structure and law. 
 
 This path is difficult, secret, and beset with terror. The 
 ancients called it . rcdnxi/ or absence, a getting out of their 
 bodies to think. All religious history contains traces of the 
 trance of saints, a beatitude, but without any sign of jov, 
 earnest, solitary, even sad; "the flight," Plotinus called it, 
 "of the alone to the alone"; Mveo-is, the closing of the 
 whence our word, J///*//V. The trail. -cs of Socrates. 1 loti- 
 nus, Porphyry, Behmen, Bunyan, Kox, Pascal, Cuion, Swcden- 
 borg, will readily come to mind. Hut what as readily comes 
 to mind, is, the accompaniment of disease. This beatitude 
 OOmefl in terror, and with shocks to the mind of the receiver. 
 "It o er-informs the tenement of clay," and drive s the man 
 mad; or, gives a certain violent bias, which taints his judg 
 ment. In the chief examples of religious illumination, some 
 what morbid has mingled, in spite of the unquestionable hi 
 Crease of mental power. Must the highest good drag after it 
 a quality which neutralizes and discredits it? 
 
 " Indeed, it takes 
 
 From our achievements, when performed at height, 
 The pith and marrow of our attribute. 1 
 
 Shall we say, that the economical mother disburses so much 
 earth and so much fire, by weight and metre, to make a man, 
 and will not .add a pennyweight, though a nation is perishing 
 for a leader? Therefore, the men of (Jod purchased their sci 
 ence by folly or pain. If you will have pure carbon, car 
 buncle, OF diamond, to make the brain transparent, the trunk 
 and organs shall be so much the grosser: instead of porcelain, 
 they are potter s earth, clay, or mud. 
 
 In modern times, no such remarkable example of this intro 
 verted mind has occurred, as in Kmanuel Swedcnborg, horn 
 in Stockholm, in lliSS. This man. who appeared to his con 
 temporaries a visionarv, and elixir of moonbeams, no doubt 
 led the most real life of any man then in the world : and now, 
 when the royal and ducal 1-Yederics, Crist ierns, and Unilis- 
 wicks, of that day, have slid into oblivion, he begins to spread 
 
54 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 himself into the minds of thousands. As happens in great 
 men, he seemed, by the variety and amount of his powers, to 
 be a composition of several persons, - like the giant fruits 
 which are matured in gardens by the union of four or 
 single blossoms. His frame is on a larger scale, and possesses 
 the" advantages of size. As it is easier to see the reflection 
 of the great sphere in large globes, though defaced by some 
 crack or blemish, than in drops of water, so men of large 
 calibre though with some eccentricity or madness, like 1 ascai 
 or Newton, help us more than balanced mediocre minds 
 
 His youth and training could not fail to be extraordinary. 
 Such a boy could not whistle or dance, but goes grubbing into 
 mines and mountains, prying into chemistry, optics physiol 
 ogy mathematics, and astronomy, to find images fi 
 measure of his versatile and capacious brain. He was a 
 scholar from a child, and was educated at Upsala. At -the 
 age of twenty-eight, he was made Assessor of the Board of 
 Mines, by Charles XII. In 1716, he left home for four years 
 and visited the universities of England, Holland, France and 
 Germany. He performed a notable feat of engineering in 1 U b, 
 at the "siege of Fredericshall, by hauling two galleys five 
 boats, and a sloop, some fourteen English miles overland, for 
 the royal service. In 1721, he journeyed over Europe to 
 examine mines and smelting-works. He published, in 1716, 
 his Daedalus Hyperboreus, and, from this time, for the next 
 thirty years, was employed in the composition and publication 
 of his scientific works/ With the like force, he threw him 
 self into theology. In 1743, when he was fifty-four years 
 old what is called his illumination began. All his metallurgy, 
 and transportation of ships overland, was absorbed into this 
 ecstasy. He ceased to publish any more scientific books, 
 withdrew from his practical labors, and devoted himself to 
 the writing and publication of his voluminous theological 
 works, which were printed at his own expense, or at that ot 
 the Duke of Brunswick, or other prince, at Dresden, Leipsic, 
 London or Amsterdam. Later, he resigned his office ot As 
 sessor : the salary attached to this office continued to be paid 
 to him during his life. His duties had brought him into inti 
 mate acquaintance with King Charles XII., by whom he was 
 much consulted and honored. The like favor was continued 
 to him by his successor. At the Diet of 1751, Count Hopken 
 says the most solid memorials on finance were from his pen. 
 In Sweden, he appears to have attracted a marked regard. 
 
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 55 
 
 His rare science and practical skill, and the added fame of 
 second sight and extraordinary religious knowledge and gifts, 
 drew to him queens, nobles, clergy, shipmasters, and people 
 about the ports through which he was wont to pass in his 
 many voyages. The clergy interfered a little with the im 
 portation and publication of his religious works ; but he serins 
 to have kept the friendship of men in power. He was never 
 married. He had great modesty and gentleness of bearing. 
 His habits were simple ; he lived on bread, rnilk, and vege 
 tables ; he lived in a house situated in a large garden: he 
 went several times to England, where he does not seem to 
 have attracted any attention whatever from the learned or the 
 eminent; and died at London, March 29, 1772, of apoplexy, 
 in his eighty-fifth year. He is described, when in London, as 
 a man of a quiet, clerical habit, not averse to tea and cotl ee, 
 and kind to children. He wore a sword when in full velvet 
 dress, and whenever he walked out, carried a gold-headed 
 cane. There is a common portrait of him in antique coat and 
 wig, but the face has a wandering or vacant air. 
 
 The genius which was to penetrate the science of the age 
 with a far more subtle science ; to pass the bounds of space 
 and time ; venture into the dim spirit-realm, and attempt to 
 establish a new religion in the world, began its lessons in 
 quarries and forges, in the smelting-pot and crucible, in ship 
 yards and dissecting-rooms. No one man is perhaps able to 
 judge of the merits of his works on so many subjects. One 
 is glad to learn that his books on mines and metals arc held in 
 the highest esteem by those who understand these matters. 
 It seems that he anticipated much science of the nineteenth 
 century ; anticipated, in astronomy, the discovery of the 
 seventh planet, but, unhappily, not also of the eighth ; anti 
 cipated the views of modern astronomy in regard to the gen 
 eration of earths by the sun ; in magnetism, some important 
 experiments and conclusions of later students; in chemistry, 
 the atomic theory ; in anatomy, the discoveries of Sclilielitin-j-, 
 MoniOj and Wilson ; and first demonstrated the ottice of the 
 lungs. His excellent English editor magnanimously lays no 
 stress on his discoveries, since he was too great to care to be 
 original ; and we are to judge, by what he can spare, of what 
 remains. 
 
 A colossal soul, he lies vast abroad on his times, imcompre- 
 hendcd by them, and requires a long local distance to be seen ; 
 suggests, as Aristotle, Bacon, Seklun, Humboldt, that a certain 
 
56 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 vastness of learning, or quasi omnipresence of the human soul 
 in nature, is possible. His superb speculation, as from a tower, 
 over nature and arts, without ever losing sight of the texture 
 and sequence of things, almost realizes his own picture, in his 
 " Principia," of the original integrity of man. Over and above 
 the merit of his particular discoveries, is the capital merit of 
 his self-equality. A drop of water has the properties of the 
 sea, but cannot exhibit a storm. There is beauty of a concert, 
 as well as of a flute ; strength of a host, as well as of a hero ; 
 and, in Swedenborg, those who are best acquainted with mod 
 ern books will most admire the merit of mass. One of the 
 missouriums and mastodons of literature, he is not to be meas 
 ured by whole colleges of ordinary scholars. His stalwart 
 presence would flutter the gowns of a university. Our books 
 are false by being fragmentary : their sentences are bonmots, 
 and not parts of natural discourse ; childish expressions of 
 surprise or pleasure in nature ; or, worse, owing a brief noto 
 riety to their petidance, or aversion from the order of nature, 
 being some curiosity or oddity, designedly not in harmony 
 with nature, and purposely framed to excite surprise, as jug 
 glers do by concealing their means. But Swedenborg is svs- 
 tematic, and respective of the world in every sentence : all the 
 means arc orderly given ; his faculties work with astronomic 
 punctuality, and this admirable writing is pure from all pert- 
 ness or egotism. 
 
 Swedenborg was born into an atmosphere of great ideas. 
 T is hard to say what was his own : yet his life was dignified 
 by noblest pictures of the universe. The robust Aristotelian 
 method, with its breadth and adequateness, shaming our sterile 
 and linear logic by its genial radiation, conversant with series 
 and degree, with effects and ends, skilful to discriminate pow 
 er from form, essence from accident, and opening, by its termi 
 nology and definition, high roads into nature, had trained a 
 race of athletic philosophers. Harvey had shown the circula 
 tion of the blood ; Gilbert had shown that the earth was a 
 magnet ; Descartes, taught by Gilbert s magnet, with its vor 
 tex, spiral, and polarity, had filled Europe with the leading 
 thought of vortical motion, as the secret of nature. Newton, 
 in the year in which Swedenborg was born, published the 
 " Principia," and established the universal gravity. Malpighi, 
 following the high doctrines of Hippocrates, Leucippus, and 
 Lucretius, had given emphasis to the dogma that nature works 
 in leasts, " tota in minimis exist it natura." Unrivalled dis- 
 
s\VKi>KXp,i)i;r, ; on, THE MYSTIC. 57 
 
 sectors, S\vammcrd;un, Lccmvenhoek, Win slow, Kiistaehius, 
 Hcistor, Vesalius, JJoerhaave, h;ul left nothing for sculp. 1 or 
 microscope to reveal in human or comparative anatomy ; Lin 
 naeus, his contemporary, was affirming, in his beautiful sci 
 ence, that "Nature is always like herself "; and, lastly, the 
 nobilitv of method, the largest application of principles, had 
 been exhibited by Leibnitz and Christian \Volff, in cosmology; 
 whilst Locke and Grotius had drawn the moral argument. 
 What was left for a genius of the largest calibre, but to go 
 over their ground, and verity and unite I It is easy to see, in 
 these minds, the origin of Swedenborg s studies, and the sug 
 gestion of his problems. He had a capacity to entertain and 
 vivify these volumes of thought. Yet the proximity of these 
 geniuses, one or other of whom had introduced all his leading 
 ideas, makes Swedenborg another example of the difficulty, 
 even in a highly fertile genius, of proving originality, the first 
 birth and annunciation of one of the laws of nature. 
 
 He named his favorite views, the doctrine of Forms, the doc 
 trine of Series and Decrees, the doctrine of Influx, the doctrine 
 of Correspondence. His statement of these doctrines deserves 
 to be studied hi his books. Not every man can read them, 
 but they will reward him who can. His thcologic works aro 
 valuable to illustrate these. His writings would be a sufficient 
 library to a lonely and athletic student ; and the " Economy 
 of the Animal Kingdom " is one of those books which, by the 
 sustained dignity of thinking, is an honor to the human race. 
 He had studied spars and rnetals to some purpose. His varied 
 and solid knowledge makes his style lustrous with points and 
 shooting spicula of thought, and resembling one of those win 
 ter morn ings when the air sparkles with crystals. The gran 
 deur of the topics makes the grandeur of the style. He was 
 apt for cosmology, because of that native perception of iden 
 tity which made mere size of no account to him. In the 
 atom of magnetic iron, ho saw the quality which would gen 
 erate the spiral motion of sun and planet. 
 
 The thoughts in which he lived were, the universality of 
 each law in nature; the Platonic doctrine of the scale or de 
 grees ; the version or conversion of each into other, and so the 
 correspondence of all the parts ; the fine secret that little ex 
 plains l.iru e, and large, little ; the centrality of man in nature, 
 and the connection that subsists throughout all things : lie saw 
 that the human body was strictly universal, or an instrument 
 through which the soul feeds and is fed by the whole of mat- 
 3* 
 
58 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 ter so that he held, in exact antagonism to the sceptics that 
 the wiser a man is, the more will he be a worshipper of the 
 Deity " In short, he was a believer in the Identity-philoso- 
 phy, which he held not idly, as the dreamers of Berlin or Bos 
 ton, but which he experimented with and established through 
 years of labor, with the heart and strength of the rudest Vik 
 ing that his rough Sweden ever sent to battle. 
 
 This theory dates from the oldest philosophers, and derives 
 perhaps its best illustration from the newest. It is this : that 
 nature iterates her means perpetually on successive planes. 
 In the old aphorism, nature is always self-similar, in t 
 plant, the eye or germinative point opens to a leaf, then to 
 another leaf," with a power of transforming the leaf into radicle, 
 stamen, pistil, petal, bract, sepal, or seed. The whole art of 
 the plant is still to repeat leaf on leaf without end, the more 
 or less of heat, light, moisture, and food determining the form 
 it shall assume. In the animal, nature makes a vertebra, or a 
 spine of vertebra, and helps herself still by a new spine, with 
 a limited power of modifying its form, spine on spine, to the 
 end of the world. A poetic anatomist, in our own day, teaches 
 that a snake, being a horizontal line, and man, being an erect 
 line, constitute a right angle; and, between the lines of this 
 mvstical quadrant, all animated beings find their place : and he 
 assumes the hair-worm, the span-worm, or the snake, as the type 
 or prediction of the spine. Manifestly, at the end of the spine, 
 nature puts out smaller spines, as arms ; at the end 
 arms, new snines, as hands ; at the other end, she repeats the 
 process, as legs and feet. At the top of the column, she puts 
 out another ^spine, which doubles or loops itself over, as a 
 span-worm, into a ball, and forms the skull, with extremiti 
 aUin : the hands being now the upper jaw, the feet the lower 
 iaw, the fingers and toes being represented this time by upper 
 and lower teeth. This new spine is destined to high uses. It 
 is a new man on the shoulders of the last. It can almost g 
 its trunk, and manage to live alone, according to the Platonic 
 idea in the Timams. Within it, on a higher plane, all that 
 was done in the trunk repeats itself. Nature recites her les 
 son once more in a higher mood. The mind is a finer body, 
 and resumes its functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, ex 
 cluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal element Here, 
 in the^brain, is all the process of alimentation repeated, in the 
 acquiring, comparing, digesting, and assimilating of experience. 
 Here again is the mystery of generation repeated. In t 
 
SWEDEXBORG ; OR, THE MYSTIC. 59 
 
 brain arc male ami female faculties : here is marriage, here is 
 fruit. And there is no limit to this ascending scale, but. series 
 on series. Everything, at the end of one use, is taken up into 
 the next, each series punctually repeating every organ and 
 process of the last. We are adapted to infinity. We are hard 
 to please, and love nothing which ends : and in nature is no 
 end ; but everything, at the end of one use, is lifted into a 
 superior, and the ascent of these things climbs into demonic 
 and celestial natures. Creative force, like a musical composer, 
 goes on umveariedly repeating a simple air or theme, now high, 
 now low, in solo, in chorus, ten thousand times reverberated, 
 till it fills earth and heaven with the chant. 
 
 Gravitation, as explained by Newton, is good ; but grander, 
 when we find chemistry only an extension of the law of masses 
 into particles, and that the atomic theory shows the action of 
 chemistry to be mechanical also. Metaphvsics shows us a sort 
 of gravitation, operative also in the mental phenomena ; and 
 the terrible tabulation of the French statists brings every 
 piece of whim and humor to be reducible also to exact numeri 
 cal ratios. If one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thou 
 sand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, then in every 
 twenty thousand, or thirty thousand, is found one man who 
 eats shoes, or marries his grandmother. What we call gravi 
 tation, and fancy ultimate, is one fork of a mightier stream, 
 for which we have yet no name. Astronomy is excellent ; but 
 it must come np into life to have its full value, and not re 
 main there in globes and spaces. The globule of blood gyrates 
 around its own axis in the human veins, as the planet in the 
 sky ; and the circles of intellect relate to those of the heavens. 
 Each law of nature has the like universality ; eating, sleep or 
 hibernation, rotation, generation, metamorphosis, vortical mo 
 tion, which is seen in eggs as in planets. These grand rhymes 
 or returns in nature, the dear, best-known face startling us 
 at every turn, under a mask so unexpected that we think it 
 the face of a stranger, and carrving up the semblance into di 
 vine forms, delighted the prophetic eye of Swedenborg ; and 
 he must be reckoned a leader in that revolution, which, by giv 
 ing to science an idea, has given to an aimless accumulation of 
 experiments, guidance and form, and a beating heart. 
 
 I own, with some regret, that his printed works amount to 
 about fifty stout octavos, his scientific works being about half 
 of the whole number ; and it appears that a mass of manu 
 script still unedited remains in the royal library at Stockholm. 
 
CO REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 The scientific works have just now been translated into Engf 
 lish, in an excellent edition. 
 
 Swedenborg printed these scientific books in the ten years 
 from 1734 to 1744, and they remained from that time neg 
 lected : and now, after their century is complete, he has at 
 last found a pupil in Mr. Wilkinson, in London, a philosophic 
 critic, with a coequal vigor of understanding and imagination 
 comparable only to Lord Bacon s, who has produced his mas 
 ter s buried books to the day, and transferred them, with 
 every advantage, from their forgotten Latin into English, to 
 go round the world in our commercial and conquering tongue. 
 This startling reappearance of Swedenborg, after a hundred 
 years, in his pupil, is not the least remarkable fact in his his 
 tory. Aided, it is said, by the munificence of Mr. Clissold, 
 and also by his literary skill, this piece of poetic justice is 
 done. The admirable preliminary discourses with which Mr. 
 Wilkinson has enriched these volumes, throw all the contem 
 porary philosophy of England into shade, and leave me noth 
 ing to say on their proper grounds. 
 
 The "Animal Kingdom" is a book of wonderful merits. 
 It was written with the highest end, to put science and the 
 soul, long estranged from each other, at one again. It was an 
 anatomist s account of the human body, in the highest style 
 of poetry. Nothing can exceed the bold and brilliant treat 
 ment of a subject usually so dry and repulsive. He saw na 
 ture " wreathing through an everlasting spiral, with wheels 
 that never dry, on axles that never creak," and sometimes 
 sought " to uncover those secret recesses where Nature is sit 
 ting at the fires in the depths of her laboratory " ; whilst the 
 picture comes recommended by the hard fidelity with which 
 it is based on practical anatomy. It is remarkable that this 
 sublime genius decides, peremptorily for the analytic, against 
 the synthetic method ; and, in a book whose genius is a dar 
 ing poetic synthesis, claims to confine himself to a rigid ex 
 perience. 
 
 He knows, if ho only, the flowing of nature, and how wise 
 was that old answer of Amasis to him who bade him drink up 
 the sea, " Yes, willingly, if you will stop the rivers that flow 
 in." Few knew as much about nature and her subtle man- 
 nerg; or expressed more subtly her goings. He thought as 
 large a demand is made on our faith by nature, as by mira 
 cles. " He noted that in her proceeding from first principles 
 through her several subordinations, there was no state through 
 
SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. fil 
 
 which she did not pass, as if her path la} through all things." 
 "For as often as she betakes herself upward t n>m visible 
 ])heiioiiieua, or, in other words, withdraws herself inward, she 
 instantly, as it wore, disappears, while 110 one knows what has 
 become of her, or whither she is gone : so that it is nee- 
 to take science as a guide in pursuing her sti-ps." 
 
 The pursuing the inquiry under the light of an end or final 
 cause, gives wonderful animation, a sort of personality to the 
 whole writing. This book announces his favorite dogmas. 
 The ancient doctrine of Hippocrates, that the brain is a 
 gland ; and of Leucippus, that the atom may be known by 
 the mass ; or, in Plato, the macrocosm by the microcosm j 
 and, in the verses of Lucretius, 
 
 O^sa videlicet e pauxillis atque minutis 
 ()<siini- sic ct de panxillis atque minutis 
 Viseeribus vi>cu- :_ r i ;::;i, sanguenque creari 
 Sanguinis inter so multi.s coeiintibus guttis; 
 Ex aurique putat micis consistere posse 
 Aurum, et de terris terrain concrescere parvis: 
 Ignibus ex igiieis, humorcm humoribus ease. 
 
 LIB. I. 835. 
 
 " The principle of all things, entrails made 
 Of smallest entrails; bone, of smallest bone; 
 Blood, of small sanguine drops n-liiced to one; 
 Gold, of small grains; oartb, of small sands compacted; 
 Small drops to water, sparks to fire contracted " : 
 
 and which Malpighi had summed in his maxim, that "nature 
 exists entire in beasts," is a favorite thought of Sweden- 
 bofg. " It is a constant law of the organic body, that large, 
 compound, or visible forms exist and subsist from smaller, 
 simpler, and ultimately from invisible forms, which act simi 
 larly to the larger ones, but more perfectly and more uni 
 versally ; and the least forms so perfectly and universally, as 
 to involve an idea representative of their entire universe." 
 The unities of each organ are so many little organs, homo 
 geneous with their compound : the unities of the tongue are 
 little tongues ; those of the stomach, little stomachs ; those 
 of the heart are little hearts. This fruitful idea furnishes, a 
 key to every secret. What was too small for the eye to de 
 tect was read by the abrogates; what was too larg-. by the, 
 units. There is no end to his application of the thought. 
 "Hunger is an aggregate f very many little huiiL r < 
 losses of blood by the little veins all over the body." It is a 
 key to his theology also. "Man is a kind of very minute 
 heaven, corresponding to the world of spirits and to heaven. 
 
62 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 Every particular idea of man, and every affection, yea, every 
 smallest part of his affection, is an image and effigy of him. 
 A spirit may be known from only a single thought. God is 
 the grand man." 
 
 The hardihood and thoroughness of his study of nature re 
 quired a theory of forms, also. " Forms ascend in order from 
 the lowest to the highest. The lowest form is angular, or the 
 terrestrial and corporeal. The second and next higher form is 
 the circular, which is also called the perpetual-angular, be 
 cause the circumference of a circle is a perpetual angle. The 
 form above this is the spiral, parent and measure of circular 
 forms ; its diameters are not rectilinear, but variously circular, 
 and have a spherical surface for centre ; therefore it is called 
 the perpetual-circular. The form above this is the vortical, or 
 perpetual-spiral : next, the perpetual-vortical, or celestial : 
 last, the perpetual-celestial, or spiritual." 
 
 Was it strange that a genius so bold should take the last 
 step, also, conceive that he might attain the science of all 
 sciences, to unlock the meaning of the world? In the first 
 volume of the "Animal Kingdom," he broaches the subject, 
 in a remarkable note : 
 
 " In our doctrine of Representations and Correspondences, 
 we shall treat of both these symbolical and typical resem 
 blances, and of the astonishing things which occur, I will not 
 say, in the living body only, but throughout nature, and which 
 correspond so entirely to supreme and spiritual things, that 
 one would swear that the physical world was purely symbolical 
 of the spiritual world ; insomuch, that if we choose to express 
 any natural truth in physical and definite vocal terms, and to 
 convert these terms only into the corresponding and spiritual 
 terms, we shall by this means elicit a spiritual truth, or 
 theological dogma, in place of the physical truth or precept : 
 although no mortal would have predicted that anything of the 
 kind could possibly arise by bare literal transposition ; inas 
 much as the one precept, considered separately from the other, 
 appears to have absolutely no relation to it. I intend, here 
 after, to communicate a number of examples of such corre 
 spondences, together with a vocabulary containing the terms 
 of spiritual things, as well as of the physical things for which 
 they are to be substituted. This symbolism pervades the liv 
 ing body." 
 
 The fact, thus explicitly stated, is implied in all poetry, in 
 allegory, in fable, in the use of emblems, and in the structure 
 
SWEDENBORG ; OR, THE MYSTIC. 63 
 
 of language. Plato knew of it, as is evident from his twice 
 bisected line, in the sixth book of the Republic. Lord l.aemi 
 had found that truth and nature differed only us seal and print ; 
 and he instanced some physical propositions, with their trans 
 lation into a moral or political sense. Behmen, and all mys 
 tics, imply this law, in their dark riddle-writing. The poets, 
 in as far as they are poets, use it ; but it is known to them 
 only, as the magnet was known for ages, as a toy. Sweden- 
 borg first put the fact into a detached and scientific statement, 
 because it was habitually present to him, and never not seen. 
 It was involved, as we explained already, in the doctrine of 
 identity and iteration, because the mental series exactly tallies 
 with the material series. It required an insight that could 
 rank things in order and series ; or, rather, it required such 
 Tightness of position, that the poles of the eye should coincide 
 with the axis of the world. The earth had fed its mankind 
 through five or six millenniums, and they had sciences, religions, 
 philosophies ; and yet had failed to see the correspondence of 
 meaning between every part and every other part. And, down 
 to this hour, literature has no book in which the symbolism of 
 things is scientifically opened. One would say, that, as soon 
 as men had the first hint that every sensible object, animal, 
 rock, river, air, nay, space and time, subsists not for itself, 
 nor finally to a material end, but as a picture-language to tell 
 another story of beings and duties, other science would be put 
 by, and a science of such grand presage would absorb all facul 
 ties : that each man would ask of all objects, what they mean : 
 Why does the horizon hold me fast, with my joy and grief, in 
 this centre] Why hear I the same sense from countless dif 
 fering voices, and read one never quite expressed fact in endless 
 picture-language ] Yet, whether it be, that these things will 
 not be intellectually learned, or, that many centuries must 
 elaborate and compose so rare and opulent a soul, there is 
 no comet, rock-stratum, fossil, fish, quadruped, spider, or fungus, 
 that, for itself, does not interest more scholars and classifiers, 
 than the meaning and upshot of the frame of things. 
 
 But Swedcnhorg was not content with the culinary use of 
 the world. In his fifty-fourth year, these thoughts held him 
 fast, and his profound mind admitted the perilous opinion, too 
 frequent in religious history, that he was an abnormal person, 
 to whom was granted the privilege of conversing with angels 
 and spirits; and this ecstasy connected itself with just this 
 office of explaining the moral import of the sensible world. 
 
64 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 To a right perception, at once broad and minute, of the order 
 of nature, he added the comprehension of the moral laws in 
 their widest social aspects; but whatever he saw, through 
 some excessive determination to form, in his constitution, he 
 saw not abstractedly, but in pictures, heard it in dialogues, 
 constructed it in events. When he attempted to announce the 
 law most sanely, he was forced to couch it in parable. 
 
 Modern psychology offers no similar example of a deranged 
 balance. The principal powers continued to maintain a healthy 
 action ; and, to a reader who can make due allowance in the 
 report for the reporter s peculiarities, the results are still in 
 structive, and a more striking testimony to the sublime laws 
 he announced, than any that balanced dulness could afford. 
 He attempts to give some account of the modus of the new 
 state, affirming that " his presence in the spiritual world is at 
 tended with a certain separation, but only as to the intellectual 
 part of his mind, not as to the will part " ; and he affirms 
 that " he sees, with the internal sight, the things that are in 
 another life, more clearly than he sees the things which are 
 here in the world." 
 
 Having adopted the belief that certain books of the Old and 
 New Testaments were exact allegories, or written in the angelic 
 and ecstatic mode, he employed his remaining years in extri 
 cating from the literal, the universal sense. He had borrowed 
 from Plato the fine fable of " a most ancient people, men bet 
 ter than we, and dwelling nigher to the gods " ; and Sweden- 
 borg added, that they used the earth symbolically ; that these, 
 when they saw terrestrial objects, did not think at all about 
 them, but only about those which they signified. The corre 
 spondence between thoughts and things henceforward occupied 
 him. " The very organic form resembles the end inscribed on 
 it." A man is in general, and in particular, an organized jus 
 tice or injustice, selfishness or gratitude. And the cause of 
 this harmony he assigned in the Arcana : " The reason why all 
 and single things, in the heavens and on earth, are representa 
 tive, is because they exist from an influx of the Lord, through 
 heaven." This design of exhibiting such correspondences, 
 which, if adequately executed, would be the poem of the world, 
 in which all history and science would play an essential part, 
 was narrowed and defeated by the exclusively theologic direc 
 tion which his inquiries took. His perception of nature is not 
 human and universal, but is mystical and Hebraic. He fastens 
 each natural object to a theologic notion ; a horse signifies 
 
SWEDEXBORG ; Oil, THE MYSTIC. G5 
 
 carnal understanding; a tree, perception ; the moon, faith; a 
 cat means this ; an ostrich, that ; an art ichoke, this other ; and 
 poorlv tethers every symbol to a several errlesiast ie 
 The .slippery Proteus is not so easily caught. In nature, each 
 individual symbol plays innumerable pans, as each partiele of 
 matter circulates in turn through every system. The central 
 identity enables any one symbol to express successively all the 
 qualities and shades of real being. In the transmission of the 
 
 nly waters, every hose fits every hydrant. Nature avenges 
 herself speedily on the hard pedantry that would chain her 
 waves. She is no literalist. Everything must be taken 
 genially, anil we must be at the top of our condition, to under 
 stand anything rightly. 
 
 His theological bias thus fatally narrowed his interpretation 
 of nature, and the dictionary of symbols is yet to be written. 
 But the interpreter, whom mankind must still expect, will 
 find no predecessor who has approached so near to the true 
 problem. 
 
 S \\edenborg styles himself, in the title-page of his books, 
 
 .ant of the Lord Jesus Christ"; and by force of intel- 
 
 .nd in etl* ct, he is the last Father in the Clu.rch, and is 
 not likely to have a successor. No wonder that his depth of 
 ethical wisdom should give him influence as a teacher. To 
 the withered traditional church yielding dry catechisms, he 
 l-.-t in nature again, and the worshipper, escaping ir-m the 
 of verbs and texts, is surprised to find himself a party 
 to the whole of his religion : his religion thinks for him, and 
 is of universal application: he turns it on every side ; it tits 
 every part of life, interprets and dignifies every circumstance. 
 
 d of a religion which visited him diplomatically thi 
 four times, when he was born, when he married, when he 
 fell sick, and when he died, and for the rest never interfered 
 with him, here was a teaching which accompanied him all 
 dav, accompanied him even into sleep and dreams ; into his 
 thinking, and showed him through what a long ancestry his 
 thoughts descend ; into society, and showed by what allinities 
 he was girt to his equals and his counterparts ; into natural 
 
 9, and showed their origin and meaning, what are friend 
 ly and what are hurtful ; and opened the future world by in- 
 
 MLT the continuity of the same laws. His disciples 
 that their intellect is invigorated by the study of his 
 pooka. 
 
 There is no such problem for criticism as his theologicaj 
 
66 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 writings, their merits are so commanding ; yet such grave de 
 ductions must be made. Their immense and sandy ditiuseness 
 is like the prairie, or the desert, and their incongruities are like 
 the last deliration. He is supcrflously explanatory, and his 
 feeling of the ignorance of men, strangely exaggerated. Men 
 take truths of this nature very fast. Yet he abounds in as 
 sertions : he is a rich discoverer, and of things which most 
 import us to know. His thought dwells in essential resem 
 blances, like the resemblance of a house to the man who built it. 
 He saw things in their law, in likeness of function, not of 
 structure. There is an invariable method and order in his 
 delivery of his truth, the habitual proceeding of the mind 
 from inmost to outmost. What earnestness and weightiness, 
 his eye never roving, without one swell of vanity, or 
 one look to self, in any common form of literary pride ! a 
 theoretic or speculative man, but whom no practical man in 
 the universe could affect to scorn. Plato is a gownsman : his 
 garment, though of purple, and almost sky-woven, is an aca 
 demic robe, and hinders action with its voluminous folds. 
 But this mystic is awful to Caesar. Lycurgus himself would 
 bow. 
 
 The moral insight of Swedenborg, the correction of popular 
 errors, the announcement of ethical laws, take him out of 
 comparison with any other modern writer, and entitle him to 
 a place, vacant for some ages, among the lawgivers of man 
 kind. That slow but commanding influence which he has 
 acquired, like that of other religious geniuses, must be exces 
 sive also, and have its tides, before it subsides into a permanent 
 amount. Of course, what is real and universal cannot be con 
 fined to the circle of those who sympathize strictly with his 
 genius, but will pass forth into the common stock of wise and 
 just thinking. The world has a sure chemistry, by which it 
 extracts what is excellent in its children, and lets fall the in 
 firmities and limitations of the grandest mind. 
 
 That metempsychosis which is familiar in the old mythol 
 ogy of the Greeks, collected in Ovid, and in the Indian Trans 
 migration, and is there objective, or really takes place in bodies 
 by alien will, in Swedenborg s mind, has a more philosophic 
 character. It is subjective, or depends entirely upon the 
 thought of the person. All things in the universe arrange 
 themselves to each person anew, according to his ruling love. 
 Man is such as his affection and thought are. Man is man by 
 virtue of willing, not by virtue of knowing and understanding. 
 
SWEDEXBORG ; OR, THE MYSTIC C7 
 
 As he is, so he sees. The m.-r -Id are broken 
 
 up. Interiors associate all in tin.- >pintual world. Whatever 
 the ai,_ ed upon was to them celestial. Each Satan ap- 
 
 lo himself a man : to tliM.se as liail a.> he, ;i comely man; 
 to the purified, a heap of carrion. Nothing can resist states: 
 everything gravitates : like will to like : what we call poetic 
 justice takes effect on the spot. We have come into a world 
 which is a living poem. Everything is as 1 am. Bird and 
 beast is not bird and beast, but emanation and effluvia of the 
 minds and wills of men there pivsviit. Every one makes his 
 own house and state. The ghosts are tormented with th 
 of death, and cannot remember that they have died. They 
 who are in evil and falsehood are afraid of all others. Such as 
 have deprived themselves of charity, wander and flee : the so 
 cieties which they approach discover their quality, and drive 
 them away. The covetous seem to thi-m^chvs t be abiding 
 in cells where their money is deposited, and these to be i: 
 ed with mice. They who place merit in good works seem to 
 themselves to cut wood. " I asked such, if they were not wea 
 ried ? They replied, that they have not yet done work enough 
 
 rit heaven." 
 
 He delive?-s golden sayings, which express with singular 
 beauty the ethical laws ; as when he uttered that famed sen 
 tence, that, " in heaven the angels are advancing continually 
 to the sprinirtirae of their youth, so that the oldest angel ap- 
 jears the youngest": "The more angels, the more room": 
 The perfection of man is the love of u<e " : Man, in his per- 
 
 rm, is heaven" : " What is from Him. is Him " : " Ends 
 always ascend as nature " And the truly poetic ac 
 
 count of the writinir in the inmost heaven, which, as it con- 
 
 f inflexions according to the form of heaven, can be read 
 without instruction. He almost justifies his claim to j 
 natural vision, by strange insights of the structure of the hu 
 man body and mind. "It is never permitted to any one, in 
 
 M. to stand behind another and look at the back of his 
 head : for then the influx which is from the Lord is disturbed." 1 
 
 Mirels. from the sound of the voice, know a man s love ; 
 from the articulation of the sound, his wisdom ; and from the 
 
 of the words, his science. 
 
 In the "Cnn juiral Love." he has unfolded the science of 
 marriage. Of this I took, one would sav, that, with the b 
 elements, it has failed B& It came n- ar to be the 
 
 .Hymn of Love, which Plato attempted in the Banquet"; 
 
68 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 the love, which, Dante says, Casella sang among the angels in 
 Paradise ; and which, as rightly celebrated, in its genesis, frui 
 tion, and effect, might well entrance the souls, as it would lay 
 open the genesis of all institutions, customs, and manners. 
 The book had been grand, if the Hebraism had been omitted, 
 and the law stated without Gothicism, as ethics, and with that 
 scope for ascension of state which the nature of things requires. 
 It is a fine platonic development of the science of marriage ; 
 teaching that sex is universal, and not local ; virility in the 
 male qualifying every organ, act, and thought ; and the femi 
 nine in woman. Therefore, in the real or spiritual world, the 
 nuptial union is not momentary, but incessant and total ; and 
 chastity not a local, but a universal virtue ; unchastity being 
 discovered as much in the trading, or planting, or speaking, or 
 philosophizing, as in generation ; and that, though the virgins 
 he saw in heaven were beautiful, the wives were incomparably 
 more beautiful, and went on increasing in beauty evermore. 
 
 Yet Swedenborg, after his mode, pinned his theory to a 
 temporary form. He exaggerates the circumstance of mar 
 riage ; and, though he finds false marriages on earth, fancies 
 a wiser choice in heaven. But of progressive souls, all loves 
 and friendships are momentary. Do you love me ? means, Do 
 you see the same truth 1 If you do, we are happy with the 
 same happiness : but presently one of us passes into the per 
 ception of new truth ; we are divorced, and no tension in na 
 ture can hold us to each other. I know how delicious is this 
 cnp of love, I existing for you, you existing for me ; but 
 it is a child s clinging to his toy ; an attempt to eternize the 
 fireside and nuptial chamber ; to keep the picture-alphabet 
 throuo-h which our first lessons are prettily conveyed. 
 Eden of God is bare and grand : like the out-door landscape, 
 remembered from the evening fireside, it seems cold and deso 
 late whilst you cower over the coals ; but, once abroad again, 
 we pitv those who can forego the magnificence of nature for 
 candle-light and cards. Perhaps the true subject of the Con- 
 iuo-al Love " is Conversation, whose laws are profoundly elimi 
 nated. It is false, if literally applied to marriage. For God 
 is the bride or bridegroom of the soul. Heaven is not the 
 pairin^ of two, but the communion of all souls. We meet 
 and dwell an instant under the temple of one thought and 
 part as though we parted not, to join another thought in 
 other fellowships of joy. So far from there being anything di 
 vine in the low and proprietary sense of Do you love me f 
 
SWKDEXBORG; OR, THK MYSTIC. GO 
 
 only when you leave and lc.se me, by cast in- yourself on a sen- 
 timent which is higher than l)oth of us, that I draw near, and 
 find myself at your side ; and 1 am repelled, if you lix your 
 eye on me, and demand love. In fact, in the spiritual world, 
 we chaimv B6X6fl everv moment. You love the worth in me; 
 then I am your husband : hut it is not me, hut the worth, 
 that tixcs the love ; and that worth is a drop of the ocean of 
 worth that is beyond me. Meantime, I adore the greater 
 worth in another, and so become his wife. He aspires to a 
 higher worth iu another spirit, and is wife or receiver of that 
 influence. 
 
 Whether a self-inquisitorial habit, that he grew into, from 
 jealousy of the sins to which men of thought are liable, he 
 has acquired, in disentangling and demonstrating that par 
 ticular form of moral disease, an acumen which no conscience 
 can resist. I refer to his feeling of the profanation of think 
 ing to what is good "from scientitics." "To reason about 
 faith, is to doubt and deny." He was painfully alive to the 
 difference between knowing and doing, and this sensibility is 
 incessantly expressed. Philosophers are, therefore, vipers, 
 cockatrices, asps, hemorrhoids, presters, and flying serpents ; 
 literary men are conjurers and charlatans. 
 
 But this topic su-LM Ms a sad afterthought, that here wo 
 find the seat of his own pain. Possibly Swedenborg paid the 
 penalty of introverted faculties. Success, or a fortunate gen- 
 
 ems to depend on a happy adjustment of heart and 
 brain ; on a due proportion, hard to hit, of moral and mental 
 power, which, perhaps, obeys the law of those chemical ratios 
 which make a proportion in volumes necessary to combina 
 tion, as when gases will combine in certain fixed rates, but 
 not at any rate. It, is hard to carry a full cup : and this man, 
 profusely endowed in heart and mind, early fell into dangerous 
 discord with himself. In his Animal Kingdom, he surprised 
 us, by de.-larin^ that he loved analysis, and not synthesis : and 
 now, after his fiftieth year, he falls into jealousy of his intel 
 lect ; and, though aware that truth is not solitary, nor is good- 
 
 - /litary, but both must ever mix and marry, he makes 
 war "ii his mind, takes the part of the conscience against it, 
 and, on all occasions, traduces and blasphemes it. The violence 
 is instantly avenged. Beautv is disgraced, love is unlovelv, 
 when truth, the half part of heaven, is denied, as much as 
 when a bitteniess in men of talent loads to satire, and destroys 
 
 
70 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 the judgment. He is wise, but wise in his own despite. There 
 is an air of infinite grief, and the sound of wailing, all over 
 and through this lurid universe. A vampire sits in the seat 
 of the prophet, and turns with gloomy appetite to the images 
 of pain. Indeed, a bird does not more readily weave its nest, 
 or a mole bore into the ground, than this seer of souls sub- 
 structs a new hell and pit, each more abominable than the 
 last, round every new crew of offenders. He was let down 
 through a column that seemed of brass, but it was formed of 
 angelic spirits, that he might descend safely amongst the un 
 happy, and witness tho vastation of souls ; and heard there, 
 for a long continuance, their lamentations ; he saw their tor 
 mentors, who increase and strain pangs to infinity ; he saw 
 the hell of jugglers, the hell of assassins, the hell of the las 
 civious ; the hell of robbers, who kill and boil men ; the in 
 fernal tun of the deceitful ; the excrcmentitious hells ; the hell 
 of the revengeful, whose faces resembled a round, broad cake, 
 and their arms rotate like a wheel. Except Rabelais and Dean 
 Swift, nobody ever had such science of filth and corruption. 
 
 These books should be used with caution. It is dangerous 
 to sculpture these evanescing images of thought. True in 
 transition, they become false if fixed. It requires, for his just 
 apprehension, almost a genius equal to his own. But when 
 his visions become the stereotyped language of multitudes of 
 persons, of all degrees of age and capacity, they are perverted. 
 The wise people of the Greek race were accustomed to lead 
 the most intelligent and virtuous young men, as part of their 
 education, through the Eleusinian mysteries, wherein, with 
 much pomp and graduation, the highest truths known to 
 ancient wisdom were taught. An ardent and contemplative 
 young man, at eighteen or twenty years, might read once these 
 books of Swedenborg, these mysteries of love and conscience, 
 and then throw them aside forever. Genius is ever haunted 
 by similar dreams, when the hells and the heavens are opened 
 to it. But these pictures are to be held as mystical, that is, 
 as a quite arbitrary and accidental picture of the truth, not 
 as the truth. Any other symbol would be as good : then 
 this is safely seen. 
 
 Swedenborg s system of the world wants central sponta 
 neity ; it is dynamic, not vital, and lacks power to generate 
 life. There is" no individual in it. The universe is a giganti 
 crystal, all whose atoms and laminae lie in uninterrupted order, 
 
SWKDFAT.ORG ; OR, THE MYSTIC. 71 
 
 and with unbroken unity, hut cold and still. What seems an 
 individual and a will, is none. There is an immense chain of 
 intermediation, extending from centre to extremes, which be 
 reaves every agency of all freedom and character. The uni 
 verse, in his poem, sailers under a magnetic sleep, and only 
 reflects the mind of the magneti/er. Kvery thought conies 
 into each mind by influence from a society of spirits that sur 
 round it, and into these from a higher society, and so on. All 
 his types mean the same few things. All his figures speak 
 one speech. All his interlocutors Swedenborgize. Be they 
 who they may, to this complexion must they come at last. 
 This Charon ferries them all over in his lx>at ; kings, counsel 
 lors, cavaliers, doctors, Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Hans Sloane, 
 King George II., Mahomet, or whosoever, and all gather one 
 grinmess of hue and style. Only when Cicero comes by, our 
 gentle seer sticks a little at saying he talked with Cicero, and, 
 with a touch of human relenting, remarks, "one whom it was 
 given me to believe was Cicero " ; and when the soi disant Ro 
 man opens his mouth, Rome and eloquence have ebbed away, 
 it is plain theologic Suedenborg, like the rest. His heavens 
 and hells are dull ; fault of want of individualism. The thou 
 sand-fold relation of men is not there. The interest that at 
 taches in nature to each man, localise he is right by his 
 wrong, and wrong by his right, because he defies all dogma 
 tizing and classification, so many allowances, and contingencies, 
 and futurities, are to be taken into account, strong by his vices, 
 often paralyzed by his virtues, sinks into entire sympathy 
 with his society. This want reacts to the centre of the sys 
 tem. Though the agency of " the Ix>rd " is in every line re 
 ferred to by name, it never becomes alive. There is no lustre 
 in that eye which gazes from the centre, and which should 
 vivify the immense dependency of beings. 
 
 The vice of Swcdenborg s mind is its theologic determina 
 tion. Nothing with him has the liberality of universal wis 
 dom, but we are always in a church. That Hebrew muse, 
 which taught the lore of right and wrong to men, had the 
 same excess of influence for him, it has had for the nations. 
 The mode, as well as the essence, was sacred. Palestine is 
 ever the more valuable as a chapter in universal history, and 
 ever the less an available element in education. The genius 
 of Swedenborg, largest of all modern souls in this department 
 of thought, wasted itself in the endeavor to reanimate and 
 conserve what had already arrived at its natural term, and, in 
 
72 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 the great secular Providence, was retiring from its prominence, 
 before western modes of thought and expression. Swedenborg 
 and Behmen both failed by attaching themselves to the Chris 
 tian symbol, instead of to the moral sentiment, which carries 
 innumerable Christianities, humanities, divinities, in its bosom. 
 
 The excess of influence shows itself in the incongruous im 
 portation of a foreign rhetoric. What have I to do, asks the 
 impatient reader, * with jasper and sardonyx, beryl and chalce 
 dony ; what with arks and passovers, ephahs and ephods ; what 
 with lepers and emerods : what with heave-offerings and un 
 leavened bread ; chariots of fire, dragons crowned and horned, 
 behemoth and unicorn 1 Good for Orientals, these are nothing 
 to me. The more learning you bring to explain them, the 
 more glaring the impertinence. The more coherent and elab 
 orate the system, the less I like it. I say, with the Spartan, 
 " Why do you speak so much to the purpose, of that which is 
 nothing to the purpose 1 " My learning is such as God gave 
 me in my birth and habit, in the delight and study of my 
 eyes, and not of another man s. Of all absurdities, this of 
 some foreigner, proposing to take away my rhetoric, and sub 
 stitute his own, and amuse me with pelican and stork, instead 
 of thrush and robin ; palm trees and shittim-wood, instead of 
 sassafras and hickory, seems the most needless. 
 
 Locke said, "God, when he makes the prophet, does not un 
 make the man." Swedenborg s history points the remark. 
 The parish disputes, in the Swedish church, between the 
 friends and foes of Luther and Melancthon, concerning "faith 
 alone," and " works alone," intrude themselves into his specu 
 lations upon the economy of the universe, and of the celestial 
 societies. The Lutheran bishop s son, for whom the heavens 
 are opened, so that he sees with eyes, and in the richest sym 
 bolic forms, the awful truth of things, and utters again, in his 
 books, as under a heavenly mandate, the indisputable secrets of 
 moral nature, with all these grandeurs resting upon him, re 
 mains the Lutheran bishop s son ; his judgments are those of 
 a Swedish polemic, and his vast enlargements are purchased by 
 adamantine limitations. He carries his controversial memory 
 with him in his visits to the souls. He is like Michel Angelo, 
 who, in his frescos, put the cardinal who had offended him 
 to roast under a mountain of devils ; or, like Dante, who 
 avenged, in vindictive melodies, all his private wrongs ; or, 
 perhaps still more like Montaigne s parish priest, who, if a 
 hail-storm passes over the village, thinks the day of doom is 
 
SWEDEXBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 73 
 
 come, and the cannibals already have got the pip. Sweden 
 borg confounds us not less with the pains of Melancthon, and 
 Luther, and \Voliius, and his own books, which he advertises 
 among the angels. 
 
 I nder the same thcologic cramp, many of his dogmas are> 
 bound. His cardinal position in morals is, that evils should 
 be shunned as sins. But he does not know what evil is, or 
 what good is, who thinks any ground remains to be occupied, 
 after saying that evil is to be shunned as evil. I doubt not 
 he was led by the desire to insert the element of personality 
 of Deity. But nothing is added. One man, you say, dreads 
 erysipelas, show him that this dread is evil : or, one dreads 
 hell, show him that dread is evil. He who loves good 
 ness, harbors angels, reveres reverence, and lives with God. 
 The less we have to do with our sins, the better. No man can 
 aftbrd to waste his moments in compunctions. " That is active 
 duty," say the Hindoos, "which is not for our bondage; that 
 is knowledge, which is for our liberation : all other duty is 
 good only unto weariness." 
 
 Another dogma, growing out of this pernicious theologic 
 limitation, is this Inferno. Swedenborg has devils. Evil, ac 
 cording to old philosophers, is good in the making. That pure 
 malignity can exist, is the extreme proposition of unbelief. It 
 is not to be entertained by a rational agent ; it is atheism ; it 
 is the last profanation. Euripides rightly said, 
 
 " Good?iess and bcin.sr in the pod* are one: 
 He who imputes ill to them inakcs tlu-ni none." 
 
 To what a painful perversion had Gothic theology arrived, 
 that Swedenborg admitted no conversion for evil spirits ! But 
 the divine effort is never relaxed ; the carrion in the sun will 
 convert itself to irrass and flowers ; and man, though in broth 
 els, or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that is good and 
 true. Burns, with the wild humor of his apostrophe to " poor 
 old Xickie Ben," 
 
 " wad ye tak a thought, and mend ! " 
 
 has the advantage of the vindictive theologian. Everything 
 is superficial, and perishes, but love and truth only. The 
 largest is always the truest sentiment, and we t c< 1 the more 
 generous spirit of the Indian Vishnu, "I am the same to 
 all mankind. There is not one who is worth v of mv love or 
 hatred. They who serve UK- with adoration, 1 am in them, 
 and they in me. If one whose ways are altogether evil, serve 
 
 VOL. II. 4 
 
74 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 me alone, he is as respectable as the just man ; he is alto 
 gether well employed ; he soon becometh of a virtuous spirit, 
 and obtaineth eternal happiness." 
 
 For the anomalous pretension of Revelations of the other 
 world, only his probity and genius can entitle it to any se 
 rious regard. His revelations destroy their credit by running 
 into detail. If a man say, that the Holy Ghost has informed 
 him that the Last Judgment (or the last of the judgments) 
 took place in 1757; or, that the Dutch, in the other world, 
 live in a heaven by themselves, and the English, in a heaven 
 by themselves ; I reply, that the Spirit which is holy, is re 
 served, taciturn, and deals in laws. The rumors of ghosts 
 and hobgoblins gossip and tell fortunes. The teachings of the 
 High Spirit are abstemious, and, in regard to particulars, nega 
 tive. Socrates Genius did not advise him to act or to find, 
 but if he purposed to do somewhat not advantageous, it dis 
 suaded him. " What God is," he said, " I know not ; what he 
 is not, I know." The Hindoos have denominated the Supreme 
 Being, the " Internal Check." The illuminated Quakers ex 
 plained their Light, not as somewhat which leads to any action, 
 but it appears as an obstruction to anything unfit. But the 
 right examples are private experiences, which are absolutely at 
 one on this point. Strictly speaking, Swcdenborg s revelation 
 is a confounding of planes, a capital offence in so learned a 
 categorist. This is to carry the law of surface into the plane 
 of substance, to carry individualism and its fopperies into the 
 realm of essences and generals, which is dislocation and chaos. 
 The secret of heaven is kept from age to age. No impru 
 dent, no sociable angel, ever dropped an early syllable to answer 
 the longings of saints, the fears of mortals. AVe should have 
 listened on our knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedi 
 ence, had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celes 
 tial currents, and could hint to human ears the scenery and 
 circumstance of the newly parted soul. But it is certain that 
 it must tally with what is best in nature. It must not be in 
 ferior in tone to the already known works of the artist who 
 sculptures the globes of the firmament, and writes the moral 
 law. It must be fresher than rainbows, stabler than mountains, 
 agreeing with flowers, with tides, and the rising and setting of 
 autumnal stars. Melodious poets shall be hoarse as street bal 
 lads, when once the penetrating key-note of nature and spirit 
 is sounded, the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat, which makes 
 the tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule of blood, and 
 the sap of trees. 
 
SWEDKXBORG; OK, THE MYSTIC. 7"i 
 
 In t.liis mood, we hear the minor that the seer has arrived, 
 and his tale is told. lint there is no beauty, no heaven : for 
 anuvls. Ljohlins. The sad mnse loves nLlit and death, and the 
 pit. His Inferno is mesmeric. His spiritual world bears the 
 same relation to the iri-nemsities and joys of truth, of which 
 human souls have alre-ady made us cogni/ant, as a man s bad 
 dreams bear to his ideal life. It is indeed very like, in its end 
 less power of Inrid pictures, to the phenomena of dreaming; 
 whieh niirhtly turns many an honest gentleman, benevolent, 
 hut dyspeptic, into a wretch, skulking like a dog about the 
 outer yards and kennels of creation. When he mounts into 
 the heaven, I do not hear its language. A man should not 
 tell me that he has walked among the angels ; his proof is, 
 that his eloquence makes me one. Shall the archangels be 
 less majestic and sweet than the ti-ures that have actually 
 walked the earth ? These angels that Swcdenborg {taints give 
 us no very high idea of their discipline and culture : they are 
 all country parsons : their heaven is si fete clunn]H tr< , an evan 
 gelical picnic, or French distribution of prizes to virtuous 
 peasants. Strange, scholastic, didactic, passionless, bloodless 
 man, who denotes classes of souls as a botanist disposes of a 
 carex, and visits doleful hells as a. stratum of chalk or horn 
 blende ! He has no sympathy. He goes up and down the 
 world of men, a modern Rhadamanthus in gold-headed cane 
 and peruke, ami with nonchalance, and the air of a referee, 
 distributes souls. The warm, many-weathered, passionate- 
 peopled world is to him a -Tanimar of hieroglyphs, or an em 
 blematic freemason s procession. How different is Jacob Beh- 
 nieii ! / is tremulous with emotion, and listens awe struck, 
 with the gentlest humanity, to the Teacher whose lessons he 
 couvevs; and when he asserts that; "in some sort, love is 
 greater than Clod," his heart beats so high that the thumping 
 against his leathern coat is audible across the centuries. T is 
 a great difference. Px-hmen is healthily and beautifully wise, 
 notwithstanding the mystical narrowness and incommunieable- 
 Swedenhorg is disagreeably wise, and, with all his ac 
 cumulated gifts, paraly/es and repels. 
 
 It is the be<t sign of u Lfreat nature, that it opens a fore 
 ground, and, like the breath of mornim: landscapes, invites us 
 onward. Swedenboig is retrospective, nor can we divest him 
 of his mattock and shroud. Sonic minds are forever restrained 
 from descending into nature: others are forever prevented 
 from ascending out of it. With a force of many men, he 
 
76 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 could never break the umbilical cord which held him to na 
 ture, and he did not rise to the platform of pure genius. 
 
 It is remarkable that this man, who, by his perception of 
 symbols, saw the poetic construction of things, and the pri 
 mary relation of mind to matter, remained entirely devoid of 
 the whole apparatus of poetic expression, which that perception 
 creates. He knew the grammar and rudiments of the Mother- 
 Tongue, how could he not read off one strain into music 1 ? 
 Was he like Saadi, who, in his vision, designed to fill his lap 
 with the celestial flowers, as presents for his friends ; but the 
 fragrance of the roses so intoxicated him, that the skirt dropped 
 from his hands 1 or, is reporting a breach of the manners of 
 that heavenly society 1 or, was it that he saw the vision intel 
 lectually, and hence that chiding of the intellectual that per 
 vades his books ? Be it as it may, his books have no melody, 
 no emotion, no humor, no relief to the dead prosaic level. In 
 his profuse and accurate imagery is no pleasure, for there is 
 no beauty. We wander forlorn in a lack-lustre landscape. No 
 bird ever sang in all these gardens of the dead. The entire 
 want of poetry in so transcendent a mind betokens the disease, 
 and, like a hoarse voice in a beautiful person, is a kind of 
 warning. I think, sometimes, he will not be read longer. His 
 great name will turn a sentence. His books have become a 
 monument. His laurel so largely mixed with cypress, a char- 
 nel-breath so mingles with the temple incense, that boys and 
 maids will shun the spot. 
 
 Yet, in this immolation of genius and fame at the shrine of 
 conscience, is a merit sublime beyond praise. He lived to 
 purpose : he gave a verdict. He elected goodness as the clew 
 to which the soul must cling in all this labyrinth of nature. 
 Many opinions conflict as to the true centre. In the shipwreck, 
 some cling to running rigging, some to cask and barrel, some 
 to spars, some to mast ; the pilot chooses with science, I 
 plant myself here ; all will sink before this ; " he comes to 
 land who sails with me." Do not rely on heavenly favor, or on 
 compassion to folly, or on prudence, on common sense, the old 
 usage and main chance of men : nothing can keep you, not 
 fate, nor health, nor admirable intellect ; none can keep you, 
 but rectitude only, rectitude for ever and ever ! and, with 
 a tenacity that never swerved in all his studies, inventions, 
 dreams, he adheres to this brave choice. I think of him as 
 of some transmigrating votary of Indian legend, who says, 
 Though I be dog, or jackal, or pismire, in the last rudiments 
 
SWEDENBORG ; OR, THE MYSTIC. 77 
 
 of nature, under what integument or ferocity, I cleave to riulit, 
 as the sure ladder that leads up to man and to (Joil." 
 
 Swedenborg lias rendered a double service to mankind, 
 which is now only beginning to be known. liy the science of 
 experiment and use, lie made his first steps : he observed and 
 published the laws of nature : and. ascending by just degrees, 
 from events to their summits and causes, he was fired with 
 pirtv at the- harmonies he felt, and abandoned himself to his 
 joy and worship. This was his first service. If the glory was 
 too bright for his eyes to bear, if he staggered under the 
 trance of delight, the more excellent is the spectacle he saw, 
 the realities of being which beam and blaze through him, and 
 which no infirmities of the prophet are suffered to obscure ; 
 and he renders a second passive service to men, not less than 
 the first, perhaps, in the great circle of being, and in the 
 retributions of spiritual nature, not less glorious or less beauti 
 ful to himself. 
 
IV. 
 
 MONTAIGNE; OR THE SCEPTIC. 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 MONTAIGNE; OR, THE SCEPTIC. 
 
 EVKHY fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on 
 the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on tha 
 appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other; given 
 the upper, to find the under side. Nothing so thin, but has 
 these two lares ; and, when the observer has seen the obverse, 
 he turns it over to see the reverse. Life is a pitching of this 
 penny, heads <>r tails. We never tire of this game, because 
 there is still a slight shudder of astonishment at the exhibition 
 of the other face, at the contrast of the two faces. A man is 
 flushed with success, and bethinks himself what this good luck 
 signifies. He drives his bargain in the street ; but it occurs, 
 that he also is bought and sold. He sees the beauty of a hu 
 man face, and searches the cause of that beauty, which must 
 be more beautiful. He builds his fortunes, maintains the laws, 
 cherishes his children ; but he asks himself, why ? and whereto 1 
 This head and this tail are called, in the language of philoso 
 phy. Infinite and Finite; Relative and Absolute; Apparent 
 and Real ; and many fine names beside. 
 
 K.ich man is born with a predisposition to one or the other 
 of these sides of nature ; and it will easily happen that men 
 will l)e found devoted to one or the other. One class has the 
 perception of difference, and is conversant with facts and sur 
 faces : cities and persons ; and the bringing certain things to 
 : the men of talent and action. Another class have 
 the perception of identity, and are men of faith and philoso 
 phy, men of genius. 
 
 Each of these riders drives too fast. Plotinus believes only 
 in philosophers ; Fenelon, in saints ; Pindar and Bvron, in 
 poets. Read the haughty language in which Plato and the 
 Platonists speak of all men who are not devoted t< their own 
 shining abstractions : other men are rats and mice. The lit- 
 
 4* F 
 
82 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 erary class is usually proud and exclusive. The correspondence 
 of Pope and Swift describes mankind around them as mon 
 sters ; and that of Goethe and Schiller, in our own time, is 
 scarcely more kind. 
 
 It is easy to see how this arrogance comes. The genius is 
 a genius by the first look he casts on any object. Is his eye 
 creative I Does he not rest in angles and colors, but beholds 
 the design, he will presently undervalue the actual object. 
 In powerful moments, his thought has dissolved the works of 
 art and nature into their causes, so that the works appear 
 heavy and faulty. He has a conception of beauty which the 
 sculptor cannot embody. Picture, statue, temple, railroad, 
 steam-engine, existed first in an artist s mind, without flaw, 
 mistake, or friction, which impair the executed models. So 
 did the church, the state, college, court, social circle, and all 
 the institutions. It is not strange that these men, remember 
 ing what they have seen and hoped of ideas, should affirm 
 disdainfully the superiority of ideas. Having at some time 
 seen that the happy soul will cany all the arts in power, they 
 say, Why cumber ourselves with superfluous realizations 1 and, 
 like dreaming beggars, they assume to speak and act as if 
 these values were already substantiated. 
 
 On the other part, the men of toil and trade and luxury, 
 the animal world, including the animal in the philosopher and 
 poet also, and the practical world, including the painful 
 drudgeries which are never excused to philosopher or poet any 
 more than to the rest, weigh heavily on the other side. The 
 trade in our streets believes in no metaphysical causes, thinks 
 nothing of the force which necessitated traders and a trading 
 planet to exist ; no, but sticks to cotton, sugar, wool, and salt. 
 The ward meetings, on election days, are not softened by any 
 misgiving of the value of these ballotings. Hot life is stream 
 ing in a single direction. To the men of this world, to the 
 animal strength and spirits, to the men of practical power, 
 while immersed in it,, the man of ideas appears out of his 
 reason. They alone have reason. 
 
 Things always bring their own philosophy with them, that 
 is, prudence. "No man acquires property without acquiring 
 with it a little arithmetic, also. In England, the richest coun- 
 trv that ever existed, property stands for more, compared with 
 personal ability, than in any other. After dinner, a man be 
 lieves less, denies more : verities have lost some charm. After 
 dinner, arithmetic is the only science : ideas are disturbing. 
 
MOXTAHINT. : OR, THE SCEPTIC. 83 
 
 incendiary, follies of young men, repudiated by the solid por 
 tion <,f MM-ii ty : and ;i man comes to lie valued !y his athletic 
 and animal qualit ies. Spruce relates, that Mr. 1 ope was with 
 Sir (Jodfrey Kneller, one day, when his nephew, a (Jiiiin-.-i 
 trader, eame in. M Nephew," said Sir Godfrey , "you have the 
 honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world." " I don t 
 know how -Teat men yon may lie." said the (Jtiinea man, " hut 
 I don t like your looks. 1 have often bought a much better 
 than both of you, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas." Thus, 
 the men of the senses revenue themselves on the profc- 
 and repay scorn for scorn. The first had leaped to conclusions 
 not yet ripe, ami say more than is true; the others make 
 themselves merry with the philosopher, anil weigh man by the 
 pound. They believe that mustard bites the tongue, and pep 
 per is hot, friction-matches are incendiary, revolvers to be 
 avoided, and suspenders hold np pantaloons; that there is 
 much sentiment in a chest of tea ; and a man will be eloquent, 
 if you give him good wine. Are you tender and scrupulous, 
 you must eat more mince-pie. They hold that Luther had 
 niilk in him when he said, 
 
 \Ver nicht liobt Wcin, Weil), und (lesang, 
 IV r bleibt cm Narr sein Leben lung"; 
 
 and when he advised a young scholar, perplexed with fore-or 
 dination and free-will, to get well drunk. " The nerves," savs 
 t abanis, " they are the man/ My neighbor, a jolly farmer, 
 in the tavern bar-room, thinks that the use of money is sure 
 and speedy spending : " for his part," he says, " he puts his 
 down his neck, and gets the good of it." 
 
 The inconvenience of this way of thinking is, that it runs 
 into indifferentism, and then into disgust. Life is eating us 
 up. We shall be fables presently. Keep cool : it will IK- all 
 one a hundred years hence. Life s well enough ; but we shall 
 be glad to get out of it, and they will all be glad to have us. 
 Why should we fret and drudge ? Our meat will taste to 
 morrow as it did yesterday, and we may at, last have had 
 enough of it. "Ah," said my languid gentleman at Oxford, 
 " there s nothing new or true, and no matter." 
 
 W ith a little more bitterness, the cynic moans : our life is 
 like an ass led to market by a bundle of hay being carried be 
 fore him : he sees nothing but the bundle of hay. " There is 
 so much trouble in coming into the world," said Lord P.oling- 
 . "and so much more, as well as meanness, in going out 
 of it, that t is hardly worth while to be here at all." I know 
 
84 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 a philosopher of this kidney, who was accustomed briefly to 
 sum up his experience of human nature in saying, " Mankind 
 is a damned rascal " : and the natural corollary is pretty sure 
 to follow, The world lives by humbug, and so will I. 
 
 The abstractionist and the materialist thus mutually exas 
 perating each other, and the scoffer expressing the worst of 
 materialism, there arises a third party to occupy the middle 
 ground between these two, the sceptic, namely. He finds both 
 wrong by being in extremes. He labors to plant his feet, to 
 be the beam of the balance. He will not go beyond his card. 
 He sees the one-sidedness of these men of the street ; he will 
 not be a Gibeonite ; he stands for the intellectual faculties, a 
 cool head, and whatever serves to keep it cool ; no unadvised 
 industry, no unrewarded self-devotion, no loss of the brains in 
 toil. Am I an ox, or a dray 1 You are both in extremes, he 
 says. You that will have all solid, and a world of pig-lead, 
 deceive yourselves grossly : you believe yourselves rooted and 
 grounded on adamant ; and yet, if we uncover the last facts 
 of our knowledge, you are spinning like bubbles in a river, you 
 know not whither or whence, and you are bottomed and capped 
 and wrapped in delusions. 
 
 Neither will he be betrayed to a book, and wrapped in a 
 gown. The studious class are their own victims : they are 
 thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the 
 night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption, pallor, 
 squalor, hunger, and egotism. If you come near them, and 
 see what conceits they entertain, they are abstractionists, 
 and spend their days and nights in dreaming some dream ; in 
 expecting the homage of society to some precious scheme 
 built on a truth, but destitute of proportion in its presentment, 
 of justness in its application, and of all energy of will in the 
 schemer to embody and vitalize it. 
 
 But I see plainly, he says, that I cannot see. I know that 
 human strength is not in extremes, but in avoiding extremes. 
 I, at least, will shun the weakness of philosophizing beyond 
 my depth. What is the use of pretending to powers we have 
 not 1 What is the use of pretending to assurances we have 
 not, respecting the other life 1 Why exaggerate the power of 
 virtue 1 Why be an angel before your time 1 These strings, 
 wound up too high, will snap. If there is a wish for immor 
 tality, and no evidence, whv not say just that 1 If there are 
 conflicting evidences, why not state them 1 ? If there is not 
 ground for a candid thinker to make up his mind, yea or nay, 
 
MONTAIGNE ; OR, THE SCEPTIC. 8,1 
 
 - why not suspend the judgment 1 I weary of these dogma- 
 tizers. I tire of these harks of routine, who deny the dogmas. 
 I neither atlirm nor deny. I stand here to try the case. 1 
 urn here to consider, aKcnrdv, to consider how it is. I will try 
 to keep the balance true. Of what use to take the chair, and 
 glibly rattle oil theories of society, religion, and nature, when 
 1 know that practical objections lie in the way, insurmountable 
 by me and by my mates] Why so talkative in public, when 
 each of my neighbors can pin me to my seat by arguments I 
 cannot ivfute t Why pretend that life is so simple a game, 
 when we know how subtle and illusive the Proteus is? Why 
 think to shut up all things in your narrow coop, when we 
 know there are not one or two only, but ten, twenty, a thou 
 sand things, and unlike? Why fancy that you have all 
 the truth in your keeping 1 There is much to say on all 
 sides. 
 
 Who shall forbid a wise scepticism, seeing that there is no 
 practical question on which anything more than an approxi 
 mate solution can be had? Is not marriage an open question, 
 when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such 
 as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out 
 wish to get in ? And the reply of Socrates, to him who asked 
 whether he should choose a wife, still remains reasonable, 
 " that, whether he should choose one or not, he would repent 
 it." Is not the state a question? All society is divided in 
 opinion on the subject of the state. Nobody loves it ; great 
 numbers dislike it, and suffer conscientious scruples to aL 
 legiance : and the only defence set up, is the fear of doing 
 worse in disorganizing. Is it otherwise with the church ? Or, 
 to put any of the questions which touch mankind nearest, > 
 shall the young man aim at a leading part in law, in politics, 
 in trade ? It will not be pretended that a success in either of 
 these kinds is quite coincident with what is best and inmost 
 in his mind. Shall he, then, cutting the stays that hold him 
 fast to the social state, put out to sea with no guidance but 
 nius? There is much to say on both sides. Remember 
 the open question between the present order of "competition," 
 and the friends of " attractive and associated labor." The 
 generous minds embrace the proposition of labor sl.ared. by- 
 all ; it is the only honesty : nothing else is safe. It is from 
 the poor man s hut alone, that strength and virtue come : and 
 yet, on the other side, it is alleged that labor impairs the form, 
 and breaks the spirit of man, and the laborers cry unani- 
 
86 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 niously, We have no thoughts. Culture, how indispensable ! 
 I cannot forgive you the want of accomplishments ; and yet, 
 culture will instantly impair that chiefest beauty of sponta- 
 neousness. Excellent is culture for a savage ; but once let 
 him read in the book, and he is no longer able not to think of 
 Plutarch s heroes. In short, since true fortitude of under 
 standing consists " in not letting what we know be embar 
 rassed by what we do not know," we ought to secure those ad 
 vantages which we can command, and not risk them by clutch 
 ing after the airy and unattainable. Come, no chimeras ! 
 Let us go abroad ; let us mix in affairs ; let us learn, and get, 
 alid have, and climb. " Men are a sort of moving plants, and, 
 like trees, receive a great part of their nourishment from the 
 air. If they keep too much at home, they pine." Let us 
 have a robust, manly life ; let us know what we know, for cer 
 tain ; what we have, let it be solid, and seasonable, and our 
 own. A world in the hand is worth two in the bush. Let us 
 have to do with real men and women, and not with skipping 
 ghosts. 
 
 This, then, is the right ground of the sceptic, this of con 
 sideration, of self-containing ; not at all of unbelief ; not at all of 
 universal denying, nor of universal doubting, doubting even 
 that he doubts ; least of all, of scoffing and profligate jeering at 
 all that is stable and good. These are no more his moods than 
 are those of religion and philosophy. He is the considerer, the 
 prudent, taking in sail, counting stock, husbanding his means, 
 believing that a man has too many enemies, than that he can af 
 ford to be his own ; that we cannot give ourselves too many ad 
 vantages, in this unequal conflict, with powers so vast and 
 unweariable ranged on one side, and this little, conceited, vul 
 nerable popinjay that a man is, bobbing up and down into every 
 danger, on the other. It is a position taken up for better defence, 
 as of more safety, and one that can be maintained ; and it is one 
 of more opportunity and range : as, when we build a house, 
 the rule is to set it not too high nor too low, under the wind, 
 but out of the dirt. 
 
 The philosophy we want is one of fluxions and mobility. 
 The Spartan and Stoic schemes are too stark and stiff for our 
 occasion. A theory of Saint John, and of nonresistance, 
 seems, on the other hand, too thin and aerial. We want some 
 coat woven of elastic steel, stout as the first, and limber as 
 the second. We want a ship in these billows we inhabit. An 
 angular, dogmatic house would be rent to chips and splinters, 
 
MONTAIGNE; OR, THE SCEPTIC. 87 
 
 in this storm of many elements. No. it. must lie tight, and fit 
 to tin 1 form of man. to live at all ; as a shell must dictate the 
 arehiteetmv of a house founded on the sea. The soul of man 
 niuM le the type of our srheme, ju>t as the body of man is 
 the type after which Ji dwelling-house is built. Adaptiveneaii 
 
 is the peculiarity of human nature. We are golden averages; 
 
 yolitant stabilities, compensated or periodic errors, houses 
 founded on the sea. The wise sceptic wishes to have a near 
 view of the hest game, and the chief players ; what is best in 
 the planet : art. and nature, places ami events, but mainly 
 men. Everything that is excellent in mankind, a form of 
 grace, an arm of iron, lips of persuasion, a brain of resources, 
 every one skilful to play and win, he will see and jud 
 
 The terms of admission to this spectacle, are, that he have a 
 certain solid and intelligible way of living of his own ; some 
 method of answering the inevitable needs of human life ; proof 
 that he has played with skill and success : that he has evinced 
 the temper, stout ness, and the range of qualities which, among 
 his contemporaries and countrymen, entitle him to fellowship 
 and trust. For, the secrets of life are not shown except to 
 sympathy ami likeness. Men do not confide themselv 
 boys, or coxcombs, or pedants, but to their peers. Some wise 
 limitation, as the modem phrase is; some condition between 
 the extremes, and having itself a positive quality ; some stark 
 and sufficient man, who is not salt or sugar, but sufficiently 
 related to the world to do justice to Paris or London, and, at 
 the same time, a vigorous and original thinker, whom cities 
 cannot overawe, but who uses them, is the n t person to oc 
 cupy this gnnmd of speculation. 
 
 These qualities meet in the character of Montaigne. And 
 ;ice the personal re<_rard which 1 entertain for Montaigne 
 may be unduly great, 1 will, under the shield of this prince of 
 s, offer, as an apology for electing him as the representa 
 tive of scepticism, a word or two to explain how my love be 
 gan and grew for this admirable gossip. 
 
 A single odd volume of Cotton s translation of the Essays re 
 mained to me from my lather s library, when a boy. It lay 
 Imiir neirlected. until, alter many years, when I was newly s- 
 caped from college, I read tin- honk, and procured the remain- 
 in^ volumes. I remember the delight and wonder in which I 
 lived with it. It s-emed to me as if I had myself written the 
 book, in some former life, so sincerely it spoke to my thought 
 and experience. It happened, when in Paris, in 183J, that, in 
 
88 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 the cemetery of Pere la Chaise, I came to a tomb of Auguste 
 CollignoD, who died in 1830, aged sixty-eight years, and vho, 
 said the monument, " lived to do right, and had formed him 
 self to virtue on the Essays of Montaigne." Some years later, 
 I became acquainted with an accomplished English poet, John 
 Sterling ; and, in prosecuting my correspondence, I found that, 
 from a love of Montaigne, he had made a pilgrimage to his 
 chateau, still standing near Castellan, in Perigord, and, after 
 two hundred and fifty years, had copied from the walls of his 
 library the inscriptions which Montaigne had written there. 
 That Journal of Mr. Sterling s, published in the Westminster 
 Keview, Mr. Hazlitt has reprinted in the Prolegomena to his 
 edition of the Essays. I heard with pleasure that one of the 
 newly discovered autographs of William Shakespeare was in a 
 copy of Florio s translation of Montaigne. It is the only book 
 which we certainly know to have been in the poet s library. 
 And, oddly enough, the duplicate copy of Florio. which the 
 British Museum purchased, with a view of protecting the 
 Shakespeare autograph, (as I was informed in the Museum,) 
 turned out to have the autograph of Ben Jonson in the fly 
 leaf. Leigh Hunt relates of Lord Byron, that Montaigne was 
 the only great writer of past times whom he read with avowed 
 satisfaction. Other coincidences, not needful to be mentioned 
 here, concurred to make this old Gascon still new and immor 
 tal for me. 
 
 In 1571, on the death of his father, Montaigne, then thirty- 
 eight years old, retired from the practice of law, at Bordeaux, 
 and settled himself on his estate. Though he had been a man 
 of pleasure, and sometimes a courtier, his studious habits now 
 grew on him, and he loved the compass, staidness, and inde 
 pendence of the country gentleman s life. He took up his 
 economy in good earnest, and made his farms yield the most. 
 Downright and plain dealing, and abhorring to be deceived or 
 to deceive, he was esteemed in the country for his sense and 
 probity. In the civil wars of the League, which converted 
 every house into a fort, Montaigne kept his gates open, and 
 his house without defence. All parties freely came and went, 
 his courage and honor being universally esteemed. The neigh 
 boring lords and gentry brought jewels and papers to him for 
 safe-keeping. Gibbon reckons, in these bigoted times, but two 
 men of liberality in France, Henry IV. and Montaigne. 
 
 Montaigne is the frankest and honestest of all writers. 
 His French freedom runs into grossness ; but he has antici 
 
MONTAIGNE; OR, THE SCEPTIC. 80 
 
 pated all censure by the bounty of his own confessions. In 
 his times, books were written to one sex only, and almost all 
 written in Latin ; so that, in a humorist, a certain naked 
 ness of statement was permitted, which our manners, of a 
 literature addressed equally to both sexes, do not allow. Hut, 
 though a liiblieal plainness, coupled with a most uncanonical 
 levity, may shut his paires to many sensitive readers, yet the 
 offence is superficial. He parades it : he makes the most of 
 it : nobody can think or say worse of him than he does. He 
 :.ds to most of the vices; and, if there be any virtue in 
 him, he says, it got in by stealth. There is no man, in his 
 opinion, who has not deserved hanging five or six times; and 
 he pretends no exception in his own behalf. "Five or six as 
 ridiculous stories," too, he says, " can be told of me, as of any 
 man living." Hut, with all this really superfluous frankness, 
 the opinion of an invincible probity grows into every reader s 
 mind. 
 
 When I the most strictly and religiously confess myself, 
 I find that the best, virtue I have has in it some tincture of 
 vice; and I am afraid that Plato, in his purest virtue, (I, who 
 am as sincere and perfect a lover of virtue of that stamp as 
 any other whatever,) if he had listened, and laid his ear close 
 to himself, would have heard some jarring sound of human 
 mixture ; but faint and remote, and only to be perceived by 
 himself." 
 
 Here is an impatience and fastidiousness at color or pre 
 tence of any kind. He has been in courts so long as to have 
 conceived a furious disgust at appearances ; he will indulge 
 himself with a little cursing and swearing ; he will talk with 
 sailors and gypsies, use ilash and street ballads : he has stayed 
 in-doors till he is deadly sick ; he will to the open air, though 
 it rain bullets. He has seen too much of gentlemen of the 
 long robe, until he,wishes for cannibals ; and is so nervous, by 
 factitiojis life, that he thinks, the more barbarous man is, the 
 better he is. He likes his saddle. You may read theology, 
 and grammar, and metaphysics elsewhere. Whatever you get 
 here, shall smack of the earth and of real life, sweet, or smart, 
 or stinging. He makes no hesitation to entertain you with 
 the records of his disease ; and his journey to Italy is quite 
 full of that matter. He took and kept this position of equilib 
 rium. Over his name, he drew an emblematic pair of scales, 
 and wrote Que s$ais je ? under it. As I look at his effigy op 
 posite the title-page, I seem to hear him say, * You may play 
 
90 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 old Poz, if you will ; you may rail and exaggerate, I stand 
 here for truth, and will not, for all the states, and churches, 
 and revenues, and personal reputations of Europe, overstate 
 the dry fact, as I see it ; I will rather mumble and prose about 
 what I certainly know, my house and barns ; my father, my 
 wife, and my tenants ; my old lean bald pate ; my knives and 
 forks ; what meats I eat, and what drinks I prefer ; and a 
 hundred straws just as ridiculous, than I will write, with a 
 fine crow-quill, a fine romance. I like gray days, and autumn 
 and winter weather. I am gray and autumnal myself, and 
 think an undress, and old shoes that do not pinch my feet, 
 and old friends who do not constrain me, and plain topics 
 where I do not need to strain myself and pump my brains, 
 the most suitable. Our condition as men is risky and ticklish 
 enough. One cannot be sure of himself and his fortune an 
 hour, but he may be whisked off into some pitiable or ridicu 
 lous plight. Why should I vapor and play the philosopher, 
 instead of ballasting, the best I can, this dancing balloon 1 
 80, at least, I live within compass, keep myself ready for 
 action, and can shoot the gulf, at lust, with decency. If there 
 be anything farcical in such a life, the blame is not mine : let 
 it lie at fate s and nature s door. 
 
 The Essays, therefore, are an entertaining soliloquy on every 
 random topic that comes into his head ; treating everything 
 without ceremony, yet with masculine sense. There have 
 been men with deeper insight ; but, one would say, never a 
 man with such abundance of thoughts : he is never dull, never 
 insincere, and has the genius to make the reader care for all 
 that he cares for. 
 
 The sincerity and marrow of the man reaches to his sen 
 tences. I know not anywhere the book that seems less writ 
 ten. It is the language of conversation transferred to a book. 
 Cut these words and they would bleed ; they are vascular and 
 alive. One has the same pleasure in it that we have in listen 
 ing to the necessary speech of men about their work, when 
 any unusual circumstance gives momentary importance to the 
 dialogue. For blacksmiths and teamsters do not trip in their 
 bpeech ; it is a shower of bullets. It is Cambridge men who 
 correct themselves, and begin again at every half-sentence, 
 and, moreover, will pun, and refine too much, and swerve 
 from the matter to the expression. Montaigne talks with 
 shrewdness, knows the world, and books, and himself, and uses 
 the positive degree : never shrieks, or protests, or prays : no 
 
MOXTAICNI- : Oil, THK SCEPTIC. 91 
 
 weakness, no convulsion, no superlative : docs not wish f () 
 jump out of Ills skin, or play any unties, or annihilate spare 
 or time ; but is stout and solid ; tastes every moment of the 
 day ; likes pain, became it makes him feel himself, and reali/o 
 things, as \ve pinch ourselves to know that \\e are awake. lie 
 the plain; he rarely mounts or sinks; likes to feel solid 
 ground, and the stones underneath. Mis writing has no en 
 thusiasms, no aspiration ; contented, self-respecting, and keep 
 ing the middle of the road. There is but one exception, in 
 his love for Socrates. In speaking of him, for once his cheek 
 flushes, and his style rises to passion. 
 
 Montaigne died of a <punsy, at the age of sixty, in 1592. 
 When he came to die, he caused the mass to be celebrated in 
 his chamber. At the age of thirty-three, he had been mar 
 ried. " But," he says, " might I have had my own will, I 
 would not have married \Visdom herself, if slie would have 
 had me: but t is to much purpose to evade it, the common 
 custom and use of life will have it so. Most of my actions 
 are miided by example, not choice." In the hour of death, he 
 gave the sam;> weight to custom. Qu<- Sflrit jc ? "\Vhat do I 
 know . 
 
 This book of Montaigne the world has indorsed, by trans 
 lating it into all tongues,, and printing seventy-five editions of 
 it in Europe : and that, too, a circulation somewhat chosen, 
 namely, among courtiers, soldiers, princes, men of the world, 
 and meii of wit and generosity. 
 
 Shall we say that Montaigne has spoken wisely, and given 
 the right and permanent expression of the human mind, on 
 the conduct of life 1 
 
 We arc natural believers. Tnith, or the connection between 
 cause and effect, alone interests us. We are persuaded that a 
 thread runs through all things: all worlds are strung on it, as 
 beads: and men, and events, and life, come to us, only be 
 cause of that thread : they pass and repass, only that we may 
 know the direction and continuity of that line. A book or 
 statement which gOM to show that there is no line, but ran 
 dom and chaos, a calamity out of nothing, a prosperitv and no 
 account of it. a hero born from a fool, a fool from a hero, 
 dispirits us. Seen or unseen, we believe the tie exists. Tal 
 ent makes counterfeit ties ; genius finds the real ones. AVc 
 hearken to the man of science, because we anticipate the 
 
92 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 sequence in natural phenomena which he uncovers. We love 
 whatever affirms, connects, preserves ; and dislike what scatters 
 or pulls down. One man appears whose nature is to all men s 
 eyes conserving and constructive : his presence supposes a 
 well-ordered society, agriculture, trade, large institutions, and 
 empire. If these did not exist, they would begin to exist 
 through his endeavors. Therefore, he cheers and comforts 
 men, who feel all this in him very readily. The nonconformist 
 and the rebel say all manner of unanswerable things against 
 the existing republic, but discover to our sense no plan of 
 house or state of their own. Therefore, though the town, and 
 state, and way of living, which our counsellor contemplated, 
 might be a very modest or musty prosperity, yet men rightly 
 go for him, and reject the reformer, so long as he comes only 
 with axe and crowbar. 
 
 But though we are natural conservers and causationists, and 
 reject a sour, dumpish unbelief, the sceptical class, which 
 Montaigne represents, have reason, and every man, at some 
 time, belongs to it. Every superior mind will pass through 
 this domain of equilibration, I should rather say, will know 
 how to avail himself of the checks and balances in nature, as 
 a natural weapon against the exaggeration and formalism of 
 bigots and blockheads. 
 
 Scepticism is the attitude assumed by the student in rela 
 tion to the particulars which society adorns, hnt. whip.h he 
 sees to be reverend only in their tendency and spirit. The 
 ground occupied by the sceptic is the vestibule of the temple. 
 Society does not like to have any breath of question blown on 
 the existing order. But the interrogation of custom at all 
 points is an inevitable stage in the growth of every superior 
 mind, and is the evidence of its perception of the flowing 
 power which remains itself in all changes. 
 
 The superior mind will find itself equally at odds with 
 the evils of society, and with the projects that are offered 
 to relieve them. The wise sceptic is a bad citizen ; no con 
 servative ; he sees the selfishness of property, and the drow 
 siness of institutions. But neither is he fit to work with 
 any democratic party that ever was constituted ; for parties 
 wish every one committed, and he penetrates the popular 
 patriotism. His politics are those of the " Soul s Errand " 
 of Sir Walter Raleigh ; or of Krishna, in the Bhagavat, 
 " There is none who is worthy of my love or hatred " ; 
 whilst he sentences law, physic, divinity, commerce, and cus- 
 
MONTAIGNE; OK, THE SCEPTIC 93 
 
 torn. Ho is a reformer : yet lie is no better member of 
 the philanthropic association. It turns out that he is not 
 the champion of the operative, the pauper, the prisoner, the 
 slave. It stands in his mind, that our life in this world is 
 not of quite so easy interpretation as churches and school- 
 books say. He does not wish to take ground against these 
 benevolences, to play the part of devil s attorney, and blazon 
 every doubt and sneer that darkens the sun for him. But 
 he says, There are doubts. 
 
 I mean to use the occasion, and celebrate the calendar-day 
 of our Saint Michel de Montaigne, by counting and describ 
 ing these doubts or negations. I wish to ferret them out 
 of their holes, and sun them a little. We must do with 
 them as the police do with old rogues, who are shown up 
 to the public at the marshal s office. They will never be 
 so formidable, when once they have been identified and regis 
 tered. But I mean honestly by them, that justice shall 
 be done to their terrors. I shall not take Sunday objections, 
 made up on purpose to be put down. I shall take the worst 
 1 can find, whether 1 can dispose of them, or they of me. 
 
 I do not press the scepticism of the materialist. I know, 
 the quadruped opinion will not prevail. T is of no impor 
 tance what bats and oxen think. The first dangerous symp 
 tom 1 report, is, the levity of intellect ; as if it were fatal 
 to earnestness to know much. Knowledge is the know- 
 in -JT that we cannot know. The dull pray ; the geniuses are 
 light mockers. How respectable is earnestness on every plat 
 form ! but intellect kills it. Nay, San Carlo, my subtle and 
 admirable friend, one of the most penetrating of men, finds 
 that all direct ascension, even of lofty piety, leads to this 
 ghastly insight, and sends back the votary orphaned. M v 
 astonishing San Carlo thought the lawgivers and saints in 
 fected. They found the ark empty ; saw, and would not tell; 
 and tried to choke oft their approaching followers, by saying, 
 * Action, action, my dear fellows, is for you ! Bad as was 
 to me this detection by San Carlo, this frost in July, this 
 blow from a bride, there was still a worse, namely, the cloy 
 or satiety of the saints. In the mount of vision, ere tln-v 
 have yet risen from their knees, they say, We discover that 
 this our homage and beatitude is partial and deformed : we 
 must fly for relief to the susp^-rtrd and reviled Intellect, to 
 the Understanding, the Mephistopheles, to the gymnastics of 
 talent. 
 
94 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 This is hojngoblin the first ; and, though it has been the 
 subject of much elegy, in our nineteenth century, from By 
 ron, Goethe, and other poets of less fame, not to mention 
 many distinguished private observers, I confess it is not 
 very affecting to my imagination ; for it seems to concern 
 the shattering of baby-houses and crockery-shops. What flut 
 ters the church of Rome, or of England, or of Geneva, or of 
 Boston, may yet be very far from touching any principle of 
 faith. I think that the intellect and moral sentiment are 
 unanimous ; and that, though philosophy extirpates bugbears, 
 yet it supplies the natural checks of vice, and polarity to 
 the soul. I think that the wiser a man is, the more stu 
 pendous he finds the natural and moral economy, and lifts 
 himself to a more absolute reliance. 
 
 There is the power of moods, each setting at naught all 
 but its own tissue of facts and beliefs. There is the power 
 of complexions, obviously modifying the dispositions and sen 
 timents. The beliefs and unbeliefs appear to be structural ; 
 and, as soon as each man attains the poise and vivacity 
 which allow the whole machinery to play, he will not need 
 extreme examples, but will rapidly alternate all opinions in 
 his own life. Our life is March weather, savage and serene 
 in one hour. We go forth austere, dedicated, believing in 
 the iron links of Destiny, and will not turn on our heel to 
 save our life : but a book or a bust, or only the sound of 
 a name, shoots a spark through the nerves, and we suddenly 
 believe in will : my finger-ring shall be the seal of Solomon : 
 fate is for imbeciles: all is possible to the resolved mind. 
 Presently, a new experience gives a new turn to our thoughts : 
 common" sense resumes its tyranny : we say, Well, the army, 
 after all, is the gate to fame, manners, and poetry : and, look 
 V0ll) _ on the whole, selfishness plants best, prunes best, 
 makes the best commerce, and the best citizen. Are the 
 opinions of a man 011 right and wrong, 011 fate and causation, 
 at the mercy of a broken sleep or an indigestion ? Is his 
 belief in God and Duty no deeper than a stomach evidence 1 
 And what guaranty for the permanence of his opinions? I 
 like not the French celerity, a new church and state once 
 a week. This is the second negation ; and I shall let it 
 pass for what it will. As far as it asserts rotation of states 
 of mind, I suppose it suggests its own remedy, namely, in 
 the record of larger periods. What is the mean of many 
 states ; of all the states 1 Does the general voice of ages 
 
MONTAIGNE; OR, THE SCEPTIC . ." 
 
 affirm any principle, or is no community of sentiment discov 
 erable in distant times and places? And when it shews the 
 power of si lf-mteresr, I accept that as part of the divine 
 law. ami must reconcile it with aspiration the hcst 1 can. 
 
 Tho word Kate, or Destiny, expresses the sense of mankind, 
 in all ages, thai tin- laws of the world do not always be 
 friend, but often hurt and crush us. Fate, in the shape of 
 Kinde or nature, grows over us like grass. \Ve paint Time 
 with a scythe; Love and Fortune, blind ; and Destiny, deaf. 
 \Ye have too little power of resistance against this ferocity 
 which champs us up. AY hat front can we make against these 
 unavoidable, victorious, maleficent foTOOfl . What can T do 
 against the influence of lla V. in my history] What can I do 
 against hereditary and constitutional habits, against st^ulijla, 
 Kmph, imp_otence ; against climate, against barbarism, in my 
 countrv I I can reason down or denv e\ erything, except this 
 perpetual Belly : feed he must and will, and 1 cannot make 
 him respectable. 
 
 But the main resistance which the affirmative impulse finds, 
 and one including all others, is in the doctrine of the Illusion- 
 There is a painful rumor in circulation, that we have 
 been practised upon in all the principal performances of life, 
 and free agency is the emptiest name. We have been sopped 
 and drilled with the air, with food, with woman, with chil 
 dren, with sciences, with events, which leave us exactly where 
 they found us. The mathematics, tis complained, leave the 
 mind where they find it: so do all sciences; and so do all 
 events and actions. T find a man who has passed through 
 all the sciences, the churl he was ; and through all the offices, 
 learned, civil, and social, can detect the child. We are not 
 the less necessitated t- dedicate life to them. In fact, we may 
 come to accept it as the fixed rule and theory of our state of 
 education, that God is a substance, and his method is illusion. 
 The K.istern sages owned the goddess Voganidra, the great 
 illusory energy of Vishnu, by whom, as utter ignorance, the 
 wh"le- world is beguiled. 
 
 Or, shall I state it thus? The astonishment of life, is, the 
 absence of any appearance of reconciliation between the theory 
 and practice of life. Reason, the prixed reality, the Law, is 
 apprehended, now and then, for a serene and profound moment, 
 amidst the hubbub of cares and works which have n< direct 
 bearing on it ; is then lost, for months or years, and again 
 
96 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 found, for an interval, to be lost again. If we compute it in 
 time, we may, in fifty years, have half a dozen reasonable 
 hours. But what are these cares and works the better ] A 
 method in the world we do not see, but this parallelism of great 
 and little, which never react on each other, nor discover the 
 smallest tendency to converge. Experiences, fortunes, govern- 
 ings, readings, writings, are nothing to the purpose ; as when 
 a man comes into the room, it does not appear whether he has 
 been fed on yams or buffalo, he has contrived to get so 
 much bone and fibre as he wants, out of rice or out of snow. 
 So vast is the disproportion between the sky of law and the 
 pismire of performance under it, that, whether he is a man 
 of^worth or a sot, is not so great a matter as we say. Shall I 
 add, as one juggle of this enchantment, the stunning non-inter 
 course law which makes co-operation impossible 1 The young 
 spirit pants to enter society. But all the ways of culture and 
 greatness lead to solitary imprisonment. He has been often 
 balked. He did not expect a sympathy with his thought 
 from the village, but he went with it to the chosen and intelli 
 gent, and found no entertainment for it, but mere misappre 
 hension, distaste, and scoffing. Men are strangely mistimed 
 and misapplied ; and the excellence of each is an inflamedj.ii- 
 dividualisni which_separates him more. 
 
 There are these, and more~thlirPthese, diseases of thought, 
 which our ordinary teachers do not attempt to remove. Now 
 shall we, because a good nature inclines us to virtue s side, say, 
 There are no doubts, and lie for the right 1 Is life to be 
 led in a brave or in a cowardly manner 1 and is not the satis 
 faction of the doubts essential to all manliness 1 Is the name 
 of virtue to be a barrier to that which is virtue 1 Can you not 
 believe that a man of earnest and burly habit may find small 
 good in tea, essays, and catechism, and want a rougher instruc 
 tion, want men, labor, trade, farming, war, hunger, plenty, love, 
 hatred, doubt, and terror, to make things plain to him ; and 
 has he not a right to insist on being convinced in his own way ] 
 When he is convinced, he will be worth the pains. 
 
 f Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul ; 
 unbelief, in denying them./ Some minds are incapable of 
 scepticism. The doubts they profess to entertain are rather 
 a civility or accommodation to the common discourse of their 
 company. They may well give themselves leave to speculate, 
 for they are secure of a return. Once admitted to the heaven 
 of thought, they see no relapse into night, but infinite invita- 
 
MoXTAIGXE; OR, THE SCEPTIC. 97 
 
 tion on the other side. Heaven is within heaven, and sky 
 over sky, and they are encompassed with divinities. Others 
 there are, to whom the heaven is brass, and it shuts down to 
 the surface of the earth. It is a question of temperament, 
 or of more or less immersion in nature. The last class must 
 have a reflex or parasite faith ; not a sight of realities, 
 but an instinctive reliance on the seers and believers of real 
 ities. The manners and thoughts of believers astonish them, 
 and convince them that these have seen something which is 
 hid from themselves. But their sensual habit would fix the 
 believer to his last position, whilst he as inevitably advances; 
 and presently the unbeliever, for love of belief, burns the be 
 liever. 
 
 (Jreat believers are always reckoned infidels, impracticable, 
 fantastic, atheistic, and really men of no account. The spirit 
 ualist finds himself driven to express his faith by a series of 
 scepticisms. Charitable souls comes with their projects, and 
 ask his co-operation. How can he hesitate ] It is the rule 
 of mere comity and courtesy to agree where you can, and to 
 turn your sentence with something auspicious, and not freez 
 ing and sinister. But he is forced to say : 0, these things 
 will be as they must be : what can you do? These particular 
 griefs and crimes are the foliage and fruit of such trees as we 
 see growinir. It is vain to complain of the leaf or the berry : 
 cut it off; it will bear another just as bad. You must begin 
 your cure lower down. The generosities of the day prove an 
 intractable clement for him. The people s questions are not 
 his ; their methods are not his ; and, against all the dictates 
 of good-nature, he is driven to say, he has no pleasure in 
 them. 
 
 Even the doctrines dear to the hope of man, of the divine 
 Providence, and of the immortality of the soul, his neighbors 
 cannot put the statement so that he shall affirm it. But he 
 denies out of more faith, and not less. He denies out of 
 honesty. He had rather stand charged with the imbecility of 
 scepticism, than with untruth. I believe, he says, in the 
 moral design of the universe ; it exists hospitably for the ^val 
 of souls; but your dogmas seem to me caricatures: why 
 should I make believe them ] Will any say, this is cold and 
 infidel ? The wise and magnanimous will not say so. They 
 will exult in his far-sighted good-will, that can abandon to the 
 adversarv all the ground of tradition and common belief, with 
 out losing a jot of strength. It sees to the end of all trans- 
 
 VOL. II. .5 O 
 
 
98 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 eression. George Fox saw " that there was an ocean of dark 
 ness and death ; but withal, an infinite ocean of light and love 
 which flowed over that of darkness." _ . 
 
 (The nnal_solution_jn_jwhicji_scjpt 
 
 moral sentimei^^hici]L-Jie3ifiii-fQjfeit.S-its supremacv. All 
 moocrs^a;fbe~ safely tried, and their weight allowed to all ob 
 jections : the moral sentiment as easily outweighs them all as 
 any one. This is the drop which balances the sea. I play 
 with the miscellany of facts, and take those superlciaLYiews 
 which we call scepticism; but I know that they will presently 
 appe^Tto~ln~e~mthat order which.make8. scepticism impossible. 
 A man of thought must feel the thought that is parent of the 
 universe : that the masses of nature do undulate and now. 
 This faith avails to the whole emergency of life and objects. 
 The world is saturated with deity and with law. 
 tent with just and unjust, with sots and fools, with the tri 
 umph of folly and fraud. He_can behold^vithjeremty the 
 yawning gulf between the ambition of man and his power ot 
 performance, between the demand and supply of power, which 
 makes the tragedy of all souk 
 
 Charles Fourier announcetl^hat " the attractions ot man 
 are proportioned to his destinies" ; in other words, that _eviy 
 desire predirts_J*L_awjQ^^ Yet, all experience ex- 
 
 Mntsthe reverse of this ; the incompetejucy^fL^owej is the 
 universal grief of young and ardent minds. They accuse the 
 divine providence of a certain parsimony. It has shown the 
 heaven and earth to every child, and filled him with a desire 
 for the whole ; a desire raging, infinite ; a hunger, as of space 
 to be filled with planets ; a cry of famine, as of devils for 
 souls. Then for the satisfaction, to each man is adminis 
 tered a single drop, a bead of dew of vital power, per day, - 
 a cup as large as space, and one drop of the water of life in 
 it. Each man woke in the morning, with an appetite that 
 could eat the solar system like a cake ; a spirit for action and 
 passion without bounds ; he could lay his hand on the morn- 
 mo- star : he could try conclusions with gravitation or chem 
 istry ; but, on the first motion to prove his strength, hands, 
 feet, senses, save way, and would not serve him. He was an 
 emperor deserted by his states, and left to whistle by himself, 
 or thrust into a mob of emperors, all whistling : and still the 
 sirens sang, " The attractions are proportioned to the desti 
 nies." In every house, in the heart of each maiden, and ot 
 each boy, in the soul of the soaring saint, this chasm is found, 
 
MONTAIGNE; OR, THE SCEPTIC. 99 
 
 betwOOll the largest promise nf ideal pnwp^ nnd t.h 
 
 experience. 
 
 I 1 ! u> i-xpunsivo nature of truth comes to our succor, elastic, 
 not to IK- surrounded. Man helps himself by larger uvnerali/a- 
 tions. f rhc lesson of life in prn.f.tif!illy f.^ ffnorii1iy,p ; to be 
 lieve what the years and the centuries say arainst t.hn hours ; 
 to resist thejisurpa tioD of particulars ; to peiietrzjLte_to their 
 catholic sense. Things seem to say one thing, and say the re 
 verse! The appearance is immoral ; the result is moral. 
 Things seem to tend downward, to justify despondency, to pro 
 mote rogues, to defeat the just ; and, by knaves, as by mar 
 tyr-, the just cause is carried forward. Although knaves win 
 in every political struggle, although society seems to be deliv 
 ered over from the hands of one set of criminals into the hands 
 of another set of criminals, as fast as the government is 
 changed, and the march of civilization is a train of felonies, 
 yet, general ends are somehow answered. We see, now, 
 events forced on, which seem to retard or retrogrado__the ci 
 vility of ages. But the world-spirit is a good swimmer, and 
 storms and waves cannot drown him He snaps his finger at 
 laws : and so, throughout history, heaven seems to affect low 
 and poor means. Through the years and the centuries, 
 through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and 
 beneficent tendency irresistibly streams. 
 
 Let a man learn to look for the permanent in the mutable 
 and fleeting ; let him learn to bear the disappearance of 
 things he was wont to reverence, without losing his rever 
 ence ; let him learn that he is- here, not to work, but to be 
 worked upon ; and that, though abyss""open under aby^ss, and 
 opinion displace opinion, all are at last contained in jjie Eter- 
 nal Cause. 
 
 " If my bark sink, t is to another sea." 
 
V. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE; OR, THE POET. 
 
 
SHAKESPEARE; OR, THE POET. 
 
 GREAT men are more distinguished by range and extent, 
 r than by originality. If we require the originality, which 
 consists in weaving, like a spider, their web from their own 
 bowels ; in finding clay, and making bricks, and building the 
 house ; no great men are original. Nor does valuable original 
 ity consist in unlikeness to other men. The hero is in the 
 press of knights, and the thick of events ; and, seeing what 
 men want, and sharing their desire, he adds the needful length 
 of sight and of arm, to come at the desired point. The great 
 est genius is the most indebted man. A poet is no rattle 
 brain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says 
 everything, saying, at last, something good ; but a heart in 
 unison with his time and country. There is nothing whim 
 sical and fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad ear 
 nest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed 
 with the most determined aim which any man or class knows 
 of in his times. 
 
 The Genius of our life is jealous of individuals; and will 
 not have any individual great, except through the general. 
 There is no choice to genius. A great man does not wake up 
 on some fine morning, and say, I am full of life, I will go to 
 sea, and find an Antarctic continent : to-day I will square the 
 circle : I will ransack botany, and find a new food for man : I 
 have a new architecture in my mind : I foresee a new mcrhan- 
 ic power : no, but he finds himself in the river of the thoughts 
 and events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities of his 
 contemporaries. He stands where all the eyes of men look 
 one way, and their hands all point in the direction in which 
 he should go. The church has reared him amidst rites and 
 pomps, and he carries out the advice which her music gave 
 him, and builds a cathedral needed by her chants and proces- 
 
104 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 sions. He finds a war raging : it educates him, by trumpet, 
 in barracks, and he betters the instruction. He finds two 
 counties groping to bring coal, or flour, or fish, from the place 
 of production to the place of consumption, and he hits on a 
 railroad. Every master has found his materials collected, and 
 his power lay in his sympathy with his people, and in his 
 love of the materials he wrought in. What an economy of 
 power ! and what a compensation for the shortness of life ! 
 All is done to his hand. The world has brought him thus 
 far on his way. The human race has gone out before him, 
 sunk the hills, filled the hollows, and bridged the rivers. 
 Men, nations, poets, artisans, women, all have worked for him, 
 and he enters into their labors. Choose any other thing, out 
 of the line of tendency, out of the national feeling and history, 
 and he would have all to do for himself : his powers would be 
 expended in the first preparations. Great genial power, one 
 would almost say, consists in not being original at all ; in be 
 ing altogether receptive ; in letting the world do all, and suf 
 fering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the 
 mind. 
 
 Shakespeare s youth fell in a time when the English people 
 were importunate for dramatic entertainments. The court 
 took offence easily at political allusions, and attempted to sup 
 press them. The Puritans, a growing and energetic party, 
 and the religious among the Anglican church, would suppress 
 them. But the people wanted them. Inn-yards, houses 
 without roofs, and extemporaneous enclosures at country fairs, 
 were the ready theatres of strolling players. The people had 
 tasted this new joy ; and, as we could not hope to suppress 
 newspapers now, no, not by the strongest party, neither 
 then could king, prelate, or puritan, alone or united, suppress 
 an organ, which was ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, lecture, 
 Punch, and library, at the same time. Probably king, prelate, 
 and puritan, all found their own account in it. It had become, 
 by all causes, a national interest, by no means conspicuous, 
 so that some great scholar would have thought of treating it 
 in an English history, but not a whit less considerable, be 
 cause it was cheap, and of no account, like a baker s shop. 
 The best proof of its vitality is the crowd of writers which 
 suddenly broke into this field ; Kyd, Marlow, Greene, Jonson, 
 Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Peele, Ford, 
 Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher. 
 
 The secure possession, by the stage, of the public mind, is 
 
SHAKESPEARE ; OR, THE POET. 105 
 
 of the first importance to the poet who works for it. Tie 
 no time in idle experiments. Hero is audience and expectation 
 prepared. In the rase of Shakespeare there is much more. 
 At the time when he left Stratford, and went np to London, a 
 gre.it body of Stage-plays, of all dates and writers, exited in 
 manuscript, and were in turn produced on the boards. Here 
 is the Tale of Troy, which the audience will bear hearing some 
 part of. every week : the Death of Julius Cojsar, and other 
 stories out of Plutarch, which they never tire of: a shelf full 
 of English history, from the chronicles of Brut and Arthur, 
 down to the royal Henries, which men hear eagerly ; and a 
 string of doleful tragedies, merry Italian tales, and Spanish 
 voyages, which all the London prentices know. All the mass 
 has been treated, with more or less skill, by every playwright, 
 and the prompter has the soiled and tattered manuscripts. It 
 is now no longer possible to say who wrote them first. They 
 have been the property of the Theatre so long, and so many 
 rising geniuses have enlarged or altered them, inserting ;l 
 speech, or a whole scene, or adding a song, that no man can 
 any longer claim copyright in this work of numbers. Happily, 
 no man wishes to. They are not yet desired in that way. 
 We have few readers, many spectators and hearers. They had 
 best lie where they are. 
 
 Shakespeare, in common with his comrades, esteemed the 
 mass of old plays, waste stock, in which any experiment could 
 be freely tried. Had the j>r< >v///r \\ Inch hedges about a modern 
 :v existed, nothing could have been done. The rude 
 warm blood of the living England circulated in the play, as in 
 street-ballads, and gave body which he wanted to his airy and 
 majestic fancy. Th- poet needs a ground in popular tradition 
 on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art 
 within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, sup 
 plies a foundation for his edifice ; and, in furnishing so much 
 work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full 
 strength for the audacities of his imagination. In short, the 
 poet owes t<> his l^-vud what sculpture owed to the temple. 
 Sculpture in Kgypt, and in (Jreere. grew up in subordination 
 to architecture. It was the >rnament of the temple wall : at 
 first, a rude relief carved on pediments, then the ivl:< f 1 < came. 
 bolder, and a head or arm was projected from the wall, the 
 groups being still arranged with reference to the building, 
 which serves also as a frame to hold the figures : and when, at 
 last, the greatest freedom of style and treatment was reached, 
 
106 REPKESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 the prevailing genius of architecture still enforced a certain 
 calmness and continence in the statue. As soon as the statue 
 was begun for itself, and with no reference to the temple or 
 palace, the art began to decline ; freak, extravagance, and ex 
 hibition took the place of the old temperance. This balance- 
 wheel, which the sculptor found in architecture, the perilous 
 irritability of poetic talent found in the accumulated dramatic 
 materials to which the people were already wonted, and which 
 had a certain excellence which no single genius, however ex 
 traordinary, could hope to create. 
 
 In point of fact, it appears that Shakespeare did owe debts in 
 all directions, and was able to use whatever he found ; and the 
 amount of indebtedness may be inferred from Malone s labori 
 ous computations in regard to the First, Second, and Third 
 Parts of Henry VI., in which "out of 6043 lines, 1771 were 
 written by some author preceding Shakespeare ; 2373 by him, 
 on the foundation laid by his predecessors; and 1899 were en 
 tirely his own." And the proceeding investigation hardly 
 leaves a single drama of his absolute invention. Malone s sen 
 tence is an important piece of external history. In Henry 
 VII L, I think I see plainly the cropping out of the original 
 rock on which his own finer stratum was laid. The first play 
 was written by a superior, thoughtful man, with a vicious ear. 
 I can mark his lines, and know well their cadence. See 
 Wolsey s soliloquy, and the following scene with Cromwell, 
 where, instead of the metre of Shakespeare, whose secret is, 
 that the thought constructs the tune, so that reading for the 
 sense will best bring out the rhythm, here the lines are con 
 structed on a given tune, and the verse has even a trace of 
 pulpit eloquence. But the play contains, through all its length, 
 unmistakable traits of Shakespeare s hand, and some passages, 
 as the account of the coronation, are like autographs. What 
 is odd, the compliment >to Queen Elizabeth is in the bad 
 rhythm. 
 
 Shakespeare knew that tradition supplies a better fable than 
 any invention can. If he lost any credit of design, he aug 
 mented his resources ; and, at that day, our petulant demand 
 for originality was not so much pressed. There was no litera 
 ture for the million. The universal reading, the cheap press, 
 were unknown. A great poet, who appears in illiterate times, 
 absorbs into his sphere all the light which is anywhere radiat 
 ing. Every intellectual jewel, every flower of sentiment, it is 
 his fine office to bring to his people ; and he comes to value his 
 
SHAKESPEARE ; OR. THE POET. 107 
 
 memory equally with his invention. He is therefore little so 
 licitous whence his thoughts have been derived ; whether 
 through translation, \\ hether through tradition, whether ly 
 travel in distant countries, whether l>y inspiration; from what 
 ever source, they are equally welcome to his uncritical audi 
 ence. Nay, he borrows very near home. Other men say wise 
 things as well as he ; only they say a good many foolish things, 
 and do not know when they have spoken wisely. He knows 
 the sparkle of the true stone, and puts it in high place, wher 
 ever he tinds it. Such is the happy position of Homer, per 
 haps ; of Chaucer, of Saadi. They felt that all wit was their 
 wit. And thev are librarians and historiographers, as well as 
 poets. Each romancer was heir and dispenser of all the hun 
 dred tales of the world, 
 
 ^ and Pclops line 
 And the tule of Troy divine." 
 
 The influence of Chaucer is conspicuous in all our early litera 
 ture ; and, more recently, not only Pope and Dryden have been 
 beholden to him, but, in the whole society of English writers, 
 a large unacknowledged debt is easily traced. One is charmed 
 with the opulence which feeds so many pensioners. But 
 Chaucer is a huge borrower. Chaucer, it seems, drew contin 
 ually, through Ljdgate and < axtoii, from Guido di Colonna, 
 whose Latin romance of the Trojan war was in turn a compila 
 tion from Dares Phrvgius, Ovid, and Statins. Then Petrarch, 
 Boccaccio, and the Provencal poets, are his benefactors : the 
 Ivoinaunt of the Rose is only judicious translation from William 
 of Lorris and John of Mcun : Troilus and Crcseide, from Lol- 
 lius of Urbino : the Cock and the Fox, from the fan s of Marie : 
 The House of Fame, from the French or Italian : and poor 
 Gower he uses as if he were only a brick-kiln or stone-qunrry, 
 out of which to build his house. He steals by this apology, 
 that what he takes has no worth where he finds it, and the 
 great i. st where he leaves it. It has come to be practically a 
 sort of rule in literature, that a man, having once shown him 
 self capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal 
 from the writings of others at discretion. Thought is the 
 property of him who can entertain it ; and of him who can 
 adequately place it. A certain awkwardness marks the use of 
 borrowed thoughts ; but, as soon as we have learned what to 
 do with them, they become our own. 
 
 Thus, all originality is relative. Every thinker is retrospec 
 tive. The learned member of the Legislature, at Westminster, 
 
108 KEPRESENTATIVE MSN. 
 
 or at Washington, speaks and votes for thousands. Show iis 
 the constituency, and the now invisible channels by which the 
 senator is made aware of their wishes, the crowd of practical 
 and knowing men, who, by correspondence or conversation, are 
 feeding him with evidence, anecdotes, and estimates, and it 
 will bereave his fine attitude and resistance of something of 
 their impressiveness. As Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Webster 
 vote, so Locke and Rousseau think for thousands ; and so 
 there were fountains all around Homer, Menu, Saadi, or Milton, 
 from which they drew ; friends, lovers, books, traditions, prov 
 erbs, all perished, which, if seen, would go to reduce the 
 wonder. Did the bard speak with authority 1 Did he feel 
 himself overmatched by any companion 1 The appeal is to the 
 consciousness of the writer. Is there at least in his breast a 
 Delphi whereof to ask concerning any thought or thing, 
 whether it be verily so, yea or nay ? and to have answer, and 
 to rely on that 1 All the debts which such a man could con 
 tract to other wit, would never disturb his consciousness of 
 originality: for the ministrations of books, and of other minds, 
 are a whiff of smoke to that most private reality with which 
 he has conversed. 
 
 It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius, 
 in the world, was no man s work, but came by wide social 
 labor, when a thousand wrought like one, sharing the same 
 impiilse. Our English Bible is a wonderful specimen of the 
 strength and music of the English language. But it was not 
 made by one man, or at one time ; but centuries and churches 
 brought it to perfection. There never was a time when there 
 was not some translation existing. The Liturgy, admired for 
 its energy and pathos, is an anthology of the piety of ages 
 and nations, a translation of the prayers and forms of the 
 Catholic church, these collected, too, in long periods, from 
 the prayers and meditations of every saint and sacred writer, 
 all over the world. Grotius makes the like remark in respect 
 to the Lord s Prayer, that the single clauses of which it is 
 composed were already in use, in the time of Christ, in the 
 rabbinical forms. He picked out the grains of gold. The 
 nervous language of the Common Law, the impressive forms 
 of our courts, and the precision and substantial truth of the 
 legal distinctions, are the contribution of all the sharp-sighted, 
 strong-minded men who have lived in the countries where 
 these laws govern. The translation of Plutarch gets its ex 
 cellence by being translation on translation. There never was 
 
SHAKESPEARE; OR, THE POET. 
 
 a time when there was none. All the truly idiomatic and 
 national phrases are kept, and all others successively picked 
 out. and thrown away. Something like the same process had 
 gone on, loinr h.-tbiv, with the originals of these books. The 
 world takes liberties with world-books. Vedas, ^fSsop s Fables, 
 Pilpay, Arabian Nights, Cid, Iliad, Robin Hood, Scottish 
 Minstrelsy, are not the work of single men. In the com 
 position of such works, the time thinks, the market thinks, 
 the mason, the carpenter, the merchant, the farmer, the fop, 
 all think for us. Every book supplies its time with one good 
 word ; every municipal law, every trade, every folly of the 
 day, and the generic catholic genius who is not afraid or 
 ashamed to owe his originality to the originality of all, stands 
 with the next age as the recorder and embodiment of his own. 
 We have to thank the researches of antiquaries, and the 
 Shakespeare Society, for ascertaining the steps of the English 
 drama, from the Mysteries celebrated in churches and by 
 churchmen, and the final detachment from the church, and 
 the completion of secular plays, from Ferrcx and Porrex, and 
 (Jammer Gurton s Needle, down to the possession of the stage 
 by the very pieces which Shakespeare altered, remodelled, and 
 finally made his own. Elated with success, and piqued by 
 the growing interest of the problem, they have left no book 
 stall unscarehed, no chest in a garret unopened, no file of old 
 yellow accounts to decompose in damp and worms, so keen 
 was the hope to discover whether the boy Shakespeare poached 
 or not, whether he held horses at the theatre door, whether he 
 kept school, and why he left in his will only his second-best 
 bed to Ann Hathaway, his wife. 
 
 There is somewhat touching in the madness with which the 
 ttg airo mischooses the object on which all candles shine, 
 and all eyes are turned ; the care with whi.-h it registers every 
 tritlo touching Queen Elizabeth, and King James, and the 
 ters, Burlri 4-hs, and Buckinghams ; and lets 
 without a sinirlc valuable note the founder of another 
 dynasty, which alone will cause the Tudor dynasty to be re 
 ared, the man who carries the Saxon race in him by 
 the inspiration which feeds him, and on whose thoughts the 
 foremost people of the world are now for some ages to be 
 nourished, and minds to receive this and not another bia-. 
 popular player, nobody suspected he was the poet of the 
 human race ; and the secret was kept as faithfullv from poets 
 and intellectual men, as from courtiers and frivolous people. 
 
110 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 Bacon, who took the inventory of the human understanding 
 for his times, never mentioned his name. Ben Jonson, though 
 we have strained his few words of regard and panegyric, had 
 no suspicion of the elastic fame whose first vibrations he was 
 attempting. He no doubt thought the praise he has conceded 
 to him generous, and esteemed himself, out of all question, the 
 better poet of the two. 
 
 If it need wit to know wit, according to the proverb, 
 Shakespeare s time should be capable of recognizing it. Sir 
 Henry Wotton was born four years after Shakespeare, and 
 died twenty-three years after him ; and I find, among his cor 
 respondents and acquaintances, the following persons : Theo 
 dore Beza, Isaac Casaubon, Sir Philip Sidney, Earl of Essex, 
 Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Milton, Sir Henry Vane, 
 Isaac Walton, Dr. Donne, Abraham Cowley, Bellarmine, Charles 
 Cotton, John Pym, John Hales, Kepler, Vieta, Albericus Gen- 
 tilis, Paul Sarpi, Arminius ; with all of whom exists some 
 token of his having communicated, without enumerating many 
 others, whom doubtless he saw, Shakespeare, Spenser, Jon- 
 son, Beaumont, Massinger, two Herberts, Marlow, Chapman, 
 and the rest. Since the constellation of great men who ap 
 peared in Greece in the time of Pericles, there was never any 
 such society ; yet their genius failed them to find out the best 
 head in the universe. Our poet s mask was impenetrable. 
 You cannot see the mountain near. It took a century to 
 make it suspected ; and not until two centuries had passed, 
 after his death, did any criticism which we think adequate 
 begin to appear. It was not possible to write the history of 
 Shakespeare till now ; for he is the father of German litera 
 ture : it was on the introduction of Shakespeare into German, 
 by Lessing, and the translation of his works by Wieland and 
 Schlegel, that the rapid burst of German literature was most 
 intimately connected. It was not until the nineteenth cen 
 tury, whose speculative genius is a sort of living Hamlet, that 
 the tragedy of Hamlet could find such wondering readers. 
 Now, literature, philosophy, and thought are Shakespearized. 
 His mind is the horizon beyond which, at present, we do not 
 see. Our ears are educated to music by his rhythm. Cole 
 ridge and Goethe are the only critics who have expressed our 
 convictions with any adequate fidelity ; but there is in all 
 cultivated minds a silent appreciation of his superlative, power 
 and beauty, which, like Christianity, qualifies the period. 
 
 The Shakespeare Society have inquired in all directions, ad- 
 
SHAKESPEARE; OR, THE POET. Ill 
 
 vertised tho missing facts, oll ercd money for any information 
 that \\ill lead to proof; and with what result] Beside some 
 important illustration of tho history of the English stage, to 
 which 1 have adverted, they have Cleaned a few lacts touching 
 the property, and dealings in regard to property, of the poet. 
 It appears that, from year to year, he owned a larger share 
 in the Blackfriars Theatre : its wardrobe and other appurte 
 nances were his : that he bought an estate in his native vil 
 lage, with his earnings, as writer and shareholder; that he 
 lived in the best house in Stratford : was intrusted by his 
 neighbors with their commissions in London, as of borrowing 
 money, and the like ; that he was a veritable farmer. About 
 the time when he was writing Macbeth, he sues Philip Rogers, 
 in the borough-court of Stratford, for thirty-five shillings, ten 
 pence, for corn delivered to him at different times; and, in all 
 respects, appears as a good husband, with no reputation for 
 eccentricity or excess. He was a good-natured sort of man, 
 an actor and shareholder in the theatre, not in any striking 
 manner distinguished from other actors and managers. 1 ad 
 mit the importance of this information. It was well worth 
 the pains that have been taken to procure it. 
 
 But whatever scraps of information concerning his condition 
 these researches may have rescued, they can shed no light 
 upon that infinite invention which is the concealed magnet of 
 his attraction for us. We are very clumsy writers of history. 
 We tell the chronicle of parentage, birth, birthplace, school 
 ing, schoolmates, earning of money, marriage, publication of 
 books, celebrity, death ; and when we have come to an end of 
 this gossip, no ray of relation appears between it and the 
 goddess-born ; and it seems as if, had we dipped at random in 
 to the "Modern Plutarch," and read any other life there, it 
 would have fitted the poems as well. It is the essence of 
 poetry to spring, like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, fn in 
 the invisible, to abolish the- past, and refuse all history. Ma- 
 lone, Warburton, Dyce, and Collier have wasted their oil. 
 The famed theatres, Covent (lardm, Drury Lane, the Park, 
 and Tremont. have vainly a>.<;>tcd. Bcttcrton, Garrick, Kem- 
 ble. Kean. and Macready dedicate their lives to this genius ; 
 him th- V crown, eludirate, obey, and express. The genius 
 knows thnn not. The recitation begins ; one golden word 
 leaps out Immortal from all this painted pedantry, and sweetly 
 torments us with invitations to its own inaccessible homes. I 
 remember, I went once to see the Hamlet of a famed perform- 
 
112 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 er, the pride of the English stage ; and all I then heard, and 
 all I now remember, of the tragedian, was that in which the 
 tragedian had no part ; simply, Hamlet s question to the 
 ghost, - 
 
 " What may this mean, 
 
 That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel 
 Revisit st thus the glimpses of the moon? " 
 
 That imagination which dilates the closet he writes in to the 
 world s dimension, crowds it with agents in rank and order, as 
 quickly reduces the big reality to be the glimpses of the moon. 
 These tricks of his magic spoil for us the illusions of the green 
 room. Can any biography shed light on the localities into 
 which the Midsummer Night s Dream admits me 1 ? Did 
 Shakespeare confide to any notary or parish recorder, sacris 
 tan, or surrogate, in Stratford, the genesis of that delicate 
 creation ? The forest of Arden, the nimble air of Scone 
 Castle, the moonlight of Portia s villa, " the antres vast and 
 desarts idle," of Othello s captivity, where is the third 
 cousin, or grand-nephew, the chancellor s file of accounts, or 
 private letter, that has kept one word of those transcendent 
 secrets 1 In fine, in this drama, as in all great works of art, 
 in the Cyclopsean architecture of Egypt and India ; in the 
 Phidian sculpture ; the Gothic minsters ; the Italian paint 
 ing ; the Ballads of Spain and Scotland, the Genius draws 
 up the ladder after him, when the creative age goes up to 
 heaven, and gives way to a new age, which sees the works, 
 and asks in vain for a history. 
 
 Shakespeare is the only biographer of Shakespeare ; and 
 even he can tell nothing, except to the Shakespeare in us ; that 
 is, to our most apprehensive and sympathetic hour. He can 
 not step from off his tripod, and give us anecdotes of his 
 inspirations. Read the antique documents extricated, ana 
 lyzed, and compared by the assiduous Dyce and Collier ; and 
 now read one of those skyey sentences, aerolites, which, 
 seem to have fallen out of heaven, and which, not your expe 
 rience, but the man within the breast, has accepted as words 
 of fate ; and tell me if they match ; if the former account in 
 any manner for the latter ; or which gives the most historical 
 insight into the man. 
 
 Hence, though our external history is so meagre, yet, with 
 Shakespeare for biographer, instead of Aubrey and Rowe, we 
 have really the information which is material, that which de 
 scribes character and fortune, that which, if we were about to 
 
SHAKESPEARE; OK, THE POET. 113 
 
 meet the man and deal with him, would most import us to 
 know. We have his recorded convictions on those questions 
 which knock for answer ut every heart, on lite and death, on 
 love, on wealth and poverty, on the prizes of life, and the ways 
 whcrehy we conic at them ; on the characters of men, and the 
 influences, occult and open, which affect their fortunes ; and 
 on those mysterious and demoniacal powers which defy our 
 science, and which yet interweave their malice and their gift in 
 our brightest hours. Who ever read the volume of the Son 
 nets, without finding that the poet had there revealed, under 
 masks that are no masks to the intelligent, the lore of friend 
 ship and of love ; the confusion of sentiments in the most sus 
 ceptible, and, at the same time, the most intellectual of men? 
 "What trait of his private mind has he hidden in his dramas? 
 One can discern, in his ample pictures of the gentleman and 
 the king, what forms and humanities pleased him ; his delight 
 in troops of friends, in large hospitality, in cheerful giving. 
 Let Tiinou, let Warwick, let Antonio the merchant, answer for 
 his great heart. So far from Shakespeare s being the least 
 known, he is the one person, in all modern history, known to us. 
 "What point of morals, of manners, of economy, of philosophy, 
 of religion, of taste, of the conduct of life, has he not settled ? 
 What mystery has he not signified his knowledge of ? What 
 office, or function, or district of man s work, has he not remem 
 bered ? What king has he not taught state, as Talma taught 
 Napoleon? What maiden has not found him finer than her 
 delicacy? "What lover has he not outloved ? What sage has 
 he not outseen ? What gentleman has he not instructed in 
 the rudeness of his behavior ! 
 
 Some able and appreciating critics think no criticism on 
 Shakespeare valuable, that docs not rest purely on the dra 
 matic merit : that he is falsely judged as poet and philosopher. 
 I think as highly as these critics of his dramatic merit, but 
 still think it secondary. He was a full man, who liked to talk ; 
 a brain exhaling thoughts and imaires, which, seeking vent,* 
 found the drama next at hand. Had he been less, we should 
 have had to consider how well he filled his place, how good a 
 dramatist he was, and he is the best in the world. But it 
 t.urns out, that what he has to say is of that weight as to 
 withdraw some attention from the vehicle ; and he is like some 
 saint whose history is to be rendered into all languages, into 
 verse and prose, into songs and pictures, find cut up into prov 
 erbs ; so that the occasion which gave the saint s meaning the 
 
114 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 form of a conversation, or of a prayer, or of a code of laws, is 
 immaterial, compared with the universality of its application. 
 So it fares with the wise Shakespeare and his book of life. He 
 wrote the airs for all our modern music : he wrote the text of 
 modern life ; the text of manners : he drew the man of Eng 
 land and Europe ; the father of the man in America : he drew 
 the man, and described the day, and what is done in it ; he 
 read the hearts of men and women, their probity, and their 
 second thought, and wiles ; the wiles of innocence, and the 
 transitions by which virtues and vices slide into their contraries : 
 he could divide the mother s part from the father s part in the 
 face of the child, or draw the fine demarcations of freedom and 
 of fate : he knew the laws of repression which make the police 
 of nature : and all the sweets and all the terrors of human lot 
 lay in his mind as truly but as softly as the landscape lies on 
 the eye. And the importance of this wisdom of life sinks the 
 form, as of Drama or Epic, out of notice. T is like making a 
 question concerning the paper on which a king s message is 
 written. 
 
 Shakespeare is as much out of the category of eminent au 
 thors, as he is out of the crowd. He is inconceivably wise ; 
 the others, conceivably. A good reader can, in a sort, nestle 
 into Plato s brain, and think from thence ; but not into Shake 
 speare s. We are still out of doors. For executive faculty, 
 for creation, Shakespeare is unique. No man can imagine it 
 better. He was the furthest reach of subtlety compatible 
 with an individual self, the subtilest of authors, and only 
 just within the possibility of authorship. With this wisdom 
 of life, is the equal endowment of imaginative and of lyric 
 power. He clothed the creatures of his legend with form and 
 sentiments, as if they were people who had lived under his roof ; 
 and few real men have left such distinct characters as these 
 fictions. And they spoke in language as sweet as it was fit. 
 Yet his talents never seduced him into an ostentation, nor did 
 he harp on one string. An omnipresent humanity co-ordi 
 nates all his faculties. Give a man of talents a story to tell, 
 and his partiality will presently appear. He has certain ob 
 servations, opinions, topics, which have some accidental promi 
 nence, and which he disposes all to exhibit. He crams this 
 part, and starves that other part, consulting not the fitness of 
 the thing, but his fitness and strength. But Shakespeare has 
 no peculiarity, no importunate topic ; but all is duly given ; no 
 veins, no curiosities : no cow-painter, no bird-fancier, no man- 
 
SHAKESPEARE; OR, THE POET. 115 
 
 nerist is he ; he has no discoverable egotism : the great he tells 
 greatly; the small. subordinately. He is wise wit limit empha 
 sis or assertion ; he is strong, as nature is strong, who lifts the 
 land into mountain slopes \vithontettbrt, and by the same rule 
 as she lli Mis a bubble in the air, and likes as well to do the 
 one as the other. This makes that equality of power in farce, 
 traced v, narrative, and love-songs ; a merit so incessant, that 
 each reader is ineredulous of the perception of other readers. 
 
 This power of expression, or of transferring the inmost truth 
 of things into music and verse, makes him the type of the poet, 
 and has added a new problem to metaphysics. This is that 
 which throws him into natural history, as a main production 
 of the globe, and as announcing new eras and ameliorations. 
 Things were mirrored in his poetry without loss or blur ; he 
 could paint the fine with precision, the great with compass ; 
 the tragic and the comic indifferently, and without any distor 
 tion or favor. He carried his powerful execution into minute 
 details, to a hair point; finishes an eyelash or a dimple as 
 firmly as he draws a mountain ; and yet these, like nature s, 
 will bear the scrutiny of the solar microscope. 
 
 In short, he is the chief example to prove that more or less 
 of production, more or fewer pictures, is a thing indifferent. 
 He had the power to make one picture. Daguerre learned 
 ho\\- to let one flower etch its image on his plate of iodine ; 
 and then proceeds at leisure to etch a million. There are al 
 ways objects ; but there was never representation. Here is 
 perfect representation, at last ; and now let the world of fig- 
 uivs sit for their portraits. No recipe can be given for the 
 making of a Shakespeare ; but the possibility of the translation 
 of things into song is demonstrated. 
 
 His lyric power lies in the genius of the piece. The sonnets, 
 though their excellence is lost in the splendor of the dramas, 
 are as inimitable as they : and it is not a merit of lines, but a 
 total merit of the piece ; like the tone of voice of some incom 
 parable pei-son, so is this a speech of poetic beings, and any 
 clause as unproducible now as a whole poem. 
 
 Though the speeches in the plays, and single lines, have a 
 beauty which tempts the ear to pause on them for their en phu- 
 ism, yet the sentence is so lo.uled with meaning, and so linked 
 with its foregoc-rs and followers, that the logician is satisfied. 
 His means are as admirable as his cuds ; cvcrv subordinate in 
 vention, by which lie helps himself to Connect some irrecon 
 cilable opposites, is a poem too. He is nut reduced to dis- 
 
116 REPIIESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 mount and walk, because his horses are running off with him 
 in some distant direction : he always rides. 
 
 The finest poetry was first expedience : but the thought has 
 suffered a transformation since it was an experience. Culti 
 vated men often attain a good degree of skill in writing verses ; 
 but it is easy to read, through their poems, their personal his 
 tory : any one acquainted with parties can name every figure : 
 this is Andrew, and that is Rachel. The sense thus remains 
 prosaic. It is a caterpillar with wings, and not yet a butter 
 fly. In the poet s mind, the fact has gone quite over into the 
 new element of thought, and has lost all that is exuvial. This 
 generosity abides with Shakespeare. We say, from the truth 
 and closeness of his pictures, that he knows the lesson by 
 heart. Yet there is not a trace of egotism. 
 
 One more royal trait properly belongs to the poet. I mean 
 his cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet, for 
 beauty is his aim. He loves virtue, not for its obligation, but 
 for its grace : he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for 
 the lovely light that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit 
 of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the universe. Epicurus re 
 lates, that poetry hath such charms that a lover might forsake 
 his mistress to partake of them. And the true bards have 
 been noted for their firm and cheerful temper. Homer lies in 
 sunshine ; Chaucer is glad and erect ; and Saadi says, " It 
 was rumored abroad that I was penitent ; but what had I to 
 do with repentance 1 " Not less sovereign and cheerful, 
 much more sovereign and cheerful, is the tone of Shakespeare. 
 His name suggests joy and emancipation to the heart of men. 
 If he should appear in any company of human souls, who 
 would not march in his troop 1 ? He touches nothing that 
 does not borrow health and longevity from his festal style. 
 
 And now, how stands the account of man with this bard 
 and benefactor, when in solitude, shutting our ears to the re 
 verberations of his fame, we seek to strike the balance 1 Soli 
 tude has austere lessons ; it can teach us to spare both heroes 
 and poets ; and it weighs Shakespeare also, and finds him to 
 share the halfness and imperfection of humanity. 
 
 Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Chaucer, saw the splendor of 
 meaning that plays over the visible world ; knew that a tree 
 had another use than for apples, and corn another than for 
 meal, and the ball of the earth, than for tillage and roads : 
 that these things bore a second and finer harvest to the mind, 
 
SIIAKKSrKAKK ; OR, THE POET 117 
 
 being emblems of its thoughts, and conveying in all their 
 natural history a certain mute commentary on human life. 
 Shakespeare < mployed them as colors to compose his picture. 
 He ivsted in their beauty; and never took the step which 
 seemed inevitable to such genius, namely, to explore (lie virtue 
 which resides in thr.M- >ymh>ls, and imparts this power, 
 what is that which they themselves say f He converted the 
 elements, which waited on his command, into entertainments, 
 lie uas master of the revels to mankind. Is it not as if one 
 should have, through majestic powers of science, the comets 
 given into his hand, or the planets and their moons, and should 
 draw them from their orbits to glare with the municipal fire 
 works on a holiday night, and advertise in all towns, " very 
 superior pyrotechny this evening ! " Are the agents of nature, 
 and the power to understand them, worth no more than a 
 street serenade, or the breath of a cigar 1 One remembers 
 again the trumpet-text in the Koran, " The heavens and the 
 earth, and all that is between them, think ye we have created 
 them in jest 1 ?" As long us the question is of talent and mental 
 power, the world of men has not his equal to show. But when 
 the question is to life, and its materials, and its auxiliaries, 
 how does he profit me ? "What does it signify ] It is but a 
 Twelfth Night, or Midsummer Night s Dream, or a Winter 
 Evening s Tale : what signifies another picture more or less] 
 The Egyptian verdict of the Shakespeare Societies comes to 
 mind, that he was a jovial actor and manager. I cannot 
 marry this fact to his verse. Other admirable, men have led 
 lives in some sort of keeping with their thought : but this 
 man, in wide contrast. Had he been less, had he reached only 
 the common measure of great authors, of Bacon, Milton, Tasso, 
 Cervantes, we might leav. the fact in the twilight of human 
 fate : but, that this m;ui of men, he who gave to the science 
 of mind a new and larger subject than had ever existed, and 
 planted the standard of humanity some furlongs forward into 
 Chaos, that he should not be wise for himself, it must even 
 go into the world s history, that the best poet led an obscure 
 and profane life, using his genius for the public amusement. 
 
 Well, other men, priest and prophet; Israelite, (Jerman, and 
 Swede, beheld the same objects : they also saw through them 
 that which was contained. And to what purpose ? The 
 beauty straightway vanished ; they read commandments, all- 
 excludinu mountainous duty; an obligation, a sadness, as of 
 piled mountains, fell oil them, and life became ghastly, joyless, 
 
118 KEPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 a pilgrim s progress, a probation, beleaguered round with dole 
 ful histories of Adam s fall and curse, behind us ; with dooms 
 days and purgatorial and penal fires before us ; and the heart 
 of the seer and the heart of the listener sank in them. 
 
 It must be conceded that these are half-views of half-men. 
 The world still wants its poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall 
 not trifle with Shakespeare the player, nor shall grope in 
 graves with Swedenborg the mourner; but who shall see, 
 speak, and act, with equal inspiration. For knowledge will 
 brighten the sunshine ; right is more beautiful than private 
 affection ; and love is compatible with universal wisdom. 
 
VI. 
 
 NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF 
 THE WORLD. 
 

 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 iJ 
 
 NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAN OF THE 
 WORLD. 
 
 AMONG the eminent persons of the nineteenth century, 
 Honaparte is far the best known, and the most power 
 ful ; and owes his predominance to the fidelity with which 
 IK- expresses the tone of thought and belief," the aims of 
 the masses of active and cultivated men. It is Swedenborg s 
 theory, that every organ is made up of homogeneous particles; 
 or, as it is Hum-times expressed, every whole is made of simi 
 lars ; that is, the lungs are composed of infinitely small lungs ; 
 the liver, of infinitely small livers; the kidney, of little kid 
 neys, <tc. Following this analogy, if any man is found to 
 carry with him the power and aiiections of vast numbers, if 
 Napoleon is France, if Napoleon is Europe, it is because the 
 people whom he sways are little Napoleons. 
 
 In our society, there is a standing antagonism between the 
 conservative and the democratic classes; between those who 
 have made their fortunes, and the young and the poor who 
 have fortunes to make: between the interests of dead labor, 
 that is, the labor of hands lonur ago still in the grave, 
 which labor is now entombed in money stocks, or in land and 
 buildings owned by idle capitalists,- and the interests of liv 
 ing labor, which seeks t<> itself of land, and buildings, 
 and money stocks. The first, class is timid, selfish, illiberal, 
 hating innovation, and continually losing numbers by death. 
 The second class is selti<h al>. encroaching, bold, sell-relying, 
 always outnumbering the other, and recruiting its numbers 
 every hour by births. It desire* to keep open every avenue 
 to the Competition of all, and to multii.lv avenues; the class 
 of business men in America, in Kimland, in France, and 
 throughout Europe ; the class of industry and skill. Na 
 poleon is its representative. The instinct of active, brave, 
 
 VOL. n. . 6 
 
122 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 able men, throughout the middle class everywhere, has point 
 ed ont Napoleon as the incarnate Democrat. He had their 
 virtues and their vices ; above all, he had their spirit or aim. 
 That tendency is material, pointing at a sensual success, and 
 employing the richest and most various means to that end ; 
 conversant with mechanical powers, highly intellectual, wide 
 ly and accurately learned and skilful, but subordinating ail 
 intellectual and spiritual forces into means to a material suc 
 cess. To be the rich man, is the end. " God has granted^ 
 says the Koran, " to every people a prophet in its own tongue. 
 Paris, and London, and New York, the spirit of commerce, of 
 money, and material power, were also to have their prophet ; 
 and Bonaparte was qualified and sent. 
 
 Every one of the million readers of anecdotes, or memoirs, 
 or lives of Napoleon, delights in the page, because he studies 
 in it his own history. Napoleon is thoroughly modern, and, 
 at the highest point of his fortunes, has the very spirit of the 
 newspapers. He is no saint, to use his own word, "no 
 capuchin," and he is no hero, in the high sense. The man m 
 the street finds in him the qualities and powers of other men 
 in the street. He finds him, like himself, by birth a citizen, 
 who by very intelligible merits, arrived at such a commaiid- 
 inor position, that he could indulge all those tastes which the 
 common man possesses, but is obliged to conceal and deny : 
 good society, good books, fast travelling, dress, dinners, ser 
 vants without number, personal weight, the execution of his 
 ideas, the standing in the attitude of a benefactor to all per 
 sons about him, the refined enjoyments of pictures, statues, 
 music, palaces, and conventional honors, precisely what is 
 agreeable to the heart of every man in the nineteenth century, 
 this powerful man possessed. 
 
 It is true that a man of Napoleon s truth of adaptation t< 
 the mind of the masses around him, becomes not merely 
 representative, but actually a monopolizer and usurper of 
 other minds. Thus Mirabeau plagiarized every good thought, 
 every good word, that was spoken in France. Dumont re 
 lates, that he sat in the gallery of the Convention, and heard 
 Mirabeau make a speech. It struck Dumont that he could fit 
 it with a peroration, which he wrote in pencil immediately, 
 and showed it .to Lord Elgin, who sat by him. Lord Elgin ap 
 proved it, and Dumont, in the evening, showed it to Mirabeau. 
 Mirabeau read it, pronounced it admirable, and declared he 
 would incorporate it into his harangue to-morrow, to the As- 
 
NAPOLEON; OR, TIIK MAX 0V TIIK WORLD. 123 
 
 scmbly. " It is impossible," said Dumont, " as, unfortunately, 
 I have shown it to Lord Klgin." " If you have shown it to 
 Lord Klgin, and to fifty persons beside, I shall still speak it to 
 morrow" : and he did speak it, with much effect, at the next 
 day s session. For Mirabeau. with his overpowering pcrson- 
 ality, felt that these things, which his presence inspired, were 
 as much his own as if lie had said them, and that his adop 
 tion of them gave them their weight. Much more absolute 
 and centralizing was the successor to Mirabeau s popularity, 
 and to much more than his predominance in F ranee. Indeed, 
 a man of Napoleon s stamp almost ceases to have a private 
 speech and opinion. He is so largely receptive, and is so 
 placed, that he comes to be a bureau for all the intelligence, 
 wit, and power, of the age and country. He gains the battle ; 
 he makes the code ; he makes the system of weights and 
 measures ; he levels the Alps ; he builds the road. All dis 
 tinguished engineers, savans, statists, report to him : so, like 
 wise, do all good heads in every kind: he adopts the best 
 measures, sets his stamp on them, and not these alone, but on 
 every happy and memorable expression. Every sentence 
 spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves 
 reading, as it is the sense of France. 
 
 Bonaparte was the idol of common men, because he had in 
 transcendent degree the qualities and powers of common men. 
 There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest 
 ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy. 
 Bonaparte wrought, in common with that great class he repre 
 sented, for power and wealth, but Bonaparte, specially, with 
 out any scruple as to the means. All the sentiments which 
 embarrass men s pursuit of these objects, he set aside. The 
 sentiments were for women and children. Fontanes, in Isnl, 
 expressed Napoleon s own sense, when, in behalf of the Sen 
 ate, he addressed him, " Sire, the desire of perfection is the 
 worst disease that ever afflicted the human mind/ The ad- 
 s of liberty, and of progress, are "ideologists"; a 
 word of contempt often in his mouth; " Necker is an 
 ideologist": " Lafayette is an ideologist. 
 
 An Italian proverb, too well known, declares that, " if vou 
 would succeed, you must not be too L f ood." It is an adv:in- 
 .vithin certain limits, to have renounced the dominion of 
 the sentiments of piety, gratitude, and generosity ; since, 
 what was an impassable bar to us, and still is to others, be 
 comes a convenient weapon for our purposes ; just as the river 
 
124: REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 which was a formidable barrier, winter transforms into the 
 smoothest of roads. . 
 
 Napoleon renounced, once for all, sentiments and affections, 
 and would help himself with his hands and his head, \\ith 
 him is no miracle, and no magic. He is a worker in brass, in 
 iron, in wood, in earth, in roads, in buildings, in money, and 
 in troops, and a very consistent and wise master-workman 
 He is never weak and literary, but acts with the solidity and 
 the precision of natural agents. He has not lost his native 
 sense and sympathy with things. Men give way before such 
 a man as before natural events. To be sure, there are men 
 enough who are immersed in things, as farmers, smiths 
 sailors, and mechanics generally ; and we know how real t 
 solid such men appear in the presence of scholars and gram 
 marians : but these men ordinarily lack the power of arrange 
 ment, and are like hands without a head. But Bonaparte 
 superadded to this mineral and animal force, insight and gen 
 eralization. so that men saw in him combined the natural and the 
 intellectual power, as if the sea and land had taken flesh and be- 
 cim to cipher. Therefore the land and sea seem to presuppose 
 him He came unto his own and they received him. 11ns ci- 
 pherino- operative knows what he is working with, and what is 
 the product. He knew the properties of gold and iron of 
 wheels and ships, of troops and diplomatists, and required that 
 each should do after its kind. 
 
 The art of war was the game in which he exerted his arith 
 metic. It consisted, according to him, in having always more 
 forces than the enemy, on the point where the enemy is at 
 tacked, or where he attacks ; and his whole talent is strained 
 bv endless manoeuvre and evolution to march always on the 
 enemv at an amrle, and destroy his forces m detail. 
 vlus that a very small force, skilfully and rapidly man.u vring 
 so as always to bring two men against one at the point ot 
 engagement, will be an overmatch for a much larger body of 
 
 times, his constitution, and his early 
 
 had the 
 
 , 
 
 combined to develop this pattern democrat. 
 virtues of his class, and the conditions for their activity. 
 common sense, which no sooner respects any end, than 
 the means to effect it; the delight m the use of mean ^m 
 the choice, simplification, and combining of means ; th > dnect 
 ness and thoroughness of his work; the prudence with which 
 all was seen, and the energy with which all was done, make 
 
on, TIIK MAX OF THE WORLD. 125 
 
 him the natural or_ran and head of what I may almost call, 
 from its extent, tin- modern party. 
 
 Nature must have 1 far tin 1 Lrreatest share in cverv success, 
 ami so in his. Such a man was wanted, and such a man was 
 horn : a man of stone and iron, capable of sitting on horse 
 back sixteen <>r seventeen hours, of going many days together 
 without rest or food, except by snatches, and with the speed 
 and spring of a tiger in action ; a man not embarrassed by 
 anv scruples ; compact, instant, selfish, prudent, and of a per 
 ception which did not sutler itself to be balked or misled by 
 any pretences of others, or any superstition, or any heat or 
 haste of his own. " My hand of iron," he said, " was not at 
 the extremity of my arm ; it was immediately connected with 
 my head." He respected the power of nature and fortune, 
 and ascribed it to his superiority, instead of valuing himself, 
 like inferior men, on his opinionativeness. and waging war with 
 nature. His favorite rhetoric! lay in allusion to his star: and 
 he pleased himself, as well as the people, when he sf vl<-d him- 
 eolf the "Child of Destiny." "They charge me, he said, 
 "with the commission of great crimes: men of my stamp do 
 not commit crimes. Nothing has been more simple than my 
 elevation: t is in vain to ascribe it to intrigue or crime : it 
 \-ing to the peculiarity of the times, and to my reputa 
 tion of having foiurht well against the enemies of my country. 
 I have always marched with the opinion of great masses, and 
 with events. Of what use, then, would crimes be to me I " 
 Again he said, speaking of his son : " My son cannot replace 
 me : I could not replace myself. I am the creature of circum 
 stances." 
 
 He had a directness of action never before combined with 
 so much comprehension. He is a realist terrific to all talkers, 
 and confused truth-obscuring persons. He sees where the 
 matter hinges, throws himself on the precise point of resist- 
 and slights all other considerations. He is strong in the 
 riyrht manner, namely, by insight. He never blundered into 
 victory, but won his battles in his head, before he won them 
 on the field. His principal means are in himself. He asks 
 counsel of no other. In 179G, he writes to the Directory : " I 
 have conducted the campaign without consulting anv one. I 
 should have done no _ r ood, if I had been under the necessity 
 of conforming to the notions of another person. 1 !n\,- Drained 
 some advanta<_:< iperior forces, and when totally desti 
 
 tute of everything, because, in the persuasion that your con- 
 
126 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 fidence was reposed in me, my actions were as prompt as my 
 thoughts." 
 
 History is full, down to this day, of the imbecility of kings 
 and governors. They are a class of persons much to be 
 pitied, for they know not what they should do. The weavers 
 strike for bread ; and the king and his ministers, not knowing 
 what to do, meet them with bayonets. But Napoleon under 
 stood his business. Here was a man who, in each moment 
 and emergency, knew what to do next. It is an immense 
 comfort and refreshment to the spirits, not only of kings, but 
 of citizens. Few men have any next ; they live from hand to 
 mouth, without plan, and are ever at the end of their line, 
 and, after each action, wait for an impulse from abroad. Na 
 poleon had been the first man of the world, if his ends had 
 been purely public. As he is, he inspires confidence and vigor 
 by the extraordinary unity of his action. He is firm, sure, 
 self-denying, self-postponing, sacrificing everything to his aim, 
 money, troops, generals, and his own safety also, to his 
 aim ; not misled, like common adventurers, by the splendor 
 of his own means. " Incidents ought not to govern policy," 
 he said, "but policy, incidents." "To be hurried away by 
 every event, is to have no political system at all." His vic 
 tories were only so many doors, and he never for a moment 
 lost sight of his way onward, in the dazzle and uproar of the 
 present circumstance. He knew what to do, and he flew to 
 his mark. He would shorten a straight line to come at his 
 object. Horrible anecdotes may, no doubt, be collected from 
 his history, of the price at which he bought his successes ; 
 but he must not therefore be set down as cruel ; but only as 
 one who knew no impediment to his will ; not bloodthirsty, 
 not cruel, but woe to what thing or person stood in his 
 way ! Not bloodthirsty, but not sparing of blood, and 
 pitiless. He saw only the object : the obstacle must give way. 
 " Sire, General Clarke cannot combine with General Junot, for 
 the dreadful fire of the Austrian battery." " Let him carry 
 the battery." "Sire, every regiment that approaches the 
 heavy artillery is sacrificed : Sire, what orders ] " " For 
 ward, forward ! " Seruzier, a colonel of artillery, gives, in his 
 Military Memoirs, the following sketch of a scene after the 
 battle of Austerlitz : " At the moment in which the Russian 
 army was making its retreat, painfully, but in good order, on 
 the ice of the lake, the Emperor Napoleon came riding at full 
 speed toward the artillery. You are losing time, he cried ; 
 
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAX OF THE WORLD. 127 
 
 fire upon those masses; they must be ingulfed: fire upon 
 the itv ! The order remained unexecuted for ten minutes. 
 In vain several otlicers and myself were placed on the si"; -3 
 of a hill to produce the ell ect : their halls and mine rolled 
 upon the ice, without breaking it up. Seeing that, I tried a 
 simple method of elevating light howitzers. The almost per 
 pend if, ular fall of the heavy projectiles produced the desired 
 etffft. My method was immediately followed by the adjoin 
 ing batteries, and in less than no time we buried" some* 
 "thousands of Russians and Austrians under the waters of 
 the lake/ 
 
 In the plenitude of his resources, every obstacle seemed to 
 vanish. " There shall be no Alps," he said ; and he built his 
 perfect roads, climbing by graded galleries their steepest preci 
 pices, until Italy was as open to Paris as any town in France. 
 He laid his bones to, and wrought for his crown. Having de 
 cided what was to be done, he did that with might and main. 
 He put out all his strength. He risked everything, and spared 
 nothing, neither ammunition, nor money, nor troops, nor 
 generals, nor himself. 
 
 We like to see everything do its office after its kind, whether 
 it be a milch-cow or a rattle-snake ; and, if fighting be the 
 best mode of adjusting national differences (as hirge majorities 
 of men seem to agree), certainly Bonaparte was ri-ht in mak 
 ing it thorough. " The grand principle of war," he said, "was, 
 that an army ought always to be ready, by day and by night, 
 and at all hours, to make all the resistance it is capable of 
 making/ He never economized his ammunition, but, on a hos 
 tile position, rained a torrent of iron, shells, balls, grape- 
 shot, to annihilate all defence. On any point of resistance, 
 he concentrated squadron on squadron in overwhelming num 
 bers, until it was swept out of existence. To a regiment of 
 horse-chasseurs at Lobenstein, two days before the battle of 
 Jena, Napoleon said : " My lads, you must not fear death ; 
 when soldiers brave death, they drive him into the enemy s 
 ranks/ 1 In the fury of assault, he no more spared himself. 
 He went to the edge of his possibility. It is plain that in Ita 
 ly he did what he could, and all that he could. He came, sev 
 eral times, within an inch of ruin ; and his own person was all 
 but lost. He was Hung into the marsh at Arcola. The Aus- 
 trians were between him and his troops, in the melee, and he 
 
 * A- I quote at second-hand, and cannot procure Seruzier, I dare not adopt 
 the high figure I tind. 
 
128 REPKESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 was brought off with desperate efforts. At Lonato, and at 
 other places, he was on the point of being taken prisoner. He 
 fought sixty battles. He had never enough. Each victory 
 was a new weapon. " My power would fall, were I not to 
 support it by new achievements. Conquest has made me 
 what I am, and conquest must maintain me." He felt, with 
 every wise man, that as much life is needed for conservation, 
 as for creation. We are always in peril, always in a bad 
 plight, just on the edge of destruction, and only to be saved 
 by invention and courage. 
 
 This vigor was guarded and tempered by the coldest prudence 
 and punctuality. A thunderbolt in the attack, he was found 
 invulnerable in his intrenchments. His very attack was never 
 the inspiration of courage, but the result of calculation. His 
 idea of the best defence consists in being still the attacking par 
 ty. " My ambition," he says, " was great, but was of a cold na 
 ture." In one of his conversations with Las Casas, he remarked, 
 " As to moral courage, I have rarely met with the two-o clock- 
 in-the-morning kind : I mean unprepared courage, that which is 
 necessary on an unexpected occasion ; and which, in spite of the 
 most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of judgment and 
 decision " : and he did not hesitate to declare that he was him 
 self eminently endowed with this " two-o clock-in-the-morning 
 courage, and that he had met with few persons equal to him 
 self in this respect." 
 
 Everything depended on the nicety of his combinations, 
 and the stars were not more punctual than his arithmetic. 
 His personal attention descended to the smallest particulars. 
 " At Montebello, I ordered Kellermann to attack with eight 
 hundred horse, and with these he separated the six thousand 
 Hungarian grenadiers, before the very eyes of the- Austrian 
 cavalry. This cavalry was half a league off, and required a 
 quarter of an hour to arrive on the field of action ; and I have 
 observed, that it is always these quarters of an hour that de 
 cide the fate of a battle." " Before he fought a battle, Bona 
 parte thought little about what he should do in case of 
 success, but a great deal about what he should do in case of 
 a reverse of fortune." The same prudence and good sense 
 mark all his behavior. His instructions to his secretary at the 
 Tuileries are worth remembering. " During the night, enter 
 my chamber as seldom as possible. Do not awake me when 
 you have any good news to communicate ; with that there is 
 no hurry. But when you bring bad news, rouse me instantly, 
 
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAX OF THE WORLD. 129 
 
 for then there is not a UK uncut to bo lost." It was a whim 
 sical economy of the same kind which dictated his practice, 
 
 when general in Italy, in ivgard to liis burdenM>me cnvspond- 
 
 He directed n.Mirrienne to leave all letters unopeuod 
 
 for three weeks, and then observed with satisfaction how largo 
 
 a part of the correspondence had thus disposed of itself, and 
 
 no longer required an answer. His achievement of business 
 
 was immense, and enlarge* the known powers of man. Thero 
 have been many working kings, from t lysses to William of 
 Orange, but none who accomplished a tithe of this man s pei> 
 fermanee* 
 
 To these gifts of nature, Napoleon added the advantage of 
 having been born to a private and humble fortune. In his 
 later days, he had the weakness of wishing to add to hia 
 crowns and badges the proscription of aristocracy ; but he 
 knew his debt to his austere education, and made no secret of 
 his contempt for the born kings, and for "the hereditary 
 as he eoarselv st vied the Bourbons. He said that, "in 
 their exile, they have learned nothing and forgot nothing." 
 Bonaparte had passed through all the degrees of military ser 
 vice, but also was citizen before he was emperor, and so has 
 the key to citizenship. His remarks and estimates discover 
 the information and justness of measurement of the middle 
 class. ThoM who had to deal with him, found that he was 
 not to be imposed upon, but could cipher as well as another 
 man. This appears in all parts of his Memoirs, dictate) I at 
 St. Helena. When the expenses of the empress, of his house 
 hold, of his palaces, had accumulated great debts, Napoleon e.X 
 amined the bills of the creditors himself, detected overcharges 
 and errors, and reduced the claims by considerable sums. 
 
 .rrand weapon, namely, the millions whom he directed, 
 he owed to the representative character which clothed him. 
 He interests us as he stands for France and for Knrope ; and 
 he exists as captain and kinir, only as far as the revolution, or 
 the interest of the industrious masses, found an organ and a 
 r in him. In the social interests, he knew the meaning 
 and value of labor, and threw himself naturally on that side. 
 I like an incident mentioned bv one of his biographer! at St. 
 Helena. " When walking with Mrs. Baloombe, some servants, 
 carry in LT heavy bo.\e<. passed by on the road, and Mrs. l>al- 
 comhi them, in rather an angry tone, to keep back. 
 
 Napoleon interfered, saying, Ilespeet the burden. Madam. * 
 In the time of th<> empire, he directed attention to the improve 
 6* I 
 
130 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 ment and embellishment of the markets of the capital. " The 
 market-place," he said, " is the Louvre of the common people." 
 The principal works that have survived him are his magnifi 
 cent roads. He filled the troops with his spirit, and a sort of 
 freedom and companionship grew up between him and them, 
 which the forms of his court never permitted between the offi 
 cers and himself. They performed, under his eye, that which 
 no others could do. The best document of his relation to his 
 troops is the order of the day on the morning of the battle of 
 Austerlitz, in which Napoleon promises the troops that he will 
 keep his person out of reach of fire. This declaration, which 
 is the reverse of that ordinarily made by generals and sover 
 eigns on the eve of a battle, sufficiently explains the devotion 
 of the army to their leader. 
 
 But though there is in particulars this identity between 
 Napoleon and the mass of the people, his real strength lay 
 in their conviction that he was their representative in his 
 genius, and aims, not only when he courted, but when he 
 controlled, and even when he decimated them by his conscrip 
 tions. He knew, as well as any Jacobin in France, how to 
 philosophize on liberty and equality ; and, when allusion was 
 made to the precious blood of centuries, which was spilled by 
 the killing of the Due d Enghien, he suggested, " Neither is 
 my blood ditch-water." The people felt that no longer the 
 throne was occupied, and the land sucked of its nourishment, 
 by a small class of legitimates, secluded from all community 
 with the children of the soil, and holding the ideas and su 
 perstitions of a long-forgotten state of society. Instead of 
 that vampire, a man of themselves held, in the Tuileries, 
 knowledge and ideas like their own, opening, of course, to 
 them and their children, all places of power and trust. The 
 day of sleepy, selfish policy, ever narrowing the means and 
 opportunities of young men, was ended, and a day of expan 
 sion and demand was come. A market for all the powers 
 and productions of man was opened ; brilliant prizes glittered 
 in the eyes of youth and talent. The old, iron-bound, feudal 
 France was changed into a young Ohio or New York ; and 
 those who smarted under the immediate rigors of the new 
 monarch, pardoned them, as the necessary severities of the 
 military svstern which had driven out the oppressor. And 
 even when the majority of the people had begun to ask, 
 whether they had really gained anything under the exhaust 
 ing levies of m en and money of the new master, the whole 
 
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAX OF THE WORLD. 131 
 
 talent of the county, in every rank and kindred, took his part, 
 and deicnded him us its natural patron. In 1S1 4, when ad 
 vised to rely on the higher classes, Napoleon said to those 
 around him : "Gentlemen, in the .situation in which J .stand, 
 mv oiilv nobility is the rahble of the Faubourgs." 
 
 Napoleon met this natural expectation. The necessity of 
 his position required a hospitality to every sort of talent, and 
 its appointment to trusts; and his feeling went along with 
 this policy. Like every superior person, he undoubtedly felt 
 a desire for men and compeers, and a wish to measure his 
 power with other masters, and an impatience of fools and un 
 derlings. In Italy, he sought for men, and found none. 
 " Good God ! " he said, " how rare men are ! There are 
 eighteen millions in Italy, and 1 have with difficulty found two, 
 Dandolo and Melzi." In later years, with larger experience, 
 his respect for mankind was not increased. In a moment of 
 bitterness, he said, to one of his oldest friends : " Men deserve 
 the contempt with which they inspire me. I have only to put 
 some gold lace on the coat of my virtuous republicans, and 
 they immediately become just what I wish them." This im 
 patience at levity was, however, an oblique tribute of respect 
 to those able persons who commanded his regard, not only 
 when he found them friends and coadjutors, but also when 
 they resisted his will. He could not confound Fox and Pitt, 
 Carnot, Lafayette, and Bernadotte, with the danglers of his 
 court ; and, in spite of the detraction which his systematic 
 egotism dictated toward the great captains who conquered with 
 and for him, ample acknowledgments are made by -him to 
 Lanncs, Duroc, Kleber, Dessaix, Masscna, Mnrat, "Xey, and 
 Augereau. If he felt himself their patron, and the founder 
 of their fortunes, as when he said, " I made my generals out 
 of mud," he could not hide his satisfaction in receiving from 
 them a seconding and support commensurate with the grandeur 
 of his enterprise. In the Russian campaign, he was so much 
 impressed by the courage and resources of Marshal Xey, that 
 he said, " I have two hundred millions in my coffers, and I 
 would give them all for Xey." The characters which he has 
 drawn of several of his marshals are discriminating, and, 
 though they did not content the insatiable vanity of French 
 officers, are, no doubt, substantially just. And, in fact, every 
 species of merit was sought and advanced under his govern 
 ment. " I know," ho said, "the depth and draught of water of 
 every one of my generals." Natural power was sure to be well 
 
132 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 received at his court. Seventeen men, in his time, were raised 
 from common soldiers to the rank of king, marshal, duke, or 
 general j and the crosses of his Legion of Honor were given to 
 personal valor, and not to family connection. " When soldiers 
 have been baptized in the lire of a battle-field, they have all 
 one rank in my eyes." 
 
 When a natural king becomes a titular king, everybody is 
 pleased and satisfied. The Revolution entitled the strong 
 populace of the Faubourg St. Antoine, and every horse-boy 
 and powder-monkey in the army, to look on Napoleon, as flesh 
 of his flesh, and the creature of his party ; but there is some 
 thing in the success of grand talent which enlists a universal 
 sympathy. For, in the prevalence of sense and spirit over 
 stupidity and malversation, all reasonable men have an interest \ 
 and, as intellectual beings, we feel the air purified by the elec 
 tric shock, when material force is overthrown by intellectual 
 energies. As soon as we are removed out of the reach of local 
 and accidental partialities, man feels that Napoleon fights for 
 him ; these are honest victories ; this strong steam-engine does 
 our work. Whatever appeals to the imagination, by tran 
 scending the ordinary limits of human ability, wonderfully 
 encourages and liberates us. This capacious head, revolving 
 and disposing sovereignly trains of affairs, and animating such 
 multitudes of agents ; this eye, which looked through Europe : 
 this prompt invention ; this inexhaustible resource ; what 
 events ! what romantic pictures ! what strange situations ! 
 when spying the Alps, by a sunset in the Sicilian sea ; drawing 
 up his army for battle, in sight of the Pyramids, and saying 
 to his troops, " From the tops of those pyramids, forty centu 
 ries look down on you " ; fording the Red Sea ; wading in the 
 gulf of the Isthmus of Suez. On the shore of Ptolemais, 
 gigantic projects agitated him. "Had Acre fallen, I , should 
 have changed the face of the world." His army, on the night 
 of the battle of Austerlitz, which was the anniversary of his 
 inauguration as Emperor, presented him with a bouquet of 
 forty standards taken in the fight. Perhaps it is a little pue 
 rile, the pleasure he took in making these contrasts glaring ; as, 
 when he pleased himself with making kings wait in his ante 
 chambers, at Tilsit, at Paris, and at Erfurt. 
 
 We cannot, in the universal imbecility, indecision, and indo 
 lence of men, sufficiently congratulate ourselves on this strong 
 and ready actor, who took occasion by the beard, and showed 
 us how much may be accomplished by the mere force of such 
 
NAPOLEON; OR, THE MAX OF THE WORLD. 
 
 virtues as all men possess in less decrees : namely, by -punctu 
 ality, by personal attention, by courage, and thorough). c.-s. 
 "The Ausrrians." he said, "do not know the value of time." 
 I should cite him, in his earlier years, as a model of prudence. 
 His power does not consist in any wild or extravagant force; 
 in any enthusiasm, like Mahomet s ; or singular power of per 
 suasion ; but in the exercise of common sense on each emer 
 gency, instead of abiding by rules and customs. The lesson 
 he teaches is that which vigor always teaches, that there is 
 always room for it. To what heaps of cowardly doubts is not 
 that man s life an answer. When he appeared, it was the 
 belief of all military men that there could be nothing new in 
 war : as it is the belief of men to-day, that nothing new can 
 be undertaken in politics, or in church, or in letters, or in trade, 
 or in farming, or in our social manners and onstomfl ; and as it 
 is, at all times, the belief of society that the world is used up. 
 I5ut Bonaparte knew better than society ; and, moreover, knew 
 that he knew better. I think all men know Letter than they 
 do ; know that the institutions we so volubly commend are go- 
 carts and bawbles ; but they dare not trust their presentiments. 
 Bonaparte relied on his own sense, and did not care a bean for 
 other people s. The world treated his novelties just as it 
 treats everybody s novelties, made infinite objection; mus 
 tered all the impediments : but he snapped his finger at their 
 objections. " What creates great difficulty," he remarks, " in 
 the profession of the land-commander, is the necessity of feed 
 ing so many men and animals. If he allows himself to be 
 guided by the commissaries, he will never stir, and all his ex 
 peditions will fail." An example of his common sense is what 
 he says of the passage of the Alps in winter, which all writers, 
 one repeating after the other, had described as ini] racl it-able. 
 "Thi winter." says Napoleon, " is not the most unfavorable 
 season for the passage of lofty mountains. The snow is then 
 firm, the weather settled, and there is nothing to fear from 
 avalanches, the real and only danger to be apprehended in the 
 Alps. On tln.se high mountains, there are often very fine days 
 in December, of a dry cold, with extreme calmness in the air." 
 Read his account, too, of the way in which battles arc gained. 
 "In all battles, a moment occurs, when the bravest tl 
 after having made the greatest efforts, feel inclined t<> n n. 
 That terror proceeds from a want of confidence in their own 
 courage ; and it only requires a slight opportunity, a piv 
 to restore confidence to them. The art is to give rise to U.e- 
 
134 REPRESENTATIVE MEN- 
 
 opportunity, and to invent the pretence. At Arcola, I won the 
 
 battle with twenty-five horsemen. I seized that moment of 
 
 lassitude, gave every man a trumpet, and gained the day with 
 
 his handful. You see that two armies are two bodies which 
 
 meet, and endeavor to frighten each other : a moment of pan i, 
 
 occurs, and that moment must be turned to advantage When 
 
 man has been present in many actions, he distinguishes that 
 
 moment without difficulty : it is as easy as casting up an 
 
 epuy of the nineteenth century added to * 
 capacity for peculation on general topics He delighted m 
 running through the range of practical, of literary, and of 
 abstract questions. His opinion is always ; original and to the 
 purpose. On the voyage to Egypt, he liked, after dinner, t( 
 fix on three or four persons to support a proposition, and 
 many to oppose it. He gave a subject, and the discussions 
 toned on questions of religion, the different kinds of govern 
 ment, and the art of war. One day, he asked whether tt 
 planets were inhabited 1 On another, what was the age of t 
 world 1 Then he proposed to consider the probability of the 
 destruction of the globe, either by water or by fire : at another 
 time, the truth or fallacy of presentiments, and the interpreta 
 tion of dreams. He was very fond of talking of religion. 
 1806, he conversed with Fournier, Bishop of Montpellier 01 
 matters of theology. There were two points 011 which they 
 could not agree, viz., that of hell, and that of salvation out of 
 the pale of the church. The Emperor told Josephine, that he 
 disputed like a devil on these two points, on which the B 
 was inexorable. To the philosophers he readily yielded all 
 that was proved against religion as the work of men and time ; 
 but he would not hear of materialism. One fine night on 
 deck, amid a clatter of materialism, Bonaparte pointed to t 
 stars, and said, "You may talk as long as you please, gentle 
 men, but who made all that 1 " He delighted in the conversa 
 tion of men of science, particularly of Monge and Bertholle 
 but the men of letters he slighted ; they were manufacturers 
 of phrases." Of medicine, too, he was fond of talking, and 
 with those of its practitioners whom he most esteemed, -~ with 
 Corvisart at Paris, and with Antonomarchi at St. Helena 
 "Believe me," he said to the last, "we had better leave off all 
 these remedies : life is a fortress which neither you nor I know 
 anything about. Why throw obstacles in the way of its de 
 fence] Its own means are superior to all the apparatus of 
 
NAPOLEON ; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 135 
 
 your laboratories. Corvisart candidly agreed with me, that all 
 your filthy mixtures are u ood for not Inn- . Medicine is a col 
 lection, of uncertain prescriptions, the results of which, taken 
 collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind. Water, 
 air, and cleanliness are the chief articles in my pharmacopeia." 
 
 His memoirs, dictated to Count Montholon and General 
 (ioui -aud. at St. Helena, have great value, after all the de 
 duction that, it seems, is to be made from them, on account 
 of his known disingenuousness. He has the good-nature of 
 strength and conscious superiority. I admire his simple, clear 
 narrative of his battles; good as Caesar s; his good-natured 
 and sufficiently respectful account of Marshal Wurmser and 
 his other antagonists, and his own equality as a writer to 
 his varying subject. The most agreeable portion is the 
 Campaign in Egypt. 
 
 He had hours of thought and wisdom. In intervals of 
 leisure, either in the camp or the palace, Napoleon appears as 
 a man of genius, directing on abstract questions the native ap 
 petite for truth, and the impatience of words, he was wont to 
 shew in war. He could enjoy every play of invention, a ro 
 mance, a lin i/i tf, as well as a stratagem in a campaign. He 
 delighted to fascinate Josephine and her ladies, in a dim-lighted 
 apartment, by the terrors of a fiction, to which his voice and 
 dramatic power lent every addition. 
 
 I call Napoleon the agent or attorney of the middle class of 
 modern society ; of the throng who fill the markets, shops, 
 counting-houses, manufactories, ships, of the modern world, 
 aiming to be rich. He was the agitator, the destroyer of pre 
 scription, the internal improver, the liberal, the radical, the 
 inventor of means, the opener of doors and markets, the sub 
 vert er of monopoly and abuse. Of course, the rich and aristo 
 cratic did not like him. England, the centre of capital, and 
 Home and Austria, centres of tradition and genealogy, opposed 
 him. The consternation of the dull and conservative classes, 
 the terror of the foolish old men and old women of the Roman 
 conclave, who in their despair took hold of anything, and 
 would cliiiLT to ivd-hot iron, the vain attempts of statists to 
 amuse and deceive him, of the Emperor of Austria to bribe 
 him ; and the instinct of the young, ardent, and active men, 
 everywhere, which pointed him out as the giant of the middle 
 class, make his history bright and commanding. He had the 
 virtues of the masses* of his constituents: he had also th^ir 
 vices. I am sorry that the brilliant picture has its reverse. 
 
136 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 But that is the fatal quality which we discover in our pursuit 
 of wealth, that it is treacherous, and is bought by the breaking 
 or weakening of the sentiments ; and it is inevitable that we 
 should find the same fact in the history of this champion, who 
 proposed to himself simply a brilliant career, without any 
 stipulation or scruple concerning the means. 
 
 Bonaparte was singularly destitute of generous sentiments. 
 The highest-placed individual in the most cultivated age and 
 population of the world, he has not the merit of common 
 truth and honesty. He is unjust to his generals ; egotistic, and 
 monopolizing ; meanly stealing the credit of their great actions 
 from Kellermann, from Bernadotte ; intriguing to involve his 
 faithful Junot in hopeless bankruptcy, in order to drive him to 
 a distance from Paris, because the familiarity of his manners 
 offends the new pride of his throne. He is a boundless liar. 
 The official paper, his Moniteurn, and all his bulletins, are prov 
 erbs for saying what he wished to be believed ; and worse, 
 he sat, in his premature old age, in his lonely island, coldly 
 falsifying facts, and dates, and characters, and giving to history 
 a theatrical eclat. Like all Frenchmen, he has a passion for 
 stage effect. Every action that breathes of generosity is pois 
 oned by this calculation. His star, his love of glory, his doc 
 trine of the immortality of the soul, are all French. " I must 
 dazzle and astonish. If 1 were to give the liberty of the press, 
 my power could not last three days." To make a great noise 
 is his favorite design. "A great reputation is a great noise : 
 the more there is made, the farther off it is heard. Laws, 
 institutions, monuments, nations, all fall ; but the noise con 
 tinues, and resounds in after ages." His doctrine of immor 
 tality is simply fame. His theory of influence is not flatter 
 ing. " There are two levers for moving men, interest and 
 fear. Love is a silly infatuation, depend upon it. Friendship 
 is but a name. I love nobod}^. I do not even love my broth 
 ers : perhaps Joseph, a little, from habit, and because he is my 
 elder ; and Duroc, I love him too ; but why I because his 
 character pleases me : he is stern and resolute, and, I believe, 
 the fellow never shed a tear. For my part, I know very well 
 that I have no true friends. As long as I continue to be what I 
 am, I may have as many pretended friends as I please. Leave 
 sensibility to women : but men should be firm in heart and pur 
 pose, or they should have nothing to do with w r ar and govern 
 ment." He was thoroughly unscrupulous. He would steal, 
 slander, assassinate, drown, and poison, as his interest dictated. 
 
NAPOLEON ; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 137 
 
 l\^ h-.nl n> -vnerosity ; but mere vulgar hatred: lie was in 
 tensely selfish : he was perfidious : he cheat ed at cards : ho 
 was a prodigious gossip; and opened letters ; and delighted in 
 his infamous police; and rubbed his hands with joy when ho 
 had intercepted some morsel of intelligence concerning the 
 men and women about him, boasting that "he knew every 
 thing" ; and interfered with the cutting the dresses of the wo 
 men ; and listened after the hurrahs and the compliments of 
 the street, incognito. His manners were coarse. He treated 
 women with low familiarity. He had the habit of pulling 
 their cars, and pinching their cheeks, when he was in good- 
 humor, and of pulling tie ears and whiskers of men, and of 
 striking and horse-play with them, to his last days. It does 
 not appear that he listened at keyholes, or, at least, that ho 
 was caught at it. In short, when you have penetrated through 
 all the circles of power and splendor, you were not dealing 
 with a gentleman, at last ; but with an impostor and a rogue : 
 and he fully deserves the epithet of Jupiter Scapin, or a sort 
 of Scamp Jupiter. 
 
 In describing the two parties into which modern society 
 divides itself, the democrat and the conservative, I said, 
 Bonaparte represents the Democrat, or the party of men of 
 business, against the stationary or conservative party. I 
 omitted then to say, what is material to the statement, name 
 ly, that these two parties differ only as young and old. The 
 democrat is a young conservative ; the conservative is an old 
 democrat. The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to 
 seed, because both parties stand on the one ground of the 
 supreme value of property, which one endeavors to get, and 
 the other to keep. Bonaparte may be said to represent the 
 whole history of this party, its youth and its age ; yes, and 
 with poetic justice, its fate, in his own. The counter-revolu 
 tion, the counter- party, still waits for its organ and representa 
 tive, in a lover and a man of truly public and universal aims. 
 
 Here was an experiment, under the most favorable condi 
 tions, of the powers of intellect without conscience. Never 
 was such a leader so endowed, and so wraponed ; never leader 
 found such aids and followers. And what was the result of 
 this vast talent and power, of these immense armies, burned 
 cities, squandered treasures, immolated millions of men, of 
 this demoralized Kuropc ] It came to no result. All passed 
 away, like the smoke of his artillery, and left no trace. 
 
138 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 He left France smaller, poorer, feebler, than he found it ; and 
 the whole contest for freedom was to be begun again. The 
 attempt was, in principle, suicidal. France served him with 
 life, and limb, and estate, as long as it could identify its inter 
 est with him ; but when men saw that after victory was anoth 
 er war ; after the destruction of armies, new conscriptions ; 
 and they who had toiled so desperately were never nearer to 
 the reward, they could not spend what they had earned, 
 nor repose on their down-beds, nor strut in their chateaux, 
 they deserted him. Men found that his absorbing egotism 
 was deadly to all other men. It resembled the torpedo, which 
 inflicts a succession of shocks on anyone who takes hold of 
 it, producing spasms which contract tne muscles of the hand, 
 so that the man cannot open his fingers ; and the animal in 
 flicts new and more violent shocks, until he paralyzes and kills 
 his victim. So, this exorbitant egotist narrowed, impover 
 ished, and absorbed the power and existence of those who 
 served him ; and the universal cry of France, and of Europe, 
 in 1814, was, " enough of him " : "assez de Bonaparte." 
 
 It was not Bonaparte s fault. He did all that in him lay, 
 to live and thrive without moral principle. It was the nature 
 of things, the eternal law of the man and the world, which 
 balked and ruined him ; and the result, in a million experi 
 ments would be the same. Every experiment, by multitudes 
 or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail. 
 The pacific Fourier will be as inefficient as the pernicious Na 
 poleon. As long as our civilization is essentially one of prop 
 erty, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. 
 Our riches will leave us sick ; there will be bitterness in our 
 laughter ; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that 
 good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and 
 which serves all men. 
 
VII. 
 GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 
 
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 
 
 I FIND a provision, in the constitution of the world, for 
 the writer or secretary, who is to report the doings of the 
 miraculous spirit of life "that everywhere throbs and works. 
 His office is a reception of the facts into the -mind, and then a 
 selection of the eminent and characteristic experiences. 
 
 Nature will be reported. All things are engaged in writing 
 their history. The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its 
 shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the moun 
 tain ; the river, its channel in the soil ; the animal, its bones 
 in the stratum ; the fern and leaf, their modest epitaph in the 
 coal. The falling dro p makes its sculpture in the sand or the 
 stone. Not a foot steps into the snow, or along the ground, 
 but prints, in characters more or less lasting, a map of its 
 march. Kverv act of the man inscribes itself in the memories 
 of his fellows, and in his own manners and face. The air is 
 full of sounds ; the sky, of tokens ; the ground is all memo 
 randa and signatures ; and every object covered over with 
 hints, which speak to the intelligent. 
 
 In nature, this self-registration is incessant, and the narra 
 tive is the print of the seal. It neither exceeds nor comes 
 short of the fact. But nature strives upward ; and, in man, 
 the report is something more than print of the seal. It is a 
 new and finer form of the original. The record is alive, as 
 that which it recorded is alive. In man, the memory is a 
 kind of looking _rl:iss. which, having received the images of 
 surrounding objc- -N. i> touched with life, and disposes them 
 in a new order. The facts which transpired do not lie in it 
 inert ; but some subside, and others shine ; so that soon we 
 have a new picture, composed of the eminent experiences. 
 The man co-operates. He loves to communicate ; and that 
 which is for him to say lies as a load on his heart until it is 
 
142 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 delivered. But, besides the universal joy of conversation, 
 some men are born with exalted powers for this second crea 
 tion. Men are born to write. The gardener saves every slip, 
 and seed, and peach-stone : his vocation is to be a planter of 
 plants. Not less does the writer attend his affair. Whatever 
 he beholds or experiences, comes to him as a model, and sits 
 for its picture. He counts it all nonsense that they say, that 
 some things are undescribable. He believes that all that can 
 be thought can be written, first or last ; and he would report 
 the Holy Ghost, or attempt it. Nothing so broad, so subtle, 
 or so dear, but comes therefore commended to his pen, and 
 he will write. In his eyes, a man is the faculty of reporting, 
 and the universe is the possibility of being reported. In con 
 versation, in calamity, he finds new materials ; as our German 
 poet said, " Some God gave me the power to paint what I suf 
 fer." He draws his rents from rage and pain. By acting 
 rashly, he buys the power of talking wisely. Vexations, and 
 a tempest of passion, only fill his sail ; as the good Luther 
 writes, " When I am angry, I can pray well, and preach well" : 
 and if we knew the genesis of fine strokes of eloquence, they 
 might recall the complaisance of Sultan Amurath, who struck 
 off some Persian heads, that his physician, Vesalius, might see 
 the spasms in the muscles of the neck. His failures are the 
 preparation of his victories. A new thought, or a crisis of pas 
 sion, apprises him that all that he has yet learned and written 
 is exoteric, is not the fact, but some rumor of the fact. 
 What then 1 Docs he throw away the pen ? No ; he begins 
 again to describe in the new light which has shined on him, 
 if, by some means, he may yet save some true word. Nature 
 conspires. Whatever can be thought can be spoken, and still 
 rises for utterance, though to rude and stammering organs. 
 If they cannot compass it, it waits and works, until, at last, it 
 moulds them to its perfect will, and is articulated. 
 
 This striving after imitative expression, which one meets 
 everywhere, is significant of the aim of nature, but is mere 
 stenography. There are higher degrees, and Nature has more 
 splendid endowments for those whom she elects to a superior 
 office ; for the class of scholars or writers, who see connection 
 where the multitude seo fragments, and who are impelled to 
 exhibit the facts in ideal order, and so to supply the axis on 
 which the frame of things turns. Nature has dearly at heart 
 the formation of the speculative man, or scholar. It is an end 
 never lost sight of, and is prepared in the original casting of 
 
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 143 
 
 things. Ho is no permissive or accidental appearance, but an 
 organic agent, one of the estates of the realm, provided and 
 ]uv|i.-iivd, from of old and from everlasting, in the knitting 
 and contexture of things. Presentiments, impulses, cheer him. 
 Tlu-iv is a certain heat in the bivast, which attends the per 
 ception of a primary truth, which is the shining of the spiritu 
 al sun down into the shaft of the mine. Every thought which 
 dawns on the mind, in the moment of its emergence announces 
 its own rank, whether it is some whimsy, or whether it is a 
 power. 
 
 If he have his incitements, there is, on the other side, invi 
 tation and need enough of his gift. Society has, at all times, 
 the same want, namely, of one sane man with adequate powers 
 of expression to hold up each object of monomania in its right 
 relations. The ambitious and mercenary bring their last new 
 mumbo-jumbo, whether tariff, Texas railroad, Komanism, mes 
 merism, or California ; and, by detaching the object from its 
 relations, easily succeed in making it seen in a glare; and a 
 multitude go mad about it, and they are not to be reproved or 
 cured by the opposite multitude, who are kept from this par 
 ticular insanity by an equal frenzy on another crotchet. But 
 let one man have the comprehensive eye that can replace this 
 isolated prodigy in its right neighborhood and bearings, the 
 illusion vanishes, and the returning reason of the community 
 thanks the reason of the monitor. 
 
 The scholar is the man of the ages, but he must also wish 
 with other men to stand well with his contemporaries. But 
 there is a certain ridicule, among superficial people, thrown on 
 the scholars or clerisy, which is of no import, unless the scholar 
 heed it. In this country, the emphasis of conversation, and 
 of public opinion, commends the practical man; and the solid 
 portion of the community is named with significant respect in 
 every circle. Our people are of Bonaparte s opinion concerning 
 ideologists. Ideas are subversive of social order and comfort, 
 and at last make a fool of the possessor. It is believed, the 
 ordering a cargo of goods from New York to Smyrna ; or, the 
 running up and down to procure a company of subscribers to 
 . "ing five or ten thousand spindles ; or, the negotiations 
 of a caucus, and the practising on the prejudices and facility 
 of country-people, to secure- their votes in November, is 
 practical and commendable. 
 
 If I were to compare action of a much higher strain with a- 
 life of contemplation, I should not venture to pronounce with 
 
144 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 much confidence in favor of the former. Mankind have such 
 a deep stake in inward illumination, that there is much to be 
 said by the hermit or monk in defence of his life of thought 
 and prayer. A certain partiality, a headiness, and loss of bal 
 ance, is the tax which all action must pay. Act, if you like, 
 but you do it at your peril. Men s actions are too strong 
 for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not 
 been the victim and slave of his action. What they have done 
 commits and enforces them to do the same again. The first 
 act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacrament. 
 The fiery reformer embodies his aspiration in some rite or 
 covenant, and he and his friends cleave to the form, and lose 
 the aspiration. The Quaker has established Quakerism, the 
 Shaker has established his monastery and his dance ; and, 
 although each prates of spirit, there is no spirit, but repetition, 
 which is anti-spiritual. But where are his new things of to 
 day ? In actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears : but 
 in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to 
 make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of 
 cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the 
 speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason 
 and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation. 
 The Hindoos write in their sacred books, " Children only, and 
 not the learned, speak of the speculative and the practical 
 faculties as two. They are but one, for both obtain the self 
 same end, and the place which is gained by the followers of the 
 one is gained by the followers of the other. That man seeth, 
 who seeth that the speculative and the practical doctrines are 
 one." For great action must draw on the spiritual nature. 
 The measure of action is the sentiment from which it proceeds. 
 The greatest action may easily be one of the most private cir 
 cumstance. 
 
 This disparagement will not come from the leaders, but from 
 inferior persons. The robust gentlemen who stand at the 
 head of the practical class, share the ideas of the time, and 
 have too much sympathy with the speculative class. It is not 
 from men excellent in any kind, that disparagement of any 
 other is to be looked for. With such, Talleyrand s question is 
 ever the main one ; not, is he rich 1 is he committed ? is he 
 well-meaning ? has he this or that faculty 1 is he of the move 
 ment 1 is he of the establishment 1 but, Is he anybody ? does 
 he stand for something 1 He must be good of his kind. That 
 is all that Talleyrand, all that State Street, all that the com- 
 
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 145 
 
 mon sense of mankind asks. Be real and admirable, net :us 
 we know, hut as you know. . \hle inrn do not care in \\liat 
 kind a man is able, so only that he is able. A master likes a 
 master, and does not stipulate whether it he orator, artist, 
 i-ratt sinan, or king. - 
 
 Society lias really no graver interest than the well-bein^ of 
 the literary class. And it is not to he denied that men are 
 cordial in their recognition and welcome of intellectual accom 
 plishments. Still the writer does not stand with us on any 
 commanding ground. 1 think this to he his own fault. A 
 pound pusses lor a pound. There huyo been times when he 
 was a sacred person ; lie wrote Bibles ; the tirst hymns ; the 
 codes; the epics; tragic songs ; Sibylline verses: Chaldean 
 oracles ; Lacoiiian sentences, inscribed on temple walls. Every 
 word was true, and woke the nations to new life. He wrote 
 without levity, and without choice. Every word was curved 
 Iwfore his eyes, into the earth and the sky ; and the sun and 
 stars were only letters of the same purport, and of no more 
 lity. But how can he be honored, when he does not 
 honor himself; when he loses himself in the crowd : when he 
 is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the 
 giddy opinion of a reckless public ; when he must sustain with 
 shameless advocacy some bad government, or must bark all the 
 \e-ir round, in opposition ; or write conventional criticism, or 
 profligate novels : or. at any rate, write without thought, and 
 without recurrence, by day and by night, to the sources of 
 inspiration ] 
 
 Some reply to these questions may be furnished by looking 
 over the list of men of literary genius in our aire. Among 
 the-e, no more instructive name occurs than that of (loethe, 
 to represent the powers and duties of the scholar or writer. 
 
 1 described Bonaparte as a representative of the popular 
 external life and aims of the nineteenth century. Its other 
 half, its poet, is (loethe, a man quite domesticated in the 
 century, breathing its air, enjoying its fruits, impossible at. 
 any earlier time, and taking away, by his colossal parts, the 
 r"proach of weakness, which, but for him, would lie on the 
 intellectual works of the period. He appears at a time when 
 a general culture has spread itself, and has smoothed down all 
 sharp individual traits; when, in the absence of heroic charac- 
 :;d comfort and OO-OperatioO have come in. There 
 is no poet, but scores of poetic writers: no Columbus, but 
 hundreds of post-cat tams, with transit-telescope, barometer, 
 
 VOL. II. 7 J 
 
146 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 and concentrated soup and pemmlcan ; no Demosthenes, no 
 Chatham, but any number of clever parliamentary and foren 
 sic debaters ; no prophet or saint, but colleges of divinity ; 
 no learned man, but learned societies, a cheap press, reading- 
 rooms, and book-clubs, without number. There was never 
 such a miscellany of facts. The world extends itself like Amer 
 ican trade. We conceive Greek or Roman life life in the 
 Middle Ages to be a simple and comprehensible affair ; but 
 modern life to respect a multitude of things, which is distracting. 
 
 Goethe was the philosopher of this multiplicity ; hundred- 
 handed, Argus-eyed, able and happy to cope with this rolling 
 miscellany of facts and sciences, and, by his own versatility, 
 to dispose of them with ease ; a manly mind, unembarrassed 
 by the variety of coats of convention, with which life had got 
 incrusted, easily able by his subtlety to pierce these, and to 
 draw his strength from nature, with which he lived in full 
 communion. What is strange, too, he lived in a small town, 
 in a petty state, in a defeated state, and in a time when Ger 
 many played no such leading part in the world s affairs as to 
 swell the bosoms of her sons with any metropolitan pride, 
 such as might have cheered a French, or English, or once, a 
 Roman or Attic genius. Yet there is no trace of provincial 
 limitation in his muse. He is not a debtor to his position, but 
 was born with a free and controlling genius. 
 
 The Helena, or the second part of Faust, is a philosophy of 
 literature set in poetry ; the work of one who found himself 
 the master of histories, mythologies, philosophies, sciences, 
 and national literatures, in the encyclopaedical manner in 
 which modern erudition, with its international intercourse of 
 the whole earth s population, researches into Indian, Etrus 
 can, and all Cyclopsean arts, geology, chemistry, astronomy ; 
 and every one of these kingdoms assiiming a certain aerial and 
 poetic character, by reason of the multitude. One looks at a 
 king with reverence ; but if one should chance to be at a con 
 gress of kings, the eye would take liberties with the peculiari 
 ties of each. These are not wild miraculous songs, biit elab 
 orate forms, to which the poet has confided the results of 
 eighty years of observation. This reflective and critical wis 
 dom makes the poem more truly the flower of this time. It 
 dates itself. Still he is a poet, poet of a prouder laurel 
 than any contemporary, and, under this plague of micro 
 scopes, (for he seems to see out of every pore of his skin,) 
 strikes the harp with a hero s strength and grace. 
 
GOETHE; OR, THE WHITE!!. 147 
 
 The wonder of the book is its superior intelligence. In the 
 nu iistnium of this man s wit, the past and tin- present ages, 
 and their religions, politics, and modes of thinking, :uv dis 
 solved into archetypes and ideas. \Vluit new mythologies sail 
 through his head! The (Ireeks said, that Alexander went as 
 far as Chaos; (Joethe went, only the other day, as far; and 
 one step farther he ha/arded, and brought himself safe back. 
 
 Then- is a heart-cheering freedom in his speculation. The 
 immense hori/on which journeys with ns lends its majesty to 
 trifles, and to matters of convenience and necessity, as to 
 solemn and festal performances. He was the soul of his cen 
 tury. If that was learned, and had become, by population, 
 compact organization, and drill of parts, one great Exploring 
 Expedition, accumulating a glut of facts and fruits too fast for 
 any hitherto-existing savans to classify, this man s mind had 
 ample chambers for the distribution of all. He had a power 
 to unite the detached atoms again by their ow r n law. He has 
 clothed our modern existence with poetry. Amid littleness 
 and detail, he detected the (Jenius of life, the old cunning 
 Proteus, nestling close beside us, and showed that the d illness 
 and prose we ascribe to the age was only another of his 
 masks : 
 
 "Ills very flight is presence in disguise ": 
 
 that he had put off a gay uniform for a fatigue dress, and was 
 not a whit less vivacious or rich in Liverpool, ,>r the Hague, 
 than once in Rome or Antioch. He sought him in public 
 squares and main streets, in boulevards and hotels ; and. in 
 the solidest kingdom of routine and the senses, lie showed the 
 lurking demonic power ; that, in actions of routine, a thread 
 of mythology uiid fable spins itself: and this, by tracing the 
 pedigree of every usage and pra.-t.ice, every institution, utensil; 
 and means, home to its origin in the structure of man. He 
 had an extreme impatience of conjecture and of rhetoric. " I 
 have LTMesses enough of my own ; if a man write a book, let 
 him set down only what he knows." He writes in the plainest 
 and lowest tone, omitting a great deal more than he writes, 
 and patting ever a thing for a word. He has explained the 
 distinction between the antique and the modern spirit, and art. 
 He has d fined art. its scope and laws. He has said the best 
 things about nature that ever were said. He treats nature as 
 the old philosophers, as the seven wise masters did, and, 
 with whatever loss of French tabulation and dissection, poetry 
 und humanity remain to us; and they have some doctoral 
 
148 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 skill. Eyes are better, on the whole, than telescopes or mi 
 croscopes. He has contributed a key to many parts of nature, 
 through the rare turn for unity and simplicity in his mind. 
 Thus Goethe suggested the leading idea of modern botany, that 
 a leaf, or the eye of a leaf, is the unit of botany, and that 
 every part of the plant is only a transformed leaf to meet a 
 new condition ; and, by varying the conditions, a leaf may be 
 converted into any other organ; and any other organ into a 
 leaf. In like manner, in osteology, he assumed that one ver 
 tebra of the spine might be considered the unit of the skele 
 ton : the head was only the uppermost vertebra transformed. 
 " The plant goes from knot to knot, closing, at last, with the 
 flower and the seed. So the tape-worm, the caterpillar, goes 
 from knot to knot, and closes with the head. Man and the 
 higher animals are built up through the vertebra), the powers 
 being concentrated in the head." In optics, again, he rejected 
 the artificial theory of seven colors, and considered that every 
 color was the mixture of light and darkness in new propor 
 tions. It is really of very little consequence what topic he 
 writes upon. He sees at every pore, and has a certain gravi 
 tation towards truth. He will realize what you say. He hates 
 to be trifled with, and to be made to say over again some old 
 wife s fable, that has had possession of men s faith these thousand 
 years. He may as well see if it is true as another. He sifts 
 it. I am here, he would say, to be the measure and judge of 
 these things. Why should I take them on trust 1 And, there 
 fore, what he says of religion, of passion, of marriage, of man 
 ners, of property, of paper money, of periods of belief, of 
 omens, of luck, or whatever else, refuses to be forgotten. 
 
 Take the most remarkable example that could occur of 
 this tendency to verify every term in popular use. The 
 Devil had played an important part in mythology in all 
 times. Goethe would have no word that does not cover a 
 tiling. The same measure will still serve : " I have never 
 heard of any crime which I might not have committed." So 
 he flies at the throat of this imp. He shall be real ; he shall 
 be modern ; he shall be European ; he shall dress like a gentle 
 man, and accept the manners, and walk in the streets, and be 
 well initiated in the life of Vienna, and of Heidelberg, in 1820, 
 or he shall not exist. Accordingly, he stripped him of 
 mythologic gear, of horns, cloven foot, harpoon tail, brimstone, 
 and blue-fire, and, instead of looking in books and pictures, 
 looked for him in his own mind, in every shade of coldness, 
 
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 149 
 
 selfishness, and unbelief that, in crowds, or in solitude-, dark- 
 
 en8 over the human thought, and found that the portrait 
 
 gained ivulity and terror hy every tiling he added, and l>y 
 every tiling he took away. He found that the" essence of this 
 hobgoblin, which liad hovered in shadow ahont the habitations 
 of men, ever since there were men, was pure intellect, applied 
 as always there is a tendency to the service of the senses : 
 and he Hung into literature, in his Mephistophcles, the first or 
 ganic figure that has been added for some ages, and which 
 will remain as long as the Prometheus. 
 
 1 have no design to enter into any analysis of his numerous 
 works. They consist of translations, criticisms, dramas, lyric 
 and every other description of poems, literary journals, and 
 portraits of distinguished men. Yet I cannot omit to specify 
 Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 Wilhelm .Meister is a novel in every sense, the first of its 
 kind, called by its admirers the only delineation of modern 
 society, as if other novels, those of Scott, for example, 
 dealt with costume and condition, this with the spirit of life. 
 It is a book over which some veil is still drawn. It is read 
 by very intelligent persons with wonder and delight. It is 
 preferred by some such to Hamlet, as a work of genius. I 
 suppose, no book of this century can compare with it in its 
 delicious sweetness, so new, so provoking to the mind, gratify 
 ing it with so many and so solid thoughts, just insights into 
 life, and manners, and characters ; so many good hints for the 
 conduct of life, so many unexpected glimpses into a higher 
 sphere, and never a trace of rhetoric or dulness. A very pro 
 voking book to the curiosity of young men of genius, but a 
 very unsatisfactory one. Lovers of light reading, those who 
 look in it for the entertainment they find in a romance, are 
 disappointed. On the other hand, those who begin it with the 
 higher hope to read in it a worthy history of genius, and the 
 just award of the laurel to its toils and denials, have also 
 reason to complain. We had an English romance here, not 
 loni: a _r<>, professing to embody the hope of a new age, and to 
 unfold the political hope of the party called Young England/ 
 in which the only reward of virtue is a seat in parliament, 
 and a peerage. Goethe s romance has a conclusion as lame 
 and immoral. George Sand, in Consuelo and its continuation, 
 has sketched a truer and more dignified picture. In the pro 
 of the story, the characters of the hero and heroine ex 
 pand at a rate that shivers the porcelain chess-table of aristo- 
 
150 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 cratic convention : they quit the society and habits of their 
 rank; they lose their wealth; they become the servants of 
 great ideas, and of the most generous social ends; until, at 
 last, the hero, who is the centre and fountain of an association 
 for the rendering of the noblest benefits to the human race, 
 no longer answers to his own titled name : it sounds foreign 
 and remote in his ear. "I am only man," he says; " I breathe 
 and work for man," and this in poverty and extreme sacrifices. 
 Goethe s hero, on the contrary, has so many weaknesses and 
 impurities, and keeps such bad company, that the sober Eng 
 lish public, when the book was translated, were disgusted. 
 And yet it is so crammed with wisdom, with knowledge of the 
 world, and with knowledge of laws ; the persons so truly and 
 subtly drawn, and with such few strokes, and not a word too 
 much, the book remains ever so new and unexhausted, that 
 we must even let it go its way, and be willing to get what 
 good from it we can, assured that it has only begun its office, 
 and has millions of readers yet to serve. 
 
 The argument is the passage of a democrat to the aris 
 tocracy, using both words in their best sense. And this pas 
 sage is not made in any mean or creeping way, but through 
 the hall door. Nature and character assist, and the rank is 
 made real by sense and probity in the nobles. No generous 
 youth can escape this charm of reality in the book, so that it 
 is highly stimulating to intellect and courage. 
 
 The ardent and holy Novalis characterized the book as 
 " thoroughly modern and prosaic ; the romantic is completely 
 levelled in it ; so is the poetry of nature ; the wonderful. The 
 book treats only of the ordinary affairs of men : it is a poeti 
 cized civic and domestic story. The wonderful in it is expressly 
 treated as fiction and enthusiastic dreaming " : and yet, 
 what is also characteristic, Novalis soon returned to this book, 
 and it remained his favorite reading to the end of his life. 
 
 What distinguishes Goethe for French and English readers, 
 is, a property which he shares with his nation, an habitual 
 reference to interior truth. In England and in America, there 
 is a respect for talent ; and, if it is exerted in support of any 
 ascertained or intelligible interest or party, or in regular op 
 position to any, the public is satisfied. In France, there is 
 even a greater delight in intellectual brilliancy, for its own 
 sake. And, in all these countries, men of talent write from 
 talent. It is enough if the understanding is occupied, the 
 taste propitiated, so many columns, so many hours, filled in 
 
GOETIIK; OK, THK WKITKIi. 151 
 
 :i lively and creditable way. The Cerm an intellect wants the 
 J-Yench sprightliurss, the tine practical understanding of the 
 
 Knglish, and the American adventure; Imt it has a eertain 
 probity, whieh never rest.-; in a superlicial performance, but 
 asks steadilv, T<> n-Jmt <ml / A (Jennan public asks for a eon- 
 trolling sincerity. Hero is aetivity of thought j but what is 
 it I m- { What does the man mean { "Whence, whence all these 
 thoughts / 
 
 Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man 
 behind the book ; a personality which, by birth and quality, is 
 pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to 
 see and state things so, and not otherwise ; holding things bo- 
 eaiiM they are thin-s. If lie cannot rightly express himself 
 to-day, the same things subsist, and will open themselves to 
 morrow. There lies the burden on his mind, the burden of 
 truth to be declared, more or less understood ; and it con 
 stitutes his business and calling in the world, to sec tln<. 
 facts through, and to make them known. What signifies that 
 he trips and stammers ; that his voice is harsh or hissing ; 
 that his method or his tropes are inadequate ? That m< 
 will iind method and imagery, articulation and melody. Though 
 he were dumb, it would speak. If not, if there be no such 
 God s word in the man, what care we how adroit, how fluent, 
 how brilliant he is 1 
 
 It makes a great difference to the force of any sentence, 
 whether there be a man behind it, or no. In the learned jour 
 nal, in the influential newspaper, I discern no form : only some 
 nsible shadow ; oftener some moneyed corporation, or 
 some dangler, who hopes, in the mask and robes of his para 
 graph, to pass for somebody. But, through every clause and 
 part of speech of a right book, I meet the eyes of the most 
 determined of men ; his force and terror inundate every word : 
 the commas and dashes are alive ; so that the writing is athletic 
 and nimble, can go far and live long. 
 
 In England and America, one may be an adept in the writ 
 ings of a CJreck or Latin poet, without any poetic taste or fire. 
 That a man lias spent years on Plato and Proclus, does not 
 afford a presumption that he holds heroic opinions, or under 
 values the fashions of his town. P.ut the (Jermaii nation have 
 the most ridl - dons ^fod faith on these subjects; the student 
 out of the lecture-room, still broods on tl: : and the 
 
 professor cannot divest himself of the fancy, that the truths 
 of philosophy have sonic application to Berlin and Munich. 
 
152 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 This earnestness enables them to outsee men of much more 
 talent. Hence, almost all the valuable distinctions which are 
 current in higher conversation, have been derived to us from 
 Germany. But, whilst men distinguished for wit and learning, 
 in England and France, adopt their study and their side with 
 a certain levity, and are not understood to be very deeply en 
 gaged, from grounds of character, to the topic or the part they 
 espouse, Goethe, the head and body of the German nation, 
 does not speak from talent, but the truth shines through : he 
 is very wise, though his talent often veils his wisdom. How 
 ever excellent his sentence is, he has somewhat better in view. 
 It awakens my curiosity. He lias the formidable independence 
 which converse with truth gives ; hear you, or forbear, his fact 
 abides ; and your interest in the writer is not confined to his 
 story, and he dismissed from memory, when he has performed 
 his task creditably, as a baker when he has left his loaf; but 
 his work is the least part of him. The old Eternal Genius 
 who built the world has confided himself more to this man 
 than to any other. I dare not say that Goethe ascended to the 
 highest grounds from which genius has spoken. He has not 
 worshipped the highest unity ; he is incapable of a self-sur 
 render to the moral sentiment. There are nobler strains in 
 poetry than any he has sounded. There are writers poorer in 
 talent, whose tone is purer, and more touches the heart. 
 Goethe can never be dear to men. His is not even the devo 
 tion to pure truth ; but to truth for the sake of culture. He 
 has no aims less large than the conquest of universal nature, 
 of universal truth, to be his portion : a man not to be bribed, 
 nor deceived, nor overawed ; of a stoical self-command and 
 self-denial, and having one test for all men, What can you 
 teach me ? All possessions are valued by him for that only ; 
 rank, privileges, health, time, being itself. 
 
 He is the type of culture, the amateur of all arts, and 
 sciences, and events ; artistic, but not artist ; spiritual, but not 
 spiritualist. There is nothing he had not right to know : there 
 is no w r eapon in the armory of universal genius he did not take 
 into his hand, but with peremptory heed that he should not be 
 for a moment prejudiced by his instruments. He lays a ray 
 of light under every fact, and between himself and his dearest 
 property. From him nothing was hid, nothing withholden. 
 The lurking demons sat to him, and the saint who saw the 
 demons ; and the metaphysical elements took form. " Piety 
 itself is no aim, but only a means, whereby, through purest 
 
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 
 
 inward peace, we may attain to highest culture." And his 
 penetration of every secret of tin- tine arts will make Goetho 
 still more statuesque. His all ections help him, like women 
 employed by Cicero to worm out the secret of conspirators. 
 Knmities ho has none. Enemy of him you maybe, if so 
 you shall teach him aught which your good-will cannot, 
 were it only what experience will accrue from your ruin. Kn- 
 emy and welcome, but enemy on high terms. He cannot hn to 
 anybody ; his time is worth too much. Temperamental antag 
 onisms may be suffered, but like feuds of emperors, who fight 
 dignifiedly across kingdoms. 
 
 His autobiography, under the title of " Poetry and Truth 
 out of my Lite," is the expression of the idea, now familiar 
 to the world through the German mind, but a novelty to Kng- 
 land, Old and New, when that hook appeared, that a man 
 exists for culture ; not for what he can accomplish, but for 
 what can he accomplished in him. The reaction of things on 
 the man is the only noteworthy result. An intellectual man 
 can see himself as a third person ; therefore his faults and de 
 lusions interest him equally with his successes. Though he 
 wishes to prosper in affairs, he wishes more to know the history 
 and destiny of man; whilst the clouds of egotists drifting 
 about him are only interested in a low success. 
 
 This idea reigns in the Dichtung und Wahrheit, and directs 
 the selection of the incidents ; and nowise the external impor 
 tance of events, the rank of the personages, or the bulk of in 
 comes. Of course, the book affords slender materials for what 
 would be reckoned with us a " Life of Goethe " ; few dates ; 
 no correspondence ; no details of offices or employments ; no 
 light on his marriage ; and, a period of ten years, that should 
 be the most active in his life, after his settlement at Weimar, 
 is sunk in silence. Meantime, certain love-affairs, that came 
 to nothing, as people say, have the strangest importance : he 
 cn.w.ls us with details : certain whimsical opinions, cosmogo 
 nies, and religions of his own invention, and, especially his 
 relations to remarkable minds, and to critical epochs of 
 thought : these he magnifies. His " Daily and Yearly Jour 
 nal," his "Italian Travels," his " Campaign in France, find 
 the historical part of his "Theory of Colors," have the same 
 interest. In the last, he rapidly notices Kepler. l;..-_ er llaoni, 
 Galileo, Xewtoii, Voltaire, iV-. ; and the charm of this portion 
 of the book consists in the simplest statement of the relation 
 betwixt these grandees of European scientific history and him- 
 
154 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. 
 
 self; the mere drawing of the lines from Goethe to- Kepler, 
 from Goethe to Bacon, from Goethe to Newton. The draw 
 ing of the line is for the time and person, a solution of the 
 formidable problem, and gives pleasure when Iphigenia and 
 Faust do not, without any cost of invention comparable to 
 that of Iphigenia and Faust. 
 
 This lawgiver of art is not an artist. Was it that he knew 
 too much, that his sight was microscopic, and interfered with 
 the just perspective, the seeing of the whole 1 He is fragmen 
 tary ; a writer of occasional poems, and of an encyclopaedia of 
 sentences. When he sits down to write a drama or a tale, he 
 collects and sorts his observations from a hundred sides, and 
 combines them into the body as fitly as he can. A great deal 
 refuses to incorporate : this he adds loosely, as letters of the 
 parties, leaves from their journals, or the like. A great deal 
 still is left that will not find any place. This the bookbinder 
 alone can give any cohesion to : and hence, notwithstanding 
 the looseness of many of his works, we have volumes of de 
 tached paragraphs, aphorisms, xenien, c. 
 
 I suppose the worldly tone of his tales grew out of the cal 
 culations of self-culture. It was the infirmity of an admira 
 ble scholar, who loved the world out of gratitude ; who knew 
 where libraries, galleries, architecture, laboratories, savans, and 
 leisure were to be had, and who did not quite trust the com 
 pensations of poverty and nakedness. Socrates loved Athens ; 
 Montaigne, Paris ; and Madame de Stae l said she was only 
 vulnerable on that side (namely, of Paris). It has its favor 
 able aspect. All the geniuses are usually so ill-assorted and 
 sickly, that one is ever wishing them somewhere else. We 
 seldom see anybody who is not uneasy or afraid to live. 
 There is a slight blush of shame on the cheek of good men and 
 aspiring men, and a spice of caricature. But this man was en 
 tirely at home and happy in his century and the world. None 
 was so fit to live, or more heartily enjoyed the game. In this 
 jim of culture, which is the genius of his works, is their power. 
 /The idea of absolute, eternal truth, without reference to my 
 I own enlargement by it, is higher. The surrender to the tor- 
 j rent of poetic inspiration is higher ; but, compared with any 
 motives on which books are written in England and America, 
 this is very truth, and has the power to inspire which belongs 
 to truth. Thus has he brought back to a book some of its 
 ancient might and dignity. 
 
 Goethe, coming into an over-civilized time and country, 
 
GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 155 
 
 when original talent was oppressed under the load of books 
 and mechanical auxiliaries, and the distracting variety of 
 claims, taught men how to dispose of this mountainous miscel 
 lany, and make it subservient. I join Napoleon with him, as 
 bring both representatives of the impatience and reaction of 
 nature against the inor<in? of conventions, two stern real- 
 ists, who, with their scholars, have severally set the axe at the 
 root of the tree of cant and seeming, for this time, and for all 
 time. This cheerful laborer, with no external popularity or 
 provocation, drawing his motive and his plan from his own 
 breast, tasked himself with stints for a giant, and, without re 
 laxation or rest, except, by alternating his pursuits, worked on 
 for eighty years with the steadiness of his first zeal. 
 
 It is the last lesson of modern science, that the highest sim 
 plicity of structure is produced, not by few elements, but by 
 the highest complexity. Man is the most composite of all 
 creatures : the wheel-insect, volvos </l<>l><i{r, is at the other ex 
 treme. We shall learn to draw rents and revenues from the 
 immense patrimony of the old and the recent ages. Goethe 
 t (. aches courage, and the equivalence of all times; that the 
 disadvantages of any epoch exist only to the faint-hearted 
 Genius hovers with his sunshine and music close by the dark 
 est and deafest eras. No mortgage, no attainder, will hold on 
 men or hours. The world is young : the former great men 
 call to us affectionately. We too must write Bibles, to unite 
 again the heavens and the earthly world. The secret of ge 
 nius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us ; to realize all that we 
 know ; in the high refinement of modern life, in arts, in sci 
 ences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality, and a 
 purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honor 
 every truth by use. 
 
ENGLISH TRAITS 
 
ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 
 
 I HAVE been twice in England. In 1833, on my return 
 from :i short tour in Sicily, Italy, and France, I crossed 
 from Boulogne, ami landed in London at the Tower stairs. It 
 was a dark Sunday morning ; there were few people in the 
 streets; and I ivmeii .her the pleasure of that first walk on 
 English ground, with my companion, an American artist, from 
 the Tower up through Cheapside and the Strand, to a house 
 in Russell Square, whither we had been recommended to good 
 chambers. For the first time for many months we were forced 
 to check the saucy habit of travel ]?> criticism, as we could 
 no longer speak aloud in the streets without being understood. 
 The shop-signs spoke our language : our country names wrre 
 on the door-plates ; and the public and private buildings wore 
 a more native and wonted front. 
 
 Like most young men at that time, I was much indebted to 
 the men of Edinburgh, and of the Edinburgh Ileview, to 
 Jeffrey, Mackintosh, Hallam, and to Scott, Playfair, and De 
 Quincey; and my narrow and desultory reading had inspired 
 the wish to see the faces of three or four writers, Coleridge, 
 Wordsworth, Landor, DC Quincey, and the latest and strongest 
 contributor to the critical journals, Carlyle; and I suppose if 
 I had sifted the reasons that led me to Kurope, when I was ill 
 and was advised to travel, it was mainly the attraction of these 
 persons. If Goethe had been still living, I might have wan 
 dered into German v also. Hesides those 1 have named (for 
 Scott was dead), there was not in Britain the man living whom 
 1 eaivd to hehold, unless it were the Duke of Wellington, 
 whom I afterwards saw at Westminster Abbey, at the funeral 
 
160 ENGLISH TKAITS. 
 
 of Wilberforce. The young scholar fancies it happiness enough 
 to live with people who can give an inside to the world ; with 
 out reflecting that they are prisoners, too, of their own thought, 
 and cannot apply themselves to yours. The conditions of 
 literary success are almost destructive of the best social power, 
 as they do not leave that frolic liberty which only can encoun 
 ter a companion on the best terms. It is probable you left 
 some obscure comrade at a tavern, or in the farms, with right 
 mother-wit, and equality to life, when you crossed sea and land 
 to play bo-peep with celebrated scribes. I have, however, 
 found writers superior to their books, and I cling to my first 
 belief, that a strong head will dispose fast enough of these im 
 pediments, and give one the satisfaction of reality, the sense 
 of having been met, and a larger horizon. 
 
 On looking over the diary of my journey in 1833, I find 
 nothing to publish in my memoranda of visits to places. But 
 I have copied the few notes I made of visits to persons, as they 
 respect parties quite too good and too transparent to the whole 
 world to make it needful to affect any prudery of suppression 
 about a few hints of those bright personalities. 
 
 At Florence, chief among artists, I found Horatio Greenough, 
 the American sculptor. His face was so handsome, and his 
 person so well formed, that he might be pardoned, if, as was 
 alleged, the face of his Medora, and the figure of a colossal 
 Achilles in clay, were idealizations of his own. Greenough was 
 a superior man, ardent and eloquent, and all his opinions had 
 elevation and magnanimity. He believed that the Greeks had 
 wrought in schools or fraternities, the genius of the master 
 imparting his design to his friends, and inflaming them with it, 
 and when his strength was spent, a new hand, with equal heat, 
 continued the work ; and so by relays, until it was finished in 
 every part with equal fire. This was necessary in so refractory 
 a material as stone ; and he thought art would never prosper 
 until we left our shy jealous ways, and worked in society as 
 they. All his thoughts breathed the same generosity. He 
 was an accurate and a deep man. He was a votary of the 
 Greeks, and impatient of Gothic art. His paper on Architect 
 ure, published in 1843, announced in advance the leading 
 thoughts of Mr. Ruskin on the morality in architecture, not 
 withstanding the antagonism in their views of the history of 
 art. I have a private letter from him, later, but respecting 
 the same period, in which he roughly sketches his own 
 theory. " Here is my theory of structure : A scientific ar- 
 
FIRST VISIT TO EN* CLAN I >. 1G1 
 
 rangement of spaces and forms to functions ami to site ; an 
 emphasis of features proportioned to their <// "</" l! importance 
 in function ; color and ornament to be decided and arranged 
 and varied bv strictly organic laws, having a distinct reason 
 for each decision ; the entire and immediate banishment of all 
 
 -liiir and make believe." 
 
 .i.uigh brought UK- , through a coimnon friend, an invi 
 tation from Mr. Landor, who lived ;it San Domeiiiea di Fio- 
 sole. On the IMh May I dined with Mr. Landor. 1 found 
 him nol.le and courteous, living in a cloud of pictures at his 
 Villa liheranlesca, a fine house commanding a beautiful land 
 scape. 1 had inferred from his books, or magnified from some 
 anecdotes, an impression of Achillean wrath, an untamable 
 petulance. I do not know whether the imputation were just 
 or not, but certainly on this May day his courtesy veiled that 
 haughty mind, and" he was the most patient and gentle of 
 He praised the beautiful cyclamen which grows all 
 a! tout Florence; he admired Washington ; talked of Words 
 worth. Byron, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher. To be 
 sure, he is decided in his opinions, likes to surprise, and is well 
 content to impress, if possible, his English whim upon the im 
 mutable past. No great man ever had a great son, if Philip 
 and Alexander be not an exception ; and Philip he calls the 
 greater man. In art, he loves the Greeks, and in sculpture, 
 them only. He prefers the Venus to even-thing else, and, af 
 ter that, the head of Alexander, in the gallery here. He pre 
 fers John of Bologna to Michel Angelo ; in painting, Ratfaelle ; 
 and shares the growing taste for Perugino and the early mas 
 ters. The (I reek histories he thought the only g(.<.d ; and af 
 ter them, Voltaire s. I could not make him praise Mackintosh, 
 nor my more recent friends ; Montaigne very cordially, 
 and Charron also, which seemed nndiscri initiating. " He 
 thought Degerando indebted to " Lucas on Happiness" and 
 "Lucas on Holiness"! He pestered me with Southey ; but 
 who is Southey 1 
 
 He invited me to breakfast on Friday. On Friday I did 
 not fail to go, and this time with (In-enough. He entertained 
 us at once with reciting half a dozen hexameter lines of Julius 
 
 s ! from Donatus, he said. He glorified Lord Ches 
 terfield more than was necessary, and undervalued Burke, and 
 undervalued So rates ; designated as three of the greatest of 
 men, Washington. Phocion, and Tinioleon ; much as our po- 
 mologists, in their lists, select the three or the six best pears 
 
162 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 " for a small orchard " ; and did not even omit to remark the 
 similar termination of their names. " A great man," he said, 
 " should make great sacrifices, and kill his hundred oxen, with 
 out knowing whether they would be consumed by gods and 
 heroes, or whether the flies would eat them." I had visited 
 Professor Amici, who had shown me his microscopes, magnify 
 ing (it was said) two thousand diameters ; and I spoke of the 
 uses to which they were applied. Landor despised entomology, 
 yet, in the same breath, said, " the sublime was in a grain of 
 dust." I suppose I teased him about recent writers, but he 
 professed never to have heard of Herschel, not even by name. 
 One room was full of pictures, which he likes to show, espe 
 cially one piece, standing before which, he said " he would 
 give fifty guineas to the man that would swear it was a 
 Domeniehino." I was more curious to see his library, but 
 
 Mr. H , one of the guests, told me that Mr. Landor gives 
 
 away his books, and has never more than a dozen at a time in 
 his house. 
 
 Mr. Landor carries tr its height the love of freak which the 
 English delight to indulge, as if to signalize their command 
 ing freedom. He has a wonderful brain, despotic, violent, and 
 inexhaustible, meant for a soldier, by what chance converted 
 to letters, in which there is not a style nor a tint not known 
 to him, yet with an English appetite for action and heroes. 
 The thing done avails, and not what is said about it. An 
 original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the 
 censures. Landor is strangely undervalued in England ; usually 
 ignored ; and sometimes savagely attacked in the Reviews. 
 The criticism may be right or wrong, and is quickly forgot 
 ten ; but year after year the scholar must still go back to 
 Landor for a multitude of elegant sentences, for wisdom, 
 wit, and indignation that are unforgetable. 
 
 From London, on the 5th August, I went to Highgate, and 
 wrote a note to Mr. Coleridge, requesting leave to pay my re 
 spects to him. It was near noon. Mr. Coleridge sent a ver 
 bal message, that he was in bed, but if I would call after one 
 o clock, he would see me. I returned at one, and he appeared, 
 a short, thick old man, with bright blue eyes and fine clear 
 complexion, leaning on his cane. He took snuff freely, which 
 presently soiled his cravat and neat black suit. He asked 
 whether I knew Allston, and spoke warmly of his merits and 
 doings when he knew him in Rome ; what a master of the 
 
FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 1G3 
 
 Titianosquo ho was. AC.. .V.-. He spoke of Dr. ( banning. 
 It \\.isan unspeakable misfortune that lie should have turned 
 
 cut a I liitarian after all. On this, lit- burst iitt. a declama 
 tion on tho lolly and ignorance of I nitariaiiism, its high 
 unreasonableness : and taking up Bishop XYaterland s Look, 
 which lay on the table, ho read with vehemence two or three 
 \\ritt i n ly hiiuselt in tho fly-loavos, passages, too, 
 which, I believe, tiro printed in tho "Aids to lletlcction." 
 \Vhen he stopped to take breath, 1 interposed, that, " whilst 1 
 highly valued all his explanations, 1 was hound to toll him that 
 1 vafl horn and hred a I nitarian." "Yes," he said, " I sup 
 posed so"; and continued as before. * It was a wonder, that 
 after so many ages of unquestioning acquiescence in the doc 
 trine of St. Paul, the doctrine of the Trinity, which was 
 also, according to Philo Jiuheus, the doctrine of the Jews lie- 
 lore Christ, this handful of I ricstleians should take on 
 themselves to deny it, tfcc., &c. He was very sorry that Dr. 
 I hanning, a man to whom he looked up, no, to say that 
 he looked t j> to him would be to speak falsely; but a man 
 whom he looked at with so much interest, should embrace 
 such views. AYhcn he saw Dr. ( banning, be bad hinted to 
 him that bo was afraid he loved Christianity for what was 
 lovely and excellent, he loved the good in it, and not the- 
 true ; and I tell you, sir, that I have known ton persons who 
 loved the good, for one person who loved the true ; but it is a 
 far greater virtue to love the true for itself alone, than to love 
 the nood for itself alone. He (Coleridge) knew all about Cni- 
 tarianism perfectly well, because he bad once been a I nitari- 
 an, and knew what qn:;ckery it was. He had been called "the 
 rising star of Unitarianism." He went on defining, or rath 
 er refining : The Trinitarian doctrine was realism ; the idea of 
 God was not essential, but super-essential ; talked of trinixni 
 and /r//v//-/.v//>, and much more, of which I only caught this : 
 that the will was that by which a person is a person ; because, 
 if one should push me in the street, and so I should force the 
 man next me into the kennel, I should at once exclaim, " I did 
 not do it. sir," meaning it was not my will. And this also : 
 that if you should insist on your faith here 1 in England, and I 
 on mine, mine would be the hotter side of the fagot. 
 
 I took advantage of a pause to say, that ho had many 
 readers of all religious opinions in America, and I proceeded 
 to inquire if the "extract" from the Independent s pamphlet, 
 in the third volume of the Friend, were a veritable quotation. 
 
164 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 He replied that it was really taken from a pamphlet in hia 
 possession, entitled " A Protest of one of the Independents," 
 or something to that effect. I told him how excellent I 
 thought it, and how much I wished to see the entire work. 
 " Yes," he said, " the man was a chaos of truths, but lacked 
 the knowledge that God was a god of order. Yet the passage 
 would no doubt strike you more in the quotation than in the 
 original, for I have filtered it." 
 
 When I rose to go, he said, " I do not know whether you 
 care about poetry, but I will repeat some verses I lately made 
 on my baptismal anniversary " ; and he recited with strong em 
 phasis, standing, ten or twelve lines, beginning, 
 
 " Born unto God in Christ " 
 
 He inquired where I had been travelling ; and on learning 
 that I had been in Malta and Sicily, he compared one island 
 with the other, repeating what he had said to the Bishop of 
 London when he returned from that country, that Sicily was 
 an excellent school of political economy ; for, in any town 
 there, it only needed to ask what the government enacted, 
 and reverse that to know what ought to be done ; it was the 
 most felicitously opposite legislation to anything good and 
 wise. There were only three things which the government 
 had brought into that garden of delights, namely, itch, pox, 
 and famine ; whereas, in Malta, the force of law and mind 
 was seen, in making that barren rock of semi-Saracen inhab 
 itants the seat of population and plenty. Going out, he 
 showed me in the next apartment a picture of Allston s, and 
 told me that Montague, a picture-dealer, once came to see 
 him, and, glancing towards this, said, " Well, you have got a 
 picture ! " thinking it the work of an old master ; afterwards, 
 Montague, still talking with his back to the canvas, put up 
 his hand and touched it, and exclaimed, " By Heaven ! this 
 picture is not ten years old " : so delicate and skilful was 
 that man s touch. 
 
 I was in his company for about an hour, but find it impos 
 sible to recall the largest part of his discourse, which was 
 often like so many printed paragraphs in his book, perhaps 
 the same, so readily did he fall into certain commonplaces. 
 As I might have foreseen, the visit was rather a spectacle than 
 a conversation, of no use beyond the satisfaction of my curi 
 osity. He was old and preoccupied, and could not bend to a 
 new companion and think with him. 
 
FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 165 
 
 From Edinburgh I went to the Highlands. On my return, 
 I came from lila^ow t Dumfries, :uul being intent on deliver 
 ing a letter which I had brought from Rome, inquired for 
 Craigenputtoek. It was a farm in Nitlisdale, in the parish of 
 Dunscore, sixteen miles distant. No public coach passed near 
 it, so 1 took a private carriage from the inn. 1 found the 
 house uniid desolate heathery hills, where the lonely scholar 
 nourished his mighty heart. Carlyle was a man from his 
 youth, an author who did not need to hide from his readers, 
 and as absolute a man of the world, unknown and exiled on 
 that hill-farm, as if holding on his own terms what is best in 
 London. He was tall and gaunt, with a cliff-like brow, self- 
 ->ed. and holding his extraordinary ]>owers of conversa 
 tion in easy command ; clinging to his northern accent with 
 evident relish; full of lively anecdote, and with a streaming 
 humor, which floated everything he looked upon. His talk 
 playfully exalting the familiar objects, put the companion at 
 once into an acquaintance with his Lars and Lemurs, and it 
 was very pleasant to learn what was predestined to be a pretty 
 mythology. Few were the objects and lonely the man, " not 
 a person to speak to within sixteen miles except the minister 
 of Dunseore" ; so that books inevitably m;ide his topics. 
 
 IJe had names of his own for all the matters familiar to his 
 discourse. " Blrfck wood s " was the " sand maga/ine " ; " Fra- 
 ser s" nearer approach to possibility of life was the " mud 
 ma<_ra/ine"; a piece of road near by that marked some failed 
 enterprise was the "grave of the last sixpence." When too 
 much praise of any genius annoyed him, he professed hugely 
 to admi v the talent shown by his pig. He had spent much 
 time and contrivance in confining the poor beast to one en 
 closure in his pen, but pig, by great strokes of judgment, h;id 
 found out how to let a board down, and had foiled him. For 
 all that, he still thought man the most plastic little fellow in 
 the planet, and he liked Nero s death, " (Jn<ilix <i,-fif<.r pern /* 
 b tter than most history. He worships a man that will mani 
 fest any truth to him. At one time he had inquired and read 
 a good deal about America. Landor s principle was mere re- 
 bellion, and tlwt he feared was the American principle. The 
 be*t thing he knew of that country was, that in it a man can 
 have meat for his labor. He had read in Stewart s book, that 
 when he inquired in a New York hotel for the Boots, he had 
 been shown across the street and had found Mungo in his own 
 house dining on roast turkey. 
 
166 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 We talked of books. Plato he does not read, and he dis 
 paraged Socrates ; and, when pressed, persisted in making 
 Mirabeau a hero. Gibbon he called the splendid bridge from 
 the old world to the new. His own reading had been multi 
 farious. Tristram Shandy was one of his first books after 
 Robinson Crusoe, and Robertson s America an early favorite. 
 Rousseau s Confessions had discovered to him that he was not 
 a dunce ; and it was now ten years since he had learned Ger 
 man, by the advice of a man who told him. he would find in 
 that language what he wanted. 
 
 He took despairing or satirical views of literature at this 
 moment ; recounted the incredible sums paid in one year by 
 the great booksellers for puffing. Hence it conies that no 
 newspaper is trusted now, no books are bought, and the book 
 sellers are on the eve of bankruptcy. 
 
 He still returned to English pauperism, the crowded coun 
 try, the selfish abdication by public men of all that public per 
 sons should perform. Government should direct poor men 
 what to do. Poor Irish folk come wandering over these moors. 
 My dame makes it a rule to give to every son of Adam bread 
 to eat, and supplies his wants to the next house. But here 
 are thousands of acres which might give them all meat, and 
 nobody to bid these poor Irish go to the moor and tillrit. 
 They burned the stacks, and so found a way "to force the rich 
 people to attend to them. 
 
 We went out to walk over long hills, and looked at Criffel, 
 then without his cap, and down into Wordsworth s country. 
 There we sat down, and talked of the immortality of the soul. 
 It was not Carlyle s fault that we talked on that topic, for he 
 had the natural disinclination of every nimble spirit to bruise 
 itself against walls, and did not like to place himself where no 
 step can be taken. But he was honest and true, and cognizant 
 of the subtile links tha,t bind ages together, and saw how every 
 event affects all the future. Christ died on the tree : that 
 built Dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you and me to 
 gether. Time has only a relative existence. 
 
 He was already turning his eyes towards London with a 
 scholar s appreciation. London is the heart of the world, he 
 said, wonderful only from the mass of human beings. He 
 liked the huge machine. Each keeps its own round. The 
 baker s boy brings muffins to the window at a fixed hour every 
 day, and that is all the Londoner knows or wishes to know on 
 the subject. But it turned out good men. He named certain 
 
rillST VISIT TO EXCLAXD. 1G7 
 
 individuals, especially one man of letters, his friend, the best 
 mind he knew, whom London had well served. 
 
 On the L Sth August, I went to Rydal Mount, to pay my re 
 spects to Mr. Wordsworth. His daughters called in their 
 father, a plain, elderly, white-haired man. not prepossessing, 
 and disfigured l>y green gng^lrs. He sat down, and talked 
 with great simplicity. He had just returned from a journey. 
 His health was good, but he had broken a tooth hy a fall, 
 when walking with two lawyers, and had said, that he was 
 glad it did not happen forty years ago ; whereupon they had 
 praised his philosophy. 
 
 He had much t> say of America, the more that it gave oc 
 casion for his favorite topic, that society is being enlightened 
 by a superficial tuition, out of all proportion to its hem- re 
 strained by moral culture. Schools do no good.. Tuition is 
 
 lucation. He thinks more of the education of circum 
 stances than of tuition. T is not a question whether there 
 ar - oifences of which the la.v takes cogni/.ance, but whether 
 tin-re are oflfenc H "f which the law does not take cognizance. 
 Sin is what he fears, and how society is to escape without 
 grayest mischiefs from this source -< !! has even said, what 
 seem -d a paradox, that they needed a civil war in America, to 
 teaeh the necessltv of knitting the so -i il ties stronger. There 
 may be, he said, in Am erica so-ue vulgarity in manner, but 
 th.it s not important. That comes of the pioneer state of 
 things. But I fear th -y are too niueh given to the making of 
 
 . ; and secondly, to politics; that they make political 
 distinction the end, and not the means. And I fear they lack 
 a date of men of leisure, in short, of gentlemen, to give a 
 
 f honor to the community. I am told that things are 
 1 of iii th second class of society there, which, in Mug- 
 land, (Jod knows, are done in Kn-Jand evrry day. but 
 would never be spoken of. In America I wish to know not 
 how many churches or schools, but what newspapers^ My 
 friend, Colonel Hamilton, at the foot of the hill, who was :i 
 year in Americi. me that tin- newspapers are atrocious, 
 
 and accuse members f Congress of stealing spoons! He 
 was against takin-j; off the tax <>n newspapers in Kngland. which 
 
 formers represent as a tax upon knowledge. for th 
 son, that tliev would be inundated with base prints He viid, 
 he talked on ]>olitical aspects, flu- he wished to impress on me 
 and all good Americans to cultivate the moral, the conserva- 
 
168 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 tive, &c., &c., and never to call into action the physical 
 strength of the people, as had just now been done in England 
 in the Reform Bill, a thing prophesied by Delolme. He al 
 luded once or twice to his conversation with Dr. Charming, 
 who had recently visited him (laying his hand on a particular 
 chair in which the Doctor had sat). 
 
 The conversation turned on books. Lucretius he esteems a 
 far higher poet than Virgil : not in his system, which is 
 nothing, but in his power of illustration. Faith is necessary 
 to explain anything, and to reconcile the foreknowledge of 
 God with human evil. Of Cousin (whose lectures we had all 
 been reading in Boston) he knew only the name. 
 
 I inquired if he had read Carlyle s critical articles and 
 translations. He said, he thought him sometimes insane. He 
 proceeded to abuse Goethe s Wilhelm Meister heartily. It 
 was full of all manner of fornication. It was like the crossing 
 of Hies in the air. He had never gone further than the first 
 part ; so disgusted was he that he threw the book across the 
 room. I deprecated this wrath, and said what I could for the 
 better parts of the book ; and he courteously promised to look 
 at it again. Carlyle, he said, wrote most obscurely. He was 
 clever and deep, but he defied the sympathies of everybody. 
 Even Mr. Coleridge wrote more clearly, though he had always 
 wished Coleridge would write more to be understood. He led 
 me out into his garden, and showed me the gravel walk in 
 which thousands of his lines were composed. His eyes are 
 much inflamed. This is no loss, except for reading, be 
 cause he never writes prose, and of poetry he carries 
 even hundreds of lines in his head before writing them. 
 He had just returned from a visit to Staffa, and within 
 three days had made three sonnets on Fingal s Cave, 
 and was composing a fourth, when he was called in to 
 see me. He said, " If you are interested in my verses, per 
 haps you will like to hear these lines." I gladly assented ; and 
 he recollected himself for a few moments, and then stood forth 
 and repeated, one after the other, the three entire sonnets 
 with great animation. I fancied the second and third more 
 beautiful than his poems are wont to be. The third is ad 
 dressed to the flowers, which, he said, especially the ox-eye 
 daisy, are very abundant on the top of the rock. The second 
 alludes to the name of the cave, which is " Cave of Music " ; 
 the first to the circumstance of its being visited by the pro 
 miscuous company of the steamboat. 
 
FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 1G9 
 
 This recitation was so unlooked for and surprising, he, 
 the old \\onlsworth, standing apart, and reciting to me in a- 
 garden-walk, like a school-boy declaiming, that 1 at first 
 was near to laugh; hut recollecting myself, that 1 had coino 
 thus far to see a poet, and lie was chanting poems to me, I 
 naw that lie w;us right and! was im>ng, and gladly gave myself 
 up to hear. I told him how much the lew printed extracts 
 had quickened the desire to possess his unpublished poems. 
 He replied, he never was in haste to publish ; partly, because 
 he corrected a good deal, and every alteration is ungraciously 
 received after printing; but what he had written Vould be 
 printed, \\hether he lived or died. 1 said, " Tintern Abbey 
 appeared to be the favorite poem with the public, but more 
 contemplative readers preferred the first l>ooks of the " Excur 
 sion," and the Sonnets. He said, " Yes, they are better." He 
 preferred such of his poems as touched the aifections, to any 
 others; for whatever is didactic what theories of society, 
 and so on might perish quickly ; but whatever combined a 
 truth with an ali ection was Krr,^a (s act, good to-day and good 
 forever. He cited the sonnet "On the feelings of a high- 
 minded Spaniard," which he preferred to any other (I so un 
 derstood him), and the " Two Voices " ; and quoted, with evi 
 dent pleasure, the verses addressed " To the Skylark." In 
 this connection, he said of the Newtonian theory, that it might 
 yet be superseded and forgotten ; and Dalton s atomic theory. 
 
 When 1 prepared to depart, he said he wished to show me 
 what a common person in Kngland could do, and he led me 
 into the enclosure of his clerk, a young man, to whom he had 
 given this slip of ground, which was laid out, or its natural 
 capabilities shown, with much taste. He then said he would 
 show me a better way towai-ds the inn ; and he walked a good 
 part of a mile, talking, and ever and anon stopping short to 
 impress the word or the verse, and finally parted from me with 
 great kindness, and returned across the h elds. 
 
 Wordsworth honored himself by his simple adherence to 
 truth, and was very willing not to shine ; but he surprised by 
 the hard limits of his thought. To judge from a single con- 
 : .on. he made the impression of a narrow and very Eng 
 lish mind ; of one who paid for his rare elevation by general 
 tameness and conformity. Oil his own beat, his opinions 
 were of no value. It is not very rare to find persons loving 
 sympathy and ease, who expiate their depart ure 
 mon in one direction, bv their conformity iuX^rjttwcrr " M />:; 
 
 VOL. ii. 8 * / N THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
170 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 
 
 r I ^HE occasion of my second visit to England was an invi 
 tation from some Mechanics Institutes in Lancashire and 
 Yorkshire, which separately are organized much in the same 
 way as our New England Lyceums, but, in 1847, had been 
 linked into a "Union," which- embraced twenty or thirty towns 
 and cities, and presently extended into the middle counties, 
 and northward into Scotland. I was invited, on liberal terms, 
 to read a series of lectures in them all. The request was 
 urged with every kind suggestion, and every assurance of aid 
 and comfort, by friendliest parties in Manchester, who, in the 
 sequel, amply redeemed their word. The remuneration was 
 equivalent to the fees at that time paid in this country for the 
 like services. At all events, it was sufficient to cover any trav 
 elling expenses, and the proposal offered an excellent opportu 
 nity of seeing the interior of England and Scotland, by means 
 of a home, and a committee of intelligent friends, awaiting me 
 in every town. 
 
 I did not go very willingly. I am not a good traveller, nor 
 have I found that long journeys yield a fair share of reasonable 
 hours. But the invitation was repeated and pressed at a mo 
 ment of more leisure, and when I was a little spent by some 
 nnusual studies. I wanted a change and a tonic, and England 
 was proposed to me. Besides, there were, at least, the dread 
 attraction and salutary influences of the sea. So I took my 
 berth in the packet-ship Washington Irving, and sailed from 
 Boston on Tuesday, 5th October, 1847. 
 
 On Friday, at noon, we had only made one hundred and 
 thirty-four miles. A nimble Indian would have swum as far ; 
 but the captain affirmed that the ship would show us in time 
 all her paces, and we crept along through the floating drift of 
 boards, logs, and chips, which the rivers of Maine and New 
 Brunswick pour into the sea after a freshet. 
 
 At last, on Sunday night, after doing one day s work in four, 
 the storm came, the winds blew, and we flew before a north 
 wester, which strained every rope and sail. The good ship 
 darts through the water all day, all night, like a fish, quivering 
 
VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 171 
 
 with speed, gliding through liquid leagues, sliding from hori/.oii 
 to horizon. She has passed ( ape Sable ; she has reached tho 
 luniks ; tho land-linls an- left : gulls, haglets, ducks, petrels, 
 swim, dive, and hover around : no fishermen; she has passed 
 the Banks ; lei t live sail behind her, far on the edge of the 
 wi M at sundown, which were far east of us at morn, though 
 they say at sea a stern chase is a long race, - and still we liy 
 for our lives. The shortest sea-line from Boston to Liverpool 
 is L Sf)0 miles. This a steamer keeps, and saves lf>0 miles. 
 A sailing ship can never go in a shorter line than 3000, and 
 usual Iv it is much longer. Our good master keeps his kites 
 up to the last moment, studding-sails alow and aloft, and, by 
 inc. .ssant straight steering, never loses a rod of way. Watch 
 fulness is the law of the ship,- -watch on watch, for advantage 
 and for life. Since the ship was built, it seems, the master 
 never slept but in his day -clothes whilst on board. " There are 
 many advantages," says Saadi, "in sea-voyaging, but security 
 is not one of them." Yet in hurrying over these abysses, 
 whatever dangers we are running into, we are certainly run 
 ning out of the risks of hundreds of miles every day, which 
 have their own chances of squall, collision, sea-stroke, piracy, 
 cold, and thunder. Hour for hour, the risk on a steamboat is 
 greater ; hut the speed is safety, or twelve days of danger, in 
 stead of twenty-four. 
 
 Our ship was registered 750 tons, and weighed perhaps, with 
 all her freight, 1500 tons. The mainmast, from the deck to 
 the top-button, measured 115 feet; the length of the deck, 
 from stem to stern, 155. It is impossible not to personify a 
 ship ; everybody does, in everything they say : she behaves 
 \\ell ; she minds her rudder ; she swims like a duck ; she runs 
 her nose into the water ; she looks into a port. Then that 
 wonderful r.y//-/V <Jn ,-nr/>.^ by which we adopt into our self-love 
 everything we touch, makes us all champions of her sailing- 
 qualities. 
 
 The conscious ship hears all the praise. In one week she 
 has made 1-JU7 miles, and now, at night, seems to hear the 
 steamer behind her, which left Boston to-day at two, has 
 mended her speed, and is Hying before the gray south wind 
 eleven and a half knots the hour. Tho sea tire shines in her 
 wake, and far around wherever a wave breaks. I read the 
 hour. ( .<h. -l.V, on my watch by this light. Near the equator, 
 you can read small print by it ; and the mate describes the 
 phosphoric insects, when taken up in a pail, as shaped like a 
 Carolina potato. 
 
172 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 I find the sea-life an acquired taste, like that for tomatoes 
 and olives. The confinement, cold, motion, noise, and odor are 
 not to be dispensed with. The floor of your room is sloped at 
 an angle of twenty or thirty degrees, and I waked every morn 
 ing with the belief that some one was tipping up my berth. 
 Nobody likes to be treated ignominiously, upset, shoved against 
 the side of the house, rolled over, suffocated with bilge, mephi 
 tis, and stewing oil. We get used to these annoyances at last, 
 but the dread of the sea remains longer. The sea is mascu 
 line, the type of active strength. Look, what egg-shells are 
 drifting all over it, each one, like ours, filled with men in ecsta 
 sies of teiTor, alternating with cockney conceit, as the sea is 
 rough or smooth. Is this sad-colored circle an eternal cemetery 1 
 In our graveyards we scoop a pit, but this aggressive water 
 opens mile-wide pits and chasms, and makes a mouthful of a 
 fleet. To the geologist, the sea is the only firmament ; the 
 land is in perpetual flux and change, now blown up like a tu 
 mor, now sunk in a chasm, and the registered observations of 
 a few hundred years find it in a perpetual tilt, rising and fall 
 ing. The sea keeps its old level ; and t is no wonder that the 
 history of our race is so recent, if the roar of the ocean is 
 silencing our traditions. A rising of the sea, such as has been 
 observed, say an inch in a century, from east to west on the 
 land, will bury all the towns, monuments, bones, and knowledge 
 of mankind, steadily and insensibly. If it is capable of these 
 great and secular mischiefs, it is quite as ready at private and 
 local damage ; and of this no landsman seems so fearful as the 
 seaman. Such discomfort and such danger as the narratives 
 of the captain and mate disclose are bad enough as the costly 
 fee we pay for entrance to Europe ; but the wonder is always 
 new that any sane man can be a sailor. And here, on the 
 second day of our voyage, stepped out a little boy in his shirt 
 sleeves, who had hid himself, whilst the ship was in port, in 
 the bread-closet, having no money, and wishing to go to Eng 
 land. The sailors have dressed him in Guernsey frock, with a 
 knife in his belt, and he is climbing nimbly about after them, 
 " likes the work first-rate, and, if the captain will take him, 
 means now to come back again in the ship." The mate avers 
 that this is the history of all sailors ; nine out of ten are run 
 away boys ; and adds, that all of them are sick of the sea, but 
 stay in it out of pride. Jack has a life of risks, incessant 
 abuse, and the worst pay. It is a little better with the mate, 
 and not very much better with the captain. A hundred dollars 
 
VOYAGE TO EXULANI). 173 
 
 a month is reckoned high pay. If sailors were contented, if 
 they had nt resolved again and again not to go to sea any 
 more, 1 should respect them. 
 
 Of course, the inconveniences and terrors of the sea are not 
 of anv account to those whose minds are preoccupied. The 
 wah !-!, i\vs, arctic frost, the mountain, the mine, only shatter 
 cocknevisin ; cverv noble activity makes room for itself. A 
 great mind is a good sailor, as a great heart is. And the se;i 
 is not slow in disclosing inestimable secrets to a good naturalist, 
 i ifl a u ood rule in every journey to provide some piece of 
 liheral studv to rescue the hours which had weather, had com- 
 panv, and taverns steal from the best economist. Classics 
 which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a 
 country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig. I remem 
 ber that some of the happiest and most valuable hours 1 have 
 owed to hooks, passed, many years ago, on shipboard. The 
 worst impediment i have found at sea is the want of light in 
 the i-abin. 
 
 We found on board the usual cabin library ; Basil Hall, 
 Dumas, Dickens, I .ulwcr, Balzac, and Sand were our sea-gods. 
 Among the passengers, there was some variety of talent and 
 profession ; we exchanged our experiences, and all learned 
 something. The busiest talk with leisure and convenience at 
 sea, and sometimes a memorable fact turns up, which von have 
 loiin- had a vacant niche for, and seixe with the joy of a col 
 lector. But, under the best conditions, a voyage is one of the 
 severest tests to try a man. A college examination is nothing 
 to it. Sea-days are long, these lack-lustre, joyless days 
 which whistled over us ; but they were few, only fifteen, as 
 the captain counted, sixteen according to me. Reckoned from 
 the time when we left soundings, our speed was such that the 
 captain drew the line of his course in red ink on his chart, for 
 the encouragement or envy of future navigators. 
 
 It has been said that the King of England would consult 
 his dignity by giving audience to foreign ambassadors in the 
 cabin of a inan-of war. And I think the white path of an At 
 lantic ship the right avenue to the palace front of this sea 
 faring people, who for hundreds of years claimed the strict sov 
 ereignty of the sea, and exacted toll and the striking sail from 
 the ships of all other peoples. When their privilege was dis 
 puted by the Duti-h and other junior marines, on the plea that 
 you could never anchor on the same wave, or hold property in 
 what was always flowing, the English did not stick to claim 
 
174 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 the channel, or bottom of all the main. " As if," said they, 
 " we contended for tiie drops of the sea, and not for its situa 
 tion, or the bed of those waters. The sea is bounded by his 
 Majesty s empire." 
 
 As we neared the land, its genius was felt. This was inevi 
 tably the British side. In every man s thought arises now a 
 new system, English sentiments, English loves and fears, Eng 
 lish history and social modes. Yesterday, every passenger had 
 measured the speed of the ship by watching the bubbles over 
 the ship s bulwarks. To-day, instead of bubbles, we measure 
 by Kinsale, Cork, Waterford, and Ardmore. There lay the 
 green shore of Ireland, like some coast of plenty. We could 
 see towns, towers, churches, harvests , but the curse of eight 
 hundred years we could not discern. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 LAND. 
 
 A LFIERI thought Italy and England the only countries 
 _/~\. worth living in ; the former, because there nature vindi 
 cates her rights, and triumphs over the evils inflicted by the 
 governments ; the latter, because art conquers nature, and 
 transforms a rude, ungenial land into a paradise of comfort and 
 plenty. England is a garden. Under an ash-colored sky, the 
 fields have been combed and rolled till they appear to have 
 been finished with a pencil instead of a plough. The solidity 
 of the structures that compose the towns speaks the industry of 
 ages. Nothing is left as it was made. Rivers, hills, valleys, 
 the sea itself, feel the hand of a master. The long habitation 
 of a powerful and ingenious race has turned every rood of land 
 to its best use, has found all the capabilities, the arable soil, 
 the quarriable rock, the highways, the byways, the fords, the 
 navigable waters ; and the new arts of intercourse meet you 
 everywhere ; so that England is a huge phalanstery, where all 
 that man wants is provided within the precinct. Cushioned 
 and comforted in every manner, the traveller rides as on a 
 cannon-ball, high and low, over rivers and towns, through moun 
 tains, in tunnels of three or four miles, at near twice the speed 
 of our trains ; and reads quietly the Times newspaper, which, 
 
LAND. 175 
 
 by its immense correspondence and reporting, seems to have 
 muchim/.ed the rest of the world for his occasion. 
 
 The problem of tlu- traveller landing sit Liverpool is, Why 
 England is England. AY hat are tin- elements of that power 
 which the Kngiish hold over other nations? If there be one 
 test of national genius universally accepted, it is success ; and 
 if there l>e one successful country in the universe for the last 
 millennium, that country is England. 
 
 A \\isc traveller will naturally choose to visit the best of 
 actual nations ; and an American hamxtOTg reasons than another 
 to draw him to Britain. In all that is done or begun by the 
 Americans towards right thinking or practice, we are met by a 
 civilization already settled and overpowering. The culture of 
 the day, the thoughts and aims of men, are English thoughts 
 and aims. A nation considerable for a thousand years since 
 Egbert, it has, in the last centuries, obtained the ascendant, 
 and stamped the knowledge, activity, and power of mankind 
 with its impress. Those who resist it do not feel it or obey it 
 The liussian in his snows is aiming to be English. The 
 Turk and Chinese also are making awkward efforts to be 
 English. The practical common-sense of modern society, the 
 utilitarian direction which labor, laws, opinion, religion take, 
 is the natural genius of the British mind. The influence of 
 France is a constituent of modern civility, but not enough op 
 posed to the English for the most wholesome effect. The 
 American is only the continuation of the English genius into 
 new conditions, more or less propitious. 
 
 See what books fill our libraries. Every book we read, every 
 biography, play, romance, in whatever form, is still English 
 histon* and manners. So that a sensible Englishman once 
 said to me, " As long as you do not grant us copyright, we 
 shall have the teaching of yon." 
 
 But we have the same difficulty in making a social or moral 
 estimate of England, as the sheriff finds in drawing a jury to 
 try some cause which has agitated the whole community, and 
 on which everybody finds himself an interested party. Of 
 ficers, jurors, judges, have all taken sides. England has in 
 oculated all nations with her civilization, intelligence, and 
 tastes ; and, to resist the tyranny and prepossession of the 
 British element, a serious man must aid himself, by comparing 
 with it the civilizations of the farthest east and west, the old 
 Creek, the Oriental, and, much more, the ideal standard, if 
 onlv by means of the verv impatienre which English forms arc 
 sure to awaken in independent minds. 
 
176 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 Besides, if we will visit London, the present time is the best 
 time, as some signs portend that it has reached its highest 
 point. It is observed that the English interest us a little less 
 within a few years ; and hence the impression that the British 
 power has culminated, is in solstice, or already declining. 
 
 As soon as you enter England, which, with Wales, is no 
 larger than the State of Georgia,* this little land stretches by 
 an illusion to the dimensions of an empire. The innumerable 
 details, the crowded succession of towns, cities, cathedrals, 
 castles, and great and decorated estates, the number and power 
 of the trades and guilds, the military strength and splendor, 
 the multitudes of rich and of remarkable people, the servants 
 and equipages, all these catching the eye, and never allow 
 ing it to pause, hide all boundaries, by the impression of mag 
 nificence and endless wealth. 
 
 I reply to all the urgencies that refer me to this and that 
 object indispensably to be seen, Yes, to see England well 
 needs a hundred years ; for, what they told me was the merit 
 of Sir John Soane s Museum, in London, that it was well 
 packed and well saved, is the merit of England ; it is 
 stuffed full, in all corners and crevices, with towns, towers, 
 churches, villas, palaces, hospitals, and charity -houses. In the 
 history of art, it is a long way from a cromlech to York minster ; 
 yet all the intermediate steps may still be traced in this all- 
 preserving island. 
 
 The territory has a singular perfection. The climate is 
 warmer by many degrees than it is entitled to by latitude. 
 Neither hot nor cold, there is no hour in the whole year when 
 one cannot work. Here is no winter, but such days as we have 
 in Massachusetts in November, a temperature which makes no 
 exhausting demand on human strength, but allows the attain 
 ment of the largest stature. Charles the Second said, " It in 
 vited men abroad more days in the year and more hours in the 
 day than another country." Then England has all the materi 
 als of a working country except wood. The constant rain, 
 a rain with every tide, in some parts of the island, keeps its 
 multitude of rivers full, and brings agricultural production up 
 to the highest point. It has plenty of water, of stone, of pot 
 ter s clay, of coal, of salt, and of iron. The land naturally 
 abounds with game, immense heaths and downs are paved 
 with quails, grouse, and woodcock, and the shores are animated 
 
 * Add South Carolina, and you have more than an equivalent for the area 
 of Scotland. 
 
LAND. 177 
 
 by water-birds. The rivers :uul the surrounding sen spawn 
 with iish ; thriv an- salmon for the rich, and sprats and her 
 rings for the poor. In the northern lehs, the herring an- in 
 innumerable shoals ; at one sea^.n, the country people say, the 
 lakes contain one part water and two pails fish. 
 
 The only drawback on this industrial conveniriiey is the 
 darkness of its sky. The night and day are too nearly of a 
 color. It strains the eves to read and to write. Add the 
 coal-smoke. In the manufacturing towns, the fine soot or 
 ll<i<-kx darken the day, give white sheep the color of black 
 sheep, discolor the human saliva, contaminate the air, poison 
 nianv plants, and corrode the monuments and buildings. 
 
 The London fog aggravates the distempers of the sky, and 
 sometimes justifies the epigram on the climate by an English 
 wit, " in a tine day, looking up a chimney ; in a foul day, 
 looking down one." A gentleman in Liverpool told me that 
 he found he could do without a tiro in his parlor about one 
 clav in the \ ear. It is however pretended, that the enormous 
 consumption of coal in the island is also felt in modifying the 
 general climate. 
 
 Factitious climate, factitious position. England resembles 
 a ship in its shape, and, if it were one, its best admiral could 
 not have worked it, or anchored it in a more judicious or ef 
 fective position. Sir John Herschel said, " London was the 
 centre of the terrene globe." The shopkeeping nation, to use 
 a shop word, has a </<><l stand. The old Venetians pl< 
 themselves with the flattery, that Venice was in 45, midway 
 between the poles and the line ; as if that were an imperial 
 centrality. Long of old, the Greeks fancied Delphi the navel 
 of the earth, in their favorite mode of fabling the earth to be 
 an animal. The Jews belived Jerusalem to be the centre. I 
 have seen a kratometric chart designed to show that the city 
 of Philadelphia was in the same thermic belt, and, by infcn 
 ence. in the same belt of empire, as the cities of Athens, 
 Koine, and London. It was drawn by a patriotic Philadel- 
 phian, and was examined with pleasure, under his showing, 
 by the inhabitants of Chestnut Street. But, when carried to 
 Charleston, to New Orleans, and to llo^i ii, it somehow failed 
 to convince the ingenious scholars of all those capitals. 
 
 But England is anchored at the side of Europe, and right 
 in the heart of the modern world. The sea. which, according 
 to ViririTs famous line, divided the poor Britons utterly from 
 the world, proved to be the ring of marriage with Jill nations. 
 
 8* L 
 
178 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 It is not down in the books, it is written only in the ge 
 ologic strata, that fortunate day when a wave of the German 
 Ocean burst the old isthmus which joined Kent and Cornwall 
 to France, and gave to this fragment of Europe its impreg 
 nable sea-wall, cutting off an island of eight hundred miles in 
 length, with an irregular breadth reaching to three hundred 
 miles ; a territory large enough for independence enriched 
 with every seed of national power, so near, that it can see the 
 harvests of the continent \ and so far, that who would cross 
 the strait must be an expert mariner, ready for tempests. As 
 America, Europe, and Asia lie, these Britons have precisely 
 the best commercial position in the whole planet, and are sure 
 of a market for all the goods they can manufacture. And to 
 make these advantages avail, the river Thames must dig its 
 spacious outlet to the sea from the heart of the kingdom, 
 giving road and landing to innumerable ships, and all the con- 
 veniency to trade, that a people so skilful and sufficient in 
 economizing water-front by docks, warehouses, and lighters re 
 quired. When James the First declared his purpose of punish 
 ing London by removing his Court, the Lord Mayor replied, 
 " that, in removing his royal presence from his lieges, they 
 hoped he would leave them the Thames." 
 
 In the variety of surface, Britain is a miniature of Europe, 
 having plain, forest, marsh, river, sea-shore ; mines in Corn 
 wall ; caves in Matlock and Derbyshire ; delicious landscape 
 in Dovedale, delicious sea-view at Tor Bay, Highlands in Scot 
 land, Snowdon in Wales ; and, in Westmoreland and Cumber 
 land, a pocket Switzerland, in which the lakes and mountains 
 are on a sufficient scale to fill the eye and touch the imagina 
 tion. It is a nation conveniently small. Fontenelle thought, 
 that nature had sometimes a little affectation ; and there is 
 such an artificial completeness in this nation of artificers, as 
 if there were a design from the beginning to elaborate a bigger 
 Birmingham. Nature held counsel with herself, and said, 
 * My Romans are gone. To build my new empire, I will 
 choose a rude race, all masculine, with brutish strength. I 
 will not grudge a competition of the roughest males. Let 
 buffalo gore buffalo, and the pasture to the strongest ! For I 
 have work that requires the best will and sinew. Sharp and 
 temperate northern breezes shall blow, to keep that will alive 
 and alert. The sea shall disjoin the people from others, and 
 knit them to a fierce nationality. It shall give them markets 
 on every side. Long time I will keep them on their feet, by 
 
RACE. 179 
 
 poverty, border-wars, seafaring, sea-risks, and the stimulus of 
 gain. An island, but not so hyge, the people nut so many 
 OS to glut tho givat markets and depress one another, but 
 proj)ortioned to the si/.e of Europe and the continent.--. 
 
 With its fruits, and wares, and money, must its civil influ 
 ence radiate. It is a singular coincidence to this geographic 
 centrality, the spiritual centrulity, which Kmanuel Sweden 
 borg ascribes to the p"ople. " Kor the English nation, the 
 best of them are in the centre of all Christians, because 
 they have interior intellectual light. This appears conspicu 
 ously in the spiritual world. This light they derive from the 
 liberty of speaking and writing, and thereby of thinking." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 RACE. 
 
 AN ingenious anatomist has written a book * to prove that 
 races are imperishable, but nations are pliant political 
 constructions, easily changed or destroyed. But this writer 
 did not found his assumed races on any necessary law, dispos 
 ing their ideal or metaphysical necessity ; nor did he, on the 
 other hand, count with precision the existing races, and settle 
 the true bounds ; a point of nicety, and the popular test of 
 the theory. The individuals at the extremes of divergence in 
 one race of men are as unlike as the wolf to the lapdog. Yet 
 each variety shades down imperceptibly into the next, and you 
 cannot draw the line where a race begins or ends. Hence 
 every writer makes a different count. Blumenbach reckons 
 five races ; II umboldt, three ; and Mr. Pickering, who lately, 
 in our Exploring Expedition, thinks he saw all the kinds of 
 men that can be on the planet, makes eleven. 
 
 The British Empire- is re ckoned to contain 222,000,000 
 souls, perhaps a fifth of tin- population of the globe: and 
 to comprise a territory of 6,000,000 square miles. So far 
 have British people predominated. IVrhaps forty of these 
 millions are of British stock. Add the l nit"d Sr.ifsof Amer 
 ica, which reckon, exclusive of slaves, 20,000,000 of people, 
 on a territory of 3,000,000" square miles, and in which the 
 
 * The Races, a Fragment. By Robert Knox. London: I860. 
 
180 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 foreign element, however considerable, is rapidly assimilated, 
 and you have a population of English descent and language, of 
 60,000,000, and governing a population of 245,000,000 souls. 
 
 The British census proper reckons twenty-seven and a half 
 millions in the home countries. What makes this census im 
 portant is the quality of the units that compose it. They are 
 free forcible men, in a country where life is safe, and has 
 reached the greatest value. They give the bias to the current 
 age ; and that, not by chance or by mass, but by their charac 
 ter, and by the number of individuals among them of personal 
 ability. It has been denied that the English have genius. Be 
 it as it may, men of vast intellect have been born on their 
 soil, and they have made or applied the principal inventions. 
 They have sound bodies, and supreme endurance in Avar and in 
 labor. The spawning force of the race has sufficed to the col 
 onization of great parts of the world ; yet it remains to be 
 seen whether they can make good the exodus of millions from 
 Great Britain, amounting, in 1852, to more than a thousand a 
 day. They have assimilating force, since they are imitated by 
 their foreign subjects; and they are still aggressive and prop 
 agandist, enlarging the dominion of their arts and liberty. 
 Their laws are hospitable, and slavery does not exist under 
 them. What oppression exists is incidental and temporary ; 
 their success is not sudden or fortunate, but they have main 
 tained constancy and self-equality for many ages. 
 
 Is this power due to their race, or to some other cause 1 
 Men hear gladly of the power of blood or race. Everybody 
 likes to know that his advantages cannot be attributed to air, 
 soil, sea, or to local wealth, as mines and quarries, nor to laws 
 and traditions, nor to fortune, but to superior brain, as it 
 makes the praise more personal to him. 
 
 We anticipate in the doctrine of race something like that 
 law of physiology, that, whatever bone, muscle, or essential 
 organ is found in one healthy individual, the same part or or 
 gan may be found in or near the same place in its congener; 
 and we look to find in the son every mental and moral prop 
 erty that existed in the ancestor. In race, it is not the broad 
 shoulders, or litheness, or stature that give advantage, but a 
 symmetry that reaches as far as to the wit. Then the miracle 
 and renown begin. Then first we care to examine the pedi 
 gree, and copy heedfully the training, what food they ate, 
 what nursing, school, and exercises they had, which resulted 
 in this mother-wit, delicacy of thought, and robust wisdom. 
 
RACE. 181 
 
 How came such men as Kini: Alfred, ami Roger Bacon, Wil 
 liam of \Yykeham, \V;ilti r Kaleigh, Philip Sidney, Isaac NYw- 
 ton, Williiiiu Shakespeare. < in n-ge ( hapman, Francis Bacon, 
 Herbert, Henry Yarn 1 , to exist here? \\"liat made 
 these delicate natures / was it the air? was it the seal was it 
 the parentage I For it is certain tliat these men are samples 
 of their contemporaries. The hearing ear is always found 
 close to the speaking tongue ; and no genius can long or often 
 utter anything which is not invited and gladly entertained by 
 men around him. 
 
 It is race, is it not ] that puts the hundred millions of India 
 under the dominion of a remote island in the north of Kurope. 
 Race avails much, if that he true, which is alleged, that all 
 Celts are Catholics, and all Saxons arc Protestants ; that Celts 
 love unity of power, and Saxons the representative principle. 
 Race is a controlling influence in the Jew, who, for two mil 
 lenniums, under every climate, has preserved the same charac 
 ter and employments, Race in the negro is of appalling im 
 portance. The French in Canada, cut otf from all intercourse 
 with the parent people, have held their national traits. I 
 chanced to read Tacitus "on the Manners of the Germans," 
 not long since, in Missouri, and the heart of Illinois, and 1 
 found abundant points of resemblance between the Germans 
 of the Hercynian forest, and our Hoosiers, flickers, and lla>l<jt /> 
 of the American woods. 
 
 But whilst race works immortally to keep its own, it is re 
 sisted by other forces. Civilization is a re-agent, and eats 
 away the old traits. The Arabs of to-day are the Arabs of 
 Pharaoh ; but the Briton of to : day is a very different person 
 from Cassibelaimns or Ossian. Each religious sect has its 
 physiognomy. The Methodists have acquired a face ; the 
 Quakers, a face ; the nuns, a face. An Englishman will pick 
 out a dissenter by his manners. Trades and professions 
 carve their own lines on face and form. Certain circumstan 
 ces of English life are not less effective : as, personal liberty : 
 plenty of food ; good ale and mutton ; open market, or good 
 - t ..r every kind of labor; high bribes to talent and 
 skill ; the island life, or the million opportunities and outlets 
 for expanding and misplaced talent ; readiness of combination 
 among themselves for politics or for business ; strikes ; and 
 sense of superioritv founded on habit of victorv in labor and 
 in war; and the appetite for superiority grows by feeding. 
 
 It is easy to add to the counteracting forces to race. Cre/ 
 
182 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 denco is a main element. T is said, that the views of nature 
 held by any people determine all their institutions. What 
 ever influences add to mental or moral faculty, take men out 
 of nationality, as out of other conditions, and make the na 
 tional life a culpable compromise. 
 
 These limitations of the formidable doctrine of race suggest 
 others which threaten to undermine it, as not sufficiently 
 based. The fixity or inconvertibleness of races as we see 
 them, is a weak argument for the eternity of these frail k 
 boundaries, since all our historical period is a point to the du 
 ration in which nature has wrought. Any the least and soli- 
 tariest fact in our natural history, such as the melioration of 
 fruits and of animal stocks, has the worth of a pvwer in the 
 opportunity of geologic periods. Moreover, though we natter 
 the self-love of men and nations by the legend of pure races, 
 all our experience is of the gradation and resolution of races, 
 and strange resemblances meet us everywhere. It need not 
 puzzle us that Malay and Papuan, Celt and Roman, Saxon 
 and Tartar, should mix, when we see the rudiments of tiger 
 and baboon in our human form, and know that the barriers of 
 races are not so firm, but that some spray sprinkles us from 
 the antediluvian seas. 
 
 The low organizations are simplest ; a mere mouth, a jelly, 
 or a straight worm. As the scale mounts, the organizations 
 become complex. We are piqued with pure descent, but na 
 ture loves inoculation. A child blends in his face the faces of 
 both parents, and some feature from every ancestor whose face 
 hangs on the wall. The best nations are those most widely 
 related ; and navigation, as effecting a world-wide mixture, is 
 the most potent advancer of nations. 
 
 The English composite character betrays a mixed origin. 
 Everything English is a fusion of distant and antagonistic 
 elements. The language is mixed ; the names of men are of 
 different nations, three languages, three or four nations ; 
 the currents of thought are counter : contemplation and prac 
 tical skill ; active intellect and dead conservatism ; world-wide 
 enterprise, and devoted use and wont ; aggressive freedom and 
 hospitable law, with bitter class-legislation ; a people scattered 
 by their wars and affairs over the face of the whole earth, and 
 homesick to a man ; a country of extremes, dukes and 
 chartists, Bishops of Durham and naked heathen colliers ; 
 nothing can be praised in it without damning exceptions, 
 jiid nothing denounced without salvos of cordial praise. 
 
RACE. 183 
 
 Xeithcr do this people appear to bo of one stem ; but col- 
 . !v a better race than any from which they arc derived. 
 .Nor is it easy to trace it home to its original scats. Who can 
 call by right names what races are in Britain I Who can trace 
 them historically I Who can discriminate them anatomically, 
 or metaphysically I 
 
 In the impossibility of arriving at satisfaction on the his 
 torical question of race, and come of whatever disputable 
 ancestry the indisputable Englishman before me, himself 
 very well marked, and nowhere eUe to be found, I fancied I 
 could leave quite aside the choice of a tribe as his lineal pro 
 genitors. Defoe said in his wrath, "the Englishman was the 
 mud of all races." 1 incline to the belief, that, as water, lime, 
 and sand make mortar, so certain temperaments marry well, 
 and, by well-managed contrarieties, develop as drastic a charac 
 ter as the English. On the whole, it is not so much a history 
 of one or of certain tribes of Saxons, .lutes, or Frisians, coming 
 from one place, and genetically identical, as it is an anthologv 
 of temperaments out of them all. Certain temperaments suit 
 the sky and soil of England, say eight or ten or twenty varieties, 
 as, out of a hundred pear-trees, eight or ten suit the soil of an 
 orchard, and thrive, whilst all the unadapted temperaments die 
 out. 
 
 The English derive their pedigree from such a range of 
 nationalities, that there needs sea-room and land-room to un 
 fold the varieties of talent and character. Perhaps the ocean 
 serves as a galvanic battery to distribute acids at one pole, and 
 alkalies at the other. So England tends to accumulate her 
 liberals in America, and her conservatives at London. The 
 Scandinavians in her race still hear in every age the murmurs 
 of their mother, the ocean ; the Briton in the blood hugs the 
 -read still. 
 
 Again, as if to intensate the influences that are not of race, 
 what we think of when we talk of English traits really narrows 
 itself to a small district. It excludes Ireland, and Scotland, 
 and Wales, and reduces itself at last to London, that is, to those; 
 who conic and L r o thither. The portraits that hang on the 
 walls in the Academy Exhibition at London, the figures in 
 Punch s drawing of the public men, or of the club-houses, the 
 prints in the shop-windows, are distinctive English, and not 
 American, no, nor Scotch, nor Irish : but t is a very restricted 
 nationality. As you go north into the manufacturing and 
 agricultural districts, and to the population that never travels, 
 
184 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 as you go into Yorkshire, as you enter Scotland, the world s 
 Englishman is no longer found. In Scotland, there is a rapid 
 loss of all grandeur of mien and manners ; a provincial eager 
 ness and acuteness appear ; the poverty of the country makes 
 itself remarked, and a coarseness of manners ; and, among the 
 intellectual, is the insanity of dialectics. In Ireland, are the 
 same climate and soil as in England, but less food, no right 
 relation to the land, political dependence, small tenantry, and 
 an inferior or misplaced race. 
 
 These queries concerning ancestry and blood may be well 
 allowed, for there is no prosperity that seems more to depend 
 on the kind of man than British prosperity. Only a hardy and 
 wise people could have made this small territory great. We 
 say, in a regatta or yacht-race, that if the boats are anywhere 
 nearly matched, it is the man that wins. Put the best sailing- 
 master into either boat, and he will win. 
 
 Yet it is fine for us to speculate in face of unbroken tradi 
 tions, though vague, and losing themselves in fable. The 
 traditions have got footing, and refuse to be disturbed. The 
 kitchen-clock is more convenient than sidereal time. We must 
 use the popular category, as we do by the Linnaean classifica 
 tion, for convenience, and not as exact and final. Otherwise, 
 we are presently confounded, when the best-settled traits of 
 one race are claimed by some new ethnologist as precisely 
 characteristic of the rival tribe. 
 
 I found plenty of well-marked English types, the ruddy 
 complexion fair and plump, robust men, with faces cut like a 
 die, and a strong island speech and accent ; a Norman type, 
 with the complacency that belongs to that constitution. 
 Others, who might be Americans, for anything that appeared 
 in their complexion or form : and their speech was much less 
 marked, and their thought much less bound. W"e w r ill call 
 them Saxons. Then the Roman has implanted his dark com 
 plexion in the trinity or quaternity of bloods. 
 
 1. The sources from which tradition derives their stock are 
 mainly three. And, first, they are of the oldest blood of the 
 world, the Celtic. Some peoples are deciduous or transitory. 
 Where are the Greeks 1 where the Etrurians 1 where the 
 Romans ? But the Celts or Sidonides are an old family, of 
 whose beginning there is no memory, and their end is likely 
 to be still more remote in the future ; for they have endurance 
 and productiveness. They planted Britain, and gave to the 
 
 \ 
 
RACE. 185 
 
 seas and mountains names which arc poems, and imitate tho 
 pure voicrs of nature. They are favorably remembered in the 
 oldest P-eords of Kumpe. They had no violent feudal tenure, 
 but the hushandman owned the land. They had an alphabet, 
 i"mv. priestly culture, and a suhlinie creed. Thev have 
 a liidden and precarious genius. They made the hest popular 
 literature of the Middle Ages in the s.ngs of Merlin, and the 
 tender and delicious mythology of Arthur. 
 
 _ . The Knulish come mainly from the Germans, whom the 
 Rinnans found hard to conquer in two hundred and ten years, 
 say, impossible to conquer, when one remembers the 
 long sequel ; a people about whom, in the old empire, the ru 
 mor ran, there was never any that meddled with them that 
 repented it not. 
 
 3. Charlemagne, halting one day in a town of Narbonnese 
 Gaul, looked out of a window, and saw a fleet of North 
 men cruising in the Mediterranean. They even entered the 
 port of the town where he was, causing no small alarm and 
 sudden manning and arming of his galleys. As they put out 
 i airain, the emperor gazed long after them, his eyes 
 bathed in tears. "I am tormented with sorrow," he said, 
 " when I foresee the evils they will bring on my posterity/ 
 There was reason for these Xerxes tears. The men who 
 have built a ship and invented the rig, cordage, sail, com- 
 md pump, the working in and out of port, have ac 
 quired much more than a ship. Now arm them, and everv 
 shore is at their mercy. For, if they have not numerical su 
 periority where they anchor, they have only to sail a mile or 
 two to find it. Bonaparte s art of war, namely, of concentrat 
 ing force on the point of attack, must always be theirs who 
 have the choice of the battle-ground. Of course they come 
 into the fight from a higher ground of power than the land- 
 nations; and can engage them on shore with a victorious 
 advantage in the retreat. As soon as the shores are sufficient 
 ly peopled to make piracy a losing business, the same skill 
 and courage are ready for the service of trade. 
 
 The II< -////x/r////// /,* or Sagas of the Kings of Norway, col- 
 le<-t-d by Snorro Sturle^on. is the Iliad and Odyssey of Eng 
 lish history. Its portraits, like Homer s, are strongly indi 
 vidualized. Th" Sagaa describe a monarchical republic like 
 Sparta. The government disappears before the important of 
 
 * Heimskringla. Translated by Samuel Luing, Esq. Lor Ion: 1844 
 
186 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 citizens. In Norway, no Persian masses fight and perish to 
 aggrandize a king, but the actors are bonders or land-holders, 
 every one of whom is named and personally and patronym- 
 ically described, as the king s friend and companion. A sparse 
 population gives this high worth to every man. Individuals 
 are often noticed as very handsome persons, which trait only 
 brings the story nearer to the English race. Then the solid 
 material interest predominates, so dear to English understand 
 ing, wherein the association is logical, between merit and land. 
 The heroes of the Sagas are not the knights of South Europe. 
 No vaporing of France and Spain has corrupted them. They 
 are substantial farmers, whom the rough times have forced to 
 defend their properties. They have weapons which they use 
 in a determined manner, by no means for chivalry, but for 
 their acres. They are people considerably advanced in rural 
 arts, living amphibiously on a rough coast, and drawing half 
 their food from the sea, and half from the land. They have 
 herds of cows, and malt, wheat, bacon, butter, and cheese. 
 They fish in the fiord, and hunt the deer. A king among 
 these farmers has a varying power, sometimes not exceeding 
 the authority of a sheriif. A king was maintained much as, 
 in some of our country districts, a winter-schoolmaster is quar 
 tered, a week here, a week there, and a fortnight on the next 
 farm, on all the farmers in rotation. This the king calls 
 going into guest-quarters ; and it was the only way in which, 
 in a poor country, a poor king, with many retainers, could be 
 kept alive, when he leaves his own farm to collect his dues 
 through the kingdom. 
 
 These Norsemen are excellent persons in the main, with 
 good sense, steadiness, wise speech, and prompt action. But 
 they have a singular turn for homicide ; their chief end of 
 man is to murder or to be murdered ; oars, scythes, har 
 poons, crowbars, peat-knives, and hayforks are tools valued by 
 them all the more for their charming aptitude for assassina 
 tions. A pair of kings, after dinner, will divert themselves 
 by thrusting each his sword through the other s body, as did 
 Yngve and Alf. Another pair ride out on a morning for a 
 frolic, and, finding no weapon near, will take the bits out of 
 their horses mouths, and crush each other s heads with them, 
 as did Alric and Eric. The sight of a tent-cord or a cloak- 
 string puts them on hanging somebody, a wife, or a husband, 
 T, best of all, a king. If a farmer has so much as a hayfork, 
 **3 sticks it into a King Dag. King Ingiald finds it vastly 
 
KACE. 187 
 
 amusing to 1mm up half u do/on kings in a hall, after getting 
 thrni drunk. Never was poor gentleman so surfeited \viih 
 hfe, BO furious to be rid of it, as tin- Northman. If he can 
 not pick any other quarrel, he will get himself comfortahly 
 gored hy a hull s horns, like Kgil, or slain by a land-slide, like 
 the agricultural King < uuiid. Odin died in his bed, in 8w 
 den : hut it was a proverb of ill condition, to die the death of 
 old aire. Kin^ Hake of Sweden cuts and shushes in hat tie, 
 as long as he caii stand, then orders his war-ship, loaded with 
 his dead men and their weapons, to he taken out to sea, the 
 tiller shipped, and the sails spread ; being left alone, he sets 
 fire to some tar- wood, and lies down contented on deck. The 
 wind blew oft the land, the ship flew burning in clear flame, 
 out Let we. n the islets into the ocean, and there was the right 
 end of King Hake. 
 
 The early Sagas are sanguinary and piratical; the later are 
 of a noble strain. History rarely yields us better pas 
 than the conversation between King Sigurd the Crusader, and 
 King Kvstein, his brother, on their respective merits, one, 
 the soldier, and the other, a lover of the arts of peace. 
 
 But the reader of the Norman history must steel himself 
 by holding last the remote compeiisat ions which result from 
 animal vigor. As the old fossil world shows that the first 
 steps of reducing the chaos were confided to saurians and 
 other huge and horrible animals, so the foundations of the 
 new civility were to be laid by the most savage men. 
 
 The Normans came out of France into England worse men 
 than they went into it, one hundred and sixty years before. 
 They had lost their own language, and learned the Romance or 
 barbarous Latin of the Gauls; and had acquired, with the 
 language, all the vices it had names for. The conquest has 
 obtained in the chronicles, the name of the "memory of sor 
 row/ Twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings. These 
 founders of the House of Lords were greedy and ferocious 
 dragoons, sons of greedy and ferocious pirates. They were all 
 alike, they took everything they could carry, they burned, 
 harried, violated, tortured, and killed, until everything KUL:- 
 lish was brought to the verge of ruin. Such, however, is the 
 illusion of antiquity and wealth, that decent and dignified 
 men now existing boast their descent from these filthy thieves, 
 who showed a far just er conviction of their own merits, by as- 
 Binning for their types the swine, goat, jackal, leopard, wolf, 
 and snake, which they severally resembled. 
 
188 ENGLISH TEAITS. 
 
 England yielded to the Danes and Northmen in the tenth 
 and eleventh centuries, and was the receptacle into which all 
 the mettle of that strenuous population was poured. The 
 continued draught of the best men in Norway, Sweden, and 
 Denmark, to these piratical expeditions, exhausted those coun 
 tries, like a tree which bears much fruit when young, and 
 these have been second-rate powers ever since. The power of 
 the race migrated, and left Norway void. King Olaf said : 
 " When King Harold, my father, went westward to England, 
 the chosen men in Norway followed him ; but Norway was 
 so emptied then, that such men have not since been to find in 
 the country, nor especially such a leader as King Harold was 
 for wisdom and bravery." 
 
 It was a tardy recoil of these invasions, when, in 1801, the 
 British government sent Nelson to bombard the Danish forts 
 in the Sound; and, in 1807, Lord Cathcart, at Copenhagen, 
 took the entire Danish fleet, as it lay in the basins, and all the 
 equipments from the Arsenal, and carried them to England. 
 Konghelle, the town where the kings of Norway, Sweden, and 
 Denmark were wont to meet, is now rented to a private Eng 
 lish gentleman for a hunting-ground. 
 
 It took many generations to trim, and comb, and perfume 
 the first boat-load of Norse pirates into royal highnesses and 
 most noble Knights of the Garter : but every sparkle of orna 
 ment dates back to the Norse boat. There will be time 
 enough to mellow this strength into civility and religion. It 
 is a medical fact, that the children of the blind see ; the 
 children of felons have a healthy conscience. Many a mean, 
 dastardly boy is, at the age of puberty, transformed into a 
 serious and generous youth. 
 
 The mildness of the following ages has not quite effaced 
 these traits of Odin ; as the rudiment of a structure matured 
 in the tiger is said to be still found unabsorbed in the Cau 
 casian man. The nation has a tough, acrid, animal nature, 
 which centuries of churching and civilizing have not been able 
 to sweeten. Alfieri said, "the crimes of Italy were the proof 
 of the superiority of the stock " ; and one may say of England, 
 that this watch moves on a splinter of adamant. The English 
 uncultured are a brutal nation. The crimes recorded in their 
 calendars leave nothing to be desired in the way of cold malig 
 nity. Dear to the English heart is a fair stand-up fight. The 
 brutality of the manners in the lower class appears in the box 
 ing, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, love of executions, and in the 
 
KACE. 180 
 
 readiness for a set-to in the streets, delightful to the English 
 of all classes. The mstermou^rrs "f London streets hold 
 cmvurdire in loathing : - - " we must work our lists well; we 
 are all handy wit.li our fists." The public schools are charged 
 with being hc-ar-gardcns of brutal strength, and are liked by 
 the people fi.r that cause. The fagging is a trait of the saint- 
 quality. Medwin, in the Life of Shelley, relates, that, at a 
 military school, they rolled up a young man in a snowball, 
 and left him so in his room, while the other cadets went to 
 church ; and crippled him for life. They have retained im 
 pressment, deck-flogging. :mny-llogL:ing, and Bohooi-floggmg. 
 Sucli is the ferocity of the army discipline, that a soldier sen- 
 teneed to flogging, sometimes pravs that his sentence may he 
 commuted to death. Flogging banished from the armies of 
 Wotern Europe, remains here by the sanction of the Duke of 
 Wellington. The right of the husband to sell the wife has 
 been retained down to our times. The Jews have been the 
 fa^>rite victims of roval and popular persecution. Henry III. 
 mortgaged all the Jews in the kingdom to his brother, the 
 Karl of ( ornwall. as security for money which he borrowed. 
 The torture of criminals, and the rack for extorting evidence, 
 were slowly disused. Of the criminal statutes, Sir Samuel 
 Komilly said, " I have examined the codes of all nations, and 
 onrs is the worst, and worthy of the Anthropophagi." In the 
 last session, the House of Commons was listening to details of 
 flogging and torture practised in the jails. 
 
 A- soon as this land, thus geographically posted, got a hardy 
 people into it, they could not help becoming the sailors and 
 factors of the globe. From childhood, they dabbled in water, 
 they swum like nshes, their playthings were boats. In the 
 "f the ship-money, the judges delivered it for law, that 
 England being an island, the very midland shires therein 
 are all to be accounted maritime " : and Fuller adds, " the 
 genius even of land-locked countries driving the natives with a 
 maritime dexterity." As early as the conquest, it is remarked 
 in explanation of the wealth of England, that its merchants 
 trade to all countries. 
 
 The English, at the present day, have great vigor of body 
 and endurance. Other countrymen look slight and undersi/"d 
 beside them, and invalids. Theyjire bigger_men than the 
 Americans. I suppose a hundred English taken at random 
 oufc-ef the street would wej-h a fourth more than so many 
 Americans. Yet, I am told, the skeleton is not larger. They 
 
190 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 are round, ruddy, and handsome ; at least, the whole bust is 
 well formed ; and there is a tendency to stout and powerful 
 frames. I remarked the stoutness, on my first landing at 
 Liverpool ; porter, drayman, coachman, guard, what sub 
 stantial, respectable, grandfatherly figures, with costume and 
 manners to suit. The American has arrived at the old man 
 sion-house, and finds himself among uncles, aunts, and grand- 
 sires. The pictures on the chimney-tiles of his nursery were 
 pictures of these people. Here they are in the identical cos 
 tumes and air, which so took him. 
 
 It is the fault of their forms that they grow stocky, and the 
 women have that disadvantage, few tall, slender "figures of 
 flowing shape, but stunted and thickset persons. The French 
 say, that the Englishwomen have two left hands. But, in all 
 ages, they are a handsome race. The bronze monuments of 
 crusaders lying cross-legged, in the Temple Church at London, 
 and those in Worcester and in Salisbury Cathedrals, which are 
 seven hundred years old, arc of the same type as the best 
 youthful heads of men now in England ; please by beauty of 
 the same character, an expression blending good-nature, valor, 
 and refinement, and, mainly, by that uncorrupt youth in the 
 face of manhood, which is daily seen in the streets of Lon 
 don. 
 
 Both branches of the Scandinavian race are distinguished 
 for beauty. The anecdote of the handsome captives which 
 Saint Gregory found at Rome, A. D. 600, is matched by the 
 testimony of the Norman chroniclers, five centuries later, who 
 wondered at the beauty and long flowing hair of the young 
 English captives. Meantime, the Heimskringla has frequent 
 occasion to speak of the personal beauty of its heroes. When 
 it is considered what humanity, what resources of mental and 
 moral power, the traits of the blond race betoken, its ac 
 cession to empire marks a new and finer epoch, wherein the 
 old mineral force shall be subjugated at last by humanity, and 
 shall plough in its furrow henceforward. It is not a final race, 
 once a crab always crab, but a race with a future. 
 
 On the English face are combined decision and nerve, with 
 the fair complexion, blue eyes, and open and florid aspect. 
 Hence the love of truth, hence the sensibility, the fine per 
 ception, and poetic construction. The fair Saxon man, with 
 open front, and honest meaning, domestic, affectionate, is not 
 the wood out of which cannibal, or inquisitor, or assassin is 
 made. But he is moulded for law, lawful trade, civility, mar- 
 
RACE. 191 
 
 riagc, the nurture of children, for colleges, churches, charities, 
 jind IN Ionics. 
 
 They are rather manly than warlike. When the war is 
 over, the mask falls from the affectionate and domestic tastes, 
 which make them women in kindness. This union of qualities 
 is fabled in their national legend of HtKufi/ <tu<l tin- /!<axt, or 
 Ion: before, in the Creek legend of Hermaphrodite. The two 
 are co-present in the English mind. I apply to Britan 
 nia, queen of seas and colonies, the words in which her latest 
 novelist portravs his heroine : " she is as mild as she is game, 
 and as game as she is mild." The English delight in the 
 a:it monism, which combines in one person the extremes of 
 courage and tenderness. Nelson, dying at Trafalgar, sends 
 his love to Lord Collingwood, and, like an innocent school-boy 
 that goes to bed. BajB, i% Kiss me, Hardy," and turns to sleeu. 
 Lord Collingwood, his comrade, was of a nature the most af 
 fectionate and domestic. Admiral Rodney s figure approached 
 to delicacy and effeminacy, and ho declared himself very sen 
 sible to fear, which he surmounted only by considerations of 
 honor and public duty. Clarendon says, the Duke of Buck 
 ingham was so modest and gentle, that some courtiers at 
 tempted to put affronts on him, until they found that this 
 modesty and effeminacy was only a mask for the most terrible 
 determination. And Sir Edward Parry said, the other day, 
 of Sir John Franklin, that, " if he found Wellington Sound 
 open, he explored it ; for he was a man who never turned his 
 back on a danger, yet of that tenderness, that he would not 
 brush away a mosquito." Even for their highwaymen the 
 same virtue is claimed, and Robin Hood comes described to us 
 as mitixxiiit>/.< / /<"/<;// >///*, the gentlest thief. But they know 
 where their war-dogs lie. Cromwell, Blake, Marl borough, 
 Chatham, Nelson, and Wellington are not to be tritled with, 
 and the brutal strength which lies at the bottom of society, 
 the animal ferocity of the quays and cockpits, the bullies of 
 the costennoiigers of Shorcditch, Seven Dials, and Spitalfields, 
 they know how to wake up. 
 
 They have a vigorous health, and last well into middle and 
 old age. The old men are as red as roses, and still handsonu 1 . 
 A clear skin, a peach-bloom complexion, and Lfood teeth, are 
 found all over the island. They use a plentiful and nutritious 
 diet. The operative cannot subsist on water-cresses. i>t-rf, 
 mutton, wheat-bread, and malt liquors are universal among 
 the first-class laborers. Cloud feeding is a chief point of na- 
 
192 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 tional pride among th e vulgar, and, in their caricatures, they 
 represent the Frenchman as a poor, starved body. It is curious 
 that Tacitus found the English beer already in use among the 
 Germans : " they make from barley or wheat a drink corrupted 
 into some resemblance to wine." Lord Chief Justice Fortescue 
 in Henry VI. s time, says : " The inhabitants of England drink no 
 water, unless at certain times, on a religious score, and by way 
 of penance." The extremes of poverty and ascetic penance, 
 it would seem, never reach cold water in England. Wood, the 
 antiquary, in describing the poverty and maceration of Father 
 Lacey, an English Jesuit, does not deny him beer. He says, 
 " his bed was under a thatching, and the way to it up a ladder ; 
 his fare was coarse ; his drink, of a penny a gawn, or gallon." 
 
 They have more constitutional energy than any other peo 
 ple. They think, with Henri Quatre, that manly exercises are 
 the foundation of that elevation of mind which gives one nature 
 ascendant over another; or, with the Arabs, that the days 
 spent in the chase are not counted in the length of life. They 
 box, run, shoot, ride, row, and sail from pole to pole. They 
 eat and drink, and live jo^ly in the open air, putting a bar of 
 solid sleep between day and day. They walk and ride as fast 
 as they can, their heads bent forward, as if urged on some 
 pressing affair. The French say, that Englishmen in the street 
 always walk straight before them like mad dogs. Men and 
 women walk with infatuation. As soon as he can handle a 
 gun, hunting is the fine art of every Englishman of condition. 
 They are the most voracious people of prey that ever existed. 
 Every season turns out the aristocracy into the country, to 
 shoot and fish. The more vigorous run out of the island to 
 Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa, and Australia, to hunt 
 with fury by gun, by trap, by harpoon, by lasso, with dog, with 
 horse, with elephant, or with dromedary, all the game that is 
 in nature. These men have written the game-books of all 
 countries, as Hawker, Scrope, Murray, Herbert, Maxwell, Gum 
 ming, and a host of travellers. The people at home are ad 
 dicted to boxing, running, leaping, and rowing matches. 
 
 I suppose, the dogs and horses must be thanked for the fact, 
 that the men have muscles almost as tough and supple as their 
 own. If in every efficient man, there is first a fine animal, in 
 the English race it is of the best breed, a wealthy, juicy, broad- 
 chested creature, steeped in ale and good cheer, and a little 
 overloaded by his flesh. Men of animal nature rely, like an? 
 mals, on their instincts. The Englishman associates well with 
 
KACE. 193 
 
 His attachment to tin- horse arises from the 
 
 courage and addrev- required to manage it. The horse iinds 
 out \\lio is afraid of it, and does not disguise its opinion. 
 Their young boiling clerks aud IUMV collegians like the com 
 pany of horses better than the company of professors. I Mip- 
 jM)se, the horses are better company for them. The horse has 
 more uses than BuffoD noted. If you go into the streets, every 
 driver in 1ms or dray is ;i bully, and, if J wanted a good troop 
 of soldiers. 1 should reeruit among the stables. Add a certain 
 dc jree of refinement to the vivacity of these riders, and von 
 obtain the precise quality which makes the men and women of 
 polite society formidable. 
 
 They come honestly by tl Ar horsemanship, with Hniytt and 
 ll<.r#i for their Savu founders. The other branch of their 
 race had been Tartar nomads. The horse was all their wealth. 
 The children were fed on mares milk. The pastures of Tar- 
 tary were still remembered by the tenacious practice of the 
 Norsemen to eat horse-llesh at religious feasts. In the Danish 
 >ns, the manuiden sei/ed upon hoi-ses where thev landed, 
 and were at once converted into a body of expert cavalrv. 
 
 At one time, this skill seems to have declined. Two centu 
 ries ago, the English horse never performed any eminent service 
 beyond the seas ; and the reason assigned, was, that, the genius 
 of the English hath always more inclined them to foot-service, 
 as pure and proper manhood, without any mixture; whilst, in 
 a victory on horseback, the credit ought to be divided betwixt 
 the man and his horse. But in two hundred years, a change 
 has taken place. Now, thev boast that they understand In rses 
 than anv other people in the world, and that their h< rm 
 are Uv,,me th<>ir second selves. 
 
 "William the Conqueror being." says Camden, "better 
 affected to beasts than to men. imposed heavy tines and pun 
 ishments on those that should meddle with hit game." The 
 Saxon Chronicle says, "he loved the tall deer as if he were 
 their father." And rich Englishmen have followed his example, 
 according to their ability, ever since, in encroaching on the til- 
 !airf and commons with their game-preserve^. It is a proverb 
 in Kiiirland, that it is safer to shoot a man than a hare. The 
 rieverirv of the Lfame-laws certainly indicates an extravagant 
 sympathy of the nation with horses and hunters. The gen 
 tlemen are always on horseback, and have brought horses to 
 an ideal perfection, the English racer is a factitious breed. 
 A score or two of mounted gentlemen may frequently be seen 
 
 VOL. ji. 9 M 
 
194 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 running like centaurs down a hill nearly as steep as tne roof 
 of a house. Every inn-room is lined with pictures of races ; 
 telegraphs communicate, every hour, tidings of the heats from 
 Newmarket and Ascot : and the House of Commons adjourns 
 over the Derby Day. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ABILITY. 
 
 THE Saxon and the Northman are both Scandinavians. 
 History does not allow ns to fix the limits of the appli 
 cation of these names with any accuracy ; but from the resi 
 dence of a portion of these people in France, and from some 
 effect of that powerful soil on their blood and manners, the 
 Norman has come popularly to represent in England the aris 
 tocratic, and the Saxon the democratic principle. And 
 though, I doubt not, the nobles are of both tribes, and the 
 workers of both, yet we are forced to use the names a little 
 mythically, one to represent the w T orker, and the other the 
 enjoy er. 
 
 The island was a prize for the best race. Each of the domi 
 nant races tried its fortune in turn. The Phoenician, the Celt, 
 and the Goth, had already got in. The Roman came, but in 
 the very day when his fortune culminated. He looked in the 
 eyes of a new people that was to supplant his own. He dis 
 embarked his legions, erected his camps and towers, pres 
 ently he heard bad news from Italy, and worse and worse, every 
 year : at last, he made a handsome compliment of roads and 
 walls, and departed. But the Saxon seriously settled in the 
 land, builded, tilled, fished, and traded, with German truth and 
 adhesiveness. The Dane came, and divided with him. Last 
 of all, the Norman, or French-Dane, arrived, and formally con 
 quered, harried, and ruled the kingdom. A century later, it 
 came out, that the Saxon had the most bottom and longevity, 
 had managed to make the victor speak the language and accept 
 the law and usage of the victim ; forced the baron to dictate 
 Saxon terms to Norman kings ; and, step by step, got all tho 
 essential securities of civil liberty invented and confirmed. 
 The genius of the race and the genius of the place conspired 
 
ABILITY. 195 
 
 to this effect. The island is lucrative to free labor, hut not 
 worth possession on other terms. The race was so intellect :i:.l. 
 that a feudal or military tenure could not last lon-vr than tho 
 war. I hc power of the Sa\.n I >ancs. so thoroughly beaten iu 
 the war. that the name of Kn.u lish and villein were synonymous, 
 yet so vivacious as to extort, charters from the kind s, stood on 
 the strong personality of these people. Sense and economy 
 must rule in a world which is made of sense and economy, and 
 tin- I -anker, with his seven percent, drives the earl out of his 
 castle. A nobility of soldiers cannot keep down a commonalty 
 of >hrewd scientific persons. \Yhat siirnilies a pedigree of a 
 hundred links, airainst a cotton-spinner wit h steam in his mill ; 
 or. against a company of broad-shouldered Liverpool merchants, 
 for wh<>m Stephensonand Brunei are contriving locomotives and 
 a tubular bridge } 
 
 These Saxons are the hands of mankind. They have the 
 taste for toil, a distaste for pleasure <>r repose, and the telescopic 
 appreciation of distant ^ain. They are the wealth-makers, 
 and by dint of mental faculty which has its own conditions. 
 The Saxon works alter likinir, or, only for himself; and to set 
 him at work, and to be^in to draw his monstrous values out of 
 barren Britain, all dishonor, fret, and barrier must be removed, 
 and then his energies lu^in to play. 
 
 The Scandinavian fancied himself surrounded by Trolls, 
 a kind of goblin men, with vast, power of work and skilful pro 
 duction, divine stevedores, carpenters, reapers, smiths, and 
 ma <ons, swift to reward every kindness done them, with irifts 
 of -_f"ld and silver. In all Knirlish history, this dream comes 
 to pass. Certain Trolls or working brains, under the names ..f 
 Alfred, Bcdc. Caxton. l.racton, ( amden. Drake, Seldcn, Di\g- 
 dale. Newton. (Jihhon. Brindlev, W.-itt, \VedLrwood. dwell in the 
 troll-mounts of Britain, and turn the sweat of their face to 
 power and renown. 
 
 If the race is Lfood. so is the place. Nobody landed on this 
 spell-bound island with impunity. The enchantments of bar 
 ren shiiiLrlo and ron.L-h weather transformed every adventurer 
 into a laborer. Kach vagabond that arrived bent his neck to 
 the yoke of LTM U, or found the air too tense for him. The 
 strong survived, the weaker went to the ground. Kvrn the 
 pleasure-hunters and sots of Kn;_rland are of a touirhrr texture. 
 A hard temperament had been formed by Saxon and S-i\oii- 
 Bane, and such of these l- ivn<-h or Normans as could reach it, 
 Were naturalized in every sense. 
 
196 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 All the admirable expedients or means hit upon in England, 
 must be looked at as growths or irresistible offshoots of the 
 expanding mind of the race. A man of that brain thinks and 
 acts thus ; and his neighbor, being afflicted with the same kind 
 of brain, though he is rich, and called a baron, or a duke, 
 thinks the same thing, and is ready to allow the justice of the 
 thought and act in his retainer or tenant, though sorely against 
 his baronial or ducal will. 
 
 The island was renowned in antiquity for its breed of mas 
 tiffs, so fierce, that when their teeth were set, you must cut 
 their heads off to part them. The man was like his dog. The 
 people have that nervous bilious temperament, which is known 
 by medical men to resist every means employed to make its 
 possessor subservient to the wall of others. The English game 
 is main force to main force, the planting of foot to foot, fair 
 play and open field, a rough tug without trick or dodging, 
 till one or both come to pieces. King Ethel wald spoke the 
 language of his race, when he planted himself at Wimborne, 
 and said, he would do one of two things, or there live, or 
 there lie. They hate craft and subtlety. They neither poison, 
 nor waylay, nor assassinate ; and, when they have pounded 
 each other to a poultice, they will shake hands and be friends 
 for the remainder of their lives. 
 
 You shall trace these Gothic touches at school, at country 
 fairs, at the hustings, and in parliament. No artifice, no breach 
 of truth and plain dealing, not so much as secret ballot, is 
 suffered in the island. In parliament, the tactics of the op 
 position is to resist every step of the government, by a pitiless 
 attack ; and in a bargain, no prospect of advantage is so dear 
 to. the merchant, as the thought of being tricked is mortify 
 ing. 
 
 Sir Kenelm Digby, a courtier of Charles and James, who 
 won the sea-fight of Scanderoon, was a model Englishman in 
 his day. " His person was handsome and gigantic, he had so 
 graceful elocution and noble address, that, had he been dropt 
 out of the clouds in any part of the world, he would have made 
 himself respected : he was skilled in six tongues, and master 
 of arts and arms." * Sir Kenelm wrote a book, " Of Bodies 
 and of Souls," in which he propounds, that " syllogisms do breed 
 or rather are all the variety of man s life. They are the steps 
 by which we walk in all our businesses. Man, as he is man, 
 doth nothing else but weave such chains. Whatsoever he 
 
 * Antony Wood. 
 
ABILITY. 197 
 
 doth, pwarvinu from this work, lie doth as deficient from thy 
 nature <t man : and. if he do aught beyond this, by-breaking 
 out into divors MTIS of exterior actions, he tiudeth, neverthe- 
 less, in this linked sequel of simple discourses, the art, the 
 cause, the rule, the hounds, and the model of it." * 
 
 There spoke the iron i us of the English people. There is a 
 rity on them to he logical. They would hardly greet the 
 good that did not logically fall, us if it excluded their own 
 merit, or shook their understandings. They are jealous of 
 minds that have much facility of association, from an instinc 
 tive fear that the seeing many relations to their thought mi.ir.ht 
 impair this serial continuity and lucrative concentration. They 
 are impatient of genius, or of minds addicted to contemplation, 
 and cannot conceal their contempt for sallies of thought, how 
 ever lawful, whose steps they cannot count hy their wonted 
 rule. Neither do they reckon better a syllogism tint ends in 
 syllogism. For they have a supreme eye to facts, and theirs 
 is a logic that brings salt to soup, hammer to nail, oar to hoat, 
 the logic of cooks, carpenters, and chemists, following the 
 sequence of nature, and one on which words make 1 no impres 
 sion. Their mind is not da/./led hy its own means, but locked 
 and bolted to results. They love men. who, like Samuel John 
 son, a doctor in tho schools, would jump out of his syllogism 
 the instant his major proposition was in danger, to save that, 
 at all ha/ards. Their practical vision is spacious, and they 
 can hold many threads without entangling them. All the 
 hev orderly take ; but with the high logic of never con 
 founding the minor and major proposition; keeping their eye 
 on their aim, in all the complicity and delay incident to the 
 several series of means they employ. There is room in their 
 minds for this and that, a science of degrees. In the courts, 
 the independence of the judges and the loyalty of the suitors 
 are equally excellent. In Parliament, they have hit on that 
 capital invention of freedom, a constitutional opposition. And 
 when courts and parliament are both deaf, the plaintiff is not 
 silenced. Calm, patient, his weapon of defence from year to 
 year is the obstinate reproduction of the grievance, with cal 
 culations and estimates. But, meantime, he is drawing num 
 bers and m >nev to his opinion, resolved that if all remedy fails, 
 right of revolution is at the bottom of his charter-box. They 
 are bound to see their measure carried, and stick to it through 
 ages of defeat. 
 
 * Man s Soulc, p. 29. 
 
198 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 Into this English logic, however, an infusion of justice enters, 
 not so apparent in other races, a belief in the existence ot 
 two sides, and the resolution to see fair play. There is on 
 every question, an appeal from the assertion of the parties, to 
 the proof of what is asserted. They are impious in their scep 
 ticism of a theory, but kiss the dust before a fact. Is it a 
 machine, is it a charter, is it a boxer in the ring, is it a candi 
 date on the hustings, the universe of Englishmen will sus 
 pend their judgment, until the trial can be had. They are 
 not to be led by a phrase, they want a working plan, a working 
 machine, a working constitution, and will sit out the trial, and 
 abide by the issue, and reject all preconceived theories. In 
 politics they put blunt questions, which must be answered ; 
 who is to pay the taxes I what will you do for trade ] what for 
 corn ? what for the spinner 1 
 
 This singular fairness and its results strike the French with 
 surprise. Philip de Commines says : " Now, in my opinion, 
 among all the sovereignties 1 know in the world, that in which 
 the public good is best attended to, and the least violence exer 
 cised on the people, is that of England." Life is safe, and per 
 sonal rights ; and what is freedom, without security ] whilst, in 
 France, fraternity, * equality/ and k indivisible unity, arc 
 names for assassination. Montesquieu said : " England is the 
 freest country in the world. If a man in England had as 
 many enemies as hairs on his head, no harm would happen to 
 him/ 
 
 Their self-respect, their faith in causation, and their realis 
 tic logic or coupling of means to ends, have given them the 
 leadership of the modern world. Montesquieu said, " Xo 
 people have true common sense but those who are born in 
 England." This common sense is a perception of all the con 
 ditions of our earthly existence, of laws that can be stated, 
 and of laws that cannot be stated, or that are learned only by 
 practice, in which allowance for friction is made. They are 
 impious in their scepticism of theory, and in high depart 
 ments they are cramped and sterile. But the unconditional 
 surrender to facts, and the choice of means to reach their ends, 
 are as admirable as with ants and bees. 
 
 The bias of the nation is a passion for utility. They love 
 the lever, the screw, and pulley, the Flanders draught-horse, 
 the waterfall, wind-mills, tide-mills ; the sea and the wind to 
 bear their freight ships. More than the diamond Kah-i-noor, 
 which glitters among their crown jewels, they prize that dull 
 
ABILITY. 199 
 
 pebble which is wiser than :i man, who^p poles turn them- 
 to the poles of tin- world. Mini I I is parallel to 
 
 tla- axis of the world. Now, their toys are steam and galvan 
 ism. Thev are heavy at the line ;u~ts, but. adroit at the < 
 not good in jewelry r m<-saies, hut the best iron -in:. 
 colliers. w< I .inhere, and tanners, in Kuropc. They apply 
 thenix lves t<. H-rirultiire, t" draining to resisting encroach 
 ments of >ea, wind, travelling sain Is, cold uiid \set subsoil; to 
 fishery, to manufacture of indispensable staples, salt, plum- 
 le.-ither. wool, irlass, jxtttery, ami lu ick, to lees and 
 silk\V(jrms; and hy their steady combinations they succeed. 
 A manufacturer sits down to dinner in a suit of clothes which 
 was wool on a sheep s hark at sunrise. You dine with a gen 
 tleman on venison, pheasant, quail, pigeons, poultry, mush 
 rooms, and pine-apples, all the growth of his estate. They are 
 neat husbands for ordering all their tools pertaining to house 
 and field. All are well kept. There is no want and no 
 They study use and fitness in their building, in the order of 
 their dwellings, and in their dress. The Frenchman invented 
 the rutlle, the Knglishmaii added the shirt. The Englishman 
 wears a sensible n at buttoned to the chin, of rough but solid 
 and lasting texture. If he is a lord, he dresses a little worse 
 than a commoner. They have diffused the taste for plain sub 
 stantial hats, shoes, and coats through Europe. They think 
 him the b. d man, whose dress is so fit for hi 
 
 that you cannot notice or remember to describe it. 
 
 They secure the essentials in their diet, in their ails, and man 
 ufactures. Every article of cutlery shows, in its shape, thought 
 and long experience of workmen. They put the exjie; 
 the right place, as, in their sea-steamers, in the solidity of the 
 machinery and the strength of the boat. The admirable 
 equipment of their arctic ships carries London to the pole. 
 They build roads, aqueducts, warm and ventilate houses. 
 And they have injpiw-ed their directness and practical habit 
 on modern civilization. 
 
 Tn trade, the Englishman believes that nobody breaks who 
 ouu r ht not to break ; and, that, if he do not make trade every 
 thing, it will make him nothing ; and acts on this lelief. The 
 spirit of system, attention to details, and the subordination of 
 details, or, the not driving tilings too finely, (which is charged 
 on the (Germans,) constitute that despatch of business, which 
 makes the mercantile power of England. 
 
 In war, the Englishman looks to his means. He is of the 
 
200 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 opinion of Civilis, his German ancestor, whom Tacitus reports 
 as holding " that the gods are on the side of the strongest " ; 
 a sentence which Bonaparte unconsciously translated, when 
 he said, " that he had noticed, that Pro vidence_jil ways favored 
 the -heaviest battalion." Their military science propounds 
 that if the weight of the advancing column is greater than 
 that of the resisting, the latter is destroyed. Therefore Wel 
 lington, when he came to the army in Spain, had every man 
 weighed, first with accoutrements, and then without ; believ 
 ing that the force of an army depended on the weight and 
 power of the individual soldiers, in spite of cannon. Lord 
 Palmerston told the House of Commons, that more care is 
 taken of the health and comfort of English troops than of 
 any other troops in the world ; and that hence the English 
 can put more men into the rank, on the day of action, on the 
 field of battle, than any other army. Before the bombard 
 ment of the Danish forts in the Baltic, Nelson spent day af 
 ter day, himself in the boats, on the exhausting service of 
 sounding the channel. Clerk of Eldin s celebrated manoeu 
 vre of breaking the line of sea-battle, and Nelson s feat of 
 doubling, or stationing his ships one on the outer bow, and 
 another on the outer quarter of each of the enemy s were only 
 translations into naval tactics of Bonaparte s rule of concen 
 tration. Lord Collingwood was accustomed to tell his men, 
 that, if they could fire three well-directed broadsides in five 
 minutes, no vessel could resist them ; and, from constant 
 practice, they came to do it in three minutes and a half. 
 
 But conscious that no race of better men exists, they rely 
 most on the simplest means ; and do not like ponderous and 
 difficult tactics, but delight to bring the affair hand to hand, 
 where the victory lies with the strength, courage, and endur 
 ance of the individual combatants. They adopt every im 
 provement in rig, in motor, in weapons, but they fundamen 
 tally believe that the best stratagem in naval war is to lay 
 your ship close alongside of the enemy s ship, and bring all 
 your guns to bear on him, until you or he go to the bottom. 
 This is the old fashion, which never goes out of fashion, nei 
 ther in nor out of England. 
 
 It is not usually a point of honor, nor a religious senti 
 ment, and never any whim that they will shed their blood 
 for; but usually property, and right measured by property, 
 that breeds revolution. They have no Indian taste for a toma 
 hawk-dance, no French taste for a badge or a proclamation. 
 
ABILITY. 201 
 
 The Englishman is peaceably minding his business and earn 
 ing his day s wauvs. I Jut it you oiler to lay hum! on his 
 da\ > wages, on Ins row, or his right in common, or his shop, 
 he will tight to the Judgment. Magna-charta, jury-trial, lt>i- 
 //"/>. star-chamber, sliip-nn iiey, I opery, l l\ iiimitli colo 
 ny. American Devolution, are all (|iiestions involving a yO- 
 man s right to his dinner, and, except as touching that, would 
 not liave lashed the 1 British nation to ra.ue and revolt. 
 
 \Yhil.-t they aiv thus instinct with a spirit of order, and of 
 calculation, it must he owned they are capable of larger views ; 
 but the indulgence is expensive to them, costs great . 
 or accumulations of mental power. In common, the horse 
 works U-st with blinders. Nothing is more in the line of 
 English thought, than our unvarnished Connecticut ques 
 tion, " Pray, sir, how do you get your living when you arc at 
 home I" The questions of freedom, of taxation, of privilege, 
 are money questions. Heavy fellows, steeped in beer and llesh- 
 pots, they are hard of hearing and dim of sight. Their 
 dro\\<y minds need to be ilagellated by war and trade and 
 politics and persecution. They cannot well read a principle, 
 except by the light of fagots and of burning towns. 
 
 Tacitus says of the (Germans, "powerful only in sudden ef 
 forts, they are impatient of toil and labor." This highly des 
 tined race, if it had not somewhere added the chamber of 
 patience to its brain, would not have built London. I know 
 not from which of the tribes and temperaments that went to 
 the composition of the people this tenacity was supplied, but 
 they clinch every nail they drive. Thev have no running for 
 luck, and no immoderate speed. They spend largely on their 
 fabric, and await the slow return. Their leather lies tanning 
 seven years in the vat. At h oirers s mills, in Sheffield, where 
 I was shown the process of making a razor and a penknife. I 
 was told there is no luck in making good steel; that tliev 
 make no mistakes, every blade in the hundred and in the 
 thousand is good. And that is characteristic of all their work, 
 no more is attempted than is done. 
 
 When Thor and his companions arrive at Ttgard, he is told 
 that M nobody is permitted to remain here, unless he under 
 stand some art, and excel in it all other men." The same 
 question is still put to the posterity of Thor. A nation of 
 laborers, every man is trained to some one art or d -tail, and 
 aims at perfection in that : not content unless he has some 
 thing in which be thinks he surpasses all other men. He 
 9 
 
202 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 would rather not do anything at all, than not do it well. I 
 suppose no people have such thoroughness : from the highest 
 to the lowest, every man meaning to be master of his art. 
 
 " To show capacity," a Frenchman described as the end of 
 a speech in debate : " no," said an Englishman, " but to set 
 your shoulder at the wheel, to advance the business." Sir 
 Samuel Rom illy refused to speak in popular assemblies, con 
 fining himself to the House of Commons, where a measure 
 can be carried by a speech. The business of the House of 
 Commons is conducted by a few persons, but these are hard- 
 worked. Sir Robert Peel " knew the Blue Books by heart." 
 His colleagues and rivals carry Hansard in their heads. The 
 high civil and legal offices are not beds of ease, but posts 
 which exact frightful amounts of mental labor. Many of the 
 great leaders, like Pitt, Canning, Castlereagh, Rornilly, are 
 soon worked to death. They are excellent judges in England 
 of a good worker, and when they find one, like Clarendon, Sir 
 Philip Warwick, Sir William Coventry, Ashley, Burke, Thur- 
 low, Mansfield, Pitt, Eldon, Peel, or Russell, there is nothing 
 too good or too high for him. 
 
 They have a wonderful heat in the pursuit of a public aim. 
 Private persons exhibit, in scientific and antiquarian researches, 
 the same pertinacity as the nation showed in the coalitions in 
 which it yoked Europe against the Empire of Bonaparte, one 
 after the other defeated, and stiU renewed, until the sixth 
 hurled him from his seat. 
 
 Sir John Herschel, in completion of the work of his father, 
 who had made the catalogue of the stars of the northern 
 hemisphere, expatriated himself for years at the Cape of Good 
 Hope, finished his inventory of the southern heaven, came 
 home, and redacted it in eight years more ; a work whose 
 value does not begin until thirty years have elapsed, and thence 
 forward a record to all ages of the highest import. The Ad 
 miralty sent out the Arctic expeditions year after year, in 
 search of Sir John Franklin, until, at last, they have threaded 
 their way through polar pack and Behring s Straits, and solved 
 the geographical problem. Lord Elgin, at Athens, saw the 
 imminent ruin of the Greek remains, set up his scaffoldings, 
 in spite of epigrams, and, after five years labor to collect 
 them, got his marbles on shipboard. The ship struck a rock, 
 and went to the bottom. He had them all fished up, by 
 divers, at a vast expense, and brought to London ; not know 
 ing that Haydon, Fuseli, and Canova, and all good heads in 
 
ABILITY. 203 
 
 all the world, wore to be his applaudcrs. In the same spirit, 
 were the excavation and research by Sir Charles 1 Vllowrs, for 
 the Xanthian monument; and of Layard, lor his Nineveh 
 
 oulpturea 
 
 The nat inn sits in the immense city they have budded, a 
 London extended into every man s mind, though lie live in 
 Van I Neman s Land or Capetown. Faithful performance of 
 what is undertaken to be performed, they honor in themselves, 
 and exact in others, as rerlilicale of equality with themselves. 
 The modern world is theirs. They have made and make it 
 day by day. The commercial relations of the world are so 
 intimately drawn to London, that every dollar on earth con 
 tributes to the strength of the English government. And if 
 all the wealth in the planet should perish by war or deluge, 
 they know themselves competent to replace it. 
 
 They have approved their Saxon blood, by their sea-going 
 qualities : their descent from Odin s smiths, by their hereditary 
 skill in working in iron ; their British birth, by husbandry and 
 immense \\heai harvests; and justified their occupancy of the 
 centre of habitable land, by their supreme ability and cosmo 
 politan spirit. They have tilled, buildcd, forged, spun, and 
 woven. They have made the island a thoroughfare ; and 
 London a shop, a law-court, a record-office, and scientific 
 bureau, inviting to strangers ; a sanctuary to refugees of 
 every political and religious opinion ; and such a city, that 
 almost every active man, in any nation, finds himself, at one 
 time or other, forced to visit it. 
 
 In every path of practical activity, they have gone even 
 with the best. There is no secret of war, in which they have 
 not shown mastery. The steam-chamber of Watt, the loco 
 motive of Stephenson, the cotton-mule of Koberts, perform 
 the labor of the world. There is no department of literature, 
 of science, or of useful art, in which they have not produced 
 a first-rate book. It is England, whose opinion is waited for 
 on the merit of a new invention, an improved science. And 
 in the complications of the trade and politics of their vast, 
 empire, they have been equal to every exigency, with counsel 
 ami with conduct. Is it their luck, or is it in the chambers 
 of their brain, it is their commercial advantage, that what 
 ever light appears in better method or happy invention, breaks 
 out in their race. They are a family to which a destiny at 
 taches, and the P,aii-h r has sworn that, a male heir shall 
 never be wanting. They have a wealth of men to fill im- 
 
204 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 portant posts, and the vigilance of party criticism insures the 
 selection of a competent person. 
 
 A proof of the energy of the British people is the highly 
 artificial construction of the whole fabric. The climate and 
 geography, I said, were factitious, as if the hands of man had 
 arranged the conditions. The same character pervades the 
 whole kingdom. Bacon said, " Rome was a state not subject 
 to paradoxes " ; but England subsists by antagonisms and 
 contradictions. The foundations of its greatness are the roll 
 ing waves ; and, from first to last, it is a museum of anom 
 alies. This foggy and rainy country furnishes the world with 
 astronomical observations. Its short rivers do not afford 
 water-power, but the land shakes under the thunder of the 
 mills. There is no gold-mine of any importance, but there is 
 more gold in England than in all other countries. It is too 
 far north for the culture of the vine, but the wines of all 
 countries are in its docks. The French Comte de Lauraguais 
 said, " no fruit ripens in England but a baked apple " ; but 
 oranges and pine-apples are as cheap in London as in the 
 Mediterranean. The Mark-Lane Express, or the Custom- 
 House Returns bear out to the letter the vaunt of Pope, 
 
 " Let India boast her palms, nor envy ATC 
 The weeping amber, nor the spicy tree, 
 While, by our oaks, those precious loads are borne, 
 And realms commanded v. hich those trees adorn." 
 
 The native cattle are extinct, but the island is full of arti 
 ficial breeds. The agriculturist Bakewell created sheep and 
 cows and horses to order, and breeds in which everything was 
 omitted but what is economical. The cow is sacrificed to her 
 bag, the ox to his surloin. Stall-feeding makes sperm-mills of 
 the cattle, and converts the stable to a chemical factory. The 
 rivers, lakes, and ponds, too much fished, or obstructed by 
 factories, are artificially filled with the eggs of salmon, turbot, 
 and herring. 
 
 Chat Moss and the fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire 
 are unhealthy and too barren to pay rent. By cylindrical tiles, 
 and gutta-percha tubes, five millions of acres of bad land have 
 been drained and put on equality with the best, for rape-cul 
 ture and grass. The climate too, which was already believed 
 to have become milder and drier by the enormous consumption 
 of coal, is so far reached by this new action, that fogs and 
 storms are said to disappear. In due course, all England will 
 
ABILITY. 205 
 
 be drained, and rise a second time out of the waters. The 
 latent step was to call in the aid of steam to Agriculture. 
 Steam is almost an Englishman. 1 do not know but they will 
 send him to Parliament, next, to make laws. He -\v 
 for^vx. sawfl, pounds, fans, and now he must pump. grind, dig, 
 and plough for the farmer. The markets created by the 
 manufacturing population have erected agriculture into a great 
 thriving and spending industry. The value of the houses in 
 Britain is ei|ual to the value of the soil. Artificial aids of all 
 kinds are cheaper than the natural resources. No man can 
 afford to walk, when the parliamentary train carries him for 
 a penny a mile. (las-burners an- cheaper than daylight ill 
 numberless floors in the cities. All the houses in London buy 
 their water. The English trade does not exist for the exporta 
 tion of native products, but on its manufactures, or the making 
 well everything which is ill made elsewhere. They make 
 ponchos for the Mexican, bandannas for the Hindoo, ginseng 
 for the Chinese, beads for the Indian, laces for the Flemings, 
 telescopes for astronomers, cannons for kings. 
 
 The Board of Trade caused the best models of Greece and 
 Italy to be placed within the reach of every manufacturing 
 population. They caused to be translated from foreign lan 
 guages and illustrated by elaborate drawings, the most approved 
 works of Munich, Berlin, and Paris. They have ransacked 
 Italy to find new forms, to add a grace to the products of their 
 looms, their potteries, and their foundries.* 
 
 The nearer we look, the more artificial is their social syst. in. 
 Their law is a network of fictions. Their property, a unrip or 
 certificate of right to interest on money that no man ever saw. 
 Their social classes are made by statute. Their ratios of power 
 and representation are historical and legal. The last reform- 
 bill took, awav political power from a mound, a ruin, and a 
 stone-wall, whilst Birmingham and Manchester, whose mills 
 paid for the wars of Europe, had no representative. Purity 
 in the elective Parliament is secured by the purchase of seat-.t 
 F<>rei _rn power is kept by armed colonies : power at home, by 
 a standing army of police. The pauper lives better than the 
 free laborer ; the thief better than the pauper : and the tran 
 sported felon better than the one under imprisonment The 
 crimes are factitious, as smugirling, poaching, non-conformity, 
 
 M>mori!il of H. Groonoiidi. p. f,r t , \,-\v York, 1853. 
 
 t Sir S. Homilly, pnret of Kn<:li-h patriots <k H<l<-<l that tho only imlrH ii- 
 dpnt mode of entering Parliament was to buy a seat, and he boughUHor- 
 tham. 
 
206 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 heresy, and treason. Better, they say in England, kill a man 
 than a hare. The sovereignty of the seas is maintained by the 
 imprgssment of seamen. " The impressment of seamen," said 
 Lord Elclon, " is the life of our navy." Solvency is maintained 
 by means of a national debt, on the principle, " if you will not 
 lend me the money, how can I pay you 1 " For the adminis 
 tration of justice, Sir Samuel Romilly s expedient for clearing 
 the arrears of business in Chancery, was, the Chancellor s stay 
 ing away entirely from his court. Their system of education 
 is factitious. The Universities galvanize dead languages into 
 a semblance of life. Their church is artificial. The manners 
 and customs of society are artificial ; made-up men with 
 made-up mariners ; and thus the whole is Birminghamized, 
 land we have a nation whose existence is a work of art ; a 
 cold, barren, almost arctic isle, being made the most fruitful, 
 luxurious, and imperial land in the whole earth. 
 
 Man in England submits to be a product of political economy. 
 On a bleak moor, a mill is built, a banking-house is opened, 
 and men come in, as water in a sluice-way, and towns and cities 
 rise. Man is made as a Birmingham button. The rapid 
 doubling of the population dates from Watt s steam-engine. 
 A landlord, who owns a province, says, " the tenantry are 
 unprofitable ; let me have sheep." Hejiiiropjfe tli^hojuscs,-and 
 ships the population to America. The nation is accustomed 
 to t"Ko Instantaneous creation of wealth. It is the maxim of 
 their economists, " that the greater part in value of the wealth 
 now existing in England, has been produced by human hands 
 within the last twelve months." Meantime, three or four days 
 rain will reduce hundreds to starving in London. 
 
 One secret of their power is their mutual good understand 
 ing. Not only good minds are born among them, but all the 
 people have good minds. Every nation has yielded some good 
 wit, if, as has chanced to many tribes, only one. But the intel 
 lectual organization of the English admits a communicableness 
 of knowledge and ideas among them all. An electric touch 
 by any of their national ideas, melts them into one family, and 
 brings the hoards of power which their individuality is always 
 hiving, into use and play for all. Is it the smallness of the 
 country, or is it the pride and affection of race, they have 
 solidarity, or responsibleness, and trust in each other. 
 
 Their minds, like wool, admit of a dye which is more lasting 
 than the cloth. They embrace their cause with more tenacity 
 than their life. Though not military, yet every common sub- 
 
ABILITY. 207 
 
 jcct by the poll is fit to make a soldier of. These private 
 reserved niuU family-men can adopt :i public end with nil their 
 heat, and tliis strength of altcction makes t lie romance of t heir 
 heroes. The difference of rank does not divide the national 
 heart. The Danish poet Oehlcnschliigcr complains, that who 
 writes in Danish writes to two hundred readers. In ( Jcrmany, 
 there is one speech tor the learned, and another for the masses, 
 to that extent, that, it is said, no sentiment or phrase from the 
 works uf any great German writer is ever heard among the 
 lower classes. But in England, the language of the noble is 
 the language of the poor. In Parliament, in pulpits, in thea 
 tres. \\hen the sj leakers rise to thought and passion, the language 
 becomes idiomatic ; the people in the street best understand the 
 \vords. And their language seems drawn from the Bible, 
 the common law, and the works of Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, 
 Pope, Young, Cowper, Burns, and Scott. The island has pro 
 duced two or three of the greatest men that ever existed, but 
 they were not solitary in their own time. Men quickly em 
 bodied what Newton found out, in Greenwich observatories, 
 and practical navigation. The boys knew all that lluin.u 
 knew of strata, or Dalton of atoms, or Harvey of blood-vessels ; 
 and these studies, oiice dangerous, are in fashion. So what is 
 in vent ((! or known in agriculture, or in trade, or in war, or in 
 art, or in literature, and antiquities. A great ability, not 
 amas>ed on a few giants, but poured into the general mind, so 
 that each of them could at a pinch stand in the shoes of the 
 other : and they are more bound in character than differenced 
 in ability or in rank. The laborer is a possible lord. The lord 
 is a possible basket-maker. Every man carries the English 
 system in his brain, knows what is confided to him, and does 
 therein the best ho can. The chancellor carries England on 
 his mace, the midshipman at the point of his dirk, the smith 
 on his hammer, the cook in the bowl of his spoon ; the postilion 
 cracks his whip for England, and the sailor times his oars to 
 "God save the King!" The very felons have their pride in 
 each other s English standmess. In politics and in war, they 
 hold together as l.y hooks of steel. The charm in Nelson s his 
 tory, is, the unselfish greatness : the assurance of being support- 
 edtothe uttermost by those whom he supports to the uttermost. 
 Whilst they are some ages ahead of the rest of the world in 
 the art of living : whilst in some directions they do not repre 
 sent the modern spirit, but constitute it, this vanguard of 
 civility and power they coldly hold, marching in phalanx, lock- 
 step, foot after foot, file after file of heroes, ten thousand deep. 
 
208 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MANNERS. 
 
 I FIND the Englishman to bo him of all men who stands 
 firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they 
 value in their horses, mettle and bottom. On the day of my 
 arrival at Liverpool, a gentleman, in describing to me the Lord 
 Lieutenant of Ireland, happened to say, " Lord Clarendon has 
 pluck like a cock, and will fight till he dies " ; and, what I 
 heard first I heard last, and the one thing the English value, is 
 pluck. The word is not beautiful, but on the quality they sig 
 nify by it the nation is unanimous. The cabmen have it ; the 
 merchants have it ; the bishops have it ; the women have it ; 
 the journals have it ; the Times newspaper, they say, is the 
 pluckiest thing in England, and Sidney Smith had made it a 
 proverb, that little Lord John Russell, the minister, would take 
 the command of the Channel fleet to-morrow. 
 
 They require you to dare to be of your own opinion, and 
 they hate the practical cowards who cannot in affairs answer 
 directly yes or no. They dare to displease, nay, they will let 
 you break all the commandments, if you do it natively, and 
 with spirit. You must be somebody ; then you may do this 
 or that, as you will. 
 
 Machinery has been applied to all work, and carried to such 
 perfection, that little is left for the men but to mind the 
 engines and feed the furnaces. But the machines require 
 punctual service, and as they never tire, they prove too much 
 for their tenders. Mines, forges, mills, breweries, railroads, 
 steam-pump, steam-plough, drill of regiments, drill of police, 
 rule of court, and shop-rule, have operated to give a mechan 
 ical regularity to all the habit and action of men. A terrible 
 machine has possessed itself of the ground, the air, the men 
 and women, and hardly even thought is free. 
 
 The mechanical might and organization require in the peo 
 ple constitution and answering spirits; and he who goes 
 amon- them must have some weight of metal. At last, yoi 
 take your hint from the fury of life you find, and say, one 
 thing is plain, this is no country for faint-hearted people 
 don t creep about diffidently; make up your mind; take 
 
MANNERS. 209 
 
 your own course, and you shall find respect and furtlier- 
 aoe. 
 
 It requires, men say. a LT"od constitution to travel in Spain. 
 I say as nm.-h t En-land, fur other OttOSe, simply on account 
 of the vigor and brawn of the people. Nothing hut the 
 M-rious husiness, could give one any counterweight to 
 these Haresarks, though thev were only to order CL^S and 
 muffins for their breakfast. The En.u;li.shman speaks with all 
 his body. His elocution is stomachic, as the American s 
 is lahial. The Englishman is very petulant and precise 
 about his accommodation at inns, and on the roads; a (pud 
 dle ahout his toast and his chop, and every species of conven 
 ience, and loud and pungent in his expressions of impatience 
 at any neirlect. His vivacity her rays itself, at all points, in 
 his manners, in his respiration, and the inarticulate noises 
 he makes in clearing the throat, - - all significant of burly 
 strength. He Lis stamina: lie can take the initiative in 
 emergencies. He has that a]>!<>nil>, which results from a ^ood 
 adjustment of the moral and physical nature, and the obedi 
 ence of all the powers to the will ; as if the axes of his eyes 
 were united to his backbone, and only moved with the trunk. 
 
 This vigor -appears in the incuriosity, and stony neglect, 
 each of every other. Each man walks, eats, drinks, shaves, 
 dresses, gesticulates, and, in every manner, acts, and suffer* 
 without reference to the bystanders, in his own fashion, only 
 careful not to interfere with them, or annoy them ; not that 
 he is trained to neglect the eyes of his neighbors, he is 
 really occupied with his own affair, and does not think of 
 them. Every man in this polished country consults only 
 his convenience, as much as a solitary pioneer in Wisconsin. 
 1 1 know not where any personal eccentricity is so freely al 
 lowed, and no man gives himself any concern with it. An 
 Englishman walks in a pouring rain, swinging his closed um 
 brella like a walking-stick ; wears a wig, or a shawl, or a sad 
 dle. r stands on his head, and no remark is made. And as 
 he has been doing this for several generations, it is now in 
 the blood. 
 
 In short, every one of these islanders is an island himself, 
 safe, tranquil, incommunicable. In a company of strangers, 
 you would think him deaf; his eyes never wander from his 
 table and newspaper. He is never betrayed into any curios 
 ity or unbecoming emotion. They have all been trained in 
 oiie severe school of manners, and never put off the harness, 
 
 N 
 
210 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 He does not give his hand. He does not let you meet his 
 eye. It is almost an affront to look a man in the face, with 
 out being introduced. In mixed or in select companies they 
 do not introduce persons ; so that a presentation is a circum 
 stance as valid as a contract. Introductions are sacraments. 
 He withholds his name. At the hotel, he is hardly willing 
 to whisper it to the clerk at the book-office. If he give you 
 his private address on a card, it is like an avowal of friend 
 ship ; and his bearing on being introduced is cold, even 
 though he is seeking your acquaintance, and is studying how 
 he shall serve you. 
 
 It was an odd proof of this impressive energy, that, in my 
 lectures, I hesitated to read and threw out for its imperti 
 nence many a disparaging phrase, which I had been accus 
 tomed to spin, about poor, thin, unable mortals ; so much had 
 the fine physique and the personal vigor of this robust race 
 worked on my imagination. 
 
 I happened to arrive in England at the moment of a com 
 mercial crisis. But it was evident that, let who will fail, Eng 
 land will not. These people have sat here a thousand years, 
 and here will continue to sit. They will not break up, or ar 
 rive at any desperate revolution, like their neighbors ; for they 
 have as much energy, as much continence of character, as they 
 ever had. The power and possession which surround them 
 are their own creation, and they exert the same command 
 ing industry at this moment. 
 
 They are positive, methodical, cleanly, and formal, loving 
 routine, and conventional ways ; loving truth and religion, to 
 be sure, but inexorable on points of form. All the. world 
 praises the comfort and private appointments of an English 
 inn, and of English households. You are sure of neatness 
 and of personal decorum. *A Frenchman may possibly be 
 clean : an Englishman is conscientiously clean. A certain 
 order and complete propriety is found in his dress and in his 
 belongings. 
 
 Bom in a harsh and wet climate, which keeps him in doors 
 whenever he is at rest, and being of an affectionate and loyal 
 I temper, he dearly loves his house. If he is rich, he buys a 
 demesne, and builds a hall ; if he is in middle condition, he 
 spares no expense on his house. Without, it is all planted ; 
 within, it is wainscoted, carved, curtained, hung with pictures, 
 and filled with good furniture. T is a passion which survives 
 all others, to deck and improve it. Hither he brings all that 
 
MANNERS. 211 
 
 is rare and costly, and with the national tendency t<> sit \\\.>t 
 in tin- Mime spot. for many generations, it comes to In-, in the 
 course of tinu 1 , ;i mnsenni of heirlooms, gifts, and trophies of 
 tiie advent ures and exploits of the family. He is very fond 
 of silver plate, and, though he have no gallery of portraits of 
 his ancestors, lie has of their punch-bowls and porringers. In 
 credible amounts of plate are found in good houses, and the 
 pooivst have some spoon O r saucepan, gift of a godmother, 
 xived out of bettor times. 
 
 An English family consists of a few persons, who, from 
 youth to age, are found revolving within a few feet of each 
 other, as if tied by some invisible ligature, tense as that car 
 tilage which we have seen attaching the two Siamese. Eng 
 land produces under favorable conditions of ease and culture 
 
 l the finest women in the world. And, as the men are affection 
 ate and true-hearted, the women inspire and refine them. 
 Nothing can be more delicate without being fantastical, noth 
 ing more firm and based in nature and sentiment, than the 
 courtship and mutual carriage of the sexes. The song of 
 I.V.M; savs. "The wife of every Englishman is counted blest/ 
 The sentiment of Imogen in Cymheline is copied from Eng 
 lish nature : and not less the Portia of Brutus, the Kate Per 
 cy, and the 1 >esdemona. The romance does not exceed the 
 hei-ht of noble passion in Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, or in Lady 
 Ilussell, or even as one discerns through the plain prose of 
 Pcpys s Diary, the sacred habit of an English wife. Sir Sam 
 uel Komilly could not bear the death of his wife. Every class 
 has ite noble ami tender examples. 
 
 Domesticity is the taproot which enables the nation to 
 branch wide and -hiirh. The motive and end of their trade 
 and empire is to guard the independence and privacy of their 
 
 / homes. Nothing so much marks their manners as the concen- 
 tratioii on their household ties. This domesticity is carried 
 into court and camp. Wellington governed India and Spain 
 and his own troops, and fought battles like a good family- 
 man, paid his del its, and, though general of an army in Spain, 
 (ould not stir abroad for fear of public creditors. This ta>te 
 for house and parish merits has of course its doting and 
 foolish side. Mr. Cobhett attributes the huge popularity of 
 val, prime- minister in 1810, to the fact that he w as 
 wont to go to church every Sunday, with a large quarto gilt 
 prayer-book under one arm, his wife hanging on the other, 
 and followed by a long brood of children. 
 
212 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 They keep their old customs, costnmes, and pomps, their 
 wig and mace, sceptre and crown. The Middle Ages still lurk 
 in the streets of London. The Knights of the Bath take oath 
 to defend injured ladies ; the gold-stick-in-waiting survives. 
 They repeated the ceremonies of the eleventh century in the 
 coronation of the present Queen. A hereditary tenure is 
 natural to them. Offices, farms, trades, and traditions descend 
 so. Their leases run for a hundred and a thousand years. 
 Terms of service and partnership are lifelong, or are inherited. 
 " Holdship has been with me," said Lord Eldon, " eight-and- 
 twenty years, knows all my business and books." Antiquity 
 of usage is sanction enough. Wordsworth says of the small 
 freeholders of Westmoreland, " Many of these humble sons of 
 the hills had a consciousness that the land which they tilled 
 had for more than five hundred years been possessed by men 
 of the same name and blood." The ship-carpenter in the pub 
 lic yards, my lord s gardener and porter, have been there .for 
 more than a hundred years, grandfather, father, and son. 
 nl The English power resides also in their dislike of change. 
 They have difficulty in bringing their reason to act, and on all 
 occasions use their memory first. As soon as they have rid 
 themselves of some grievance, and settled the better practice, 
 they make haste to fix it as a finality, and never wish to hear 
 of alteration more. 
 
 Every Englishman is an embryonic chancellor : his instinct 
 is to search for a precedent. The favorite phrase of their law 
 is, " & custom whereof the memory of man runneth not back 
 to the contrary." The barons say, " Nolumus mutari" ; and 
 1 the cockneys stifle the curiosity of the foreigner on the reason 
 of any practice, with, " Lord, sir, it was always so." They 
 hate innovation. Bacon told them, Time was the right re 
 former ; Chatham, that " confidence was a plant of slow 
 growth " ; Canning, to " advance with the times " ; and Wel 
 lington, that " habit was ten times nature." All their states 
 men learn the irresistibility of the tide of custom, and have 
 invented many fine phrases to cover this slowness of perception, 
 and prehensility of tail. 
 
 A sea-shell should be the crest of England, not only because 
 it represents a power built on the waves, but also the hard 
 finish of the men. The Englishman is finished like a cowry 
 or a murex. After the spire and the spines are formed, or, 
 with the formation, a juice exudes, and a hard enamel varnishes 
 every part. The keeping of the proprieties is as indispensable 
 
MANNERS. 213 
 
 as clean linen. X<> merit quite countervails the want of this, 
 whilst this sometimes stands in lieu of all. " T is in had 
 t.iMe," is tin- most formidable word an Knjlishman fan pro 
 nounce. But this japan costs them dear. There is a prose ill 
 certain Englishmen, which exceeds in wooden deaduess all 
 rivalry with other countrymen. There is a kncll~1irthe con 
 ceit and externality of their voice, which seems to my, Leave 
 all hnj.c Ixltiml. In this Cihraltur of pronriety, mediocrity 
 gets intrenched, and consolidated, and fouimed in adamant. 
 An Knidishman of fashion is like one of those souvenirs, bound 
 in gold vellum, enriched with delicate engravings, on thick 
 hot pressed paper, tit for the hands of ladies and princes, but 
 with nothing in it worth reading or remembering. 
 
 A severe decorum rules the court and the cottage. AVhcn / 
 Thalhciv. the pianist, was one evening performing before the 
 Queen, at Windsor, in a private party, the Oueeii accompanied 
 him with her voiee. The circumstance took air, and all Eng-/ 
 land shuddered frm sea to sea. The indecorum was never 
 
 I repeated. ( old. repressive manners prevail. No enthusiasm/ 
 is permitted except at the opera. They avoid everything 
 marked. They require a tone of voice that excites no atten-j 
 tion in the room. Sir Philip Sidney is one of the patron 
 saints of England, of whom Wotton said, " His wit was the 
 measure of congruity." 
 
 Pretension and vaporing are once for all distasteful. They 
 keep to the other extreme of low tone in dress and manners. 
 They avoid pretension and go right to the heart of the thing. 
 They hate nonsense, sentimentalism, and highfiown expression ; 
 (they use a studied plainness. Even Brummell their fop was 
 marked by the severest simplicity in dress. They value them 
 selves on the absence of everything theatrical in the public 
 business, and on conciseness and going to the point, in private 
 alfairs. 
 
 In an aristocrat ical country, like England, not the Trial by 
 Jury, but the dinner is the capital institution. It is the mode 
 of doing honor to a stranger, to invite him to eat, and has 
 been for many hundred years. "And they think," says the 
 Venetian traveller of 1500, "no greater honor can be conferred 
 or received, than to invite others to eat with them, or to be 
 invited themselves, and they would sooner give five or six 
 ducats to provide an entertainment for a person, than, a groat 
 to assist him in any distress." * It is reserved to the end 
 
 * " Relation of England." Printed by the Camden Society. 
 
214 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 of the day, the family-hour being generally six, in London, 
 and, if any company is expected, one or two hours later. 
 Every one dresses for dinner, in his own house, or in another 
 man s. The guests are expected to arrive within half an hour 
 of the time fixed by card of invitation, and nothing but death 
 or mutilation is permitted to detain them. The English 
 dinner is precisely the model on which our own are constructed 
 in the Atlantic cities. The company sit one or two hours, 
 before the ladies leave the table. The gentlemen remain over 
 their wine an hour longer, and rejoin the ladies in the draw 
 ing-room, and take coffee. The dress-darner generates a talent 
 of table-talk, which reaches great perfection : the stories are so 
 good, that one is sure they must have been often told before, 
 to have got such happy turns. Hither come all manner of 
 clever projects, bits of popular science, of practical invention, 
 of miscellaneous humor ; political, literary, and personal news ; 
 railroads, horses, diamonds, agriculture, horticulture, piscicul 
 ture, and wine. 
 
 English stories, bon-mots, and the recorded table-talk of their 
 wits, are as good as the best of the Erench. In America, we 
 ,are apt scholars, but have not yet attained the same perfection : 
 for the range of nations from which London draws, and the 
 steep contrasts of condition create the picturesque in society, 
 as broken country makes picturesque landscape, whilst our 
 prevailing equality makes a prairie lameness : and secondly, 
 because the usage of a dress-dinner every day at dark has a 
 tendency to hive and produce to advantage everything good. 
 Much attrition has worn every sentence into a bullet. Also 
 one meets now and then with polished men, w r ho know every 
 thing, have tried everything, can do everything, and are 
 quite superior to letters and science. What could they not, 
 if only they would 1 
 
TRUTH. 215 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 TRUTH. 
 
 E Teutonic tribes have a national singleness of heart, 
 L which contrasts with the Latin races. The (Jerman 
 name lias a proverbial significance of sincerity and honest 
 meanin<_r. The arts hear testimony to it. The faces of elcr-y 
 aii l laity in old sculptures and illuminated missals are charged 
 with earnest belief. Add to this hereditary rectitude, the 
 punctuality and precise dealing which commerce creates, and 
 you have the Kimlish truth and credit. The government 
 strictly performs its ciiga-jfemrnts. The subjects do not mult -r- 
 stand trifling on its part. When any breach of promise oc 
 curred, in the old days of prerogative, it was resented by the 
 people as an intolerable grievance. And, in modern times, any 
 slipprriness in tin- government in political faith, or any repu 
 diation or crookedness in matters of finance, would bring the 
 whole nation to a committee of inquiry and reform. Private 
 men keep their promises, never so trivial. Down goes the fly 
 ing word on the tabl,-ts. and is indelible as Domesday Book. 
 
 Th.-ir practical power rests on their national sincerity. Ve 
 racity derives from instinct, and marks superiority in organiza 
 tion. Nature has endowed some animals with cunning, as a 
 join pensation for strength withheld ; but it has provoked the 
 malice of all others, as if avengers of public wronir. In the 
 nobler kinds, where strength could be afforded, her races are 
 loyal to truth, as truth is the foundation of the social state. 
 - that make no truce with man, do not break faith with 
 each other. T is said, that the wolf, who makes a rnchp of his 
 prey, and brings his fellows with him to the spot, if, on dig 
 ging it is not found, is instantly and unresistingly torn in pieces. 
 Knglish veracity seems to result on a sounder animal structure, 
 as if they could afford it. They are blunt in saying what they 
 think, sparing of promises, and they require plain dealing of 
 others. We will not have To do with a man in a mask. Let 
 us know the truth. Draw a straight line, hit whom and where 
 it will. Alfred, whom the affection of the nation makes the 
 type of their race, is called by a writer at the Xorman Con 
 quest, the truth-speaker; Alutredas veridicus. Geoffrey of 
 
ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 Monmouth says of King Aurelius, uncle of Arthur, that " above 
 all things he hated a lie." The Northman Guttorm said to 
 King Olaf, " It is royal work to fulfil royal words." The mot 
 toes of their families are monitory proverbs, as, Fare fac, 
 Say, do, of the Fairfaxes ; Say and seal, of the house of 
 Fiennes ; Vero nil verius, of the De Veres. To be king of their 
 word, is their pride. When they unmask cant, they say, " The 
 English of this is," &c. ; and to give the lie is the extreme in 
 sult. The phrase of the lowest of the people is " honor-bright," 
 and their vulgar praise, " his word is as good as his bond." 
 They hate shuffling and equivocation, and the cause is damaged 
 in the public opinion, 011 which any paltering can be fixed. 
 Even Lord Chesterfield, with his French breeding, when he 
 came to define a gentleman, declared that truth made his 
 distinction ; and nothing ever spoken by him would find so 
 hearty a suffrage from his nation. The Duke of Wellington, 
 who had the best right to say so, advises the French General 
 Kellermann, that he may rely on the parole of an English offi 
 cer. The English, of all classes, value themselves on this trait, 
 as distinguishing them from the French, who, in the popular 
 belief, arc more polite than true. An Englishman understates, 
 avoids the superlative, checks himself in compliments, alleging, 
 that in the French language, one cannot speak without lying. 
 
 They love reality in wealth, power, hospitality, and do not 
 easily learn to make a show, and take the world as it goes. 
 They are not fond of ornaments, and if they wear them, they 
 must be gems. They read gladly in old Fuller, that a lady, in 
 the reign of Elizabeth, " would have as patiently digested a lie, 
 as the wearing of false stones or pendants of counterfeit pearl. 
 They have the earth-hunger, or preference for property in land, 
 which is said to mark the Teutonic nations. They build of 
 stone ; public and private buildings are massive and durable. 
 In comparing their ships houses, and public offices with the 
 American, it is commonly said, that they spend a pound, where 
 we spend a dollar. Plain rich clothes, plain rich equipage, 
 plain rich finish throughout their house and belongings, mark 
 the English truth. 
 
 They confide in each other, English believes in English. 
 The French feel the superiority of this probity. The English 
 man is not springing a trap for his admiration, but is honestly 
 minding his business. The Frenchman is vain. Madame 
 de Stael says, that the English irritated Napoleon, mainly,^ be 
 cause they "have found out how to unite success with hone*sty. 
 
TRUTH. 217 
 
 She was not aware how wide an application her foreign readers 
 would give to the remark. Wellington discovered the ruin of 
 Bonaparte s all airs. by liis own probity. He augured ill of the 
 empire, as soon as he saw that it was mendacious, and lived by 
 war. 11 war do not bring in its sequel new trade, better agri- 
 eulture and manufaet ures, hut only games, lireworks. and spec- 
 taclrs, -- - no prosperity could support it ; ni ich less, a nation 
 decimated for conscripts, and out of pocket, like France. So 
 ho drudged for years on his military works at Lisbon, and from 
 this base at last extruded his gigantic lines to Waterloo, be 
 lieving in his countrymen and their syllogisms above all the 
 rhodomontade of Europe. 
 
 At a St. George s festival, in Montreal, where I happened to 
 be a guest, since my return home, 1 observed that the chair 
 man complimented his compatriots, by saying, "they confided 
 that wherever they met an Fniilishman, they found a man 
 who would speak the truth." And one cannot think this 
 festival fruitless, if, all over the world, on the 23d of April, 
 wherever two or three English are found, they meet to en 
 courage each other in the nationality of veracity. 
 
 In the power of saying rude truth, sometimes in the lion s 
 month, no men surpass them. On the king s birthday, when 
 each bishop was expected to ofl er the king a purse of gold, 
 Latimer gave Henry VIII. a copy of the Vulgate, with a mark 
 at the pas^aire, " Whoremongers and adulterers God will 
 judge " ; and they so honor stoutness in each other, that the 
 king passed it over. They an- tenacious of their belief, and \ 
 cannot easily change their opinions to suit the hour. They 
 are like ships with too much head on 1<> come quickly about, 
 nor will prosperity or even adversity be allowed to shake their 
 habitual view of conduct. Whilst I was in London, M. Guizot 
 arrived there on his escape from Paris, in February, IMS. 
 Many private friends called on him. His name was immediately 
 proposed as an honorary member to the Athemcum. M. Gui/ot 
 was blackballed. ( Vrtainly, they knew the distinction of his 
 name. Hut the Englishman is not tickle. He had really 
 made up his mind, now for years as he read his newspaper, to 
 hate and despise M. Gui/ot : and the altered position of the 
 man as an Qhistrioilfl exile, and a Li uest in the country, makes 
 no difference to him. as it would instantly, to an American. 
 
 They require the same adherence, thorough conviction and 
 reality in public men. It is the want of character which 
 makes the low reputation of the Irish members. " See 
 
 TOL. II. 10 
 
218 ENGLISH TKAITS. 
 
 them," they said, " one hundred and twenty-seven all voting 
 like sheep, never proposing anything, and all but four voting 
 the income tax,"- which was an ill-judged concession of the 
 government, relieving Irish property from the burdens charged 
 on English. 
 
 , They have a horror of adventurers in or out of Parliament. 
 The ruling passion of Englishmen, in these days, is a terror 
 of humbug. In the same proportion, they value honesty, 
 stoutness, and adherence to your own. They like a man com 
 mitted to his objects. They hate the French, as frivolous ; 
 they hate the Irish, as aimless ; they hate the Germans, as 
 professors. In February, 1848, they said, Look, the French 
 king and his party fell for want of a shot ; they had not con 
 science to shoot, so entirely was the pith and heart of monarchy 
 eaten out. 
 
 They attack their own politicians every day, on the same 
 grounds, as adventurers. They love stoutness in standing for 
 your right, in declining money or promotion that costs any 
 concession. The barrister refuses the silk gown of Queen s 
 Counsel, if his junior have it one day earlier. Lord Colling- 
 wood would not accept his medal for victory on 14th February, 
 1797, if he did not receive one for victory on 1st June, 1794 ; 
 and the long-withholden medal was accorded. When Cas- 
 tlereagh dissuaded Lord Wellington from going to the king s 
 levee, until the unpopular Cintra business had been explained, 
 he replied : " You furnish me a reason for going. I will go to 
 this, or I will never go to a king s levee." The radical mob at 
 Oxford cried after the tory Lord Eldon, " There s old Eldon ; 
 cheer him ; he never ratted." They have given the parlia 
 mentary nickname of Trimmers to the time-servers, whom Eng 
 lish character does not love.* 
 
 They are very liable in their politics to extraordinary de 
 lusions, thus, to believe what stands recorded in the gravest 
 books, that the movement of 10 April, 1848, was urged or as 
 sisted by foreigners : which, to be sure, is paralleled by the 
 democratic whimsy in this country, which I have noticed to 
 be shared by men sane on other points, that the English are 
 
 * It is an unlucky moment to remember these sparkles of solitary virtue in 
 the face of the honors lately paid in England to the Emperor Louis Napoleon. 
 I am sure that no Englishman whom I had the happiness to know, consented, 
 when the aristocracy and the commons of London cringed like a Neapolitan 
 rabble, before a successful thief. But how to resist one step, though odious, 
 in a linked series of state necessities ? Governments must always learn too 
 late, that the use of dishonest agents is as runious for nations as for single 
 men. 
 
TRUTH. 219 
 
 at the bottom of the agitation of slavery, in American polities : 
 and then uiram to the French popular legends on the subject 
 of j)erri l< t* AUti Hi. But suspicion will make fools of nations 
 as of citizens. 
 
 A slow temperament makes them less rapid and ready than 
 other countrymen, and has - iven occasion to the observation 
 that English wit oomes afterwards, which the French denote 
 It <f <.-<ilnr. This dulness makes their attachment to 
 home, and their adherence in all foreign countries to home 
 habits. The Englishman who visits Mount Etna will carry 
 his tea-kettle to the top. The old Italian author of the "Re 
 lation of England " (in 1500) says : " I have it on the best in 
 formation, that, when the war is actually racing most furious- 
 Iv, tliev will seek for good eating, and all their other comforts, 
 without thinking what harm might befall them." Then their 
 -cm to be set at the bottom of a tunnel, and they affirm 
 the one small fact they know, with the best faith in the world 
 that nothing else exists. And, as their own belief in guineas 
 is perfect, they readily, on all occasions, apply the pecuniary 
 argument as final. Thus when the Rochester rappings be^an 
 to I.,- heard of in England, a man deposited 100 in a sealed 
 box in the Dublin Bank, and then advertised in the newspa 
 pers to all somnambulists, mesmerizers, and others, that who 
 ever could tell him the number of his note should have the 
 money. He let it lie there six months, the newspapers now and 
 then, at his instance, stimulating the attention of the adepts; 
 but none could ever tell him ; and he said, Xow let ; me never 
 be bothered more with this pi-oven lie." It is told of a good 
 Sir John, that he heard a ease Mated by counsel, and made up 
 his mind ; then the counsel for the other side taking their 
 turn to speak, he found himself so unsettled and perplexed, 
 that he exclaimed, " So help me God ! I will never listen to 
 evidence again." Any number of delightful examples of this 
 English stolidity are the anecdotes of Europe. I knew a very 
 worthy man, a magistrate, 1 believe he was, in the town of 
 Derby. who went to the opera, to see Malibran. In one 
 scene, the heroine was to ru^h across a ruined bridge. Mr. I>. 
 . and mildly yet firmly called the attention of the audi- 
 iii l the performers to the fact that, in his judgment, the 
 bridge was unsafe; This English M-.lidity contracts with 
 Erench wit and tact. The French, it is commonly said, have 
 gi eatly more influence in Europe than the English. What in 
 fluence the English have is by brute force of wealth and pow- 
 
220 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 or ; that of the French by affinity and talent. The Ital 
 ian is subtle, the Spaniard treacherons : tortures, it was said, 
 could never wrest from an Egyptian the confession of a secret. 
 None of these traits belong to the Englishman. His choler 
 and conceit force everything out. Defoe, who knew his coun 
 trymen well, says of them : 
 
 " In close intrigue, their faculty s but weak, 
 For generally whate er they know, they speak, 
 And often their own counsels undermine 
 By mere infirmity without design; 
 From whence, the learned say, it doth proceed, 
 That English treasons never can succeed; 
 For they re so open-hearted, you may know 
 Their own most secret thoughts, and others too." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CHARACTER. 
 
 r I ^HE English race are reputed morose. I do not know that 
 they have sadder brows than their neighbors of northern 
 climates. They are sad by comparison with the singing and 
 dancing nations : not sadder, but slow and staid, as finding 
 their joys at home. They, too, believe that where there is no 
 enjoyment of life, there can be no vigor and art in speech or 
 thought ; that your merry heart goes all the way, your sad one 
 tares in a mile. This trait of gloom has been fixed on them 
 by French travellers, who, from Froissart, Voltaire, Le Sage, 
 Mirabeau, down to the lively journalists of the fenilletons, have 
 spent their wit on the solemnity of their neighbors. The 
 French say, gay conversation is unknown in their island : the 
 Englishman finds no relief from reflection except in reflection : 
 when he wishes for amusement, he goes to work : his hilarity 
 is like an attack of fever. Religion, the theatre, and the read 
 ing the books of his country, all feed and increase his natural 
 melancholy. The police does not interfere with public di 
 versions. " It thinks itself bound in duty to respect the pleas 
 ures and rare gayety of this inconsolable nation ; and their 
 well-known courage is entirely attributable to their disgust of 
 life. 
 
 I suppose their gravity of demeanor and their few words 
 have obtained this reputation. As compared with the Ameri- 
 
CHARACTI1U. L -L 
 
 cans, I tliink them cheerful and contented. Young people, in 
 this country, are much more prone to melancholy. The Eng- 
 lisli have ;i mild aspect, and a ringing ehee. fill voice. They 
 are lar-e-natured, and not so easily amused as the southern 
 ers, and are ainon- them as grown people- amon- children, re 
 quiring war, or trade, or engineering, or science, instead of 
 frivolous panics. They are proud and private, and, even if 
 disposed t" recreation, will avoid an open garden. They 
 sported sadlv ; //x ti <iuins ti< nt tri*ti-ntrnt, <>/",/ (a continue de 
 few pay*, said Froissart ; and, 1 sup ju.se, never nation l.uilt 
 their parry walls so thick, or their -an leu fences so high, 
 and wine produce no effect on them: they are just as 
 cold, quiet, and composed, at the end, as at the beginning of 
 dinner. 
 
 The reputation of taciturnity they have enjoyed for six or 
 .seven hundred years; and a kind of pride in had public 
 speak in- is noted in the House of Commons, as if they were, 
 willing to show that they did not live by their tongues, or 
 thought they spoke well enough if they had the tone of gen 
 tlemen. In mixed company, they shut their mouths. A 
 Yorkshire mill-owner told me, he had ridden more than once 
 all the way from London to Leeds, in the first-class carriage, 
 with the same persons, and no word exchanged. The club- 
 - were established to cultivate social habits, and it is 
 rare that more than two eat together, and oftenest one eats 
 alone. -Was it then a stroke of humor in the serious Sweclen- 
 borg, or was it only his pitiless logic, that made him shut up 
 the English souls in a heaven by themselves 1 ? 
 
 They are contradictorily described as sour, splenetic, and 
 stubborn, and as mild, sweet, and sensible. The truth is, 
 they have great ran-* 1 and variety of character. Commerce, 
 s- iids abroad multitudes of different classes. The choleric 
 WeUhman. the fervid Scot, the bilious resident in the East or 
 West Indies, fire wide of the perfect behavior of the educated 
 and dignified man of family. So is the burly farmer ; so is 
 the country squiro, with his narrow and violent life. In every 
 inn, is the Commercial-Room, in which travellers, or ba-meii 
 who carry patterns, and solicit orders, for the manufacturers, 
 are wont to be entertained. It easily happens that this class 
 should characteri/.e En-land to the forei-ner, who meets them 
 on the road, and at every public house, whilst the gentry avoid 
 the taverns, or seclude themselves whilst in them. 
 
 But these classes are the right English stock, and may 
 
222 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 fairly show the national qualities, before yet art and education 
 have dealt with them. They are good lovers, good haters, 
 slow but obstinate admirers, and, in all things, very much 
 steeped in their temperament, like men hardly awaked from 
 deep sleep, which they enjoy. Their habits and instincts 
 cleave to nature. They are of the earth, earthy ; and of the 
 sea, as the sea-kinds, attached to it for what it yields them, 
 and not from any sentiment. They are full of coarse strength, 
 rude exercise, butcher s meat, and sound sleep ; and suspect 
 any poetic insinuation or any hint for the conduct of life 
 which reflects on this animal existence, as if somebody were 
 fumbling at the umbilical cord and might stop their supplies. 
 They doubt a man s sound judgment, if he does not eat with 
 appetite, and shake their heads if he is particularly chaste. 
 Take them as they come, you shall find in the common people 
 a surly indifference, sometimes gruffness and ill temper ; and, 
 in minds of more power, magazines of inexhaustible war, chal 
 lenging 
 
 " The ruggedest hour that time and Ppito dare bring 
 To frown upon the enraged Northumberland," 
 
 They are headstrong believers and defenders of their opinion, 
 and not less resolute in maintaining their whim and perversity. 
 Hezekiah Woodward wrote a book against the Lord s Prayer. 
 And one can believe that Burton the Anatomist of Melancholy, 
 having predicted from the stars the hour of his death, slipped 
 the knot himself round his own neck, not to falsify his horo 
 scope. 
 
 Their looks bespeak an invincible stoutness ; they have e 
 treme difficulty to run away, and will die game. Wellington 
 said of the young coxcombs of the Life-Guards delicately 
 brought up, " But the puppies fight well " ; and Nelson said 
 of his sailors, " They really mind shot no more than peas. 
 Of absolute stoutness no nation has more or better examples. 
 They are good at storming redoubts, at boarding frigates, at 
 dying in the last ditch, or any desperate service which has day 
 light and honor in it ; but not, I think, at enduring the rack, 
 or any passive obedience, like jumping off a castle-roof at the 
 word "of a czar. Being both vascular and highly organized, so 
 as to be very sensible of pain ; and intellectual, so as to see 
 reason and glory in a matter. 
 
 Of that constitutional force, which yields the supplies of the 
 day, they have the more than enough, the excess which creates 
 courage on fortitude, genius in poetry, invention in mechanics, 
 
CHARACT1K. 223 
 
 enterprise in trade, magnificence in wealth, splendor in ccremo- 
 : et ulance ami projects in youth. Th0yoUBg men have a 
 nidi- health which runs into peccant humors. They drink 
 brandy like water, cannot expend their quantities of waste 
 strength on riding, hunting, swimming, and fencing, and run 
 into absurd frolics with the gravity of the Einiieiiides. They 
 stoutlv carry into every nook and corner of the earth their 
 turbu : leaving no lie uncontradicted ; no pretension 
 
 unexaiiiined. They chew hasheesh ; cut themselves with poi 
 soned : swinir their hammock in the boughs of the 
 Bohon I pas ; taste every poison ; buy every secret ; at Naples, 
 they put St. Januarius s blood in an alembic ; they saw a hole 
 into tlie head of the " winking Virgin, to know why she winks ; 
 measure with an English foot-rule every cell of the Inquisition, 
 every Turkish eaal a, every Holy of holies; translate and send 
 to Hentley the arcanum bribed and bullied away from shudder 
 ing Bramins ; and measure their own strength by the terror 
 they cause. These travellers are of every class, the best and 
 tin 4 worst : and it may easily happen that those of rudest be 
 havior an- taken notice of and remembered. The Saxon mel 
 ancholy in the vulgar rich and poor appears as gushes of ill- 
 humor, which every cheek exasperates into sarcasm and 
 vituperation. There are multitudes of rude youn.Lr English who 
 have the self-sufficiency and bluntness of their nation, and who, 
 with their disdain of the rest of mankind, and with this indi 
 gestion and choler. have made the Knglish traveller a proverb 
 for uncomfortable and offensive manners. It was no bad de 
 scription of the Briton generieally, what was said two hundred 
 ago, of one particular Oxford scholar: " He was a very 
 bold man, uttered anything that came into his mind, not only 
 among his companions, but in public coffee-houses, and would 
 often speak his mind of particular persons then accidentally 
 present, without examining the company he was in : for which 
 be was often reprimanded, and several times threatened to be 
 kicked and beaten." 
 
 The common Englishman is prone to forget a cardinal article 
 in the bill of social rights, that every man has a right to his 
 own ears. No man can claim to usurp more than a few cubic 
 feet of the audibilities of a public room, or to put upon the 
 company with the loud statements of his crotchets or per>ou- 
 alities. 
 
 But it is in the deep traits of race that the fortunes of na 
 tions arj written, and however derived, whether a happier tribe 
 
224 ENGLISH TKAITS. 
 
 or mixture of tribes, the air, or what circumstance, that mixed 
 for them the golden mean of temperament, here exists the 
 best stock in the world, broad-fronted, broad-bottomed, best 
 for depth, range, and equability, men of aplomb and reserves, 
 great range and many moods, strong instincts, yet apt for cul 
 ture ; war-class as well as clerks ; earls and tradesmen ; wise 
 minority, as well as foolish majority ; abysmal temperament, 
 hiding wells of wrath, and glooms on which no sunshine settles ; 
 alternated with a common sense and humanity which hold them 
 fast to every piece of cheerful duty ; making this temperament 
 a sea to which all storms are superficial ; a race to which their 
 fortunes flow, as if they alone had the elastic organization at 
 once fine and robust enough for dominion ; as if the burly inex 
 pressive, now mute and contumacious, now fierce and sharp- 
 tongued dragon, which once made the island light with his fiery 
 breath, had bequeathed his ferocity to his conqueror. They 
 hide virtues under vices, or the semblance of them. It is the 
 misshapen hairy Scandinavian troll again, who lifts the cart 
 out of the mire, or " threshes the corn that ten day-laborers 
 could not end," but it is done in the dark, and with muttered 
 maledictions. He is a churl with a soft place in his heart, 
 whose speech is a brash of bitter waters, but who loves to help 
 you at a pinch. He says no, and serves you, and your thanks 
 disgust him. Here was lately a cross-grained miser, odd and 
 ugly, resembling in countenance the portrait of Punch, with 
 the laugh left out ; rich by his own industry ; sulking in a 
 lonely house ; who never gave a dinner to any man, and dis 
 dained all courtesies ; yet as true a worshipper of beauty in form 
 and color as ever existed, and profusely pouring over the cold 
 mind of his countrymen creations of grace and truth, removing 
 the reproach of sterility from English art, catching from their 
 savage climate every fine hint, and importing into their galleries 
 every tint and trait of sunnier cities and skies ; making an era 
 in painting ; and, when he saw that the splendor of one of his 
 pictures in the Exhibition dimmed his rival s that hung next 
 it, secretly took a brush and blackened his own. 
 
 They do not wear their heart in their sleeve for daws to peck 
 at. They have that phlegm or staidness, which it is a compli 
 ment to disturb. " Great men," said Aristotle, " are always of 
 a nature originally melancholy." T is the habit of a mind 
 which attaches to abstractions with a passion which gives vast 
 results. They dare to displease, they do not speak to expecta 
 tion. They like the sayers of No, better than the sayers of 
 
CHARACTER. 
 
 Yes. Each of them has an opinion which He feels it becomes 
 him to express all the more that it differs from yours. They 
 are meditating opposition. This gravity is inseparable from 
 minds of great resources. 
 
 There is an English hero superior to the French, the Ger 
 man, the Italian, or the Greek. When he is brought to the 
 strife with fate, h" a richer material possession, and 
 
 on more purely metaphysical grounds. He is there with his 
 own c<ni>ent. iace to lace with fortune, which he defies. On 
 deliberate choice, and frm grounds of character, he has 
 i his part TO live and die for, and dies with grandeur. 
 This rare has added new elements to humanity, and has a 
 deeper root in the world. 
 
 They have trreat ranire of scale, from ferocity to exquisite 
 refinement. With larger scale, they have great retrieving pow 
 er. After running each tendency to an extreme, they try 
 another tack with equal heat. More intellectual than other 
 when they live with other races, they do not take their 
 lanirua-^e. but b..-s.tow their own. They subsidize other na 
 tion-, and are not subsidized. They proselyte, and are not 
 proselyted. They assimilate other races to themselves, and are 
 Minilated. The English did not calculate the conquest of 
 the Indies. It fell to their character. So they administer in 
 different parts of the world, the codes of every empire and 
 race ; in Canada, old French law ; in the Mauritius, the Code 
 Napoleon ; in the West Indies, the edicts of the Spanish Cor 
 tes ; in the East Indies, the Laws of Menu : in the Isle of 
 Man, of the Scandinavian Thing : at the Cape of Good Hope, 
 of the old .Netherlands ; and in the Ionian Islands, the Pan- 
 ian. 
 
 They are very conscious of their advantageous position in 
 history. England is the lawgiver, the patron, the instructor, 
 the ally. Compare the tone of the French and of the Eng 
 lish press : the first querulous, captious, sensitive, about 
 English opinion : the English press is never timorous about 
 .h opinion, but arrogant and contemptuous. 
 
 They are testy and headstrong through an excess of will 
 
 and bias : churlish be who do not 
 
 a debt, who ask im favors, and who will do what they 
 
 like with their own. With education and intercourse these 
 
 asperities wear off, and leave the u r <"od-will pure. If anatomy 
 
 is reformed a---rdin^ to national teiidein- -. 1 -;: MB, the 
 
 spleen will hereafter be found in the Englishman, not found 
 
 10* o 
 
226 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 in the American, and differencing the one from the other. I 
 anticipate another anatomical discovery, that this organ will 
 be found to be cortical and caducous, that they are superfi 
 cially morose, but at last tender-hearted, herein differing from 
 Rome and the Latin nations. Nothing savage, nothing mean 
 resides in the English heart. They are subject to panics of 
 credulity and of rage, but the temper of the nation, however 
 disturbed, settles itself soon and easily, as, in this temperate 
 zone, the sky after whatever storms clears again, and serenity 
 is its normal condition. 
 
 A saving stupidity masks and protects their perception as 
 the curtain of the eagle s eye. Our swifter American s, when 
 they first deal with English, pronounce them stupid ; but, la 
 ter, do them justice as people who wear well, or hide their 
 strength. To understand the power of performance that is 
 in their finest wits, in the patient Newton, or in the versa 
 tile transcendent poets, or in the Dugdales, Gibbons, Hallams, 
 Eldons, and Peels, one should see how English day-laborers 
 hold out. High and low, they are of an unctuous texture. 
 There is an adipocere in their constitution, as if they had oil 
 also for their mental wheels, and could perform vast amounts 
 of work without damaging themselves. 
 
 Even the scale of expense on which people live, and to 
 which scholars and professional men conform, proves the ten 
 sion of their muscle, when vast numbers are found who can 
 each lift this enormous load. I might even add, their daily 
 feasts argue a savage vigor of body. 
 
 No nation was ever so rich in able men : " Gentlemen," as 
 Charles I. said of Strafford, "whose abilities might make a 
 prince rather afraid than ashamed in the greatest affairs of 
 state " : men of such temper, that, like Baron Vere, " had one 
 seen him returning from a victory, he would by his silence 
 have suspected that he had lost the day ; and, had he beheld 
 him in a retreat, he would have collected him a conqueror by 
 the cheerfulness of his spirit."* 
 
 The following passage from the Heimskringla might al 
 most stand as a portrait of the modern Englishman : 
 " Haldor was very stout and strong, and remarkably hand 
 some in appearances. King Harold gave him this testimony, 
 that he, among all his men, cared least about doubtful circum 
 stances, whether they betokened danger or pleasure ; for, 
 whatever turned up, he was never in higher nor in lower 
 
 * Fuller. Worthies of Englandl 
 
CHARACTER. 227 
 
 its, never slept less nor more on account of them, nor ate nor 
 drank l>ut according to his custom. llaldor was not a man <>t 
 manv words, but short in conversation, told his opinion blunt- 
 Iv, and was obstinate and hard ; and this could not please the 
 king, who had many clever people about him, xealous in his 
 service. llaldor remained a short time with the king, and then 
 came to Iceland, where he took up his abode in lliardaholt, 
 and dwelt in that farm to a very advanced age. * 
 
 The national temp.T, in the civil history, is not flashy or 
 wliilllin.^. The slow, deep English mass smoulders with fire, 
 which at last sets all its borders in flame. The wrath of Lon 
 don is not French wrath, hut has a long memory, and, in its 
 hottest, heat, a ivu istrr and rule. 
 
 Half their strength they put not forth. They arc capable 
 of a sublime resolution, and if hereafter the war of races, 
 often predicted, and making itself a war of opinions also (a 
 question of despotism and liberty coming from Eastern 
 Europe), should menace the English civilization, these sea- 
 kin-j-s may take once again to their floating castles, and find a 
 new home and a second millennium of power in their col 
 onies. 
 
 The stability of England is the security of the modern 
 world. If the English race were as mutable as the French, 
 what reliance I But the English stand for liberty. The con 
 servative, monev-lovinijf, lord-loving English are yet liberty- 
 loving ; and so freedom is safe : for they have more personal 
 force than other people. The nation always resist the im 
 moral action of their government. They think humanely on 
 the affairs of France, of Turkey, of Poland, of Hungary, of 
 Schleswig Holstein, though overborne by the statecraft of the 
 rulers at la.-t. 
 
 Does the early history of each tribe show the permanent 
 bias, which, though not less potent, is masked, as the tribe 
 spreads its activity into" colonies, commerce, codes, arts, letters] 
 The early history shows it, as the musician plays the air which 
 he proceed- to conceal in a tempest of variations. In Alfred, 
 in the Northmen, one may read the genius of the English 
 society, namely, that private life is the place of honor. Glory, 
 a career, and ambit ion, words familiar to the longitude of 
 Paris, are seldom heard in English speech. Nelson wrote 
 from their hearts his homely telegraph, "England expects 
 every man to do his duty." 
 
 * Heimskringla, Laing s translation, Vol. III. p. 37. 
 
228 ENGLISH TEAITS. 
 
 For actual service, for the dignity of a profession, or to ap 
 pease diseased or inflamed talent, the army and navy may be 
 entered (the worst boys doing well in the navy) ; and the 
 civil service, in departments where serious official work is 
 done ; and they hold in esteem the barrister engaged in the 
 severer studies of the law. But the calm, sound, and most 
 British Briton shrinks from public life, as charlatanism, and 
 respects an economy founded on agriculture, coal-mines, manu 
 factures, or trade, which secures an independence through the 
 creation of real values. 
 
 They wish neither to command or obey, but to be kings in 
 their own houses. They are intellectual and deeply enjoy 
 literature ; they like well to have the world served up to them 
 in books, maps, models, and every mode of exact information, 
 and, though not creators in the art, they value its refinement. 
 They are ready for leisure, can direct and fill their own day, 
 nor need so much as others the constraint of a necessity. But 
 the history of the nation discloses, at every turn, this original 
 predilection for private independence, and, however this in 
 clination may have been disturbed by the bribes with which 
 their vast colonial power has warped men out of orbit, the in 
 clination endures, and forms and reforms the laws, letters, 
 manners, and occupations. They choose that welfare which 
 is compatible with the commonwealth, knowing that such alone 
 is stable j as wise merchants prefer investments in three per 
 cents. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 COCKAYNE. 
 
 / 
 
 r I "HE English are a nation of humorists. Individual right 
 is pushed to the uttermost bound compatible with pub 
 lic order. Property is so , perfect, that it seems the craft of 
 that race, and not to exist elsewhere. The king cannot step 
 on an acre which the peasant refuses to sell. A testator en 
 dows a dog or a rookery, and Europe cannot interfere with his 
 absurdity. Every individual has his particular way of living, 
 which he pushes to folly, and the decided sympathy of his 
 compatriots is engaged to back up Mr. Crump s whim by stat 
 utes, and chancellors, and horse-guards. There is no freak so 
 
COCKAYNK. 229 
 
 ridiculous but some Englishman has attempted to immortali/e 
 by money and law. British citi/.enship is as omnipotent as 
 lioman \vas. Mr. Cockayne is very sensible of this. The 
 pursy man means by IVeedom the right to do as he pleases, 
 and does wrong in order to feel his freedom, and makes a con 
 science of persisting in it. 
 
 He is intensely patriotic, for his country is so small. His 
 confidence in the power and performance of his nation makes 
 him provokingly incurious about other nations. He dislikes 
 foreigners. Swedenborg, who lived much in England, notes 
 "the similitude of minds among the English, in consequence 
 of which they contract familiarity with friends who are of 
 that nation, and seldom with others; and they regard foreign 
 ers, as one looking through a telescope from the top of a 
 palace- regards those who dwell or wander about out of the 
 citv." .V much older traveller, the Venetian who wrote the 
 "Bdatren of England,"* in 1500, says: "The English are 
 great lovers of themselves, and of everything belonging to 
 them. They think that there are no other men than them 
 selves, and no other world but England ; and, whenever they 
 see a handsome- foreigner, they say that he looks like- an Eng 
 lishman, and it is a great pity he should not be an English 
 man ; and whenever they partake of any delicacy with a 
 foreigner, they ask him whether such a thing is made in his 
 countrv." When he adds epithets of praise, his climax is 
 "so English"; and when he wishes to pay you the highest 
 compliment, he says, I should not know you from an English 
 man. France is, by its natural contrast, a kind of blackboard 
 on which English * character draws its own traits in chalk. 
 This arrogance habitually exhibits itself in allusions to the 
 French. I suppose that all men of English blood in America, 
 Europe, or Asia, have a secret feeling of joy that they are not 
 French natives. Mr. Coleridge is said to have given public 
 thanks to God, at the close of a lecture, that he had defended 
 him from being able to utter a single sentence in the Freiu h 
 language. 1 have found that Englishmen have such a good 
 opinion of England, that the ordinary phrases, in all good 
 society, of postponing or disparaging one s own things in talk 
 ing with a stranger, are seriously mistaken by them for an in- 
 supprcssible homage to the merits of their nation ; and the 
 New-Yorker or Pennsylvania!! who modestly laments the dis 
 advantage of a new country, log-huts, and savages, is surprised 
 
 * Printed by the Camden Society. 
 
230 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 by the instant and unfeigned commiseration of the whole com 
 pany, who plainly account all the world out of England a heap 
 of rubbish. 
 
 The same insular limitation pinches his foreign politics. He 
 sticks to his traditions and usages, and, so help him God ! he 
 will force his island by-laws down the throat of great countries, 
 like India, China, Canada, Australia, and not only so, but im 
 pose Wapping on the Congress of Vienna, and trample down 
 all nationalities with his taxed boots. Lord Chatham goes for 
 liberty, and no taxation without representation; for that is 
 British law ; but not a hobnail shall they dare make in Ameri 
 ca, but buy their nails in England, for that also is British 
 law ; and the fact that British commerce was to be re-created 
 by the independence of America, took them all by surprise. 
 
 In short, I am afraid that English nature is so rank and 
 aggressive as to be a little incompatible with every other. The 
 world is not wide enough for two. 
 
 But, beyond this nationality, it must be admitted, the island 
 offers a daily worship to the old Norse god Brage, celebrated 
 among our Scandinavian forefathers, for his eloquence and 
 majestic air. The English have a steady courage, that fits 
 them for great attempts and endurance : they have also a 
 petty courage, through which every man delights in showing 
 himself for what he is, and in doing what he can ; so that, in 
 all companies, each of them has too good an opinion of him 
 self to imitate anybody. He hides no defect of his form, fea 
 tures, dress, connection, or birthplace, for he thinks every 
 circumstance belonging to him comes recommended to you. 
 If one of them have a bald, or a red, or a green head, or bow 
 legs, or a scar, or mark, or a paunch, or a squeaking or a 
 raven voice, he has persuaded himself that there is something 
 modish and becoming in it, and that it sits well on him. 
 
 But nature makes nothing in vain, and this little superfluity 
 of self-regard in the English brain is one of the secrets of 
 their power and history. For, it sets every man on being and 
 doing what he really is and can. It takes away a dodging, 
 skulking, secondary air, and encourages a frank and manly 
 bearing, so that each man makes the most of himself, and 
 loses no opportunity for want of pushing. A man s personal 
 defects will commonly have with the rest of the world pre 
 cisely that importance which they have to himself. If he 
 makes light of them, so will other men. We all find in these 
 a convenient meter of character, since a little man would be 
 
COCKAYNE. 231 
 
 ruined by the vexation. I remember a shrewd politician, in 
 one of (mi- Western cities, told me, "that he had known several 
 successful Matomen made by their ibible." And another, an 
 \eruor of Illinois, said to me : " If a man knew anything, 
 he would sit in a corner and be modest ; but he is such an 
 ignorant peacock, that he pies bustling np and down, and hits 
 on extraordinary discoveries." 
 
 There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is uncon 
 sciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, 
 draw it all out, and hold him to it. Their culture generally 
 enables the travelled English to avoid any ridiculous extremes 
 of this self-pleasing, and to give it an agreeable air. Then the 
 natural disposition is fostered by the respect which they find 
 entertained in the world for English ability. It was said of 
 Louis XIV., that his gait and air were becoming enough in so 
 great a monarch, yet would have been ridiculous in another 
 man ; so the prestige of the English name warrants a certain 
 confident bearing, which a Frenchman or Belgian could not 
 cany. At all events, they feel themselves at liberty to assume 
 the most extraordinary tone on the subject of English merits. 
 
 An English lady on the llhinc hearing a German speaking 
 of her party as foreigners, exclaimed, " No, we are not for 
 eigners : we are English ; it is you that are foreigners." They 
 t -ll you daily, in London, the story of the Frenchman and 
 Englishman who quarrelled. Both were unwilling to fight, but 
 their companions put them np to it ; at last, it was agreed, 
 that they should fight alone, in the dark, and with pistols : the 
 candles were put out, and the Englishman, to make sure not 
 to hit anybody, fired up the chimney, and brought down the 
 Frenchman. They have no curiosity about foreigners, and 
 answer any information yon may volunteer with, "Oh, Oh !" 
 until the informant makes up his mind, that they shall die in 
 their ignorance, for any help he will offer. There are really no 
 limits to this conceit, though brighter men among them make 
 painful efforts to be candid. 
 
 The habit of brag runs through all classes, from the Timr* 
 newspaper through politicians and poets, through Wordsworth, 
 Carlvle, Mill, and Sydney Smith, down to the boys of Eton. 
 In the gravest treatise on political economy, in a philosophical 
 essay, in books of science, one is surprised by the most in 
 nocent exhibition of unflinching nationality. In a tract on 
 Corn, a most amiable and accomplished gentleman writes thus : 
 v Though Britain, according to Bishop Berkeley s idea, were 
 
232 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 surrounded by a wall of brass ten thousand cubits in height, 
 still, she would as far excel the rest of the globe in riches, as 
 she now does, both in this secondary quality, and in the more 
 important ones of freedom, virtue, and science." * 
 
 The English dislike the American structure of society, 
 whilst yet trade, mills, public education, and chartism are do 
 ing what they can to create in England the same social condi 
 tion. America is the paradise of the economists ; is the favor 
 able exception invariably quoted to the rules of ruin ; but 
 when he speaks directly of the Americans, the islander forgets 
 his philosophy, and remembers his disparaging anecdotes. 
 
 But this childish patriotism costs something, like all narrow 
 ness. The English sway of their colonies has no root of kind 
 ness. They govern by their arts and ability ; they are more 
 just than kind ; and, whenever an abatement of their power 
 is felt, they have not conciliated the affection on which to rely. 
 
 Coarse local distinctions, as those of nation, province, or 
 town, are useful in the absence of real ones ; but we must not 
 insist on these accidental lines. Individual traits are always 
 triumphing over national ones. There is no fence in meta 
 physics discriminating Greek, or English, or Spanish science. 
 ^Esop, and Montaigne, Cervantes and Saadi, are men of the 
 world ; and to wave our own flag at the dinner-table or in the 
 University, is to carry the boisterous dulness of a fire-club into 
 a polite circle. Nature and destiny are always on the watch for 
 our follies. Nature trips us up when we strut ; and there are 
 curious examples in history on this very point of national pride. 
 
 George of Cappadocia, born at Epiphania in Cilicia, was a 
 low parasite, who got a lucrative contract to supply the army 
 with bacon. A rogue and informer, he got rich, and was forced 
 to run from justice. He saved his money, embraced Arianism, 
 collected a library, and got promoted by a faction to the epis 
 copal throne of Alexandria. When Julian came, A. D. 361, 
 George was dragged to prison ; the prison was burst open by 
 the mob, and George was lynched, as he deserved. And this 
 precious knave became, in good time, Saint George of England, 
 patron of chivalry, emblem of victory and civility, and the 
 pride of the best blood of the modern world. 
 
 Strange, that the solid truth-speaking Briton should derive 
 from an impostor. Strange, that the New World should have 
 no better luck, that broad America must wear the name of 
 a thief. Amerigo Vespucci, the pickle-dealer at Seville, who 
 
 * William Spence. 
 
WKALTH. 233 
 
 went out, in 1499, a subaltern with Hojeda, and whose highest 
 
 naval rank was boatswain s mate in an expedit ion that never 
 sailed, managed in this lying world to supplant Columbus, and 
 bapti/.e half the earth with his own dishonest name. Thus no- 
 lM)dv can throw holies. \Ve are equally badly otf in our found 
 ers ; and the false pickle-dealer is an otl set to the false bacon- 
 seller. 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 CHAPTER " J " 
 
 WEALTH. 
 
 THERE is no country in which so absolute a homage is 
 paid to wealth. In America, there is a touch of shame 
 when a man exhibits the evidences of large property, as if, 
 after all, it needed apology. But the Englishman has pure 
 pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A coarso 
 logic rules throughout all English souls ; if you have merit, 
 ean YOU not show it by your good clothes, and coach, and 
 horses \ How can a man be a gentleman without a pipe of 
 wine? Haydon says, "There is a fierce resolution to make 
 every man live according to the means he possesses." There 
 is a mixture of religion in it. They are under the Jewish law, 
 and read with sonorous emphasis that their days shall be long 
 in the land, they shall have sons and daughters, flocks and 
 herds, wine and oil. In exact proportion is the reproach of 
 poverty. They do not wish to be represented except by opu 
 lent men. An Englishman who has lost his fortune is said to 
 have died of a broken heart. The last term of insult is, "a 
 heu^ar." Nelson said, "The want of fortune is a crime 
 which I can never get over." Sydney Smith said, " Poverty is 
 infamous in England." And one of their recent writers speaks, 
 in reference to a private and scholastic life, of " the grave 
 moral deterioration which follows an emptv exchequer." You 
 shall find this sentiment, if not so frankly put, yet deeply im 
 plied, in the novels and romances of the present century, and 
 not only in these, but in biography, and in the votes of public 
 assemblies, in the tone of the preaching, and in the table-talk. 
 I was lately turning over Wood s Af/tence Oxonieiises, and 
 looking nat ni-ally for another standard in a chronicle of the 
 scholars of Oxford for two hundred years. But I found the 
 
234 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 two disgraces in that, as in most English books, are, first, 
 disloyalty to Church and State, and, second, to be born poor, 
 or to come to poverty. A natural fruit of England is the 
 brutal political economy. Malthus finds no cover laid at 
 nature s table for the laborer s son. In 1809, the majority in 
 Parliament expressed itself by the language of Mr. Fuller in 
 the House of Commons, " If you do not like the country, damn 
 you, you can leave it." When Sir S. Komilly proposed his 
 bill forbidding parish officers to bind children apprentices at a 
 greater distance than forty miles from their home, Peel op 
 posed, and Mr. Wortley said, " though, in the higher ranks, to 
 cultivate family affections was a good thing, t was not so 
 among the lower orders. Better take them away from those 
 who might deprave them. And it was highly injurious to 
 trade to stop binding to manufacturers, as it must raise the 
 price of labor, and of manufactured goods." 
 
 The respect for truth of facts in England is equalled only 
 by the respect for wealth. It is at once the pride of art of the 
 Saxon, as he is a wealth-maker, and his passion for indepen 
 dence. The Englishman believes that every man must take 
 care of himself, and has himself to thank, if he do not mend 
 his condition. To pay their debts is their national point of 
 honor. From the Exchequer and the East India House to 
 the huckster s shop, everything prospers, because it is solvent. 
 The British armies are solvent, and pay for what they take. 
 The British empire is solvent ; for, in spite of the huge nation 
 al debt, the valuation mounts. During the war from 1789 to 
 1815, whilst they complained that they were taxed within an 
 inch of their lives, and, by dint of enormous taxes, were sub 
 sidizing all the continent against France, the English were 
 growing rich every year faster than any people ever grew be 
 fore. It is their maxim, that the weight of taxes must be cal 
 culated, not by what is taken, but by what is left. Solvency is 
 in the ideas and mechanism of an Englishman. The Crystal 
 Palace is not considered honest until it pays ; no matter 
 how much convenience, beauty, or eclat it must be self-sup 
 porting. They are contented with slower steamers, as long 
 as they know that swifter boats lose money. They proceed 
 logically by the double method of labor and thrift. Every 
 household exhibits an exact economy, and nothing of that un- 
 calculated headlong expenditure which families use in America. 
 If they cannot pay, they do not buy ; for they have no pre 
 sumption of better fortunes next year, as our people have ; 
 
WEALTH. 235 
 
 and they say without shame. 1 cannot afl ord it. Gentlemen do 
 not hesitate to ride in the second-elass ears, or in the second 
 cabin. An iv>nomist, or a man who ean proportion his means 
 and his ambition, or bring the year round with expenditure 
 which BXproeaet iiis character, without embarrassing .ne day of 
 his future, is already a master of life, ami a freeman. I, on I 
 Burleigh writer to his son, "that one ought never to devote 
 nmiv than two thirds of his income to the ordinary expenses 
 of life, since the extraordinary will be certain to absorb the 
 other third." 
 
 The ambition to create value evokes every kind of ability, 
 government becomes a manufacturing corporation, and every 
 house a mill. The headlong bias to utility will let no talent 
 lie in a napkin, if possible, will teach spiders to weave silk 
 stockings. An Knulishman, while he cats and drinks no more, 
 or not much more than another man, labors three times as 
 many hours in the course of a year, as any other Kuropc-an ; 
 or, his life as a workman is three lives. He works fast. 
 Kverything in Kngland is at a quick pace. They have rein 
 forced their own productivity, by the creation of that mar 
 vellous machinery which differences this age from any other 
 age. 
 
 T is a curious chapter in modern history, the growth of the 
 machine-shop. Six hundred years ago, Roger Bacon explained 
 the precession of the equinoxes, the consequent necessity of 
 the reform of the calendar ; measured the length of the year, 
 invented gunpowder: and announced (as if looking from his 
 lofty cell, over five centuries, into ours) " that machines can 
 be constructed to drive ships more rapidly than a whole galley 
 of rowers could do ; nor would they need anything but a 
 pilot to steer them. Carriages also might be constructed to 
 move with an incredible speed, without the aid of any animal. 
 Finally, it would not be impossible to make machines, which, 
 by means of a suit of wings, should fly in the air in the man 
 ner of birds." Hut the secret slept with Bacon. The six 
 hundred years have not yet fulfilled his words. Two centuries 
 UL o. the sawing of timber was done by hand ; the carriage 
 wheels ran on wooden axles; the land was tilled by wooden 
 ploughs. And it was to little purpose that thev had pit-coal 
 or that loojps were improved, unless Watt, and Stephenson had 
 taught them to work force-pumps and power-looms by steam. 
 The great strides were all taken within the last hundred 
 years. The life of Sir Robert Peel, who died, the other day, 
 
236 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 the model Englishman, very properly has, for a frontispiece, 
 a drawing of the spinning-jenny, which wove the web of his 
 fortunes. Hargreaves invented the spinning-jenny, and died 
 in a workhouse. Arkwright improved the invention ; and the 
 machine dispensed with the work of ninety-nine men : that is, 
 one spinner could do as much work as one hundred had done 
 before. The loom was improved further. But the men would 
 sometimes strike for wages, and combine against the mas 
 ters, and, about 1829 -30, much fear was felt, lest the trade 
 would be drawn away by these interruptions, and the emigra 
 tion of the spinners, to Belgium and the United States. Iron 
 and steel are very obedient. Whether it were not possible to 
 make a spinner that would not rebel, nor mutter, nor scowl, 
 nor strike for wages, nor emigrate 1 At the solicitation of the 
 masters, after a mob and riot at Staley Bridge, Mr. Roberts of 
 Manchester undertook to create this peaceful fellow, instead 
 of the quarrelsome fellow God had made. After a few trials, 
 he succeeded, and, in 1830, procured a patent for his self-act 
 ing mule ; a creation, the delight of mill-owners, and " des 
 tined," they said, " to restore order among the industrious 
 classes " ; a machine requiring only a child s hand tp piece the 
 broken yarns. As Arkwright had destroyed domestic spinning, 
 so Roberts destroyed the factory spinner. The power of 
 machinery in Great Britain, in mills, has been computed to be 
 equal to 600,000,000 men, one man being able by the aid of 
 steam to do the work which required two hundred and fifty 
 men to accomplish fifty years ago. The production has been 
 commensurate. England already had this laborious race, rich 
 soil, water, wood, coal, iron, and favorable climate. Eight 
 hundred years ago, commerce had made it rich, and it was 
 recorded, " England is the richest of all the northern nations." 
 The Norman historians recite, that "in 1067, William carried 
 with him into Normandy, from England, more gold and silver 
 than had ever before been seen in Gaul. But when, to this 
 labor and trade, and these native resources was added this 
 goblin of steam, with his myriad arms, never tired, working 
 night and day everlastingly, the amassing of property has run 
 out of all figures. It makes the motor of the last ninety years. 
 The steam-pipe has added to her population and wealth the 
 equivalent of four or five Englands. Forty thousaod ships are 
 entered in Lloyd s lists. The yield of wheat has gone on from 
 2,000,000 quarters in the time of the Stuarts, to 13,000,000 
 in 1854. A thousand million of pounds sterling are said to 
 
WEALTH. 237 
 
 compose the floating money of commerce. In 1848, Lord 
 John Ixussell stated that the people of this country had laid 
 out 900,000,600 of capital ill railways, in the last tour \ears. 
 But a better measure than these sounding figures is the t Mi 
 niate, that there is wealth enough in Kngland to support the 
 entire population in idleness for one year. 
 
 The wise. \rrsatilc. all -giving niaehinery makes chisels, 
 roads, locomotives, telegraphs. \Yhitworth divides a bar to 
 a millionth of an inch. Steam twines huge cannon into 
 wreaths, as easily as it braids straw, and vies with the volcanic 
 forces which twisted the strata. It can clothe shingle moun 
 tains with ship-oaks, make sword-blades that will cut gun- 
 ban-els in two. In Kgypt. it can plant forests, and bring 
 rain after three thousand years. Already it is ruddering the 
 balloon, and the next war will be fought in the air. But 
 another machine more potent in England than steam, is the 
 Bank. It votes an issue of bills, population is stimulated, and 
 cities rise ; it refuses loans, and emigration empties the 
 country; trade sinks; revolutions break out; kings are de 
 throned. I .y these new agents our social system is moulded. 
 By dint of steam and of money, war and commerce are 
 changed. Nations have lost their old omnipotence ; the patri 
 otic tie does not hold. Nations are getting obsolete, we go 
 and live where we will. Steam has enabled men to choose 
 what law they will live under. Money makes place for them. 
 The telegraph is a limp-band that will hold the Fenris-wolf of 
 war. For now, that a telegraph line runs through France and 
 Europe, from London, every message it transmits makes 
 stronger by one thread the band which war will have to 
 cut. 
 
 The introduction of these elements gives new resources to 
 existing proprietors. A sporting duke may fancy that the 
 state depends on the House of Lords, but the engineer sees, 
 that every stroke of the steam-piston gives value to the duke s 
 land, fills it with tenants : doubles, quadruples, centuples the 
 duke s cnpital. and creates new measures and new necessities 
 for the culture of his children. Of course, it draws the no 
 bility into the competition as stockholders in the mine, the 
 canal, the railway, in the application of steam to agriculture, 
 and sometimes into trade. But it also introduces la - 
 into the same competition ; the old ener.L r v of the Norse race 
 arms itself with these magnificent powers ; new men prove an 
 overmatch for the land-owner, and the mill buys out the 
 
238 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 castle. Scandinavian Thor, who once forged his bolts in icy 
 Hecla, and built galleys by lonely fiords ; in England, has ad 
 vanced with the times, has shorn his beard, enters Parliament, 
 sits down at a desk in the India House, and lends Miollnir to 
 Birmingham for a steam-hammer. 
 
 The creation of wealth in England in the last ninety years 
 is a main fact in modern history. The wealth of London de 
 termines prices all over the globe. All things precious, or 
 useful, or amusing, or intoxicating, are sucked into this com 
 merce and floated to London. Some English private fortunes 
 reach, and some exceed, a million of dollars a year. A hun 
 dred thousand palaces adorn the island. All that can feed the 
 senses and passions, all that can succor the talent, or arm the 
 hands of the intelligent middle class who never spare in what 
 they buy for their own consumption ; all that can aid science, 
 gratify taste, or soothe comfort, is in open market. Whatever 
 is excellent and beautiful in civil, rural, or ecclesiastic archi 
 tecture ; in fountain, garden, or grounds; the English noble 
 crosses sea and land to see and to copy at home. The taste 
 and science of thirty peaceful generations ; the gardens which 
 Evelyn planted ; the temples and pleasure-houses which Inigo 
 Jones and Christopher Wren built ; the wood that Gibbons 
 carved ; the taste of foreign and domestic artists, Shenstone, 
 Pope, Brown, London, Paxton, are in the vast auction, and the 
 hereditary principle heaps on the owner of to-day the benefit 
 of ages of owners. The present possessors are to the full as 
 absolute as any of their fathers, in choosing and procuring 
 what they like. This comfort and splendor, the breadth of 
 lake and mountain, tillage, pasture, and park, sumptuous 
 castle and modern villa, all consist with perfect order. 
 They have no revolutions ; no horse-guards dictating to the 
 crown ; no Parisian poissardea and barricades ; no mob : but 
 drowsy habitude, daily dress-dinners, wine, and ale, and beer, 
 and gin, and sleep. 
 
 With this power of creation, and this passion for indepen 
 dence, property has reached an ideal perfection. It is felt and 
 treated as the national life-blood. The laws are framed to 
 give property the securest possible basis, and the provisions to 
 lock and transmit it have exercised the cunningest heads in a 
 profession which never admits a fool. The rights of property 
 nothing but felony and treason can override. The house is a 
 castle which the king cannot enter. The Bank is a strong box 
 to which the king has no key. Whatever surly sweetness pos- 
 
WKALIII. 239 
 
 session can give, is tasted in Mngland to the dregs. Vested 
 rights are awful things, and absolute possession gives the 
 smallest freeholder identity of interest with the duke. High 
 stone fences, and padlocked garden gates announce the absolute 
 will of the owner to be alone. Kvery whim of exaggerated 
 -in is jnit into stone and iron, into silver and gold, with 
 costly deliberation and detail. 
 
 An Kn_dishm.in hears that the Queen Dowager wishes to 
 establish some claim to put her park puling a rod forward into 
 his grounds, so as to get a coach way, ami save her a mile to 
 the avenue. Instantly he transforms his paling into stone ma 
 sonry, solid as the walls of Cuma, and all Europe cannot pre 
 vail on him to sell or compound for an inch of the land. 
 They delight in a freak as the proof of their sovereign free 
 dom. Sir Kdwartl Boynton, at Spie Park, at Cadenham. on 
 a precipice of incomparable prospect, built a house like a long 
 barn, which had not a window on the prospect side. Straw 
 berry Hill of Horace Walpole, Konthill Abbey of Mr. Beck^ 
 ford, were freaks; and Newstead Abbey became one in tho 
 hands of Lord Byron. 
 
 But the proudest result of this creation has been tho great 
 and refined forces ir has put at the disposal of the private citi 
 zen. In the social world, an Englis mian to-day has the best 
 lot. He is a king in a plain coat. He goes with the most 
 powerful protection, keeps the best company, is armed by the 
 best education, is seconded by wealth ; and his English name 
 and accidents are like a flourish of trumpets announcing him. 
 This, with his quiet style of manners, gives him the power of 
 a sovereign, without the inconveniences which belong to that 
 rank. I much prefer the condition of an Knglish gentleman 
 of the better class, to that of any potentate in Europe, - 
 whether for travel, or for opportunity of society, or for access 
 to means of science or study, or for mere comfort and easy 
 healthy relation to people at home. 
 
 Such as we have seen is the wealth of England, a mighty 
 and made good in whatever details we eaiv to explore. 
 The Cause mad spring of it is the wealth of temperament in 
 the people. The wonder of Brit-tin is this plenteous nature. 
 Her worthies are ever surrounded by as good men as th -m- 
 selves ; each is a captain a hundred strong, and that wealth 
 of men is represented airain in the faculty of each individual, 
 that he has waste stivnirth, power to spare. The English 
 arc so rich, and seem to have established a taproot in the bow- 
 
240 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 els of the planet, because they are constitutionally fertile and 
 creative. 
 
 But a man must keep an eye on his servants, if he would 
 not have them rule him. Man is a shrewd inventor, and is 
 ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own struc 
 ture, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, 
 and leather, to some required function in the work of the 
 world. But it is found that the machine unmans the user. 
 What he gains in making cloth, he loses in general power. 
 There should be temperance in making cloth, as well as in 
 eating. A man should not be a silkworm ; nor a nation a 
 tent of caterpillars. The robust rural Saxon degenerates in 
 the mills to the Leicester stock inger, to the imbecile Manches 
 ter spinner, far on the way to be spiders and needles. The 
 incessant repetition of the same hand-work dwarfs the man, 
 robs him of his strength, wit, and versatility, to make a pin- 
 polisher, a buckle-maker, or any other specialty ; and present 
 ly, in a change of industry, whole towns are sacrificed like ant 
 hills, when the fashion of shoe-strings supersedes buckles, 
 when cotton takes the place of linen, or railways of turnpikes, 
 or when commons are enclosed by landlords. Then society is 
 admonished of the mischief of the division of labor, and that 
 the best political economy is care and culture of men ; for, in 
 these crises, all are ruined except such as are proper individu 
 als, capable of thought, and of new choice and the application 
 of their talent to new labor. Then again come in new calami 
 ties. England is aghast at the disclosure of her fraud in the 
 adulteration of food, of drugs, and of almost every fabric in 
 her mills and shops ; finding that -milk will not nourish, nor 
 sugar sweeten, nor bread satisfy, nor pepper bite the tongue, 
 nor glue stick. In true England all is false and forged. This 
 too is the reaction of machinery, but of the larger machinery 
 of commerce. T is not, I suppose, want of probity, so much 
 as the tyranny of trade, which necessitates a perpetual com 
 petition of underselling, and that again a perpetual deteriora 
 tion of the fabric. 
 
 The machinery has proved, like the balloon, unmanageable, 
 and flies away with the aeronaut. Steam from the first hissed 
 and screamed to warn him ; it was dreadful with its explo 
 sion, and crushed the engineer. The machinist has wrought 
 and watched, engineers and firemen without number have been 
 sacrificed in learning to tame and guide the monster. But 
 harder still it has proved to resist and rule the dragon Money, 
 
WEALTH. 241 
 
 with his paper wings. Chancellors and Boards of Trade, Pitt, 
 Peel, and Robinson, and their Parliaments, and their whole 
 generation, adopted false principles, and went to their graves 
 in the belief that tliev were enriching the country which they 
 
 were impoverishing. They congratulated each other on ruinous 
 
 expedients. It is rare to find a merchant who knows why a 
 crisis occurs in trade, why prices rise or fall, or who knows the 
 mischief of paper money. In the culmination of national pros 
 perity, in the annexation of countries; building of ships, de 
 pots, towns ; in the influx of tons of gold and silver ; amid the 
 chuckle of chancellors and financiers, it was found that bread 
 rose to famine prices, that the yeoman was forced to sell his 
 cow and pig, his tools, and his acre of land ; and the dreadful 
 barometer of the poor-rates was touching the point of niin. 
 The poor-nit e was sucking in the solvent classes, and forcing 
 an exodus of farmers and mechanics. What befalls from the 
 violence of financial crises, befalls daily in the violence of arti 
 ficial legislation. 
 
 Such a wealth has England earned, ever new, bounteous, 
 and augmenting. But the question recurs, does she take the 
 step beyond, namely, to the wise use, in view of the supreme 
 wealth of nations < We estimate the wisdom of nations by 
 seeing what they did with their surplus capital. And, in view 
 of these injuries, some compensation has been attempted in 
 England. A part of the money earned returns to the brain 
 to buy schools, libraries, bishops, astronomers, chemists, and 
 artists with : and a part to repair the wrongs of this intem 
 perate weaving, by hospitals, savings-banks, .Mechanics Insti 
 tutes, public grounds, and other charities and amenities. But 
 the antidotes are frightfully inadequate, and the evil requires 
 a deeper cure, which time and a simpler social organization 
 must supply. At present, she does not rule her wealth. She 
 is simply a good England, but no divinity, or wise and in 
 structed sold. She too is in the stream of fate, one victim 
 more in a common catastrophe. 
 
 But beiiiLT in the fault, she has the misfortune of greatness 
 to be held as the chief offender. England must be held re 
 sponsible tor the despotism of expense. Her prosperity, the 
 splendor which so much manhood and talent and perseverance 
 has thrown upon vulgar aims, is the verv argument of mate 
 rialism. Her success strengthens the hands of base wealth. 
 Who can propose to youth poverty and wisdom, when mean 
 
 VOL. n. 11 r 
 
242 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 gain has arrived at the conquest of letters and arts ; when 
 English success has grown out of the very renunciation of 
 principles, and the dedication to outsides. A civility of trifles, 
 of money and expense, an erudition of sensation takes place, 
 and the putting as many impediments as we can, between the 
 man and his objects. Hardly the bravest among them have 
 the manliness to resist it successfully. Hence, it has come, 
 that not the aims of a manly life, but the means of meeting 
 a certain ponderous expense, is that which is to be considered 
 by a youth in England, emerging from his minority. A large 
 family is reckoned a misfortune. And it is a consolation in 
 the death of the young, that a source of expense is closed. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 ARISTOCRACY. 
 
 / T~~ V HE feudal character of the English state, now that it ia 
 getting obsolete, glares a little, in contrast with the 
 democratic tendencies. The inequality of power and prop 
 erty shocks republican nerves. Palaces, halls, villas, walled 
 parks, all over England, rival the splendor of royal seats. 
 Many of the halls, like Haddon, or Kedleston, are beautiful 
 desolations. The proprietor never saw them, or never lived 
 in them. Primogeniture built these sumptuous piles, and, I 
 suppose, it is the sentiment of every traveller, as it was mine, 
 T was well to come ere these were gone. Primogeniture is a 
 cardinal rule of English property and institutions. Laws, 
 customs, manners, the very persons and faces, affirm it. 
 P The frame of society is aristocratic, the taste of the people 
 is loyal. The estates, names, and manners of the nobles nat 
 ter the fancy of the people, and conciliate the necessary sup 
 port. In spite of broken faith, stolen charters, and the devas 
 tation of society by the profligacy of the court, we take sides 
 as we read for the loyal England and King Charles s "return 
 to his right " with his Cavaliers, knowing what a heartless 
 trifler he is, and what a crew of God-forsaken robbers they 
 are. The people of England knew as much. But the fair 
 idea of a settled government connecting itself with heraldic 
 names, with the written and oral history of Europe, and, at 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 243 
 
 last, with the Hebrew religion, and the oldest traditions of 
 tin- \vi.rld, WM too pleasing ;i vision to In- shattered by a few 
 offensive realities, and the politics of shoemakers and coster- 
 mongers. Tin 1 hop. s of tlu- commoners take tlie same direc- 
 tion with the interest of the patricians. Kvery man who be 
 comes rich buys land, and does what he can to fortify the 
 nobility, into which he hopes to rise. The Anglican clergy 
 are identified with the aristocracy. Time find law have made 
 the joining and moulding perfect in every part. Tlie Cathe 
 drals, the I niversities, the national music, the popular ro 
 mances, conspire to uphold the heraldry, which the cm-rent 
 polities of the day are supping. The taste of the people is 
 cons. i-vative. They are proud of the castles, and of the lan 
 guage and symbol of chivalry. Kveii the word "lord" is the 
 luckiest style that is used in any language to designate a 
 patrician. The superior education and manners of the nobles 
 recommend them to the country. "7 
 
 The Norwegian pirate got \yhnThe could, and held it for his 
 eldest son. The Norman noble, who was the Norwegian pirate 
 baptized, did likewise. There was this advantage of Western 
 over Oriental nobility, that this was recruited from below. 
 English history is aristocracy with the doors open. Who has 
 courage and faculty, let him come in. Of course, the terms 
 of admission to this club are hard and high. The selfishness 
 of the nobles comes in aid of the interest of the nation to 
 require signal merit. Piracy and war gave place to trade, 
 politics, and letters : the war-lord to the law-lord ; the law- 
 lord to the merchant and the mill-owner; but the privilege 
 was kept, whilst the means of obtaining it were changed. 
 
 The foundations of these families lie deep in Norwegian 
 exploits bv sea. and Saxon sturdiness on land. All nobility in 
 its beginnings was somebody s natural superiority. The things 
 these Knglish have done were not done without peril of Ii|i>, 
 nor without wisdom and conduct : and the first hands, it may 
 be presumed, were often challenged to show their right to 
 their honors, or yield them to better men. He that will be 
 a head, let him be a bridge," said the Welsh chief Benegridran, 
 when lie carried all his men over the river on his back. " He 
 shall have the hook." said the mother of Alfred, "who can 
 read it"; and Alfred won it by that title: and I make no 
 doubt that feudal tenure was no sinecure, but baron, knight, 
 and tenant often had their memories refreshed, in regard to 
 the service by which they held their lands. The De Veres, 
 
244 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 Bohuns, Mowbrays, and Plantagenets were not addicted to 
 contemplation. The Middle Age adorned itself with proofs 
 of manhood and devotion. Of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of 
 Warwick, the Emperor told Henry V. that no Christian king 
 had such another knight for wisdom, nurture, and manhood, 
 and caused him to l>e named, " Father of curtesie." " Our 
 success in France," says the historian, "lived and died with 
 him." * 
 
 The war-lord earned his honors, and no donation of land 
 was large, as long as it brought the duty of protecting it, hour 
 by hour, against a terrible enemy. In France and in England, 
 the nobles were, down to a late day, born and bred to war ; 
 and the duel, which in peace still held them to the risks of war, 
 diminished the envy that, in trading and studious nations, 
 would else have pried into their title. They were looked on 
 as men who played high for a great stake. 
 
 Great estates are not sinecures, if they are to be kept great. 
 A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence. In the same 
 line of Warwick, the successor next but one to Beauchamp, 
 was the stout earl of Henry VI. and Edward IV. Few es 
 teemed themselves in the mode, whose heads were not adorned 
 with the black ragged staff, his badge. At his house in Lon 
 don, six oxen were daily eaten at a breakfast ; and every tavern 
 was full of his meat ; and who had any acquaintance in his 
 family, should have as much boiled and roast as he could carry 
 on a long dagger. 
 
 The new age brings new qualities into request, the virtues 
 of pirates gave way to those of planters, merchants, senators, 
 and scholars. Comity, social talent, and fine manners, no 
 doubt, have had their part also. I have met somewhere with 
 a historiette, which, whether more or less true in its particu 
 lars, carries a general truth. " How came the Duke of Bedford 
 by his great landed estates 1 His ancestor having travelled on 
 the continent, a lively, pleasant man, became the companion 
 of a foreign prince wrecked on the Dorsetshire coast, where 
 Mr. Russell lived. The prince recommended him to Henry 
 VIII., who, liking his company, gave him a large share of the 
 plundered church lands." 
 
 The pretence is that the noble is of unbroken descent from 
 the Norman, and has never worked for eight hundred years. 
 But the fact is otherwise. Where is Bohun 1 where is De Vere 1 
 The lawyer, the farmer, the silk-mercer, lies perdu under the 
 
 * Fuller s Worthies. II. p 472. 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 245 
 
 coronet, and winks to the antiquary to say nothing ; especially 
 skilful lawyers, nobody s sons, \v!n did some piece of work ;it 
 
 a nice moment for government . and were rewarded with ermine. 
 
 The national tastes of the Knulish do not lead them to the 
 life of the courtier, hut to seeure the comfort and independence 
 of their homos. The aristocracy are marked by their predi- 
 lection for COlintry4ifa fhey are called the county-families. 
 They have often no residence in London, and only go thither a 
 short time, during the season, to see the opera ; hut they con 
 centrate tho love and labor of many gonerat ions on the build- 
 in-.:, phut ing, and decoration of their homesteads. Some of 
 them are too old and too proud to wear titles, or. as Sheridan 
 said of Coke, " di>duin to hide their head in a coronet ": and 
 some curious examples are cited to sho\v the stability of Kng- 
 lish families. Their proverb is, that, fifty miles from London, 
 a family will last a hundred years ; at a hundred miles, two 
 hundred voars ; and soon ; but I doubt that steam, the enemy 
 of time, as we ll as of space, will disturb these ancient rules. 
 Sir Henry Wottoii says of the first Duke of Buckingham : "He 
 was born at Hrookehy in Leicestershire, when- his ancestors 
 had chiefly continued about the space of four hundred years, 
 rather without obscurity, than with any great lustre. 1 * Wrax- 
 all says, that, in 1 ~S I , Lord Surrey, afterwards Duke of Nor 
 folk, told him, that when the year 1783 should arrive, he 
 mcanr to ^ivo a grand festival to all the descendants of tho 
 body of Jockey of Norfolk, to mark the day when the dukedom 
 should have remained three hundred years in their house, since 
 its creation by Richard III. Pepys tells us, in writing of an 
 Karl Oxford, in 1GGG, that the honor had now remained in that 
 name and blood six hundred years. 
 
 This long descent of families and this cleaving through ageg 
 to the MOM spot of -round captivates the imagination. It 
 has too a connection with the names of the towns and districts 
 of the country. 
 
 The names are excellent, an atmosphere of legendary mel 
 
 odv spread over the land. Older than all epics and histories, 
 
 : clothe a nation, this undershirt sits close to the body. 
 
 history too, and what stores of primitive and sava-o 
 
 observation it infolds ! Cambridge is the bridge of the Cam; 
 
 M the field of the river Sheaf; Leirrster the rttsfra or 
 
 cam]) of the Lear or Leir (now Soar) ; 1 loch dale, of the Koch ; 
 
 Exeter or Excester, the castra of the Kx ; Kxniouth, Dart* 
 
 * Reliquiae Wottonianw, p. 298. 
 
246 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 mouth, Sidmouth, Teignmouth, the mouths of the Ex. Dart, 
 Sid, and Teigii rivers. Waltham is strong town ; Radcliffe is 
 red cliff ; and so on : a sincerity and use in naming very 
 striking to an American, whose country is whitewashed all over 
 by unmeaning names, the cast-off clothes of the country from 
 which its emigrants came ; or, named at a pinch from a psalm- 
 tune. But the English are those " barbarians " of Jamblichus, 
 who "arc stable in their manners, and firmly continue to em 
 ploy the same words, which also are dear to the gods." 
 
 T is an old sneer, that the Irish peerage drew their names 
 from playbooks. The English lords do not call their lands after 
 thcj_own names, but call themselves after their lands ; as if 
 the man represented the country that bred him ; and they 
 rightly wear the token of the glebe that gave them birth ; sug 
 gesting that the tie is not cut, but that there in London, 
 the crags of Argyle, the kail of Cornwall, the downs of Devon, 
 the iron of Wales, the clays of Stafford, are neither forgetting 
 nor forgotten, but know the man who was born by them, and 
 who, like the long line of his fathers, has carried that crag, 
 that shore, dale, fen, or woodland, in his blood and manners. 
 "fj has, too, the advantage of suggesting responsibleness. A 
 susceptible man could not wear a name which represented in a 
 strict sense a city or a county of England, without hearing in 
 it a challenge to duty and honor. 
 
 The predilection of the patricians for residence in the coun 
 try, combined with the degree of liberty possessed by the 
 peasant, makes the safety of the English hall. Mirabeau wrote 
 prophetically from England, in 1784 : " If revolution break out 
 in France, I tremble for the aristocracy : their chateaux will be 
 reduced to ashes, and their blood spilt in torrents. The Eng 
 lish tenant would defend his lord to the last extremity." The 
 English go to their estates for grandeur. The French live at 
 court, and exile themselves to their estates for economy. As 
 they do not mean to live with their tenants, they do not con 
 ciliate them, but wring from them the last sous. Evelyn writes 
 from Blois, in 1644 : " The wolves are here in such numbers, 
 that they often come and take children out of the streets ; yet 
 will not the Duke, who is sovereign here, permit them to be 
 destroyed." 
 
 In evidence of the wealth amassed by ancient families, the 
 traveller is shown the palaces in Piccadilly, Burlington House, 
 Devonshire House, Lansdowne House in Berkshire Square, and, 
 lower down in the city, a few noble houses which still with- 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 247 
 
 stand in all their amplitude the encroachment of streets. The 
 Duke of Bedford includes or included a mile square in the 
 heart >f London, where the British Museum, onee Montague 
 House, ii"\\ -lands, and the land occupied \)\ \Yolnirn Square, 
 Bedford Square. Russell Square. The Marquis of \\estminster 
 built within a few years the series of squares called Pu lgravia. 
 Statiord llfi.M- is the n Mr>t j.alace in l.ondon. Northumber 
 land House holds its place by Charing Cross. Chesterfield 
 HoK.-e remains in Audlcy Street. Sion House and Holland 
 are i:i the suburbs, lint most of the historical houses 
 are masked or lost in the modern uses to which trade or char 
 ity has converted them. A multitude of town palaces contain 
 inestimable galleries of art. 
 
 Ill the country, the size of private estates is more impres 
 sive. From Barnard Castle I rode on the highway twenty 1 hree 
 miles from High Force, a fall of the Tees, towards Darlington, 
 past Ruby Castle, through the estate of the Duke of ( leveland. 
 The Marquis of Breadalbane rides out. of his house a hundred 
 mil s in a straight line to the sea, on his own property. The 
 Duke of Sutherland owns the county of Sutherland, stretching 
 ! Scotland from sea to sea. The Duke of Devonshire, 
 besides his other estates, owns 90,000 acres in the county of 
 Derbv. The Duke of Richmond has 40,000 acres at Good 
 wood , and 300,000 at Cordon Castle. The Duke of Norfolk s 
 park in Sussex is fifteen miles in circuit. An agriculturist 
 bought lately the island of Lewes, in Hebrides, containing 
 500,000 acres. The possessions of the Earl of Lonxlale gpwe 
 him eight seats in Parliament. This is the Heptarchy a-ain : 
 and before the Reform of 1832, one hundred and fifty-four 
 persons sent three hundred and seven members to Parliament. 
 The borough-mongers governed England. 
 
 These luge domains are growing larger. The great estates 
 are absorbing the small freeholds. In 178G, the soil of Eng 
 land was owned by I .")! ),000 corporations and proprietors ; and, 
 in IS^L . by 32,000. These broad estates find room in this nar 
 row island. All over England, scattered at short intervals 
 among ship-yards, mills, mines, and forges, are the paradises 
 of the nobles, where the livelong repose and refinement are 
 heightened by the contrast with the roar of industry and ne- 
 .iy, out of which you have stepped aside. 
 
 I was surprised to observe the very small attendance usual 
 ly in the House of Lords. Out of 573 peers, on ordinary days, 
 
248 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 only twenty or thirty. Where are they ? I asked. " At home 
 on their estates, devoured by ennui, or in the Alps, or up the 
 Rhine, in the Harz Mountains, or in Egypt, or in India, on the 
 Ghauts." But, with such interests at stake, how can these 
 men afford to neglect them? " 0," replied my friend, "why 
 should they work for themselves, when every man in England 
 works for them, and will suffer before they come to harm 1 " 
 The hardest radical instantly uncovers, and changes his tone to 
 xa lord. It was remarked on the 10th April, 1848 (the day 
 |of the Chartist demonstration), that the upper classes were, for 
 [the first time, actively interesting themselves in their own de 
 fence, and men of rank were sworn special constables, with the 
 rest. " Besides, why need they sit out the debate ? Has not 
 the Duke of Wellington, at this moment, their proxies, the 
 proxies of fifty peers in his pocket, to vote for them, if there 
 be an emergency 1 " 
 
 It is however true, that the existence of the House of Peers 
 as a branch of the government entitles them to fill half the 
 Cabinet ; and their weight of property and station give them 
 a virtual nomination of the other half ; whilst they have their 
 share in the subordinate offices, as a school of training. This 
 monopoly of political power has given them their intellectual 
 and social eminence in Europe. A few law lords and a few po 
 litical lords take the brunt of public business. In the army, 
 the nobility fill a large part of the high commissions, and give 
 to these a tone of expense and splendor, and also of exclusive- 
 ness. They have borne their full share of duty and danger in 
 this service ; and there are few noble families which have not 
 paid in some of their members, the debt of life or limb, in the 
 sacrifices of the Russian war. For the rest, the nobility have 
 the lead in matters of state, and of expense ; in questions of 
 taste, in social usages, in convivial and domestic hospitalities. 
 In general, all that is required of them is to sit securely, to pre 
 side at public meetings, to countenance charities, and to give 
 the example of that decorum so dear to the British heart. 
 
 If one asks, in the critical spirit of the clay, what service 
 this class have rendered ? uses appear, or they would have 
 perished long ago. Some of these are easily enumerated, 
 others more subtle make a part of unconscious history. Their 
 institution is one step in the progress of society. For a race 
 yields a nobility in some form, however we name the lords, as 
 surely as it yields women. 
 
 The English nobles are high-spirited, active, educated men, 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 240 
 
 born to wealth and power, who have run through every coun 
 try, and ki jiT in every country the lest company, have seen 
 every seen t of art and nature, and, when men of any ability 
 OF ambition, have been consulted iii the conduct of every im 
 portant action. You cannot wield -Teat agencies without lend 
 ing yourself to them, and \\hrn it happens that the spirit of 
 the earl UK vis his rank and duties, we have the best examples 
 of behavior. Power of any kind readily appears in the inan- 
 ner> : and beneficent power, if t<il< nt <!< !>/< n fa/re, gives a 
 majesty whicli cannot be concealed or resisted. 
 
 These people seem to gain as much as they lose by their 
 position. They survey society, as from the top of St. Paul s, 
 and if they never hear plain truth from men, they see the best 
 of everything, in every kind, and they see things so grouped 
 and amassed as to infer easily the sum and genius, instead of 
 tedious particularities. Their good behavior deserves all its 
 fame, and they have that simplicity, and that air of repose, 
 whicli are the tinest ornament of greatness. 
 
 The upper classes have only birth, say the people here, and 
 not thoughts. Yes, but they have manners, and, t is wonder 
 ful, how much talent runs into manners : nowhere and never 
 so much as in England. They have the sense of superiority, 
 the absence of all the ambitious effort which disgusts in the 
 aspiring (lasses, a pure tone of thought and feeling, and the 
 power to command, among their other luxuries, the presence 
 of the most accomplished men in their festive meetings. 
 
 Loyalty is in the English a sub-religion. They wear the 
 laws as ornaments, and walk by their faith in their painted May- 
 Fair, as if among the forms of gods. The economist of 1855 
 who asks, of what use are the lords ? may learn of Franklin to 
 ask, of what use is a baby] They have been a social church 
 proper to inspire sentiments mutually honoring the lover and 
 the loved. Politeness is the ritual of society, as pravers are 
 of the church ; a school of manners, and a gentle blessing to 
 the age in which it grow. T is a romance adorning English 
 life with a larger hori/.on ; a midway heaven, fulfilling to their 
 MM their fairy tales and poetry/ This, just as far as the 
 breeding <>f the nobleman, really made him brave, handsome, 
 iplishod, and great-hearted. 
 
 On ireneral grounds, whatever tends to form manners, or to 
 
 finish men, has a L r reat value. Every one who has tasted the 
 
 delight of friendship, will respect everv social guard which our 
 
 manners can establish, tending to secure from the intrusion 
 
 11* 
 
250 ENGLISH TEAITS. 
 
 of frivolous and distasteful people. The jealousy of every 
 class to guard itself, is a testimony to the reality they have 
 found in life. When a man once knows that he has done jus 
 tice to himself, let him dismiss all terrors of aristocracy as 
 superstitions, so far as he is concerned. He who keeps the 
 door of a mine, whether of cobalt, or mercury, or nickle, or 
 plumbago, securely knows that the world cannot do without 
 him. Everybody who is real is open and ready for that which 
 is also real. 
 
 Besides, these are they who make England that strong-box 
 and museum it is ; who gather and protect works of art, 
 dragged from amidst burning cities and revolutionary coun 
 tries, and brought hither out of all the world. I look with 
 respect at houses six, seven, eight hundred, or, like Warwick 
 Castle, nine hundred years old. I pardoned high park fences, 
 when 1 saw, that, besides does and pheasants, these have pre 
 served Arundel marbles, Townley galleries, Howard and Spen 
 serian libraries, Warwick and Portland vases, Saxon manu 
 scripts, monastic architectures, millennial trees, and breeds of 
 cattle elsewhere extinct. In these manors, after the frenzy of 
 war and destruction subsides a little, the antiquary finds the 
 frailest Roman jar, or crumbling Egyptian mummy-case, with 
 out so much as a new layer of dust, keeping the series of his 
 tory unbroken, and waiting for its interpreter, who is sure to 
 arrive. These lords are the treasurers and librarians of man 
 kind, engaged by their pride and wealth to this function. 
 
 Yet there were other works for British dukes to do. George 
 London, Quintinye, Evelyn, had taught them to make gardens. 
 Arthur Young, Bakewell, and Mechi have made them agricul 
 tural. Scotland was a camp until the day of Culloden. The 
 Dukes of Athol, Sutherland, Buccleugh, and the Marquis of 
 Brcadalbane have introduced the rape-culture, the sheep-farm, 
 wheat, drainage, the plantation of forests, the artificial re 
 plenishment of lakes and ponds with fish, the renting of game- 
 preserves. Against the cry of the old tenantry, and the sym 
 pathetic cry of the English press, they have rooted out and 
 planted anew, and now six millions of people live, and live 
 better on the same land that fed three millions. 
 
 The English barons, in every period, have been brave and 
 great, after the estimate and opinion of their times. The 
 grand old halls scattered up and down in England are dumb 
 vouchers to the state and broad hospitality of their ancient 
 lords. Shakespeare s portraits of good Duke Humphrey, of 
 
ABISTOCRACY. 251 
 
 "Warwick, of Northumberland, of Talbot, were drawn in strict 
 .i.-unv \\ith the tralitiins. A sketch of the Karl of 
 Shrewsbury, fr. in the pen of Oueen Eli/abet h s Archbishop 
 r;* Lord Herbert of Cherhury s autobiography; the 
 ivs of Sir Philip Sidney ; the anecdotes piv 
 served iv the antiquaries Fuller and Collins; some glimpses 
 at the interiors of noble houses, \\liich we owe to I epys and 
 Kvelvn ; the details which Ben Jonson s masques (performed 
 at Kenilworth, Althorpe, Belvoir, and other noble houses) re 
 cord i.r suggest; down to Aubrey s passages of the life of 
 Hohbes in the house of the Karl <>f Devon, are favorable pic- 
 of a romantic style of manners. IVnshurst still shines 
 for us, and its Christinas revels, "where logs not burn, but 
 men." At Wilton House, the " Arcadia" was written, amidst 
 conversations with Fulke (ireville, Lord Brooke, a man of no 
 vulgar mind, as his own poems declare him. 1 must hold 
 Ludlow Castlfi an honest house, for which Milton s "Comus" 
 was written, and the company nobly bred which performed it 
 with knowledge and sympathy. In the roll of nobles are 
 found poets, philosophers, chemists, astronomers, also men of 
 solid virtues and of lofty sentiments; often they have been 
 the friends and patrons of genius and learning, and especially 
 of the tine arts; and at this moment, almost every great house 
 has its sumptuous picture-gallery. 
 
 Of course, there is another side to this gorgeous show. 
 Every victory was the defeat of a party only less worthy. 
 Castles are proud things, but tis safest to^be outside of 
 them. War is a foul game, and yet war is not the worst part 
 of aristocratic history. In later times, when the baron, edu 
 cated only for war, with his brains paralyzed by his stomach, 
 found himself idle at home, he grew fat and wanton, and a 
 sorry brute. Grammont, Pepys, and Evelyn show the kennels 
 to which the king and court went in quest of pleasure. Pros 
 titutes taken from the theatres were made duchesses, their 
 ba-tards dukes and earls. "The young men sat uppermost, 
 the old serious lords were out of favor." The discourse that 
 the king s companions had with him was : poor and frothy." 
 No man who valued his head might do what these pot-com 
 panions familiarly did with the king. In logical sequence of 
 these dignified revels. IVpys can tell the heg _rarly shifts to 
 which the king was reduced, who could not find paper at his 
 
 * Dibdin s Literary Reminiscences, Vol. I. xii. 
 
252 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 council table, and " no handkerchers " in his wardrobe, " and 
 but three bands to his neck," and the linen-draper and the 
 stationer were out of pocket, and refusing to trust him, and 
 the baker will not bring bread any longer. Meantime, the 
 English Channel was swept, and London threatened by the 
 Dutch fleet, manned too by English sailors, who, having been 
 cheated of their pay for years by the king, enlisted with the 
 enemy. 
 
 The Selwyn correspondence in the reign of George III., dis 
 closes a rottenness in the aristocracy, which threatened to de 
 compose the state. The sycophancy and sale of votes and 
 honor, for place and title ; lewclness, gaming, smuggling, 
 bribery, and cheating ; the sneer at the childish indiscretion 
 of quarrelling with ten thousand a year ; the want of ideas ; 
 the splendor of the titles, and the apathy of the nation, are 
 instructive, and make the reader pause and explore the firm 
 bounds which confined these vices to a handful of rich men. 
 In the reign of the Fourth George, things do not seem to 
 have mended, and the rotten debauchee let down from a win 
 dow b/ an inclined plane into his coach to take the air, was a 
 scandal to Europe which the ill fame of his queen and of his 
 family did nothing to retrieve. 
 
 Under the present reign, the perfect decorum of the Court 
 is thought to have put a check on the gross vices of the 
 aristocracy ; yet gaming, racing, drinking, and mistresses 
 bring them down, and the democrat can still gather scandals, 
 if he will. Dismal anecdotes abound, verifying the gossip of 
 the last generation of dukes served by bailiffs, with all their 
 plate in pawn ; of great lords living by the showing of their 
 houses ; and of an old man wheeled in his chair from room to 
 room, whilst his chambers are exhibited to the visitor for 
 money : of ruined dukes and earls living in exile for debt. 
 The historic names of the Buckinghams, Beauforts, Marl- 
 boroughs, and Plertfords have gained no new lustre, and now 
 and then darker scandals break out, ominous as the new chap 
 ters added under the Orleans dynasty to the " Causes Oelebres " 
 in France. Even peers, who are men of worth and public 
 spirit, are overtaken and embarrassed by their vast expense. 
 The respectable Duke of Devonshire, willing to be the Mecsenas 
 and Lucullus of his island, is reported to have said that he 
 cannot live at Chatsworth but one month in the year. Their 
 many houses eat them up. They cannot sell them, because 
 they are entailed. They will not let them, for pride s sake, 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 253 
 
 but keep them empty, aired, :uid <hc grounds mown and 
 dressed, at a cost of four r live thousand pounds a year. 
 Tin spending is for a great part in servants, in many houses 
 diiiu a hundred. 
 
 M">t of them are only chargeable \vitli idleness, which, be 
 cause it squanders such vast p\ver of benefit, has the mischief 
 of crime. " They might be little Providences on earth," said 
 my friend, "and they are, for the most part, jockeys and fops." 
 Campbell sa\ s : " Acquaintance with the nobility, I could never 
 keep up. It requires a life of idleness, dressing, and attendance 
 on their parties." I suppose, too, that a feeling of self-respect 
 is driving cultivated men out of this society, as if the noblo 
 were slow to receive the lessons of the times, and had not 
 learned to disguise his pride of place. A man of wit, who is 
 also one of the celebrities of wealth and fashion, confessed to 
 Ins friend, that he could not enter their houses without being 
 made to feel that they were great lords, and he a low plebeian. 
 With the tribe of artistes, including the musical tribe, the 
 patrician morgue keeps no terms, but excludes them. When 
 Julia Grisi and Mario sang at the houses of the Duke of 
 Wellington and other grandees, a ribbon was stretched between 
 the singer and the company. 
 
 When every noble was a soldier, they were carefully bred to 
 great personal prowess. The education of a soldier is a 
 simpler affair than that of an carl in the nineteenth century. 
 And this was very seriously pursued ; they were expert in 
 everv species of equitation, to the most dangerous practices, 
 and this down to the accession of William of Orange. But 
 graver men appear to have trained their sons for civil affairs. 
 Kli/.abeth extended her thought to the future ; and Sir Philip 
 Sidney in his letter to his brother, and Milton and Evelyn, 
 gave "lAn m and hearty counsel. Already, too, the English 
 noble and squire were preparing for the career of the country- 
 gentleman, and his peaceable expense. They went from city 
 to city, learning receipts to make perfumes, sweet powders, 
 pomanders, antidotes, gathering seeds, gems, coins, and divers 
 curiosities, preparing for a private life thereafter, in which 
 they should take 1 pleasure in these recreations. 
 
 All advantages given to absolve the young patrician from 
 intellectual labor arc of course mistaken. "In the university, 
 noblemen are evmpted fn.m the public exercises for the de 
 gree, <fcc., by whi.-h they attain a degree called lionorari/. At 
 the same time the fees they have to pay for matriculation, 
 
254 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 and on all other occasions, are much higher." * Fuller records 
 " the observation of foreigners, that Englishmen, by making 
 their children gentlemen, before they are men, cause they are 
 so seldom wise men." This cockering justifies Dr. Johnson s 
 bitter apology for primogeniture, " that it makes but one fool 
 in a family." 
 
 The revolution in society has reached this class. The great 
 powers of industrial art have no exclusion of name or blood. 
 The tools of our time, namely, steam, ships, printing, money, 
 and popular education, belong to those who can handle them ; 
 and their effect has been, that advantages once confined to 
 men of family are now open to the whole middle class. The 
 road that grandeur levels for his coach, toil can travel in his 
 cart. 
 
 This is more manifest every day, but I think it is true 
 throughout English history. English history, wisely read, is 
 the vindication of the brain of that people. Here, at last, 
 were climate and condition friendly to the working faculty. 
 Who now will work and dare, shall rule. This is the charter, 
 or the chartism, which fogs, and seas, and rains proclaimed, 
 that intellect and personal force should make the law T ; tha.t 
 industry and administrative talent should administer ; that 
 work should wear the crown. I know that not this, but some 
 thing else is pretended. The fiction with which the noble and 
 the bystander equally please themselves is, that the former is 
 of unbroken descent from the Norman, and so has never worked 
 for eight hundred years. All the families are new, but the 
 name is old, and they have made a covenant with their mem 
 ories not to disturb it. But the analysis of the peerage and 
 gentry shows the rapid decay and extinction of old families, 
 the continual recruiting of these from new blood. The doors, 
 though ostentatiously guarded, are really open, and hence the 
 power of the bribe. All the barriers to rank only whet the 
 thirst, and enhance the prize. " Now," said Nelson, when 
 clearing for battle, " a peerage, or Westminster Abbey ! " 
 " I have no illusion left," said Sidney Smith, " but the Arch 
 bishop of Canterbury." " The lawyers," said Burke, " are only 
 birds of passage in this House of Commons," and then added, 
 with a new figure, " they have their best bower anchor in the 
 House of Lords." 
 
 Another stride that has been taken, appears in the perishing 
 of heraldry. Whilst the privileges of nobility are passing to 
 
 * Huber, History of English Universities. 
 
UNIVERSITIES. 255 
 
 the middle class, the badge is discredited, and the titles of 
 
 lord>hip are getting musty and cumbersome. I wonder that 
 sensible mm have not been already impatient of them. They 
 belong, with wigs, powder, and scarlet coats, to an earlier age, 
 and may be advantageously consigned, with paint and tattoo, 
 to the dignitariea of Australia ami Polyin 
 
 A multitude of Knglish, educated at the universities, bred 
 into their society with manners, ability, ami the gifts of for 
 tune, are every day confronting the peers on a footing of 
 equality, and outstripping them, as often, in the race of honor 
 and inllnence. That cultivated class is large and ever enlarg 
 ing, it is computed that, with titles and without, there arc 
 seventy thousand of these people coming and going in London, 
 who make up what is ealled high society. They cannot shut 
 their eves to the fact that an nntitled nobility possess all the 
 power without the inconveniences that belong to rank, and the 
 rich Knglishman goes over the world at the present day, draw 
 ing more than all the advantages which the strongest of hig 
 kings could command. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 OF British universities, Cambridge has the most illustrious 
 names on its list. At the present day, too, it has the ad 
 vantage of Oxford, counting in its til muni a greater number of 
 distinguished scholars. I regret that I had but a single day 
 wherein to sec King s College Chapel, the beautiful lawns and 
 gardens of the colleges, and a few of its gownsman. 
 
 But I availed myself of some repeated invitations to Oxford, 
 win-re I had introductions to Dr. Daubeiiy, Professor of Botany, 
 and to the I levins Professor of Divinity, as well as to a valued 
 friend, a Fellow of Oriel, and went thither on the last day of 
 March, 1S4S. 1 was the guest of my friend in Oriel, was 
 housed elose upon that college, and 1 lived on college hospi 
 talities. 
 
 My new friends showed me their cloisters, the Bodleian 
 Library, the Randolph (ialh-ry. Merton Hall, and the rest. I 
 saw several faithful, high minded young men, some of them in 
 
256 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 the mood of making sacrifices for peace of mind, a topic, of 
 course, on which I had no counsel to offer. Their affectionate 
 and gregarious ways reminded me at once of the habits of our 
 Cambridge men, though I imputed to these English an ad 
 vantage in their secure and polished manners. The halls are 
 rich with oaken wainscoting and ceiling. The pictures of the 
 founders hang from the walls ; the tables glitter with plate. 
 A youth came forward to the upper table, and pronounced the 
 ancient form of grace before meals, which, I suppose, has been 
 in use here for ages, Benedictus benedicat ; benedicitur, benedica- 
 tur. 
 
 It is a curious proof of the English use and wont, or of their 
 good-nature, that these young men are locked up every night 
 at nine o clock, and the porter at each hall is required to give 
 the name of any belated student who is admitted after that 
 hour. Still more descriptive is the fact, that out of twelve 
 hundred young men, comprising the most spirited of the aris 
 tocracy, a duel has never occurred. 
 
 Oxford is old, even in England, and conservative. Its foun 
 dations date from Alfred, and even from Arthur, if, as is alleged, 
 the Pheryllt of the Druids had a seminary here. In the reign 
 of Edward L, it is pretended, here were thirty thousand stu 
 dents ; and nineteen most noble foundations were then estab 
 lished. Chaucer found it as firm as if it had always stood ; 
 and it is in British story, rich with great names, the school of 
 the island, and the link of England to the learned of Europe. 
 Hither came Erasmus, with delight, in 1497. Albericus Gen- 
 tilis, in 1580, was relieved and maintained by the university. 
 Albert Alaskie, a noble Polonian, Prince of Sirad, who visited 
 England to admire the wisdom of Queen Elizabeth, was enter 
 tained with stage-plays in the Refectory of Christ-church, in 
 1583. Isaac Casaubon, coming from Henri Quatre of France, 
 by invitation of James L, was admitted to Christ s College, in 
 July, 1613. I saw the Ashmolean Museum, whither Elias 
 Ashmole, in 1682, sent twelve cart-loads of rarities. Here 
 indeed was the Olympia of all Antony Wood s and Aubrey s 
 games and heroes, and every inch of ground has its lustre. 
 For Wood s Atkence Oxonienscs, or calendar of the -winters of 
 Oxford for two hundred years, is a lively record of English 
 manners and merits, and as much a national monument as 
 Purchas s Pilgrims or Hansard s Register. On every side, 
 Oxford is redolent of age and authority. Its gates shut of 
 themselves against modern innovation. It is still governed 
 
UNIVERSITIES. 257 
 
 by the statutes of Archbishop Land. The books in Morton 
 Library are still chained to the wall. Here, on August -J7, 
 John Milton s I m I njmln J>/y//.v//,,> OgftflUtio and 
 mmitted to the flames. 1 sa\v the school- 
 court or <piadran-le. where, in h -s:?, the ( on vocation eattfled 
 the Leviathan of Thomas Hohbes to be publicly burnt. I do 
 not know whether this learned body have yet heard of the 
 Induration of American Independence, or whether the Ptole 
 maic astronomy does not still hold its ground against the nov 
 elties of Copernicus. 
 
 As mam sons, almost so many benefactors. It is usual for 
 a nobleman, or indeed for almost every wealthy student, on 
 quitting eolleire. to leave behind him some article of plate ; 
 and -.rifts of all values, from a hall, or a fellowship, or a library, 
 down to a picture or a spoon, are continually accruing in the 
 course of a century. My friend Doctor J. gave me the 
 following anecdote. In Sir Thomas Lawrence s collection at 
 London were the cartoons of Raphael and Michel Angelo. 
 This inestimable prize was ottered to Oxford l/niversity for 
 seven thousand pounds. The oiler was accepted, and the 
 committee charged with the affair had collected three thousand 
 pounds, when among other friends they called on Lord Eldon. 
 Instead of a hundred pounds, he surprised them by putting 
 down his name for three thousand pounds. They told him, 
 they should now very easily raise the remainder. : No," he 
 said, "your men have probably already contributed all they 
 can spare ; I can as well give the rest " : and he withdrew 
 his check for three thousand, and wrote four thousand pounds. 
 I saw the whole collection in April, 1848. 
 
 In the Bodleian Library, Dr. Bandincl showed me the manu 
 script Plato, of the date of A. D. 890, brought by Dr. Clarke 
 from Kgypt ; a manuscript Virgil, of the same century ; the 
 first Bible printed at Mentz (I believe in 1450) ; and a dupli 
 cate of the same, which had been deficient in about twenty 
 leaves at the end. But, one day, being in Venice, he bought 
 a room full of books and manuscripts, every scrap and frag 
 ment, for four thousand louis d ors, and had the doors 
 locked and seal"d by the consul. On proceeding, afterwards, 
 i i nine his purchase, he found the twenty deficient pages 
 of his Mentz Bible, in perfect order; brought them to Oxford, 
 with the rest of his purchase, and placed them in the 
 volume; but has too much awe for the Providence that ap 
 pears in bibliography also, to suffer the reunited parts to be 
 
 Q 
 
258 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 rebound. The oldest building here is two hundred years 
 younger than the frail manuscript brought by Dr. Clarke from 
 Egypt. No candle or fire is ever lighted in the Bodleian. Its 
 catalogue is the standard catalogue on the desk of every li 
 brary in Oxford. In each several college, they underscore in 
 red ink on this catalogue the titles of books contained in the 
 library of that college, the theory being that the Bodleian 
 has all books. This rich library spent during the last year 
 (1847) for the purchase of books 1668. 
 
 The logical English train a scholar as they train an engineer. 
 Oxford is a Greek factory, as Wilton mills weave carpet, and 
 Sheffield grinds steel. They know the use of a tutor, as they 
 know the use of a horse ; and they draw the greatest amount 
 of benefit out of both. The reading men are kept by hard 
 walking, hard riding, and measured eating and drinking, at the 
 top of their condition, and two days before the examination, 
 do no work, but lounge, ride, or run, to be fresh on the college 
 doomsday. Seven years residence is the theoretic period for a 
 master s degree. In point of fact, it has long been three years 
 residence, and four years more of standing. This " three 
 years " is about twenty-one months in all.* 
 
 " The whole expense," says Professor Sewel, " of ordinary 
 college tuition at Oxford, is about sixteen guineas a year." 
 But this plausible statement may deceive a reader unacquaint 
 ed with the fact, that the principal teaching relied on is private 
 tuition. And the expenses of private tuition are reckoned at 
 from 50 to 70 a year, or $ 1000 for the whole course of three 
 years and a half. At Cambridge $ 750 a year is economical, 
 and $ 1500 not extravagant.f 
 
 The number of students and of residents, the dignity of the 
 authorities, the value of the foundations, the history and the 
 architecture, the known sympathy of entire Britain in what is 
 done there, justify a dedication to study in the undergraduate, 
 such as cannot easily be in America, where his college is half 
 suspected by the Freshman to be insignificant in the scale be 
 side trade and politics. Oxford is a little aristocracy in itself, 
 numerous and dignified enough to rank with other estates in 
 the realm ; and where fame and secular promotion are to be 
 had for study, and in a direction which has the unanimous 
 respect of all cultivated nations. 
 
 This aristocracy, of course, repairs its own losses ; fills places, 
 
 * Hiiber, II. p. 304. 
 
 t Bristed, Five Years at an English Unirersity. 
 
UNIVERSITIES. 259 
 
 as they fall vacant, from the body of students. The number 
 of fellowships at Oxford is 640, averaging 1*00 a year, with 
 lodging and diet at the college. If a young American, loving 
 lea i n ing, and hindered bv povert v, were offered a h<>mc, a table, 
 the walks, and the library, in one <if these academical palaces, 
 and a thousand dollars a year as long as he chose to remain 
 a bachelor, he would dance for joy. Yet these young men thus 
 happily placed, and paid to read, are impatient of their few 
 checks, and many of them preparing to resign their fellowships. 
 They shuddered at the prospect of dying a Fellow, and they 
 pointed out to me a paralytic old man, who was assisted into 
 the hall. As the number of undergraduates at Oxford is only 
 about 1 _ <() or 1300, and many of these are never competitors, 
 the chance of a fellowship is very great. The income of the 
 nineteen colleges in conjectured at 150,000 a year. 
 
 The effect of this drill is the radical knowledge of Creek and 
 Latin, and of mathematics, and the solidity and taste of Eng 
 lish criticism. Whatever luck there may be in this or that 
 award, an Eton captain can write Latin longs and shorts, can 
 turn the ( ourt -( Juidc into hexameters, and it is certain that a 
 Senior Classic ean <|iiote correctly from the Cor/Jttx /%////////?, 
 and is critically learned in all the humanities. Greek erudition 
 exists on the Isis and Cam, whether the Maud man or the 
 IJra/cn Nose man be properly ranked or not; the atmosphere 
 is loaded with Creek learning; the whole river has reached a 
 certain height, and kills all that growth of weeds, which this 
 C;i-r tlian water kills. The English nature takes culture kindly. 
 So Milton thought. It refines the Norseman. Access to the 
 Creek mind lifts his standard of taste. He has enough to 
 think of, and, unless of an impulsive nature, is indisposed from 
 writing or speaking, by the fulness of his mind, and the new 
 severity of his taste. The great silent crowd of thorough-bred 
 Civ. Kins always known to be around him, the Knulish writer 
 cannot ignore. They prune his orations, and point his pen. 
 Hence, the style and tone of English journalism. The men 
 have learned accuracy and comprehension, logic, and pace, or 
 speed of work in ir. They have bottom, endurance, wind. When 
 born with good constitutions, they make those eupeptic study- 
 iniMuills, the cast-iron men, the Jnrn ///</, whose powers of 
 performance compare with ours, as the steam hammer with the 
 music-box; Cokes, Mansfields, Seldens, and Bentleys, and 
 when it happens that a superior brain puts a rider on this 
 aduflrable horse, we obtain those masters of the world who 
 
260 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 combine the highest energy in affairs, with a supreme cul 
 ture. 
 
 It is contended by those who have been bred at Eton, Har 
 row, Rugby, and Westminster, that the public sentiment with 
 in each of those schools is high-toned and manly ; that, in 
 their playgrounds, courage is universally admired, meanness 
 despised, manly feelings and generous conduct are encouraged : 
 that an unwritten code of honor deals to the spoiled child of 
 rank and to the child of upstart wealth an even-handed jus 
 tice, purges their nonsense out of both, and does all that can 
 be done to make them gentlemen. 
 
 Again, at the universities, it is urged, that all goes to form 
 what England values as the flower of its national life, a well- 
 educated gentleman. The German Huber, in describing to his 
 countrymen the attributes of an English gentleman, frankly 
 admits, that " in Germany, we have nothing of the kind. A 
 gentleman must possess a political character, an independent 
 and public position, or, at least, the right of assuming it. He 
 rrmst have average opulence, either of his own, or in his family. 
 He should also have bodily activity and strength, unattainable 
 by our sedentary life in public offices. The race of English 
 gentlemen presents an appearance of manly vigor and form, 
 not elsewhere to be found among an equal number of persons. 
 No other nation produces the stock. And in England, it has 
 deteriorated. The university is a decided presumption in any 
 man s favor. And so eminent are the members that a glance 
 at the calendars will show that in all the world one cannot be 
 in better company than on the books of one of the larger 
 Oxford or Cambridge colleges." * 
 
 These seminaries are finishing schools for the upper classes, 
 and not for the poor. The useful is exploded. The definition 
 of a public school is " a school which excludes all that could 
 fit a man for standing behind a counter." f 
 
 No doubt, the foundations have been perverted. Oxford, 
 which equals in wealth several of the smaller European states, 
 shuts up the lectureships which were made " public for all 
 men thereunto to have concourse " ; misspends the revenues 
 bestowed for such youths " as should be most meet for toward- 
 ness, poverty, and painfulness " ; there is gross favoritism ; 
 many chairs and many fellowships are made beds of ease ; and 
 t is likely that the university will know how to resist and 
 
 * Huber, History of the English Universities. Newman s Translation, 
 f See Bristed, Five Years in an English University. New York, 1852. 
 
UNIVERSITIES. 2G1 
 
 make inoperative the terrors of parliamentary inquiry; no 
 doubt, their learning is urown obsolete ; but Oxford also has 
 its merits, and 1 found here also proof of the national fidelity 
 and thoroughness. Such knowledge as they prize they]" 
 and impart. Whether in course or by indirection, whether by 
 a cramming tutor or by examiners with prizes and foundation 
 scholar-hips, education according to the English notion of it is 
 arrived at. 1 looked over the Examination Papers of the year 
 1848, for the various scholarships and fellowships, the Lusby, 
 the Hertford, the Dean-Ireland, and the I niversity (copies of 
 which were kindly given me by a Greek professor), containing 
 the tasks which many competitors had victoriously performed, 
 and I believed they would prove too severe tests for the candi 
 dates f<r a Bachelor s degree in Yale or Harvard. And, in 
 general, here was proof of a more searching study in the ap 
 pointed directions, and the knowledge pretended to be con 
 veyed was conveyed. Oxford sends out yearly twenty or thirty 
 very able men, and three or four hundred well-educated men. 
 
 The diet and rough exercise secure a certain amount of old 
 power. A fop will light, and, in exigent circumstances, 
 will play the manly part. In seeing these youths, I believed 
 1 saw already an advantage in vigor and color and general hab 
 it, over their contemporaries in the American colleges. No 
 doubt much of the power and brilliancy of the reading-men is 
 merelv constitutional or hygienic. With a hardier habit and 
 resolute gymnastics, with rive miles more walking, or five 
 ounces less eating, or with a saddle and gallop of twenty miles 
 a day, with skating and rowing-matches, the American would 
 arrive at as robust exegesis, and cheery and hilarious tone. I 
 should readily concede these advantages, which it would be 
 easv to acquire, if I did not find also that they read better 
 than we, and write better. 
 
 English wealth falling on their school and university train 
 ing, makes a systematic reading of the best authors, and to the 
 end of a knowledge how the things whereof they treat really 
 stand : whilst pamphleteer or journalist reading for an argu 
 ment for a party, or reading to write, or, at all events, for some 
 by-end imposed on them, must read meanly and fragment arily. 
 Charles 1. said, that lie understood English law as well as a 
 gentleman ought to understand it. 
 
 Then they have access to books : the rich libraries collected 
 at every one of many thousands of houses, give an advantage 
 not to be attained by a youth in this country, when one thinks 
 
262 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 how much more and better may be learned by a scholar, who, 
 immediately on hearing of a book, can consult it, than by one 
 who is on the quest, for years, and reads inferior books, be 
 cause he cannot find the best. 
 
 Again, the great number of cultivated men keep each other 
 up to a high standard. The habit of meeting well-read and 
 knowing men teaches the art of omission and selection. 
 
 Universities are, of course, hostile to geniuses, which seeing 
 and using ways of their own, discredit the routine : as churches 
 and monasteries persecute youthful saints. Yet we all send 
 our sons to college, and, though he be a genius, he must take 
 his chance. The university must be retrospective. The gale 
 that gives direction to the vanes on all its towers blows out 
 of antiquity. Oxford is a library, and the professors must be 
 librarians. And I should as soon think of quarrelling with 
 the janitor for not magnifying his office by hostile sallies into 
 the street, like the Governor of Kertch or Kinburn, as of 
 quarrelling with the professors for not admiring the young 
 neologists who pluck the beards of Euclid and Aristotle, or 
 for not attempting themselves to fill their vacant shelves as 
 original writers. 
 
 It is easy to carp at colleges, and the college, if we will wait 
 for it, will have its own turn. Genius exists there also, but 
 will not answer a call of a committee of the House of Com 
 mons. It is rare, precarious, eccentric, and darkling. Eng 
 land is the land of mixture and surprise, and when you have 
 settled it that the universities are moribund, out comes a 
 poetic influence from the heart of Oxford, to mould the opin 
 ions of cities, to build their houses as simply as birds their 
 nests, to give veracity to art, and charm mankind, as an ap 
 peal to moral order always must. But besides this restorative 
 genius, the best poetry of England of this age, in the old 
 forms, comes from two graduates of Cambridge. 
 
RELIGION. 263 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 RELIGION. 
 
 NO people, at the present day, can be explained by their 
 national religion. They do not feel responsible for it ; 
 it lies far outside of them. Their loyalty to truth, and their 
 labor and expenditure rest on real foundations, and not on a 
 national church. And Knglish life, it is evident, does not 
 grow out of the Athanasian creed, or the Articles, or the 
 Kucharisr. It is with religion as with marriage. A youth 
 marries in haste ; afterwards, when his mind is opened to the 
 rcMsmi of the conduct of life, he is asked, what he thinks of 
 the institution of marriage, and of the right relations of the 
 II 1 should have much to say, he might reply, if the 
 question were open, but I have a wife and children, and all 
 question is rinsed for me. In the barbarous days of a nation, 
 some cultus is formed or imported ; altars are built, tithes are 
 paid, priests ordained. The education and expenditure of the 
 country take that direction, and when wealth, refinement, 
 great men, and ties to the world, supervene, its prudent men 
 say, why tight against Fate, or lift these absurdities which are 
 now mountainous ? Better find some niche or crevice in this 
 mountain of stone which religious ages have quarried and 
 carved, wherein to bestow yourself, than attempt anything 
 ridiculously and dangerously above your strength, like remov 
 ing it. 
 
 In seeing old castles and cathedrals, I sometimes say, as to 
 day, in front of Dundee Church tower, which is eight hundred 
 years old, this was built by another and a better race than 
 any that now look on it. And, plainly, there has bi-i-n Liivat 
 power of sentiment at work in this island, of which tin-so 
 buildings are the proofs : as volcanic basalts show the work 
 of fire which has been extinguished for ages. Kniriand felt 
 the full heat of the Christianity which fermented Kurope. and 
 drew, like the chemistry of lire, a firm line between barbarism 
 ynd culture. The power of the religious sentiment put an 
 end to human sacrifices, checked appetit". inspired the cru 
 sades, inspired resistance to tyrants, inspired seli i 
 bounds to serfdom and slavery, founded liberty, created the 
 
264 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 religious architecture, York, Newstead, Westminster, Foun 
 tains Abbey, Ripon, Beverley, and Dundee, works to which 
 the key is lost, with the sentiment which created them ; in 
 spired the English Bible, the liturgy, the monkish histories, 
 the chronicle of Richard of Devizes. The priest translated 
 the Vulgate, and translated the sanctities of old hagiology 
 into English virtues on English ground. It was a certain 
 affirmative or aggressive state of the Caucasian races. Man 
 awoke refreshed by the sleep of ages. The violence of the 
 northern savages exasperated Christianity into power. It 
 lived by the love of the people. Bishop AVilfrid manumitted 
 two hundred and fifty serfs, whom he found attached to the 
 soil. The clergy obtained respite from labor for the boor on 
 the Sabbath, and on church festivals. " The lord who com 
 pelled his boor to labor between sunset on Saturday and sun 
 set on Sunday, forfeited him altogether." The priest came 
 out of the people, and sympathized with his class. The 
 church was the mediator, check, and democratic principle in 
 Europe. Latimer, Wicliffe, Arundel, Cobham, Antony Par 
 sons, Sir Harry Vane, George Fox, Penn, Bunyan, are the 
 democrats, as well as the saints of their times. The Catholic 
 Church, thrown on this toiling, serious people, has made in 
 fourteen centuries a massive system, close fitted to the man 
 ners and genius of the country, at once domestical and stately. 
 In the long time, it has blended with everything in heaven 
 above and the earth beneath. It moves through a zodiac of 
 feasts and fasts, names every day of the year, every town and 
 market and headland and monument, and has coupled itself 
 with the almanac, that no court can be held, no field ploughed, 
 no horse shod, without some leave from the church. All max 
 ims of prudence or shop or farm are fixed and dated by the 
 church. Hence, its strength in the agricultural districts. 
 The distribution of land into parishes enforces a church sanc 
 tion to every civil privilege ; and the gradation of the clergy, 
 prelates for the rich, and curates for the poor, with the 
 fact that a classical education has been secured to the clergy 
 man, makes them "the link which unites the sequestered 
 peasantry with the intellectual advancement of the age." * 
 
 The English Church has many certificates to show, of hum 
 ble effective service in humanizing the people, in cheering 
 and refining men, feeding, healing, and educating. It has the 
 seal of martyrs and confessors ; the noblest books ; a sublime 
 
 * Wordsworth. 
 
III.LKilON. 265 
 
 architecture ; a ritual marked by the same secular merits, 
 nothing cheap r purchasiblo. 
 
 Erom this sic, \\-ro\\ n church important reactions proceed; 
 much for culture, much for giving a direction to the nation s 
 a Meet ion and \vill to-day. Tin- carved and pictured chapel 
 its entire surface animated with imaue and emblem made 
 the parish-church a sort of book and liible to the people s eye. 
 
 Then, when the Saxon instinct had secured a service in the 
 vernacular tongue, it was the tutor and university of the people. 
 In York minster, on the day of the cnthronizatiou of the new 
 archbishop, 1 heard the service of evening prayer read and 
 chanted in the choir. It was strange to IK ar the pretty pastoral 
 of the betrothal of Uebecca and Isaac, in the morning of the 
 world, read with circumstantiality in York minster, on the 13th 
 January, 1848, to the decorous English audience, just fresh 
 fr>m the Times newspaper and their wine ; and listening with 
 all the devotion of national pride. That was binding old and 
 new to seme purpose. The reverence for the Scriptures is an 
 element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world 
 been preserved, and is preserved. Here in England every day 
 a chapter of Genesis, and a leader in the Times. 
 
 Another part of the same service on this occasion was not 
 insignificant. Handel s coronation anthem. Hn<l sure the, Kinff, 
 Was played by Dr. Camidge on the organ, with sublime effect. 
 The minster and the music were made for each other. It was 
 a hint of the part the church plays as a political engine. 
 From his infancy, every Englishman is accustomed to hear 
 daily prayers for the <|ueen, for the royal family, and the Par 
 liament, i>y name ; and this life-long consecration of these per 
 sonages cannot be- without influence on his opinions. 
 
 The universities, also, are parcel of the ecclesiastical system, 
 and their first design is to form the clergy. Thus the clergy 
 for a thousand years have been the scholar s of the nation. 
 
 The national temperament deeply enjoys the unbroken order 
 and tradition of its church ; the liturgy, ceremony, architec 
 ture : the sober - race, the Li<>od company, the connection with 
 the throne, and with historv, which adom it. And whilst it 
 endears itself thus t<> men of more taste than activity, the sta 
 bility of the English nation is passionately enlisted to its sup 
 port, from its inextricable connection with the cause of public 
 order, with politics and with the funds. ^ ""? *^ 
 
 Good churches are not built by bad mei^S $st Uftfift/f ^S 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
26G ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 must be probity and enthusiasm somewhere in society. These 
 minsters were neither built nor filled by atheists. No church 
 has had more learned, industrious, or devoted men ; plenty of 
 "clerks and bishops, who, out of their gowns, would turn their 
 backs on no man."* Their architecture still glows with faith 
 in immortality. Heats and genial periods arrive in history, 
 or, shall we say, plenitudes of Divine Presence, by which high 
 tides are caused in the human spirit, and great virtues and 
 talents appear, as in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and 
 again in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the 
 nation was full of genius and piety. 
 
 But the age of the Wicliffes, Cobhams, Arundels, Beckets ; 
 of the Lat iiners, Mores, Cranmers ; of the Taylors, Leigh tons, 
 Herberts ; of the Sherlocks, and Butlers, is gone. Silent revo 
 lutions in opinion have made it impossible that men like these 
 should return or find a place in their once sacred stalls. The 
 spirit that dwelt in this church has glided away to animate 
 other activities ; and they who come to the old shrines find 
 apes and players rustling the old garments. 
 
 The religion of England is part of good breeding. When 
 you see on the Continent the well-dressed Englishman come 
 into his ambassador s chapel, and put his face for silent prayer 
 into his smooth-brushed hat, one cannot help feeling how much 
 national pride prays with him, and the religion of a gentleman. 
 So far is he from attaching any meaning to the words, that ho 
 believes himself to have done almost the generous thing, and 
 that it is very condescending in him to pray to God. A great 
 duke said on the occasion of a victory, in the House of Lords^ 
 that he thought the Almighty God had not been well used by 
 them, and that it would become their magnanimity, after so 
 great successes, to take order that a prope? acknowledgment 
 be made. It is the church of the gentry ; but it is not the 
 church of the poor. The operatives do not own it, and gen 
 tlemen lately testified in the House of Commons that in their 
 lives they never saw a poor man in a ragged coat inside a 
 church. 
 
 The torpidity on the side of religion of the vigorous English 
 understanding shows how much wit and folly can agree in 
 one brain. Their religion is a quotation ; their church is a 
 doll ; and any examination is interdicted with screams of ter 
 ror. In good company, you expect them to laugh at the 
 fanaticism of the vulgar ; but they do not ; they ar* the 
 vulgar. 
 
 * Fuller. 
 
RELIGION. 267 
 
 The English, in common perhaps with Christendom in the 
 nineteenth century, do not respect power, but only perform 
 ance ; value ideas only for an economic result. Wellington 
 esteems a saint only as for as he can be an army chaplain : 
 " Mr. Briscoll, by his admirable conduct and good sense, got the 
 better of Methodism, which had appeared among the soldiers, 
 and once among the officers." They value a philosopher as 
 thev value an apothecary who brings bark or a drench ; and 
 inspiration is only some blowpipe, or a finer mechanical 
 aid. 
 
 I suspect that there is in an Englishman s brain a valve that 
 can be closed at pleasure, as an engineer shuts off steam. The 
 most sensible and well-informed men possess the power of 
 thinking just so far as the bishop in religious matters, and ag 
 the chancellor of the exchequer in politics. They talk with 
 courage and logic, and show you magnificent results, but tho 
 same men who have brought free trade or geology to their 
 present standing, look grave and lofty, and shut down their 
 valve, as soon as the conversation approaches the English 
 Church. After that, you talk with a box-turtle. 
 
 The action of the university, both in what is taught, and in 
 the spirit of the place, is directed more on producing an Eng 
 lish gentleman, than a saint or a psychologist. It ripens a 
 bishop, and extrudes a philosopher. I do not know that there 
 is more cabalism in the Anglican, than in other churches, but 
 the Anglican clergy are identified with the aristocracy. They 
 say, here, that, if you talk with a clergyman, you are sure to 
 find him well bred, informed, and candid. He entertains your 
 thought or your project with sympathy and praise. But if a 
 second clergyman come in, the sympathy is at an end : two 
 together are inaccessible to your thought, and, whenever it 
 comes to action, the clergyman invariably sides with his 
 church. 
 
 The Anglican church is marked by the grace and good sense 
 of its forms, by the manly grace of its clergy. The gospel it 
 preaches is, By taste are ye saved. It keeps the old struc^ 
 tures in repair, spends a world of money in music and build 
 ing ; and in buying Puirin, and architectural literature. It has 
 a general good name l>r amenity and mildness. It is not in 
 ordinary a persecuting church ; it is not inquisitorial, not 
 even inquisitive, is perfectly well bred, and can shut its eyes 
 on all proper occasions. If you let it alone, it will let you 
 alone. But its instinct is hostile to all change in politics, 
 
268 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 literature, or social arts. The church has not been the founder 
 of the London University of the Mechanics Institutes, of the 
 Free School, or whatever aims at diffusion of knowledge. The 
 Platonists of Oxford are as bitter against this heresy, as Thomas 
 Taylor. 
 
 The doctrine of the Old Testament is the religion of Eng 
 land. The first leaf of the New Testament it does not open. 
 It believes in a Providence which does not treat with levity 
 a pound sterling. They are neither transcendentalists nor 
 Christians. They put up no Socratic prayer, much less any 
 saintly prayer for the queen s mind ; ask neither for light nor 
 right, but say bluntly, " Grant her in health and wealth long 
 to live." And one traces this Jewish prayer in all English 
 private history, from the prayers of King Richard, in Richard 
 of Devizes Chronicle, to those in the diaries of Sir Samuel 
 Romilly, and of Haydon the painter. " Abroad with my wife," 
 writes Pepys piously, " the first time that ever I rode in my 
 own coach ; which do make my heart rejoice and praise God, 
 and pray him to bless it to me, and continue it." The bill for 
 the naturalization of the Jews (in 1753) was resisted by peti 
 tions from all parts of the kingdom, and by petition from the 
 city of London, reprobating this bill, as " tending extremely to 
 the dishonor of the Christian religion, and extremely injurious 
 to the interests and commerce of the kingdom in general, and 
 of the city of London in particular." 
 
 But they have not been able to congeal humanity by act of 
 Parliament. " The heavens journey still and sojourn not," 
 and arts, wars, discoveries, and opinion go onward at their 
 own pace. The new age has new desires, new enemies, new 
 trades, new charities, and reads the Scriptures with new eyes. 
 The chatter of French politics, the steam-whistle, the hum of 
 the mill, and the noise of embarking emigrants, had quite put 
 most of the old legends out of mind ; so that when you came 
 to read the liturgy to a modern congregation, it was almost 
 absurd in its unfitness, and suggested a masquerade of old 
 costumes. 
 
 No chemist has prospered in the attempt to crystallize a 
 religion. It is endogenous, like the skin, and other vital 
 organs. A new statement every day. The prophet and 
 apostle knew this, and the nonconformist confutes the con 
 formists, by quoting the texts they must allow. It is the con 
 dition of a religion, to require religion for its expositor. 
 Prophet and apostle can only be rightly understood by prophei 
 
RELIGION. 269 
 
 and apostle The statesman knows that the religious element 
 will not tail, any more than the supply of fibrine and chyle ; 
 but it is in its nature constructive, and will organi/e such a 
 church as it wants. The wise legislator will spend on temples, 
 schools, libraries, colleges, but will shun the enriching of 
 priests. If, in any manner, he can leave the election and pay- 
 in_r of the priest ^to the people, he will do well. Like the 
 (Quakers, he may resist the separation of a class of priests, and 
 ereare opportunity and expectation in the society, to run to 
 meet natural endowment, in this kind. But, when wealth 
 accrues to a chaplaincy, a bishopric, or rectorship, it requires 
 iiK-neyed men for its stewards, who will give it another direc 
 tion than to the mystics of their day. Of course, money will 
 d& after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualizc and 
 unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed. The class 
 certain to be excluded from all preferment are the religious, 
 and driven to other churches ; which is nature s vis medi- 
 
 The curates are ill paid, and the prelates are overpaid. This 
 abuse draws into the church the children of the nobility, and 
 other unfit persons, who have a taste for expense. Thus a 
 bishop is only a surpliced merchant. Through his lawn, I can 
 see the bright buttons of the shopman s coat glitter. A 
 wealth like that of Durham makes almost a premium on felony. 
 Brougham, in a speech in the House of Commons on the Irish 
 elective franchise, said, " How will the reverend bishops of the 
 other house be able to express their due abhorrence of the 
 crime of perjury, who solemnly declare in the presence of God, 
 that when they are called upon to accept a living, perhaps of 
 loot) a year, at that very instant, they are moved by the 
 Holy Ghost to accept the office and administration thereof, and 
 for no other reason whatever]" The modes of initiation are 
 more damaging than custom-house oaths. The Bishop is 
 eK-iTi-d by the Dean and I Vebends of the cathedral. The Queen 
 sends these gentlemen a conye cTc lire, or leave to elect ; but 
 also sends tin-in the name of the person whom they are to elect. 
 They LCO into the cathedral, chant and pray, and beseech the 
 Holy Ghost to assist them in their choice ; and, after these in 
 vocations. invariably find that the dictates of the Holy Ghost 
 agree with the recommendations of the Queen. 
 
 But you must pay for conformity. All goes well as lon-_r as; 
 you run with conformists. But you, who arc honest man in 
 other particulars, know, that there is alive somewhere a man 
 
270 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not 
 kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you 
 sink into the class of counterfeits. Besides, this succumbing 
 has grave penalties. If you take in a lie, you must take in all 
 that belongs to it. England accepts this ornamented national 
 church, and it glazes the eyes, bloats the flesh, gives the voice 
 a stertorous clang, and clouds the understanding of the re 
 ceivers. 
 
 The English Church, undermined by German criticism, had 
 nothing left but tradition, and was led logically back to Roman 
 ism. But that was an element which only hot heads could 
 breathe : in view of the educated class, generally, it was not a 
 fact to front the sun ; and the alienation of such men from the 
 church became complete. 
 
 Nature, to be sure, had her remedy. Religious persons are 
 driven out of the Established Church into sects, which in 
 stantly rise to credit, and hold the Establishment in check. 
 Nature has sharper remedies, also. The English, abhorring 
 change in all things, abhorring it most in matters of religion, 
 cling to the last rag of form, and are dreadfully given to cant. 
 The English (and I wish it were confined to them, but t is a 
 taint in the Anglo-Saxon blood in both hemispheres), the Eng 
 lish and the Americans cant beyond all other nations. The 
 French relinquish all that industry to them. What is so 
 odious as the polite bows to God, in our books and newspapers] 
 The popular press is flagitious in the exact measure of its sancti 
 mony, and the religion of the day is a theatrical Sinai, where 
 the thunders are supplied by the property-man. The fanati 
 cism and hypocrisy create satire. Punch finds an inexhaustible 
 material. Dickens writes novels on Exeter Hall humanity. 
 Thackeray exposes the heartless high life. Nature revenges 
 herself more summarily by the heathenism of the lower classes. 
 Lord Shaftesbury calls the poor thieves together, and reads 
 sermons to them, and they call it gas. George Borrow sum 
 mons the Gypsies to hear his discourse on the Hebrews in 
 Egypt, and reads to them the Apostles Creed in Romany. 
 " When I had concluded," he says, " I looked around me. The 
 features of the assembly were twisted, and the eyes of all 
 turned upon me with a frightful squint : not an individual 
 present but squinted ; the genteel Pepa, the good-humored 
 Chicharona, the Cosdami, all squinted : the Gypsy jockey 
 squinted worst of all." 
 
 The church at this moment is much to be pitied. She has 
 
LITERATURE. 271 
 
 nothing left but possession. If a bishop meets an intelligent 
 gentleman, and reads fatal interrogations in his eyes, he has no 
 resource but to take wine with him. False position introduces 
 cant, perjury, simony, and ever a lower class of mind and 
 character into the clergy : and, when the hierarchy is afraid of 
 science and education, afraid of piety, afraid of tradition, and 
 afraid of theology, there is nothing left but to quit a church 
 which is no longer one. 
 
 But the religion of England, is it the Established Church 1 
 no ; is it the sects I no ; they are only perpetuations of some 
 private man s dissent, and are to the Established Church as 
 calis are to a coach, cheaper and more convenient, but really 
 the same thing. Where dwells the religion 1 Tell me first 
 where dwells electricity, or motion, or thought or gesture. 
 They do not dwell or stay at all. Electricity cannot be made 
 fast, mortared up and ended, like London .Monument, or the 
 Tower, so that you shall know where to find it, and keep it 
 fixed, as the English do with their things, forevermore ; it is 
 passing, glancing, gesticnlar ; it, is a traveller, a newness, a 
 surprise, a secret, which perplexes them, and puts them out. 
 Yet. if religion l>e the doing of all good, and for its sake the 
 Buttering of all evil, *<,,///"/// J? tout le monde et ne faire sonffrir 
 ///<>, that divine secret has existed in England from the 
 days of Alfred to those of Romilly, of Clarkson, and of Flor 
 ence Nightingale, and in thousands who have no fame. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 A STRONG common sense, which it is not easy to unseat 
 or disturb, marks the English mind for a thousand 
 years : a rude strength newly applied to thought, as of sailors 
 and soldiers who had lately learned to read. They have no 
 fancy, and never are surprised into a covert or witty word, 
 such as pleased the Athenians and Italians, and was convertible 
 into a fable not long after ; but they delight in strong earthy 
 expression, not mislakable, coarsely true to the human body, 
 and, though spoken among princes, equally fit and welcome to 
 the mob. This homeliness, veracity, and plain style appear 
 
272 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 in the earliest extant works, and in the latest. It imports 
 into songs and ballads the smell of the earth, the breath of 
 cattle, and, like a Dutch painter, seeks a household charm, 
 though by pails and pans. They ask their constitutional 
 utility in verse. The kail and herrings are never out of sight. 
 The poet nimbly recovers himself from every sally of the 
 imagination. The English muse loves the farnvyard, the lane 
 and market. She says, with De Stael, " I tramp in the mire 
 with wooden shoes, whenever they would force me into the 
 clouds." For, the Englishman has accurate perceptions ; 
 takes hold of things by the right end, and there is no slip- 
 .periness in his grasp. He loves the axe, the spade, the oar, 
 the gun, the steam-pipe : he has built the engine he uses. He 
 is materialist, economical, mercantile. He must be treated 
 with sincerity and reality, with muffins and not the promise 
 of muffins ; and prefers his hot chop, with perfect security 
 and convenience in the eating of it, to the chances of the 
 amplest and Frencliiest bill of fare, engraved on embossed pa 
 per. When he is intellectual, and a poet or a philosopher, he 
 carries the same hard truth and the same keen machinery into 
 the mental sphere. His mind must stand on a fact. He wil) 
 not be baffled, or catch at clouds, but the mind must have a 
 symbol palpable and resisting. What he relishes in Dante, is 
 the vice-like tenacity with which he holds a mental image be 
 fore the eyes, as if it were a scutcheon painted on a shield. 
 Byron " liked something craggy to break his mind upon." A 
 taste for plain strong speech, what is called a biblical style, 
 marks the English. It is in Alfred, and the Saxon Chronicle, 
 and in the Sagas of the Northmen. Latimer was homely. 
 Hobbes was perfect in the "noble vulgar speech." Donne, 
 Bunyan, Milton, Taylor, Evelyn, Pepys, Hooker, Cotton, and 
 the translators, wrote it. How realistic or materialistic in 
 treatment of his subject is Swift. He describes his fictitious 
 persons as if for the police. Defoe has no insecurity or choice. 
 Hudibras has the same hard mentality, keeping the truth 
 at once to the senses, and to the intellect. 
 
 It is not less seen in poetry. Chaucer s hard painting of 
 his Canterbury pilgrims satisfies the senses. Shakespeare, 
 Spenser, and Milton, in their loftiest ascents, have this na 
 tional grip and exactitude of mind. This mental materialism 
 makes the value of English transcendental genius ; in these 
 writers, and in Herbert, Henry More, Donne, and Sir Thomas 
 Browne. The Saxon materialism and narrowness, exalted into 
 
LITERATURE. 273 
 
 the sphere of intellect, makes the very genius of Shakespeare 
 and Milton. When it reaches the pure element, it treads the 
 clouds as securely as the adamant. Even in its elevations, 
 materialistic, its p<>*try is common sense inspired; or iron 
 raised to white heat. 
 
 The marriage of the two qualities is in their speech. It is 
 a tacit rule of the language to make the frame or skeleton, of 
 Saxon words, and, when elevation or ornament is sought, to 
 interweave Roman ; but sparingly ; nor is a sentence made of 
 Koman words alone, without loss of strength. The children 
 and laborers use the Saxon unmixed. The Latin unmixed is 
 Abandoned to the colleges and Parliament. Mixture is a se- 
 cret of the English island ; and, in their dialect, the male prin 
 ciple is the Saxon ; the female, the Latin ; and they arc com 
 bined in every discourse. A good writer, if he has indulged 
 in a lioiuan roundness, makes haste to chasten and nerve his 
 period by English monosyllables. 
 
 When the Gothic nations came into Europe, they found it 
 lighted with the sun and moon of Hebrew and of Greek gen 
 ius. The tablets of their brain, long kept in the dark, were 
 finely sensible to the double glory. To the images from this 
 twin source (of Christianity and art), the mind became fruit 
 ful as by the incubation of the Holy Ghost. The English 
 mind flowered in every faculty. The common sense was sur 
 prised and inspired. For two centuries, England was philo 
 sophic, religious, poetic. The mental furniture seemed of 
 larger scale ; the memory capacious like the storehouse of the 
 rains ; the ardor and endurance of study ; the boldness and 
 facility of their mental construction : their fancy, and imagi 
 nation, and easy spanning of vast distances of thought ; the 
 enterprise or accosting of new subjects ; and, generally, the 
 easy exertion of power, astonish, like the legendary feats of 
 Guy of Warwick. The union of Saxon precision and Oriental 
 soaring, of which Shakespeare is the perfect example, is shared 
 in less degree by the writers of two centuries. I find not only 
 the great masters out of all rivalry and reach, but the whole 
 writing of the time charged with a masculine force and free 
 dom. 
 
 Tin TO is a hygienic simpleness, rough vigor, and closeness 
 to the matter in hand, even in the second and third da 
 writers : and, I think, in the common style of the people, as 
 one finds it in the citation of wills, letters, and public docu 
 ments, in proverbs, and forms of speech. The more hearty 
 12* K 
 
274 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 and sturdy expression may indicate that the savageness of the 
 Norseman was not all gone. Their dynamic brains hurled off 
 their words, as the revolving stone hurls off scraps of grit. I 
 could cite from the seventeenth century sentences and phrases 
 of edge not to be matched in the nineteenth. Their poets by 
 simple force of mind equalized themselves with the accumu 
 lated science of ours. The country gentlemen had a posset or 
 drink they called October ; and the poets, as if by this hint, 
 knew how to distil the whole season into their autumnal 
 verses : and, as nature, to pique the more, sometimes works 
 up deformities into beauty, in some rare Aspasia, or Cleopatra ; 
 and, as the Greek art wrought many a vase or column, in 
 which too long, or too lithe, or nodes, or pits and flaws, are 
 made a beauty of; so these were so quick and vital, that they 
 could charm and enrich by mean and vulgar objects. 
 
 A man must think that age well taught and thoughtful, by 
 which masques and poems, like those of Ben Jonson, full of 
 heroic sentiment in a manly style, were received with favor. 
 The unique fact in literary history, the unsurprised reception 
 of Shakespeare, the reception proved by his making his 
 fortune ; and the apathy proved by the absence of all contem 
 porary panegyric, seems to demonstrate an elevation in the 
 mind of the people. Judge of the splendor of a nation, by 
 the insignificance of great individuals in it. The manner in 
 which they learned Greek and Latin, before our modern facil 
 ities were yet ready, without dictionaries, grammars, or index 
 es, by lectures of a professor, followed by their own search- 
 in^ required a more robust memory, and co-operation of 
 all the faculties ; and their scholars, Camden, Usher, Selden, 
 Mede, Gataker, Hooker, Taylor, Burton, Bentley, Brian Wal 
 ton, acquired the solidity and method of engineers. 
 
 The influence of Plato tinges the British genius. Their 
 minds loved analogy ; were cognizant of resemblances, and 
 climbers on the staircase of unity. T is a very old strife be 
 tween those who elect to see identity, and those who elect to 
 see discrepancies ; and it renews itself in Britain. The poets, 
 of course, are of one part ; the men of the world, of the other. 
 But Britain had many disciples of Plato, More, Hooker, Ba 
 con, Sidney, Lord Brooke, Herbert, Browne, Donne, Spenser, 
 Chapman, Milton, Crashaw, Norris, Cudworth, Berkeley, Jere 
 my Taylor. 
 
 Lord Bacon has the English duality. His centuries of ob 
 servations, on useful science, and his experiments, I suppose, 
 
LITERATURE. 275 
 
 were worth nothing. One hint of Franklin, or Watt, or Dai- 
 ton, or Davy, or any OIK- who had a talent for experiment, was 
 worth all his lifetime of exquisite trifles. I Jut he drinks of a 
 diviner stream, and marks the influx of idealism into Kng- 
 lanil. Where that goes, is poetry, health, and progress. The 
 rules of its uvnesis or its diffusion are not known. That 
 knowledge, if we had it, would supersede all we call srienee 
 of the mind. It seems an all air of race, or of meta-chemis- 
 try : -- the vital point being, how far the sense of unity, or 
 instinct of seeking resemblances, pn dominated. For, wher 
 ever the mind takes a step, it is, to put itself at one with a 
 larger class, discerned beyond the lesser class with which it 
 has been conversant. Hence, all poetry, and all anirmativo 
 action comes. 
 
 Ban>n, in the structure of his mind, held of the analogists, 
 of the idealists, or (as we popularly say, naming from the best 
 example) Platonists. Whoever discredits analogy, and requires 
 heaps of facts, before any theories can be attempted, has no 
 poetic power, and nothing original or beautiful will be produced 
 by him. Locke is as surelv the inlhix of decomposition and 
 of prose, as Bacon and the Platonists, of growth. The Platonic 
 is the poetic tendency ; the so-called scientific is the negative 
 and poisonous. T is quite certain, that Spenser, Hums, Ryron, 
 and Wordsworth will be Platonists ; and that the dull men 
 will be Lockists. Then politics and commerce will absorb from 
 the educated class men of talents without genius, precisely 
 because such have no resistance. 
 
 Bacon, capable of ideas, yet devoted to ends, required in his 
 map of the mind, first of all, universality, or //>//;// j,liil<>.>j>fiia, 
 the receptacle for all such profitable observations, and axioms 
 as fall not within the compass of any of the special parts of 
 philosophy, but are more common, and of a higher stage. He 
 held this element essential : it is never out of mind : lie never 
 spares rebukes for such as neglect it ; believing that no perfect 
 discovery can be made in a Hat <>r level, but you must ascend 
 to a higher science. " If any man thinketh philosophy and 
 universality to be idle studies, he does not consider that all 
 professions are from thence served and supplied, and this I 
 take to be a great cause that has hindered the progression of 
 learning, because these fundamental knowledges have been 
 studied but in passage." He explained himself by giving 
 various quaint examples of the summary or common laws, of 
 which each science has its own illustration. He complains, 
 
276 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 that " he finds this part of learning very deficient, the pro- 
 founder sort of wits drawing a bucket now and then for their 
 own use, but the spring-head unvisited. This was the dry 
 lifjlit which did scorch and offend most men s watery natures." 
 Plato had signified the same sense, when he said : " All the 
 great arts require a subtle and speculative research into the 
 law of nature, since loftiness of thought and perfect mastery 
 over every subject seem to be derived from some such source as 
 this. This Pericles had, in addition to a great natural genius. 
 For, meeting with Anaxagoras, who was a person of this kind, 
 he attached himself to him, and nourished himself with sub 
 lime speculations on the absolute intelligence ; and imported 
 thence into the oratorical art whatever could be useful to it." 
 
 A few generalizations always circulate in the world, whose 
 authors we do not rightly know, which astonish, and appear to 
 be avenues to vast kingdoms of thought, and these are in the 
 world constants, like the Copernican and Newtonian theories in 
 physics. In England, these may be traced usually to Shake 
 speare, Bacon, Milton, or Hooker, even to Van Helmont and 
 Behmen, and do all have a kind of filial retrospect to Plato 
 and the Greeks. Of this kind is Lord Bacon s sentence, that 
 " nature is commanded by obeying her " ; his doctrine of 
 poetry, which " accommodates the shows of things to the 
 desires of the mind " ; or the Zoroastrian definition of poetry, 
 mystical, yet exact, " apparent pictures of unapparent natures "; 
 Spenser s creed, that " soul is form, and doth the body make " ; 
 the theory of Berkeley, and we have no certain assurance of the 
 existerice of matter ; Doctor Samuel Clarke s argument for 
 theism from the nature of space and time ; Harrington s 
 political rule, that power must rest on land, a rule which 
 requires to be liberally interpreted ; the theory of Sweden- 
 borg, so cosmically applied by him, that the man makes his 
 heaven and hell ; Hegel s study of civil history, as the conflict 
 of ideas and the victory of the deeper thought ; the identity- 
 philosophy of Schelling, couched in the statement that " all 
 difference is quantitative." So the very announcement of the 
 theory of gravitation, of Kepler s three harmonic laws, and 
 even of Dalton s doctrine of definite proportions, finds a sudden 
 response in the mind, which remains a superior evidence to 
 empirical demonstrations. I cite these generalizations, some 
 of which are more recent, merely to indicate a class. Not 
 these particulars, but the mental plane or the atmosphere 
 from which they emanate, was the home and element of the 
 
LITER Aim K. 277 
 
 writers and readers in what we loosely call the Elizabethan 
 >,iy in literary history, the period from 1575 to 1 < >_!">), 
 yet a period almost short enough to justify Ben Jonson s re 
 mark on L>rd llacou : "About his time, and within his view, 
 were bora all the wits that could honor a nation, or help 
 study." 
 
 Such richness of genius had not existed more than once be^ 
 fore. These heights could not be maintained. As we find 
 stumps of vast trees in our exhausted soils, and have received 
 traditions of their ancient fertility to tillage, so history reckons 
 epochs in which the intellect of lamed races became effete. 
 So it fared with English genius. These heights were followed 
 by a meanness, and a descent of the mind into lower levels ; 
 the Joss of wings ; no high speculation. Locke, to wh om the 
 meaning of ideas was unknown, became the type of philosophy, 
 and his "understanding" the measure, in all nations, of the 
 English intellect. His countrymen forsook the lofty sides of 
 Parnassus, on which they had once walked with echoing steps, 
 and disused the studies once so beloved ; the powers of thought 
 fell into neglect. The later English want the faculty of Plato 
 and Aristotle, of grouping men in natural classes by an insight 
 of general laws, so deep, that the rule is deduced with equal 
 precision from few subjects or from one, as from multitudes 
 of lives. Shakespeare is supreme in that, as in all the great 
 mental energies. The Germans generalize : the English can 
 not interpret the German mind. German science comprehends 
 the English. The absence of the faculty in England is shown 
 by the timidity which accumulates mountains of facts, as a bad 
 general wants myriads of men and miles of redoubts, to com 
 posite the inspirations of courage and conduct. 
 
 The English shrink from a generalization. " They do not 
 look abroad into universality, or they draw only a bucket-full 
 at the fountain of the Eirst Philosophy for their occasion, and 
 do not go to the spring bead/ Bacon, who said this, is almost 
 unique among his countrymen in that faculty, at least among 
 the prose-writers. Milton, who was the stair or high table 
 land to let down the English genius from the summits of 
 Shakespeare, used this privilege sometimes in poetry, more 
 rarely in pnso. For a lonir interval afterwards, it is not found. 
 Burke was addicted tn grnrrali/ing, but his was a shorter line ; 
 as his thoughts have less depth, they have less compass. 
 Hume s abstractions are not deep or wise. He owes his fame 
 to one keen observation, that no copula had been detected be- 
 
278 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 twccn any cause and effect, either in physics or in thought - y 
 that the term cause and effect was loosely or gratuitously ap 
 plied to what we know only as consecutive, not at all as casual. 
 Dr. Johnson s written abstractions have little value : the tone 
 of feeling in them makes their chief worth. 
 
 Mr. Hallam, a learned and elegant scholar, has written the 
 history of European literature for three centuries, a per 
 formance of great ambition, inasmuch as a judgment was to be 
 attempted on every book. But his eye does not reach to the 
 ideal standards ; the verdicts are all dated from London : all 
 new thought must be cast into the old moulds. The expansive 
 element which creates literature is steadily denied. Plato is 
 resisted, and his school. Hallam is uniformly polite, but with 
 deficient sympathy ; writes with resolute generosity, but is un 
 conscious of the deep worth which lies in the nrystics, and 
 which often outvalues as a seed of power and a source of revo 
 lution all the correct writers and shining reputations of their 
 day. He passes in silence, or dismisses with a kind of con 
 tempt, the profounder masters : a lover of ideas is not only 
 imcongenial, but unintelligible. Hallam inspires respect by 
 his knowledge and fidelity, by his manifest love of good books, 
 and he lifts himself to own better than almost any the great 
 ness of Shakespeare, and better than Johnson he appreciates 
 Milton. But in Hallam, or in the firmer intellectual nerve of 
 Mackintosh, one still finds the same type of English genius. 
 It is wise arid rich, but it lives on its capital. It is retrospec 
 tive. How can it discern and hail the new forms that are loom 
 ing up on the horizon, new and gigantic thoughts which 
 cannot dress themselves out of any old wardrobe of the past 1 
 
 The essays, the fiction, and the poetry of the day have the 
 like municipal limits. Dickens, with preternatural apprehen 
 sion of the language of manners, and the varieties of street 
 life, with pathos and laughter, with patriotic and still enlarg 
 ing generosity, writes London tracts. He is a painter of Eng 
 lish details, like Hogarth ; local and temporary in his tints 
 and style, and local in his aims. Bulwer, an industrious writ 
 er, with occasional ability, is distinguished for his reverence 
 of intellect as a temporality, and appeals to the worldly ambi 
 tion of the student. His romances tend to fan these low 
 flames. Their novelists despair of the heart. Thackeray 
 finds that God has made no allowance for the poor thing in his 
 universe ; more s the pity, he thinks ; but t is not for us 
 to be wiser : we must renounce ideals, and accept London. 
 
279 
 
 The brilliant Macanlay, who expresses the tone of the Eng 
 lish governing classes of the day, explicitly teaches, that good 
 means _ ><( I to eat, good to wear, material commodity; that 
 the glory of modern ])liilosophy is its direction on " fruit " ; to 
 yield economical inventions ; and that its merit is to avoid 
 ideas, and avoid morals. He thinks it the distinctive merit of 
 the Baconian philosophy, in its triumph over the old Platonic, 
 its disentangling the intellect from theories of the all-Fair and 
 alMJood, and pinning it down to the making a better sick- 
 chair and a better \\ine-\vhev for an invalid ; this not iron 
 ically, but in good faith; that, " solid advantage," as he 
 calls it. meaning always sensual benefit, is the only good. The 
 eminent benetit of astronomy is the better navigation it creates 
 to enable the fruit-ships to bring home their lemons and wine 
 to the London grocer. It was a curious result, in which the 
 civility and religion of England for a thousand vears, ends, in 
 denying morals, and reducing the intellect to a sauce-pan. The 
 critic hides his scepticism under the English cant of practical. 
 To convince the n- ;><>n, to touch the conscience, is romantic 
 pretension. The fine arts fall to the ground. Beauty, except 
 as luxurious commodity, does not exist. It is very certain, I 
 may say in painir. that if Lord Bacon had been only the sen 
 sualist his critic pretends, he would never have acquired the 
 fame which now entitles him to this patronage. It is because 
 he had imagination, the leisures of the spirit, and basked in 
 an element of contemplation out of all modern English atmos 
 pheric gauges, that he is impressive to the imaginations of 
 men, and has become a potentate not to be ignored. Sir 
 David Brewster sees the high place of Bacon, without finding 
 Newton indebted to him. and thinks it a mistake. Bacon oc 
 cupies it by specific gravity or levity, not by any feat he did, 
 or by any tutoring more or less of Newton, &c., but an effect 
 of the sani - cause which showed itself more pronounced after 
 wards in Hooke, IJoyle, and Halley. 
 
 Coleridge, a catholic mind, with a hunger for ideas, with 
 
 eye- looking before and after to the highest hards and sages, 
 
 and who wrote and spoke the onlv hi-_rh criticism in his time, 
 
 is one of those who save Kngland from the reproach of no 
 
 longer possessing the capacity to appreciate what rarest wit 
 
 ! ind has yielded. Yet the misfortune of his life, hi 
 attempts but most inadequate performingB, failing to accom 
 plish any one masterpiece, seems to mark the closing of an era. 
 Even in him, the traditional Englishman was too strong for 
 
280 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 the philosopher, and he fell into accommodations: and, as 
 Burke had striven to idealize the English State, so Coleridge 
 narrowed his mind in the attempt to reconcile the gothic 
 rule and dogma of the Anglican Church, with eternal ideas. 
 But for Coleridge, and a lurking taciturn minority, uttering it 
 self in occasional criticism, oftener in private discourse, one 
 would say, that in Germany and in America, is the best mind 
 in England rightly respected. It is the surest sign of national 
 decay, when the Bramins can no longer read or understand the 
 Braminical philosophy. 
 
 In the decomposition and asphyxia that followed all this ma 
 terialism, Carlyle was driven by his disgust at the pettiness 
 and the cant, into the preaching of Fate. In comparison with 
 all this rottenness, any check, any cleansing, though by fire, 
 seemed desirable and beautiful. He saw little difference in 
 the gladiators, or the " causes " for which they combated ; the 
 one comfort was, that they were all going speedily into the 
 abyss together : And his imagination, finding no nutriment 
 in any creation, avenged itself by celebrating the majestic 
 beauty of the laws of decay. The necessities of mental struc 
 ture force all minds into a few categories, and where impa 
 tience of the tricks of men makes Nemesis amiable, and builds 
 altars to the negative Deity, the inevitable recoil is to heroism 
 or the gallantry of the private heart, which decks its immola 
 tion with glory, in the unequal combat of w r ill against fate. 
 
 Wilkinson, the editor of Swedenborg, the annotator of Fou 
 rier, and the champion of Hahnemann, has brought to meta 
 physics and to physiology a native vigor, with a catholic 
 perception of relations, equal to the highest attempts, and a 
 rhetoric like the armory of the invincible knights of old. 
 There is in the action of his mind a long Atlantic roll not 
 known except in deepest waters, and only lacking what ought 
 to accompany such powers, a manifest centrality. If his mind 
 does not rest in immovable biases, perhaps the orbit is larger, 
 and the return is not yet : but a master should inspire a con 
 fidence that he will adhere to his convictions, and give his 
 present studies always the same high place. 
 
 It would be easy to add exceptions to the limitary tone of 
 English thought, and much more easy to adduce examples of 
 excellence in particular veins ; and if, going out of the region 
 of dogma, we pass into that of general culture, there is no end 
 to the graces and amenities, wit, sensibility, and erudition, of 
 the learned class. But the artificial succor which marks all 
 
LITER AT mi-;. 281 
 
 English pcrformanco, appears in letters also: much of their 
 .esthetic production is antiquarian and manufactured, and lit- 
 erarv reputations have been achieved ly forcible men. whoso 
 relation to literature was purely accidental, hut who were driven 
 hv tastes and moth s they found in vogue into their several 
 careers. So. at this moment, every amhitioiis young man 
 studies geology; so members of Parliament are made, and 
 churchmen. 
 
 The hias of Englishmen to practical skill has reacted on tho 
 national mind. They are incapahle of an iniitility, and respect 
 the five mechanic powers even in their song. The voice of 
 their modern muse has a slight hint of the steam-whistle, and 
 the poem is created as an ornament and linish of their mon 
 archy, and by no means as the bird of a new morning which 
 forgets the past world in the full enjoyment of that which is 
 forming. Thev are with difficulty ideal ; they are the most 
 conditioned men, as if, having the best conditions, they could 
 not bring themselves to forfeit them. Every one of them is a 
 thousand years old, and lives by his memory; and when you 
 say this, they accept it as praise. 
 
 "Nothing comes to the book-shops but politics, travels, statis 
 tics, tabulation, and engineering, and even what is called philos 
 ophy and letters is mechanical in its structure, as if inspiration 
 had ceased, as if no vast hope, no religion, no song of joy, no 
 wisdom, no analogy, existed any more. The tone of colleges 
 and of scholars and of literary society has this mortal air. I 
 seem to walk on a marble floor, where nothing will grow. They 
 exert every variety of talent on a lower ground, and may be 
 said to live and act in a sub-mind."" They have lost all com 
 manding views in literature, philosophy, and science. A good 
 Englishman shuts himself out of three fourths of his mind, 
 and confines himself to one fourth. He has learning, good 
 sense, power of labor, and logic : but a faith in the laws of tho 
 mind like that of Archimedes ; a belief like that of Eulcr and 
 Kepler, that experience must follow and not lead the laws of 
 the mind ; a devotion to the theory of politics, like that of 
 Hooker, and Milton, and Harrington, the modern English mind 
 repudiate-. 
 
 I fear the same fault lies in their science, since they have 
 known how to make it repulsive, and bereave nature of its 
 charm ; though perhaps the complaint Hies wider, and tho 
 vice attaches to many more than to British physicists. The 
 eye of tho naturalist must have a scope like nature itself, a 
 
282 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 susceptibility to all impressions, alive to the heart as well as 
 to the logic of creation. But English science puts humanity 
 to the door. It wants the connection which is the test of ge 
 nius. The science is false by not being poetic. It isolates the 
 reptile or mollusk it assumes to explain ; whilst reptile or mol- 
 lusk only exists in system, in relation. The poet only sees it 
 as an inevitable step in the path of the Creator. But, in Eng 
 land, one hermit finds this fact, and another finds that, and 
 lives and dies ignorant of its value. There are great exceptions, 
 of John Hunter, a man of ideas ; perhaps of Kobert Brown, 
 the botanist ; and of Richard Owen, who has imported into 
 Britain the German homologies, and enriched science with con 
 tributions of his own, adding sometimes the divination of the 
 old masters to the unbroken power of labor in the English 
 mind. But for the most part, the natural science in England 
 is out of its loyal alliance with morals, and is as void of imagi 
 nation and free play of thought, as conveyancing. It stands 
 in strong contrast with the genius of the Germans, those semi- 
 Greeks, who love analogy, and, by means of their height of 
 view, preserve their enthusiasm, and think for Europe. 
 
 No hope, no sublime augury, cheers the student, no secure 
 striding from experiment onward to a foreseen law, but only a 
 casual dipping here and there, like diggers in California 
 "prospecting for a placer" that will pay. A horizon of brass 
 of the diameter of his umbrella shuts down around his senses. 
 Squalid contentment with conventions, satire at the names of 
 philosophy and religion, parochial and shop-till politics, and 
 idolatry of usage, betray the ebb of life and spirit. As they 
 trample on nationalities to" reproduce London and Londoners 
 in Europe and Asia, so they fear the hostility of ideas, of 
 poetry, of religion, ghosts which they cannot lay ; and, hav 
 ing attempted to domesticate and dress the Blessed Soul itself 
 in English broadcloth and gaiters, they are tormented with 
 fear that herein lurks a force that will sweep their system away. 
 The artists say, "Nature puts us out"; the scholars have be 
 come un-ideal. They parry earnest speech with banter and 
 levity ; they laugh you down, or they change the subject. 
 " The fact is," say they over their wine, " all that about lib 
 erty, and so forth, is gone by ; it won t do any longer." The 
 practical and comfortable oppress them with inexorable claims, 
 and the smallest fraction of power remains for heroism and 
 poetry. No poet dares murmur of beauty out of the precinct 
 of his rhymes. No priest dares hint at a Providence which 
 
LITERATURE. 283 
 
 does not respect English utility. The island is a roaring vol 
 cano of fate, of material values, of tariffs, and laws of repres 
 sion, glutted markets and low pr; 
 
 lu the absence of the hi-hest aims, of the pure love of 
 knowledge, and tlie surrender to naturi 1 . there is the suppres- 
 sioii of the imagination, the priapism of the B6B8efl and the 
 understaiidiii-- : we have the factitious instead of the natural ; 
 tasteless expense, arts of comfort, and the rewarding as an 
 illustrious inventor whomever will contrive one impediment 
 more to interpose hetween the man and his objects. 
 
 Tims poetry is degraded* and made ornamental. Pope and 
 his aohool wr.te poetry tit to put round frosted cake. What did 
 Walter Scott write without stint I a rhymed traveller s guide 
 to Scotland. And the libraries of verses they print have this 
 Birmin-ham character. How many volumes of well-hred me 
 tre we must jingle through, before we can be filled, taught, 
 renewed ! We want the miraculous ; the beauty which wo 
 can manufacture at no mill, can give no account of ; the 
 beauty of which Chaucer and Chapman had the secret. The 
 poetry of eourse is low and prosaic ; only now and then, as in 
 Wordsworth, conscientious; or in Bvron, passional ; or in Ten 
 nyson, factitious. But if 1 should count the poets who have 
 contributed to the Bible of existing Kngland sentences of 
 guidance and consolation which are still glowing and effective, 
 how few! Shall I find my heavenly bread in the reigning 
 Win-re is great design in modern Mnglish poetry? 
 The English have lost sight of the fact that poetry exists t. 
 speak the spiritual law, and that no wealth of description or 
 of fancy is yet essentially new, and out of the limits of prose, 
 until this condition is reached. Therefore the grave old poets, 
 like the Greek artists, heeded their designs, and less consid 
 ered the finish. It was their office to lead to the divine 
 sources, out of which all this, and much more, readily springs ; 
 and. if this religion is in the poetry, it raises us to some pur 
 pose, and we can well afford some staidness, or hardness, or 
 want of popular tune in the verses. 
 
 The exceptional fact of the period is the genius of Words 
 worth. He had no master but nature and solitude. "He 
 wrote a poem," MJI Landor, "without the aid of war." His 
 verse is the voice ..f sanity in a worldly and ambition- 
 One regrets that his temperament was not more liquid and 
 musical. He lias written longer than he was inspired. But 
 for the rest, he has no competitor. 
 
284 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 Tennyson is endowed precisely in points where Wordsworth 
 wanted. There is no finer ear than Tennyson s, nor more 
 command of the keys of language. Color, like the dawn, flows 
 over the horizon from his pencil, in waves so rich that we do 
 not miss the central form. Through all his refinements, too, 
 he has reached the public, a certificate of good sense and 
 general power, since he who aspires to be the English poet 
 must be as large as London, not in the same kind as London, 
 but in his own kind. But he wants a subject, and climbs no 
 mount of vision to bring its secrets to the people. He con 
 tents himself with describing the Englishman as he is, and 
 proposes no better. There are all degrees in poetry, and we 
 must be thankful for every beautiful talent. But it is only a 
 first success, when the ear is gained. The best office of the 
 best poets has been to show how low and uninspired was their 
 general style, and that only once or twice they have struck 
 the high chord. 
 
 That expansiveness which is the essence of the poetic ele 
 ment, they have not. It was no Oxonian, but Hafiz, who 
 said : " Let us be crowned with roses, let us drink wine, and 
 break up the tiresome old roof of heaven into new forms." 
 A stanza of the song of nature the Oxonian has no ear for, 
 and he does not value the salient and curative influence of 
 Intellectual action, studious of truth, without a by-end. 
 
 By the law of contraries, I look for an irresistible taste for 
 Orientalism in Britain. For a self-conceited modish life, made 
 up of trifles, clinging to a corporeal civilization, hating ideas, 
 there is no remedy like the Oriental largeness. That astonishes 
 and disconcerts English decorum. For once there is thunder 
 it never heard, light it never saw, and power which trifles with 
 time and space. I am not surprised, then, to find an English 
 man like Warren Hastings, who had been struck with the 
 grand style of thinking in the Indian writings, deprecating 
 the prejudices of his countrymen, while offering them a trans 
 lation of the Bhagvat. ".Might I," he says, "an unlettered 
 man, venture to prescribe bounds to the latitude of criticism, 
 I should exclude, in estimating the merit of such a produc- 1 
 tion, all rules drawn from the ancient or modern literature of 
 Europe, all references to such sentiments or manners as are 
 become the standards of propriety for opinion and action in 
 our own modes, and, equally, all appeals to our revealed tenets, 
 of religion and moral duty." * He goes on to bespeak indul- 
 
 * Preface to Wilkins s Translation of the Bhagvat Geeta. 
 
mi: -TIMES." 285 
 
 gcnce to " ornaments of fancy unsuited to our taste, find pas- 
 .levated to a tract of sublimity into which our habits of 
 judgment will find it difficult to pursue them." 
 
 Meantime, I know tliat a retrieving power lies in the Eng 
 lish race, which seems to make any recoil possible; in other 
 w.n-ds, there is at all times a minority of profound minds ex 
 isting in the nation, capable of appreciating every soaring of 
 intellect and every hint of tendency. While the constructive 
 talent seems dwarfed and superficial, the criticism is often in 
 the noblest tone, and SULI^VMS the presence of the invisible 
 Lfods. i can well believe what 1 have often heard, that there 
 are two nations in England; but it is not the Poor and the 
 Rich ; nor is it the Normans and Saxons ; nor the Celt and 
 the Goth. These are each always becoming the other; for 
 Robert Owen does not e.x a Derate the power of circumstance. 
 But the two complexions, or two styles of mind, the per 
 ceptive class, and the practical finality class, are ever in 
 counterpoise, interacting mutually; one, in hopeless minori 
 ties ; the other, in huge masses ; one studious, contemplative, 
 experimenting : the other, the ungrateful pupil, scornful of 
 the source, whilst availing itself of the knowledge for gain ; 
 these two nations, of genius and of animal force, though the 
 first consist of only a dozen souls, and the second of twenty 
 millions, forever by their discord and their accord yield the 
 power of the English State. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE "TIMi>." 
 
 THE power of the newspaper is familiar in America, and 
 in accordance with our political system. In Kn;rland. it 
 stands in antagonism with the feudal institutions, and it is all 
 the more beneficent succor against the secretive tendencies of 
 a monarchy. The celebrated Lord Snmers "knew of no good 
 law proposed and passed in his time, to which the public pa 
 pers had not directed his attention." There is no corner and 
 no night. A relentless iinjiiisit ion drag s every secret to the 
 day, turns the glare of this solar microscope on every mal- 
 faisance, so as to make the public a more terrible spy than 
 
286 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 any foreigner ; and no weakness can be taken advantage of by 
 an enemy, since the whole people are already forewarned. 
 Thus England rids herself of those incrustations which have 
 been the ruin of old states. Of course, this inspection is 
 feared. No antique privilege, no comfortable monopoly, but 
 sees surely that its days are counted ; the people are familiar 
 ized with the reason of reform, and, one by one, take away 
 every argument of the obstructives. " So your Grace likes 
 the comfort of reading the newspapers," said Lord Mansfield 
 to the Duke of Northumberland ; " mark my words ; you and 
 I shall not live to see it, but this young gentleman (Lord El- 
 don)* may, or it may be a little later ; but a little sooner or 
 later, these newspapers will most assuredly write the dukes of 
 Northumberland out of their titles and possessions, and the 
 country out of its king." The tendency in England towards 
 social and political institutions like those of America, is in 
 evitable, and the ability of its journals is the driving force. 
 
 England is full of manly, clever, well-bred men who possess 
 the talent of writing off-hand pungent paragraphs, expressing 
 with clearness and courage their opinion on any person or per 
 formance. Valuable or not, it is a skill that is rarely found, 
 out of the English journals. The English do this, as they 
 write poetry, as they ride and box, by being educated to it. 
 Hundreds of clever Praeds, and Freres, and Froudes, and 
 Hoods, and Hooks, and Maginns, and Mills, and Macaulays, 
 make poems, or short essays for a journal, as they make 
 speeches in Parliament and on the hustings, or, as they shoot 
 and ride. It is a quite accidental and arbitrary direction of 
 their general ability. Rude health and spirits, an Oxford edu 
 cation, and the habits of society are implied, but not a ray of 
 genius. It comes of the crowded state of the professions, the 
 violent interest which all men take in politics, the facility of 
 experimenting in the journals, and high pay. 
 
 The most conspicuous result of this talent is the " Times " 
 newspaper. No power in England is more felt, more feared, 
 or more obeyed. What you read in the morning in that jour 
 nal, you shall hear in the evening in all society. It has ears 
 everywhere, and its information is earliest, completest, and 
 surest. It has risen, year by year, and victory by victory, to 
 its present authority. I asked one of its old contributors, 
 whether it had once been abler than it is now 1 " Never," he 
 said ; " these are its palmiest days." It has shown those 
 qualities which are dear to Englishmen, unflinching adherence 
 
THE "TIMES." 287 
 
 to its objects, prodigal intellectual ability, and a towering as 
 surance, backed by the perfect organization in its print ing- 
 hoiise. and its world -wide network of correspondence and re 
 ports. It has its own history and famous trophies. In 1820, 
 it adapted the cans,- of Hueen ( an. line, and carried it against 
 the king. It adopted a pour law system, and almost alone 
 lifted it through. When Lord Brougham was in power, it 
 decided against him, ami pulled him down. It declared war 
 against Ireland, and conquered it. It adopted the League 
 against the Corn Laws, and, when ( obden had begun to de 
 spair, it announced his triumph. It denounced and discredited 
 the French Republic of 1848, and checked every sympathy 
 with it in Kngland, until it had enrolled 200,000 special con 
 stables to watch the Chartists, and make them ridiculous on 
 the l()th April. It first denounced and then adopted the new 
 French Empire, and urged the French Alliance and its results. 
 It has entered into each municipal, literary, and social ques 
 tion, almost with a controlling voice. It has done bold and 
 seasonable service in exposing frauds which threatened the 
 commercial community. Meantime, it attacks its rivals by 
 perfecting its printing machinery, and will drive them out of 
 Circulation ; for the only limit to the circulation of the "Times" 
 is the impossibility of printing copies fast enough ; since a 
 daily paper can only be new and seasonable for a few hours. 
 It will kill all but that paper which is diametrically in oppo 
 sition ; since many papers, first and last, have lived by their 
 attacks on the leading journal. 
 
 The late Mr. Walter was printer of the " Times," and had 
 gradually arranged the whole //."//, ,-i, I of it in perfect system. 
 It is told, that when lie demanded a small share in the pro 
 prietary, and was refused, he said, k> As you please, gentlemen ; 
 and you may take away the Times from this office when you 
 will ; I shall publish the New Times next Monday morning." 
 The proprietors, who had already complained that his cliarvvs 
 for printing were excessive, found that they were in his power, 
 and -aye him what -yer he wished. 
 
 I went one day with a good friend to the " Times " office, 
 which was entered through a pretty garden-yard, in Print ing- 
 House Square. We walked with some circumspection, as if 
 we were entering a powder-mill ; but the door was opened by 
 a mild old woman, and, by dint of some transmission of <. pU. 
 we were at last conducted into the parlor of Mr. Morris, a 
 very gentle person, with no hostile appearances. The statis- 
 
288 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 tics are now quite out of date, but I remember he told us that 
 the daily printing was then 35,000 copies; that on the 1st 
 March, 1848, the greatest number ever printed, 54,000 
 were issued ; that, since February, the daily circulation had 
 increased by 8000 copies. The old press they were then using 
 printed five or six thousand sheets per hour ; the new machine, 
 for which they were then building an engine, would print 
 twelve thousand per hour. Our entertainer confided us to a 
 courteous assistant to show us the establishment, in which, I 
 think, they employed a hundred and twenty men. I remember, 
 I saw the reporters room, in which they redact their hasty 
 stenographs, but the editor s room, and who is in it, I did 
 not see, though I shared the curiosity of mankind respecting 
 it. 
 
 The staff of the " Times " has always been made up of 
 able men. Old Walter, Sterling, Bacon, Barnes, Alsiger, Hor- 
 ance Twiss, Jones Loyd, John Oxenford, Mr. Mosely, Mr. Bai 
 ley, have contributed to its renown in their special depart 
 ments. But it has never wanted the first pens for occasional 
 assistance. Its private information is inexplicable, and recalls 
 the stories of Fouche s police, whose omniscience made it be 
 lieved that the Empress Josephine must be in his pay. It has 
 mercantile and political correspondents in every foreign city ; 
 and its expresses outrun the despatches of the government. 
 One hears anecdotes of the rise of its servants, as of the func 
 tionaries of the India House. I was told of the dexterity of 
 one of its reporters, who, finding himself, on one occasion, 
 where the magistrates had strictly forbidden reporters, put his 
 hands into his coat-pocket, and with pencil in one hand, and 
 tablet in the other, did his work. 
 
 The influence of this journal is a recognized power in 
 Europe, and, of course, none is more conscious of it than its 
 conductors. The tone of its articles has often been the occa 
 sion of comment from the official organs of the continental 
 courts, and sometimes the ground of diplomatic complaint. 
 What would the " Times " say 1 is a terror in Paris, in Berlin, 
 in Vienna, in Copenhagen, and in Nepaul. Its consummate, 
 discretion and success exhibit the English skill of combination. 
 The daily paper is the work of many hands, chiefly, it is said, 
 of young men recently from the University, and perhaps read 
 ing law in chambers in London. Hence the academic elegance, 
 and classic allusion, which adorn its columns. Hence, too, the 
 heat and gallantry of its onset. But the steadiness of the 
 
THE * TIMES." 289 
 
 aim suggests the belief that tliis fire is directed and fed by 
 older i if persons of exact information, and with 
 
 settled views of policy, supplied the writers with the basis of 
 fa.-t. ami tin- object to In- attaim d, and availed themselves 
 of tlu-ir younger energy and eloquence to plead the cause, 
 lloth the council ;md the executive departments -ain by this 
 division. Of two men of equal ability, the one who does not 
 write, but keeps his eye on the course of public affairs, will 
 have the higher judicial wisdom. But the parts are kept in 
 concert ; all the articles appear to proceed from a single will. 
 The Times * never disapproves of what itself has said, or 
 cripples itself by aj>olo-y for the absence of the editor, or the 
 indiscretion of him who held the pen. It speaks out bluff and 
 bold, and sticks to what it says. It draws from any number 
 of learned and skilful contributors; but a more learned and 
 skilful I*TX >n supervises, corrects, and co-ordinates. Of this 
 closet, the secret docs not transpire. No writer is suffered to 
 claim the authorship of any pa}x,T ; everything goxnl, from 
 whatever quarter, comes out editorially; and thus, by making 
 the paper everything, and those who write it nothing, the 
 character and the awe of the journal Lfain. 
 
 The English like it for its complete information. A state 
 ment of fact in the " Times" is as reliable as a citation from 
 Hansard. Then, they like its independence ; they do not 
 know, when they take it up, what their paper is going to 
 say : but. above all. for the nationality and confidence of its 
 tone. It thinks for them all : it is their understanding and 
 <lay s ideal dairuerreotypcd. When 1 Me them reading its col 
 umns, they seem to me becoming every moment more British. 
 It has the national courage, not rash and petulant, but consid 
 erate and determined. No dignity or wealth is a shield from 
 -unit. It attacks a duke as readily as a policeman, and 
 with the most provoking airs of condescension. It makes rude 
 work with the Board of Admiralty. The Bench of Bishops 
 is still less safe. One bishop fares badly for his rapacity, and 
 another for his bigotry, and a third for his courtliness. It ad- 
 - occasionally a hint to majesty itself, and sometimes a 
 hint which is taken. There is an air of freedom even in their 
 advertising columns, which speaks well for Kn-land to a for 
 eigner. On the days when I arrived in London in 1*47, I 
 read among the daily announcements, one offering a reward of 
 fifty p >unds to any person who would put a nobleman, de 
 scribed by name and title, late a member of Parliament, into 
 
 VOL. II* 13 8 
 
290 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 any county jail in England, he having been convicted of ol> 
 taining money under false pretences. 
 
 Was never such arrogancy as the tone of this paper. Every 
 slip of an Oxonian or Cantabrigian who writes his tirst leader 
 assumes that we subdued the earth before we sat down to 
 write this particular " Times." One would think the world 
 was on its knees to the " Times " Office, for its daily break 
 fast. But this arrogance is calculated. Who would care for 
 it, if it "surmised," or "dared to confess," or "ventured to 
 predict," <fcc. No ; it is so, and so it shall be. 
 
 The morality and patriotism of the " Times " claims only to 
 be representative, and by no means ideal. It gives the argu 
 ment, not of the majority, but of the commanding class. Its 
 editors know better than to defend Russia, or Austria, or 
 English vested rights, on abstract grounds. But they give a 
 voice to the class who, at the moment, take the lead ; and 
 they have an instinct for finding where the power now lies, 
 wfiich is eternally shifting its banks. Sympathizing with, 
 an.l speaking for the class that rules the hour, yet, being ap 
 prised of every ground-swell, every Chartist resolution, every 
 Church squabble, every strike in the mills, they detect the 
 first tremblings of change. Tli3y watch the hard and bitter 
 straggles of the authors of each liberal movement, year by 
 year, watching them only to taunt and obstruct them, 
 until, at last, when they see that these have established their 
 fact, that power is on the point of passing to them, they strike 
 in, with the voice of a monarch, astonish those whom they 
 succor, as much as those whom they desert, and make victory 
 sure. Of course, the aspirants see that the " Times " is one 
 of the goods of fortune, not to be won but by winning their cause. 
 
 " Punch " is equally an expression of English good sense, as 
 the " London Times." It is the comic version of the same 
 sense. Many of its caricatures are equal to the best pamph 
 lets, and will convey to the eye in an instant the popular view 
 which was taken of each turn of public affairs. Its sketches 
 are usually made by masterly hands, and sometimes with 
 genius ; the delight of every class, because uniformly guided 
 by that taste which is tyrannical in England. It is a new 
 trait of the nineteenth century, that the wit and humor of 
 England, as in Punch, so in the humorists, Jerrold, Dickens, 
 Thackeray, Hood, have taken the direction of humanity and 
 freedom. 
 
 The " Times," ii&e every important institution, shows the 
 
STOXEHENGE. 291 
 
 way to a better. It is a living index of the colossal British 
 power. Its existence honors the people who dare to print all 
 thev know, dare to know all the facts, and do not wish to be 
 flattered by hiding the extent of the public disaster. There 
 is always safety in valor. 1 wish I could add, that this journal 
 aspired to deserve the power it wields, by guidance of the public 
 sentiment to the right. It is usually pretended, in Parliament 
 and elsewhere, that the English press has a high tone, which 
 it has not. It has an imperial tone, as of a powerful and inde 
 pendent nation. But as with other empires, its tone is prone 
 to be official, and even officinal. The " Times" shares all the 
 limitations of the governing classes, and wishes never to be in 
 a minority. If only it dared to cleave to the right, to show the 
 right to be the only expedient, and feed its batteries from the 
 central heart of humanity, it might not have so many men of 
 rank among its contributors, but genius would be its cordial 
 and invincible ally ; it might now and then bear the brunt 
 of formidable combinations, but no journal is ruined by wise 
 courage. It would be the natural leader of British reform ; its 
 proud function, that of being the voice of Europe, the defender 
 of the exile and patriot against despots, would be more effectu 
 ally discharged ; it would have the authority which is claimed 
 for that dream of good men not yet come to pass, an Interna 
 tional Congress ; and the least of its victories would be to give 
 to England a new millennium of beneficent power. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 STONEHENGE. 
 
 IT had been ajxreed between mv friend Mr. C. and me, that 
 before I left England we should make an excursion together 
 to Stonehenge, which neither of us had seen ; and the project 
 pleased my fancy with the double attraction of the monument 
 and the companion. It seemed a brhuriiiir together of extreme 
 points, to visit the oldest religious monument in Britain, in 
 company with her latest thinker, and one whose influence may 
 be traced in every contemporary book. I was glad to sum up 
 a little my experiences, and to exchange a few reasonable words 
 on the aspects of England, with a man on whose genius I set 
 
292 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 a very high value, and who had as much penetration, and as 
 severe a theory of duty as any person in it. On Friday, 7th 
 July, we took the Southwestern Railway through Hampshire 
 to Salisbury, where we found a carriage to convey us to Ames- 
 bury. The fine weather and my friend s local knowledge of 
 Hampshire, in which he is wont to spend a part of every summer, 
 made the way short. There was much to say, too, of the trav 
 elling Americans, and their usual objects in London. I thought 
 it natural, that they should give some time to works of art 
 collected here, which they cannot find at home, and a little to 
 scientific clubs and museums, which, at this moment, make 
 London very attractive. But my philosopher was not con 
 tented. Art and * high art is a favorite target for his wit. 
 " Yes, Kunst is a great delusion, and Goethe and Schiller 
 wasted a great deal of good time on it " : and he thinks he 
 discovers that old Goethe found this out, and, in his later writ 
 ings, changed his tone. As soon as men begin to talk of art, 
 architecture, and antiquities, nothing good comes of it. He 
 wishes to go through the British Museum in silence, and thinks 
 a sincere man will see something, and say nothing. In these 
 days, he thought, it would become an architect to consult only 
 the grim necessity, and say, * I can build you a coffin for such 
 dead persons as you are, and for such dead purposes as you 
 have, but you shall have no ornament. For the science, he 
 had, if possible, even less tolerance, and compared the savans 
 of Somerset House to the boy who asked Confucius " how many 
 stars in the sky]" Confucius replied, "he minded things near 
 him " ; then said the boy, " how many hairs are there in your 
 eyebrows ] " Confucius said, "he did n t know and didn t care." 
 " Still speaking of the Americans, C. complained that they 
 dislike the coldness and exclusiveness of the English, and run 
 away to France, and go with their countrymen, and are amused, 
 instead of manfully staying in London, and confronting English 
 men, and acquiring their culture, who really have much to 
 teach them. 
 
 I told C. that T was easily dazzled, and was accustomed to 
 concede readily all that an Englishman would ask ; I saw 
 everywhere in the country proofs of sense and spirit, and suc 
 cess of every sort : I like^the people : they are as good as they 
 are handsome ; they have everything, and can do everything : 
 but meantime, I surely know, that, as soon as I return to 
 Massachusetts, I shall lapse at once into the feeling, which the 
 geography of America inevitably inspires, that we play the 
 
STONEHEXGE. 293 
 
 game with immense advantage ; that there and not here is the 
 seat ami cent iv of tin- IJrit i>h nice ; and that no skill or activity 
 can long compete with the prodigious natural advantages of 
 that country, in the hands of t ho same race : and that Kngland, 
 an old and exhausted island, must one day he contented, like 
 other parents, to lie strong only in her children. But this was 
 a proposition which no Englishman of whatever condition can 
 easily entertain. 
 
 \Ye left the train at Salisbury, and took a carriage to Ames- 
 hurv. passing by ( >ld Saruiu, a bare, treeless hill, once containing 
 the town which sent two members to Parliament, now, not 
 a hut ; and, arriving at Amesbury, stopped at the George 
 Inn. After dinner, we walked to Salisbury Plain. On the 
 broad downs, under the gray sky, not a house was visible, 
 nothing but Stonehenge, which looked like a group of brown 
 dwarfs in the wide expanse, Stonehenge and the barrows, 
 which rose like green bosses about the plain, and a few hay 
 ricks. On the top of a mountain, the old temple would 
 not be more impressive. Far and wide a few shepherds 
 with their flocks sprinkled the plain, and a bagman drove 
 along the road. It looked as if the wide margin given 
 in this crowded isle to this primeval temple were accorded by 
 the veneration of the British race to the old egg out of which 
 all their ecclesiastical structures and history had proceeded. 
 Stonehenge is a circular colonnade with a diameter of a 
 hundred feet, and enclosing a second and a third colon 
 nade within. We walked round the stones, and clambered 
 over them, to wont ourselves with their strange aspect and 
 groupings, and found a nook sheltered from the wind among 
 them, where C. lighted his cigar. It was pleasant to see, that, 
 just this simplest of all simple structures, two upright 
 stones and a lintel laid across, had long outstood all later 
 churches, and all history, and were like what is most perma 
 nent on the face of the planet : these, and the barrows, 
 mere mounds (of which there are a hundred and sixty within 
 a circle of three miles about Stonehenge), like the same mound 
 on the plain of Troy, which still makes good to the passing 
 mariner on Hellespont, the vaunt of Homer and the fame of 
 Achilles. Within the enclosure --row buttercups, nettles, and, 
 all around, wild thyme, daisy, meadow-sweet, golden-rod, thistle, 
 and the carpeting grass. Over us, larks were soaring and 
 singing, as my friend said : the larks which were hatched 
 last year, and the wind which was hatched many thousand 
 
294 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 years ago." We counted and measured by paces the biggest 
 stones, and soon knew as much as any man can suddenly know 
 of the inscrutable temple. There are ninety-four stones, and 
 there were once probably one hundred and sixty. The temple 
 is circular, and uncovered, and the situation tixed astronomi 
 cally, the grand entrances here, and at Abury, being placed 
 exactly northeast, " as all the gates of the old cavern temples 
 are." How came the stones here? for these sarsens or Dru- 
 idical sandstones, are not found in this neighborhood. The 
 sacrificial stone, as it is called, is the only one in all these 
 blocks, that can resist the action of fire, and as I read in the 
 books, must have been brought one hundred and fifty miles. 
 
 On almost every stone we found the marks of the mineral 
 ogist s hammer and chisel. The nineteen smaller stones of 
 the inner circle are of granite. I, who had just come from 
 Professor Sedgwick s Cambridge Museum of megatheria and 
 mastodons, was ready to maintain that some cleverer elephants 
 or mylodonta had borne off and laid these rocks one on anoth 
 er. Only the good beasts must have known how to cut a well- 
 wrought tenon and mortise, and to smooth the surface of 
 some of the stones. The chief mystery is, that any mystery 
 should have been allowed to settle on so remarkable a monu 
 ment, in a country on which all the muses have kept their 
 eyes now for eighteen hundred years. We are not yet too late to 
 learn much more than is known of this structure. Some 
 diligent Fellowes or Layard will arrive, stone by stone, at the 
 whole history, by that exhaustive British sense and persever 
 ance, so whimsical in its choice of objects, which leaves its 
 own Stonehenge or Choir Gaur to the rabbits, whilst it opens 
 pyramids, and uncovers Nineveh. Stonehenge, in virtue of 
 the simplicity of its plan, and its good preservation, is as if 
 new and recent ; and, a thousand years hence, men will thank 
 this age for the accurate history it will yet eliminate. We 
 walked in and out, and took again and again a fresh look at 
 the uncanny stones. The old sphinx put our petty differences 
 of nationality out of sight. To these conscious stones we two 
 pilgrims were alike known and near. We could equally well re 
 vere their old British meaning. My philosopher was subdued 
 and gentle. In this quiet house of destiny, he happened to say, 
 " I plant cypresses wherever I go, and if I am in search of pain, 
 I cannot go wrong." The spot, the gray blocks, and their rude 
 order, which refuses to be disposed of, suggested to him the 
 flight of ages, and the succession of religions. The old times 
 
STONKHKNiiK. 205 
 
 of England impress ( . much : he reads little, lie says, in these 
 last years, l.nt " A<1,t ,s <///, /<////;,/," t lie fifty-three vi lunies of 
 which are in the " London Library." lie tind> all English 
 history tlu rein. lie e;m M e, as he reads, the old saint <>f lona 
 sitting there, mid writing, a man to men. The A<1<i X<iin-f<innii 
 show plainly that the men of tho>e times believed in (Jod, and 
 in the immortality of the soul, us their alleys and cathedrals 
 testily : now, even the puritanisin is all gone. London is 
 pagan. He fancied that mvater men had lived in England 
 than any of her writers : and. in fact, ahout the time when 
 those \\riters appeared, the last of these were already gone. 
 
 We left the mound in the twilight, with the design to re 
 turn the next morning, and coming I nick two miles to our inn, 
 we were met hy little showers, and late as it was, men and 
 women were out attempting to protect their spread wind-rows. 
 The grass grows rank and dark in the showery Kngland. At 
 the inn, there wa.s only milk for one cup of tea. When we 
 culled tor more, the girl liroiight us three drops. My friend 
 was annoyed who stood for the credit of an English inn, and 
 still more, the next morning, hy the dog-curt, sole procurable 
 vehicle, in which we were to be sent to Wilton. J engaged 
 the local antiquary, Mr. Brown, to go with us to Stonehenge, 
 on our wav, and show us what he knew of the "astronomical" 
 and " sacrificial v stones. 1 stood on the last, and he pointed 
 to the upright, or rather, inclined stone, called the "astro 
 nomical," and bade me notice that its top ranged with the sky 
 line. "Yes." Very well. Now, at the summer solstice, the 
 sun rises exactly over the top of that stone, and, at the Dru- 
 idical temple at A bury, there is also an astronomical stone, in 
 the same relative positions. 
 
 In the silence of tradition, this one relation to science be 
 comes an important dew : but we were content to leave the 
 problem, with the rocks. Was this the " (J hints Dance " which 
 Merlin brought from Killaraus, in Ireland, to be I ther I cn- 
 dra uon s monument to the British nobles whom Hengist 
 slaughtered here, as Geoffrey of Monmouth relates? or was it 
 a IJoinan work, as Inigo Jones explained to King. lames; or 
 identical in design and stylo with the East Indian temples of 
 tin- sun ; as Davies in the Celtic Researches maintains 1 Of 
 all the writers. Stukeley is the best. The heroic antiquary, 
 charmed with the geometric perfections of his ruin, connects 
 it with the oldest monuments and religion of the world, and, 
 with the courage of his tribe, does not stick to say, " the 
 
296 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 Deity who made the world by the scheme of Stonehenge." 
 He finds that the cursus * on Salisbury Plain stretches across 
 the downs, like a line of latitude upon the globe, and the 
 meridian line of Stonehenge passes exactly through the middle 
 of this cursus. But here is the high point of the theory : the 
 Druids had the magnet ; laid their courses by it ; their cardinal 
 points in Stonehenge, Ambresbury, and elsewhere, which vary 
 a little from true east and west, followed the variations of the 
 compass. The Druids were Phoenicians. The name of the 
 magnet is lapis Heracleus, and Hercules was the god of the 
 Phoenicians, Hercules, in the legend, drew his bow at the 
 sun, and the sun-god gave him a golden cup, with which he 
 sailed over the ocean. What was this, but a compass-box ? 
 This cup or little boat, in which the magnet was made to float 
 on water, and so show the north, was probably its first form, 
 before it was suspended on a pin. But science was an ar 
 canum, and, as Britain was a Phoenician secret, so they kept 
 their compass a secret, and it was lost with the Tyrian com 
 merce. The golden fleece, again, of Jason, was the compass, 
 a bit of loadstone, easily supposed to be the only one in 
 the world, and therefore naturally awakening the cupidity and 
 ambition of the young heroes of a maritime nation to join in 
 an expedition to obtain possession of this wise stone. Hence 
 the fable that the ship Argo was loquacious and oracular. 
 There is also some curious coincidence in the names. Apol- 
 lodorus makes Magnes the son of sEolus, who married Nais. 
 On hints like these, Stukeley builds again the grand colonnade 
 into historic harmony, and computing backward by the known 
 variations of the compass, bravely assigns the year 406 be 
 fore Christ for the date of the temple. 
 
 For the difficulty of handling and carrying stones of this 
 size, the like is done in all cities, every day, with no other 
 aid than horse-power. I chanced to see a year ago men 
 at work on the substructure of a house in Bowdoin Square, in 
 Boston, swinging a block of granite of the size of the largest 
 of the Stonehenge columns with an ordinary derrick. The 
 men were common masons, with paddies to help, nor did they 
 think they were doing anything remarkable. I suppose there 
 
 * Connected with Stonehenge are an avenue and a cursus. The avenue is 
 a narrow road of raised earth, extending 594 yards in a straight line from the 
 grand entrance, then dividing into two branches, which lead, severally, to a row 
 of barrows : and to the cnrsus, an artificially formed flat tract of groi md. This 
 is half a mile northeast from Stonehenge, bounded by banks and ditches, 3036 
 yards long, by 110 broad. 
 
STOXEIIENGE. 297 
 
 were as good men a thousand years ago. And we wonder how 
 Stoiiehcnue uas built and forgotten. After spending iialf an 
 hour on the spot, we sot forth in our dog-cart over the downs 
 for WiHon, C. not suppressing some threats and evil omens 
 on the proprietors, for keeping these broad plains a wretch d 
 sheep-walk when so many thousands of Englishmen were hun- 
 grv and wanted labor. But 1 heard afterwards that it is not 
 an economy to eultivate this land, which only yields one crop 
 on being broken up, and is then spoiled. 
 
 AVe eame to Wilton and to Wilton Hall, the renowned seat 
 of the Earls of Pembroke, a house known to Shakespeare and 
 Mas-iimvr, the frequent home of Sir Philip Sidney where he 
 wrote the Aivadia ; where he conversed with Lord Brooke, a 
 man of deep thought, and a poet, who caused to be en-raved 
 on his t<mhst>nr, " Here lies Fulke (Jreville Lord Brooke, the 
 friend of Sir Philip Sidney." It is now the property of the 
 Earl of Pembroke, and the residence of his brother, Sidney 
 Herbert. Esq., and is esteemed a noble specimen of the English 
 manor-hall. My friend had a letter from Mr. Herbert to his 
 housekeeper, and the house was shown. The state drawing- 
 room is a double cube, thirty feet hiuh, by thirty wide, by 
 sixty feet long : the adjoining room is a single cube, of thirty 
 feet everv way. Although these apartments and the long library 
 were full of good family portraits, Vandykes and other : and 
 though there were some good pictures, and a quadrangle cloister 
 full of antique and modern statuary, to which C., catalogue 
 in hand, did all too much justice, yet the eye was still drawn 
 to the windows, to a magnificent lawn, on which grew the 
 finest cedars in Fnirland. I had not seen more charming 
 grounds. We went out, and walked over the estate. \\ e 
 I a bridge built by Inigo Jones over a stream, of which 
 the gardener did not know the name, ((Jn. Alph ?) watched the 
 deer: climbed to the lonely sculptured summer-house, on a hill 
 backed by a wood ; came down into the Italian garden, and 
 into a French pavilion, garnished with French busts; and so, 
 ugain to the house, where we found a table laid for us with 
 bn ad. meat<. peaches, Crapes, and wine. 
 
 On leaving Wilton House, we took the coach for Salisbury. 
 The Cathedral which was finished six hundred years a-o has 
 even a spruce and modern air, and its spire is the highest in Fug- 
 land. I know not why, but I had been more struck with one of 
 no lame at Coventry, which rises three hundred feet from the 
 ground, with the lightness of a mullein-plant, and not at all 
 13* 
 
298 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 implicated with the church. Salisbury is now esteemed the 
 culmination of the Gothic art in England, as the buttresses 
 are fully unmasked, and honestly detailed from the sides of 
 the pile. The interior of the Cathedral is obstructed by the 
 organ in the middle, acting like a screen. I know not why in 
 real architecture the hunger of the eye for length of line is so 
 rarely gratified. The rule of art is that a colonnade is more 
 beautiful the longer it is, and that ad infinitum. And the 
 nave of a church is seldom so long that it need be divided by 
 a screen. 
 
 We loitered in the church, outside the choir, whilst service 
 was said. Whilst we listened to the organ, my friend re 
 marked, the music is good and yet not quite religious, but some 
 what as if a monk were panting to some fine Queen of Heaven. 
 C. was unwilling, and we did not ask to have the choir shown 
 us, but returned to our inn, after seeing another old church of 
 the place. We passed in the train Clarendon Park, but could 
 Bee little but the edge of a wood, though C. had wished to pay 
 closer attention to the birthplace of the Decrees of Clarendon. 
 At Bishopstoke we stopped, and found Mr. H., who received us 
 in his carriage, and took us to his house at Bishops Waltharn. 
 
 On Sunday, we had much discourse on a very rainy day. 
 My friends ask, whether there were any Americans 1 any 
 with an American idea, any theory of the right future of 
 that country 1 Thus challenged, I bethought myself neither 
 of caucuses nor congress, neither of presidents nor of cabinet- 
 ministers, nor of such as would make of America another 
 Europe. I thought only of the simplest and purest minds ; 
 I said, Certainly yes ; but those who hold it are fanatics of a 
 dream which I should hardly care to relate to your English 
 ears, to which it might be only ridiculous, and yet it is the 
 only true. So I opened the dogma of no government and 
 non-resistance, and anticipated the objections and the fun, and 
 procured a kind of hearing for it. I said, it is true that I have 
 never seen in any country a man of sufficient valor to stand 
 for this truth, and yet it is plain to me that no less valor than 
 this can command my respect. I can easily see the bankrupt 
 cy of the vulgar musket-worship, though great men be mus 
 ket-worshippers ; and t is certain, as God liveth, the gun that 
 does not need another gun, the law of love and justice alone, 
 can effect a clean revolution. I fancied that one or two of my 
 anecdotes made some impression on C., and I insisted that the 
 manifest absurdity of the view to English feasibility could 
 
STONEHEXGE. 299 
 
 make no difference to a gentleman ; that as to our secure ten 
 ure "f our mutton-chop and spinage in London or in Huston, 
 the soul might quote Talleyrand, " Mmndi-iir. }< n ~n in .* /ms hi. 
 / V * As I hud thus taken in the conversation the 
 saint s part, when dinner was announced, < . refused to go out 
 hrl iiv nu 1 , "he was altogether too wicked/ I planted my 
 bark against the wall, and our host wittily resrued us from the 
 dilomm i, by > iving, he was the wickedest, and would walk out 
 first, thru C. f llowed. and 1 went last. 
 
 On the wav to Winchester, whither our host accompanied 
 us in the afternoon, my friends asked many questions respect 
 ing American landscape, forests, houses, my house, for ex 
 ample. It is not easy to answer these queries well. There I 
 thought, in America, lies nature sleeping, over-row in g, almost 
 conscious, too much by halt for man in the picture, and so giv 
 ing a certain f/v .sY<-x.xr, like the rank vegetation of swamps and 
 : i seen at night, steeped in dews and rains, which it loves; 
 and on it man seems not able to make much impression. 
 There, in that great sloven continent, in high Alleghany pas- 
 tuns, in the sea-wide, sky-skirted prairie, still sleeps and mur 
 murs and hides the great mother, long since driven away from 
 the trim hedge-rows and over-cultivated garden of England. 
 And, in England, 1 am quite too sensible of this. Every one 
 is on his good behavior, and must be dressed for dinner at 
 six. So 1 put off my friends with very inadequate details, as 
 best I could. 
 
 .lust before entering Winchester, we stopped at the Church 
 of Saint Cross, and. after looking through the quaint antiquity, 
 we demanded a piece of bread and a draught of beer, which 
 the founder, Henry de Blois, in 1136, commanded should be 
 given to every one who should ask it at the gate. We had 
 both, from the old couple who take care of the church. Some 
 twenty people, every day, they said, make the same demand. 
 This hospitality of seven hundred years standing did not hin 
 der C. from pronouncing a malediction on the priest who re 
 ceives L lHH) a year, that were meant for the poor, and spends 
 a pittance on this small beer and crumbs. 
 
 In the Cathedral, 1 was gratified, at least by the ample di 
 mensions. The length of line exceeds that of any other Eng 
 lish church ; being ^~)<> feet by L ."ii) in breadth of transept. I 
 think I prefer this church to all I have seen, except Westmin 
 ster and York. Here was Canute buried, and here Alfred the 
 
 * " Mais, Monseigneur, ilfaut qutfexitte." 
 
300 ENGLISH TKAITS. 
 
 Great was crowned and buried, and here the Saxon kings : and, 
 later, in his own church, William of Wykeham. It is very 
 old : part of the crypt into which we went down and saw the 
 Saxon and Norman arches of the old church on which the 
 present stands, was built fourteen or fifteen hundred years ago. 
 Sharon Turner says : " Alfred was buried at Winchester, in the 
 Abbey he had founded there, but his remains were removed by 
 Henry I. to the new Abbey in the meadows at Hyde, on the 
 northern quarter of the city, and laid under the high altar. 
 The building was destroyed at the Reformation, and what is 
 left of Alfred s body now lies covered by modern buildings, or 
 buried in the ruins of the old." * William of Wykeham s 
 shrine tomb was unlocked for us, and C. took hold of the re 
 cumbent statue s marble hands, and patted them affectionate 
 ly, for he rightly values the brave man who built Windsor, and 
 this Cathedral, and the School here, and New College at Ox 
 ford. But it was growing late in the afternoon. Slowly we 
 left the old house, and parting with our host, we took tha, 
 train for London. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 PERSONAL. 
 
 I" N these comments on an old journey now revised after 
 JL seven busy years have much changed men and things in 
 England, I have abstained from reference to persons, except 
 in the last chapter, and in one or two cases where the fame 
 of the parties seemed to have given the public a property in 
 all that concerned them. I must further allow myself a few 
 notices, if only as an acknowledgment of debts that cannot 
 be paid. My journeys were cheered by so much kindness 
 from new friends, that my impression of the island is bright 
 with agreeable memories both of public societies and of house 
 holds ; and, what is nowhere better found than in England, a 
 cultivated person fitly surrounded by a happy home, " with 
 honor, love, obedience, troops of friends," is of all institutions 
 the best. At the landing in Liverpool, I found my Manchester 
 correspondent awaiting me, a gentleman whose kind reception 
 was followed by a train of friendly and effective attentions 
 
 * History of the Anglo-Saxons, I. 599. 
 
PERSONAL. 301 
 
 which never rested whilst 1 remained in tlic country. A man 
 of sense and of letters, the editor of a powerful local journal, 
 he added to solid virtues an infinite sweetness and l>n />i/t///t< . 
 There seemed a pool of honey about his heart which lubricat 
 ed all his speech and action with line jets of mead. An equal 
 good- fort une attended many later accidents of my journey, 
 until the sincerity of English kindness timed to surprise. My 
 visit fell in the fortunate days when Mr. Bancroft was the 
 American Minister in London, and at his house, or through 
 od offices, I had ea>y access to excellent persons and to 
 privileged places. At the house cf Mr. Carhle, 1 met persons 
 eminent in society and in letters. The privileges of the 
 Atlu meuni and of the Reform Clubs were hospitably opened 
 to me, and 1 found much advantage in the circles of the 
 Ceolo- ic," the "Antiquarian," and the "Royal Societies." 
 Every day in London gave me new opportunities of meeting 
 men and women who give splendor to society. I saw 1 N-uers, 
 llallam, Macaulay, Mimes, Milman, Barry Cornwall, Dickens, 
 Thackeray, Tennyson, Leigh Hunt, D lsraeli, Helps, AVilkin- 
 soii. liailcy, Kenyon, and Forster : the younger poets, Clouuh, 
 Arnold, and Patmorc ; and, among the men of science, Robert 
 Brown, Owen, Sedgwick, Faraday, Buckland, Lyell, De la 
 Beche, Hooker, Carpenter, Babbage, and Kdward Forbes. It 
 was my privilege also to converse with Miss llaillie, with Lady 
 Morgan, with Mrs. Jameson, and Mrs. Somcrville. A finer hos 
 pitality made many private houses not less known and dear. 
 It is not in distinguished circles th.it wisdom and elevated 
 characters are usually found, or, if found, not confined thereto ; 
 and my recollections of the best hours go back to private con 
 versations in different parts of the kingdom, with persons little 
 known. Nor am I insensible to the courtesy which frankly 
 opened to me some noble mansions, if I do not adorn my j ige 
 with their names. Among the privileges of London, 1 recall 
 with pleasure two or three signal davs, one at Kew, where Sir 
 "William Hooker showed me all the riches of the vast botanic 
 garden; one at the Museum, where Sir Charles Fellowes ex 
 plained in detail the history of his Ionic trophy-monument; 
 and still another, on which Mr. Owen accompanied my coun 
 tryman Mr. H. and myself through the If untenaii Museum. 
 
 The like frank hospitality, bent on real service, I found 
 aiiionir the great and the humble, wherever I went; in Bir 
 mingham, in Oxford, in Leicester, in Nottingham, in Sheffield, 
 in Manchester, in Liverpool. At Edinburgh, through the 
 
302 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 kindness of Dr. Samuel Brown, I made the acquaintance of 
 DeQuincey, of Lord Jeffrey, of Wilson, of Mrs. Crowe, of the 
 Messrs. Chambers, and of a man of high character and genius, 
 the short-lived painter David Scott. 
 
 At Ambleside, in March, 1848, I was for a couple of days 
 the guest of Miss Martineau, then newly returned from her 
 Egyptian tour. On Sunday afternoon, I accompanied her to 
 Rydal Mount. And as I have recorded a visit to Wordsworth, 
 many years before, I must not forget this second interview. 
 We found Mr. Wordsworth asleep on the sofa. He was at first 
 silent and indisposed, as an old man, suddenly waked, before 
 he had ended his nap ; but soon became full of talk on the 
 French news. He was nationally bitter on the French : bitter 
 on Scotchmen, too. No Scotchman, he said, can write Eng 
 lish. He detailed the two models, on one or the other of 
 which all the sentences of the historian Robertson are framed. 
 Nor could Jeffrey, nor the Edinburgh Reviewers write English, 
 nor can .... who is a pest to the English tongue. Incident 
 ally he added, Gibbon cannot write English. The Edinburgh 
 Review wrote what would tell and what would sell. It had 
 however changed the tone of its literary criticism from the 
 time when a certain letter was written to the editor by Cole 
 ridge. Mrs. W. had the Editor s answer in her possession. 
 Tennyson he thinks a right poetic genius, though with some 
 affectation. He had thought an elder brother of Tennyson at 
 first the better poet, but must now reckon Alfred the true one. 
 .... In speaking of I know not what style, he said, " To be 
 sure it was the manner, but then you know the matter always 
 comes out of the manner." .... He thought Rio Janeiro the 
 
 best place in the world for a great capital city We talked 
 
 of English national character. I told him it was not credit 
 able that no one in all the country knew anything of Thomas 
 Taylor, the Platonist, whilst in every American library his trans 
 lations are found. I said, if Plato s Republic were published in 
 England as a new book to-day, do you think it would find any 
 readers 1 he confessed, it would not : " And yet," he added 
 after a pause, with that complacency which never deserts a 
 true-born Englishman, " and yet we have embodied it all." 
 
 His opinions of French, English, Irish, and Scotch seemed 
 rashly formulized from little anecdotes of what had befallen 
 himself and members of his family, in a diligence or stage 
 coach. His face sometimes lighted up, but his conversation 
 was not marked by special force or elevation. Yet perhaps it 
 
PERSONAL. 303 
 
 is n high compliment to the cultivation of the English gen 
 erally, when we find such a man not distinguished He hud a 
 healthy look, with a \\eat her beaten face, his face corrugated, 
 especially the large DOM, 
 
 Miss Martini-ail, who lived near him, praised him to me, not 
 for his p..-try, hut for thrift and economy ; fur having allbrded 
 to his oountiy neighbors ao example of a modest household, 
 when 1 comfort and culture were secured without any display. 
 She said, that, in his early housekeeping at the cottage where 
 he first, lived, he was accustomed to otter his friends bread and 
 plainest tare : if they wanted anything more, they must pay 
 liiiii for their hoard. It was the rule of the house. I replied, 
 that it evinced Knglish pluck more than anv anecdote I knew. 
 A gentleman in the neighborhood told the story of Walter 
 Scott s once staying a week with Wordsworth, and slipping out 
 every day under pretence of a walk, to the Swan Inn, for a 
 cold cut and porter; and one day passing with Wordsworth 
 the inn, he was betrayed by the landlord s asking him if he 
 had come for his porter. Of course, this trait would have 
 another look in London, and there you will hear from different 
 literary men, that Wordsworth had no personal friend, that 
 lie was not amiable, that he was parsimonious, fec. Landor, 
 always generous, says that he never praised anybodv. A gen 
 tleman in London showed me a watch that once belonged to 
 Milton, whose initials are engraved on its face. He said, he 
 once showed this to Wordsworth, who took it in one hand, then 
 drew out his own watch, and held it up with the other, before 
 the company, but no one making the expected remark, he put 
 back his own in silence. I do not attach much importance 
 to the disparagement of Wordsworth among London scholars. 
 Who reads him well will know, that in following the strong 
 bent of his genius, he was careless of the many, careless also 
 of the few, self-assured that he should " create the taste by 
 which he is to be enjoyed." He lived IOIILT enough to witness 
 the revolution he had wrought, and "to see what he foresaw." 
 There an- torpid places in his mind, there is something hard 
 and sterile in his poetry, want of grace and variety, want of 
 due catholicity and cosmopolitan scope: he had conformities 
 to Knu lish politics and traditions : he had egotistic puerilities 
 in the choice and treatment of his subjects ; but let us say of 
 him, that, alone in his time, he treated the human mind well, 
 and with an absolute trust. His adherence to his poetic creed 
 rested on real inspirations. The Ode on Immortality is the 
 
304 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 high-watermark which the intellect has reached in this age. 
 New means were employed, and new realms added to the em 
 pire of the muse, by his courage. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 RESULT. 
 
 ENGLAND is the best of actual nations. It is no ideal 
 framework, it is an old pile built in different ages, with 
 repairs, additions, and makeshifts ; but you see the poor best 
 you have got. London is the epitome of our times, and the 
 Rome of to-day. Broad-fronted broad-bottomed Teutons, they 
 stand in solid phalanx foursquare to the points of compass ; 
 they constitute the modern world, they have earned their van 
 tage-ground, and held it through ages of adverse possession. 
 They are well marked and differing from other leading races. 
 England is tender-hearted. Rome was not. England is not 
 so public in its bias ; private life is its place of honor. Truth 
 in private life, untruth in public, marks these home-loving 
 men. Their political conduct is not decided by general views, 
 but by internal intrigues and personal and family interest. 
 They cannot readily see beyond England. The history of 
 Rome and Greece, when written by their scholars, degenerates 
 into English party pamphlets. They cannot see beyond Eng 
 land, nor in England can they transcend the interests of the 
 governing classes. " English principles " mean a primary re 
 gard to the interests of property. England, Scotland, and 
 Ireland combine to check the colonies. England and Scotland 
 combine to check Irish manufactures and trade. England 
 rallies at home to check Scotland. In England, the strong 
 classes check the weaker. In the home population of near 
 thirty millions, there are but one million voters. The Church 
 punishes dissent, punishes education. Down to a late day, 
 marriages performed by dissenters were illegal. A bitter class- 
 legislation gives power to those who are rich enough to buy a 
 law. The game-laws are a proverb of oppression. Pauperism 
 incrusts and clogs the state, and in hard times becomes hideous. 
 In bad seasons, the porridge was diluted. Multitudes lived 
 miserably by shell-fish and sea-ware. In cities, the children 
 
RESULT. 305 
 
 are trained to beg, until they shall be old enough to rob. Men 
 and women \\ere convicted of poison ing scores of children for 
 burial lees. In Irish districts, men deteriorated in si/.e and 
 shape. The nose sunk, the gums were exposed, with dimin 
 ished brain and brutal form. During the Australian emigra 
 tion, multitudes were rejected by the commissioners as being 
 too emaciated for useful colonists. During the Russian war, 
 few of those that ottered as recruits were found up to the 
 medical standard, though it had been reduced. 
 
 The foreign policy of England, though ambitious and lavish 
 of money, has not often been generous or just. It has a prin 
 cipal regard to the interest of trade, checked however by the 
 aristocratic bias of the ambassador, which usually puts him 
 in sympathy with the continental Courts. It sanctioned the 
 partition of Poland, it betrayed Genoa, Sicily, Parga, Greece, 
 Turkey, Rome, and Hungary. 
 
 Some public regards they have. They have abolished slav 
 ery in the West Indies, ami put an end to human sacrifices in 
 the East. At home they have a certain statute hospitality. 
 England keeps open doors, as a trading country must, to all 
 nations. It is one of their fixed ideas, and \\rathfnlly sup 
 ported by their laws in unbroken sequence fora thousand years. 
 In Milt/mi Cli trt t it was ordained, that all "merchants shall 
 have safe and secure conduct to go out and come into England, 
 and to stay there, and to pass as well by land as by water, to 
 buv and sell by the ancient allowed customs, without any evil 
 toll, except in time of war, or when they shall be of any nation 
 ut war with us." It is a statute and obliged hospitality, and 
 peremptorily maintained. But this shop-rule had one magnifi 
 cent eliect. It extends its cold unalterable courtesy to political 
 exiles of every opinion, and is a fact which might give ad 
 ditional light to that portion of the planet seen from the farthest 
 star. But this perfunctory hospitality puts no sweetness into 
 their unaccommodating manners, no check on that puissant 
 .nationality which makes their existence incompatible with all 
 that is not English. 
 
 What we must say about a nation is a superficial dealing 
 with symptoms. We cannot go deep enough into the biography 
 of the spirit who never throws himself entire into one hero, hut 
 delegates his energy in parts or spasms to vicious and defec 
 tive individuals. But the wealth of the source is seen in the 
 plenitude of English nature. What variety of power and 
 talent ; what facility and pleuteousuess of knighthood, lord 
 
306 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 ship, ladyship, royalty, loyalty ; what a proud chivalry is in 
 dicated in " Collins s Peerage," through eight hundred years ! 
 What dignity resting on what reality and stoutness ! What 
 courage in war, what sinew in labor, what cunning workmen, 
 what inventors and engineers, what seamen and pilots, what 
 clerks and scholars ! No one man and no few men can repre 
 sent them. It is a people of myriad personalities. Their 
 many-headedness is owing to the advantageous position of the 
 middle class, who are always the source of letters and science. 
 Hence the vast plenty of their aesthetic production. As they 
 are many-headed, so they are many-nationed : their coloniza 
 tion annexes archipelagoes and continents, and their speech 
 seems destined to be the universal language of men. 1 have 
 noted the reserve of power in the English temperament. In 
 the island, they never let out all the length of all the reins, 
 there is no Berserkir rage, no abandonment or ecstasy of will 
 or intellect, like that of the Arabs in the time of Mahomet, or 
 like that which intoxicated France in 1789. But who would 
 see the uncoiling of that tremendous spring, the explosion of 
 their well- husbanded forces, must follow the swarms which, 
 pouring now for two hundred years from the British islands, 
 have sailed, and rode, and traded, and planted, through all 
 climates, mainly following the belt of empire, the temperate 
 zones, carrying the Saxon seed, with its instinct for liberty and 
 law, for arts and for thought, acquiring under some skies a 
 more electric energy than the native air allows, to the con 
 quest of the globe. Their colonial policy, obeying the necessi 
 ties of a vast empire, has become liberal. Canada and Aus 
 tralia have been contented with substantial independence. 
 They are expiating the wrongs of India, by benefits : first, in 
 works for the irrigation of the peninsula, and roads and tele 
 graphs ; and secondly, in the instruction of the people, to 
 qualify them for self-government, when the British power shall 
 be finally called home. 
 
 Their mind is in a state of arrested development, a divine 
 cripple like Vulcan ; a blind savant like Huber and Sanderson. 
 They do not occupy themselves on matters of general and last 
 ing import, but on a corporeal civilization, on goods that perish 
 in the using. But they read with good intent, and what they 
 learn they incarnate. The English mind turns every abstrac 
 tion it can receive into a portable utensil, or a working institu 
 tion. Such is their tenacity, and such their practical turn, 
 that they hold all they gain. Hence we say, that only the 
 
RESULT. 307 
 
 English race can In- trusted with freedom, freedom which is 
 double-edged :in<l dangerous to any but tin- wise and robust. 
 The Knglish designate the kingdoms emulous of free institu 
 htimental nations. Their own culture is not 
 an outside varnish, hut is thorough and secular in iamilit s and 
 the race. They are oppressive with their temperament, and 
 all the more that they are refined. 1 have sometimes seen 
 them walk with my countrymen when 1 was forced to allow 
 them every advantage, and their companions seemed bags of 
 boii s. 
 
 There is cramp limitation in their habit of thought, sleepy 
 routine, and a tort oise s instinct to hold hard to the ground 
 with his claws, lest he should be thrown on his back. There 
 is a drag of inertia which resists reform in every shape : law- 
 reform, army-reform, extension of suffrage, Jewish franchise, 
 Catholic emancipation, the abolition of slavery, of impress 
 ment, penal code, and entails. They praise this drag, under 
 the formula, that it is the excellence of the British constitu 
 tion, that no law can anticipate the public opinion. These 
 poor tortoises must hold bard, for they feel no wings sprouting 
 at their shoulders. Yet somewhat divine warms at their heart, 
 and waits a happier hour. It hides in their sturdy will. 
 Will," said the old philosophy, k is the measure of power," 
 and personality is the token of this race. (jni<l cult /<//</< mlt. 
 What they do they do with a will. You cannot account for their 
 success by their Christianity, commerce, charter, common law, 
 Parliament, or letters, but by the contumacious sharp-ton-iied 
 energy of English imttm-l, with a poise impossible to disturb, 
 which makes all these its instruments. They are slow and 
 reticent, and are like a dull good horse which lets every nag 
 Mm him, but with whip and spur will run down every racer 
 in the field. They are right in their feeling, though wrong in 
 their speculation. 
 
 The feudal system survives in the steep inequality of prop 
 erty and privilege, in the limited franchise, in the social har 
 riers which confine patronage and promotion to a taste, and 
 still more in the submissive ideas pervading these people. The 
 faL ri -:ing of the schools is repeated in the social classes. An 
 Eni_ r lishman shows no mercy to those below him in the social 
 scale, as he looks for none from those above- him : any for 
 bearance from his superiors surprises him. and they suffer in 
 his good opinion. But the feudal system can be seen with less 
 pain on large historical grounds. It was pleaded in mitigation 
 
308 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 of the rotten borough, that it worked well, that substantial 
 justice was done. Fox, Burke, Pitt, Erskine, Wilberforce, 
 Sheridan, Romilly, or whatever national man, were by this 
 means sent to Parliament, when their return by large con 
 stituencies would have been doubtful. So now we say, that 
 the right measures of England are the men it bred ; that it 
 has yielded more able men in five hundred years than any 
 other nation ; and, though we must not play Providence, and 
 balance the chances of producing ten great men against the 
 comfort of ten thousand mean men, yet retrospectively we 
 may strike the balance, and prefer one Alfred, one Shakespeare, 
 one Milton, one Sidney, one Raleigh, one Wellington, to a mil 
 lion foolish democrats. 
 
 The American system is more democratic, more humane ; 
 yet the American people do not yield better or more able 
 men, or more inventions or books or benefits, than the Eng 
 lish. Congress is not wiser or better than Parliament. France 
 has abolished its suffocating old regime, but is not recently 
 marked by any more wisdom or virtue. 
 
 The power of performance has not been exceeded, the 
 creation of value. The English have given importance to 
 individuals, a principal end and fruit of every society. Every 
 man is allowed and encouraged to be what he is, and is guarded 
 in the indulgence of his whim. " Magna Charta," said Rush- 
 worth, " is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign." By 
 this general activity, and by this sacredness of individuals, 
 they have in seven hundred years evolved the principles of 
 freedom. It is the land of patriots, martyrs, sages, and bards, 
 and if the ocean out of which it emerged should wash it away, 
 it will be remembered as an island famous for immortal laws, 
 for the announcements of original right which make the stone 
 tables of liberty. 
 
SPEECH AT MANCHESTER. 309 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 SPEECH AT MANCHESTER. 
 
 A FEW days after my arrival at Manchester, in Novem- 
 J~\^ ber, 1847, the Manchester Athenseum gave its unnnal 
 Banquet in the Free-Trade Hall. With other guests, I was 
 invited to he present, and to address the company. In look 
 ing over recently a newspaper report of my remarks, I incline 
 to reprint it, as fitly expressing the feeling with which 1 entered 
 Kngland, and which agrees well i-nmigh with the more delib 
 erate results of better acquaintance recorded in the foregoing 
 pages. Sir Archibald Alison, the historian, presided, and 
 opened the meeting with a speech. He was followed by Mr. 
 Cobden, Lord Brackley, and others, among whom was Mr. 
 Cruikshank, one of the contributors to "Punch." Mr. Dick- 
 ens s letter of apology for his absence was read. Mr. Jerrold, 
 who had been announced, did not appear. On being intro 
 duced to the meeting I said : 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen : It is pleasant to me to meet 
 this great and brilliant company, and doubly pleasant to see 
 the faces of so many distinguished persons on this platform. 
 But I have known all these persons already. When I was at 
 home, they were as near to me as they are to you. The ariru- 
 ments of the League and its leader are known to all the 
 friends of free trade. The irayeties and genius, the political, 
 the social, the parietal wit of " Punch " go duly every fort 
 night to everv bov and girl in Boston and New York. Sir, 
 when I came to sea, I found the "History of Europe " * on 
 tin >hip s cabin table, the property of the captain; a sort 
 of programme or play-bill to tell the seafaring New-Ki inlander 
 what be shall tind on his landing here. And as for Dombey, 
 sir, there is no land where paper exists to print on, where it is 
 not found; no man who can read, that does not read it. and, 
 if he cannot, he finds some charitable pair of eyes that can, 
 and hears it. 
 
 But these things are not for me to say ; these compliments, 
 though true, would better come from one who felt and under- 
 
 * By Sir A. Alison. 
 
310 ENGLISH TRAITS. 
 
 stood these merits more. I am not here to exchange civilities 
 with you, but rather to speak of that which I am sure inter 
 ests these gentlemen more than their own praises ; of that 
 which is good in holidays and working-days, the same in 
 one century and in another century. That which lures a 
 solitary American in the woods with the wish to see England, 
 is the moral peculiarity of the Saxon race, its commanding 
 sense of right and wrong, the love and devotion to that, 
 this is the imperial trait, which arms them with the sceptre 
 of the globe. It is this which lies at the foundation of that 
 aristocratic character, which certainly wanders into strange 
 vagaries, so that its origin is often lost sight of, but which, if 
 it should lose this, would find itself paralyzed ; and in trade, 
 and in the mechanic s shop, gives that honesty in performance, 
 that thoroughness and solidity of work, which is a national 
 characteristic. This conscience is one element, and the other 
 is that loyal adhesion, that habit of friendship, that homage 
 of man to man, running through all classes, the electing of 
 worthy persons to a certain fraternity, to acts of kindness and 
 warm and stanch support, from year to year, from youth to 
 age, which is alike lovely and honorable to those who render 
 and those who receive it ; which stands in strong contrast 
 with the superficial attachments of other races, their excessive 
 courtesy, and short-lived connection. 
 
 You will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, but holiday 
 though it be, I have not the smallest interest in any holiday, 
 except as it celebrates real and not pretended joys ; and I 
 think it just, in this time of gloom and commercial disaster, of 
 affliction and beggary in these districts, that on these very ac 
 counts I speak of, you should not fail to keep your literary 
 anniversary. I seem to hear you say, that, for all that is 
 come and gone yet, we will not reduce by one chaplet or one 
 oak-leaf the braveries of our annual feast. For I must tell 
 you, I was given to understand in my childhood, that the 
 British island from which my forefathers came, was no lotus- 
 garden, no paradise of serene sky and roses and music and 
 merriment all the year round, no, but a cold, foggy, mournful 
 country, where nothing grew well in the open air, but robust 
 men and virtuous women, and these of a wonderful fibre and 
 endurance ; that their best parts were slowly revealed ; their 
 virtues did not come out until they quarrelled : they -did not 
 strike twelve the first time ; good lovers, good haters, and you 
 could know little about them till you had seen them long, and 
 
SPEECH AT MANCHESTER. 311 
 
 little good of them till you had seen them in action ; that in 
 prosperity they were moody and dumpish, hut in adversity 
 they were grand. Is it not true, sir, that the wise ancient 8 
 did not praise the ship parting with living colors from the port, 
 but only that brave sailer which came hack with torn sheets 
 and battered sides, stript of her banners, but having ridden 
 out the storm? And so, gentlemen, I feel in regard to this 
 Mil-land, with the possessions, honors and trophies, and 
 also with the infirmities of a thousand years gathering around 
 her, irretrievably committed as she now is to many old cus 
 toms which cannot be suddenly changed ; pressed upon by the 
 transitions of trade, and new and all incalculable modes, 
 fabrics, arts, machines, and competing populations, 1 we 
 her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that, she 
 has seen dark days before ; indeed, with a kind of instinct that 
 she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that in storm of 
 battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a 
 cannon. I see her in her old age, not decrepit, but young, and 
 still daring to believe in her power of endurance and expan 
 sion. Seeing this, I say, All hail ! mother of nations, mother 
 of heroes, with strength still equal to the time ; still wise to 
 entertain and swift to execute the policy which the mind and 
 heart of mankind requires in the present hour, and thus only 
 hospitable to the foreigner, and truly a home to the thought 
 ful and generous who are born in the soil. So be it ! so let it 
 be ! If it be not so, if the courage of England goes with the 
 chances of a commercial crisis, I will go back to the capes of 
 Massachusetts, and my own Indian stream, and say to my 
 countrymen, the old race are all gone, and the elasticity and 
 hope of mankind must henceforth remain on the Alleghauy 
 ranges, or nowhere. 
 
CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
I. 
 FATE. 
 
 Delicate omens traced in nir 
 To the lone, bard true witness bare; 
 Birds with auguries on their wings 
 chanted ondeceiying things 
 Him to beckon, him to warn; 
 Well might then the poet scorn 
 To learn of scribe or courier 
 Hints writ in vaster character; 
 And on his mind, at dawn of day, 
 Soft shadows of the evening lay. 
 For the prevision is allied 
 Tnto the thing so signified; 
 Or say, the foresight that awaits 
 Is the same Genius that creatas. 
 
^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 *r 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 FATE. 
 
 IT chanced during one winter, a few years ago, that our cit- 
 \vere bent on disru>siuLr the theory of the Age. By 
 mi odd coincidence, four or live noted men \\ere each reading 
 * discourse to the citizens of Boston or New York, on the 
 Spirit of the Times. It so happened that the subject had the 
 same prominence in some remarkable pamphlets and journals 
 issued m London in the same season. To me, however, the 
 question of the times resolved itself into a practical question 
 of the conduct of life. ll< \v shall 1 live \ We are incompe 
 tent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge 
 orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and recon 
 cile their opposition. We can only obey our own polaritv. 
 T is fine for us to speculate and elect our course, if we must 
 accept an irresistible dictation. 
 
 In our first steps to gain our wishes, we come upon immov 
 able limitations. We are fired with the hope to reform men. 
 After many experiments, we find that we must begin earlier, 
 at school. But the boys and girls are not docile; we can 
 make nothing of them. We decide that they are not of good 
 stock. We must beirin our reform earlier still, at genera 
 tion : that is to say, there is Fate, or laws of the world. 
 
 Put if there be irresistible dictation, this dictation under 
 stands itself. If we must accept Fate, we are not less com 
 pelled to atlirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the 
 grandeur of duty, the power of character. This is true, and 
 that other is true. But our geometry cannot span these ex- 
 treme points, and reconcile them. What to do \ \\\ obeying 
 each thought frankly, by harping, or, if you will, pounding <>u 
 each >triiiLT. \v- learn at last its power. lv the same obedi 
 ence toother thoughts, we learn theirs, and then comes some 
 reasonable hope of harmonizing them. We are sure, that, 
 
318 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 though we know not how, necessity does comport with liberty, 
 the individual with the world, my polarity with the spirit of 
 the times. The riddle of the age has for each a private solu 
 tion. If one would study his own time, it must be by this 
 method of taking up in turn each of the leading topics which 
 belong to. our scheme of human life, and, by firmly stating all 
 that is agreeable to experience on one, and doing the same jus 
 tice to the opposing facts in the others, the true limitations 
 will appear. Any excess of emphasis, on one part, would be 
 corrected, and a just balance would be made. 
 
 But let us honestly state the facts. Our America has a bad 
 name for superficialness. Great men, great nations, have not 
 been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, 
 and have manned themselves to face it. The Spartan, embody 
 ing his religion in his country, dies before its majesty without 
 a question. The Turk, who believes his doom is written on 
 the iron leaf in the moment when he entered the world, rushes 
 on the enemy s sabre with undivided will. The Turk, the 
 Arab, the Persian, accepts the foreordained fate. 
 
 " On two days, it steads not to run from thy grave, 
 
 The appointed, and the unappointed day; 
 On the first, neither balm nor physician can save, 
 Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay." 
 
 The Hindoo, under the wheel, is as firm. Our Calvinists, in 
 the last generation, had something of the same dignity. They 
 felt that the weight of the Universe held them down to their 
 place. What could they do 1 Wise men feel that there is some 
 thing which cannot be talked or voted away, a strap or belt 
 which girds the world. 
 
 " The Destiny, minister general, 
 That executeth in the world o er all, 
 The purveyance which God hath seen beforne, 
 So strong it is, that though the world had sworn 
 The contrary of a thing by yea or nay, 
 Yet sometime it shall fallen on a day 
 That falleth not oft in a thousand year; 
 For, certainly, our appetite s here, 
 Be it of war, or peace, or hate, or love, 
 All this is ruled by the sight above." 
 
 CHAUCER: The Knighte s Tale. 
 
 The Greek Tragedy expressed the same sense : " Whatever 
 is fated, that will take place. The great immense mind of Jove 
 is not to be transgressed." 
 
 Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. The 
 broad ethics of Jesus were quickly narrowed to village theolo- 
 
FATE. 319 
 
 gies, which preach an election or favoritism. And, now and 
 then, an amiable parson, like Jung Stilling, or Robert Hunting- 
 ton, believes in a pistareen-Providence, which, whenever tin- 
 good man wants a dinner, makes that somebody shall knock at 
 his door, and leave a half-dollar. But Nature is no senti 
 mentalist, does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that 
 the world its roiiuh and surly, and will not mind drowning a 
 man or a woman ; hut swallows your ship like a grain of dust. 
 The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benu ml >s 
 your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the ele 
 ments, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons. The 
 way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and 
 spider, the snap of the tiger, and other leapers and bloody 
 jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the 
 anaconda, these are in the system, and our habits are like 
 theirs. You have just dined, and, however scrupulously the 
 slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, 
 there is complicity, expensive races, race living at the ex 
 pense of race. The planet is liable to shocks from comets, per 
 turbations from planets, rendings from earthquake and volcano, 
 alterations of climate, precessions of equinoxes. Rivers dry 
 up by opening of the forest. The sea changes its bed. Towns 
 and counties fall into it. At Lisbon, an earthquake killed men 
 like flies. At Naples, three years ago, ten thousand persons 
 were crushed in a few minutes. The scurvy at sea; the 
 sword of the climate in the west of Africa, at Cayenne, at 
 Panama, at New Orleans, cut off men like a massacre. Our 
 rn prairie shakes with fever and ague. The cholera, the 
 small-pox, have proved as mortal to some tribes, as a frost to 
 the crickets, which, having filled the summer with noise, are 
 silenced by a fall of tin- temperature of one night. Without 
 uncovering what does not concern us, or counting how many 
 species of parasites hang on a bombyx ; or groping after in 
 testinal parasites, or infusory biters, or the obscurities of al 
 ternate generation ; the forms of the shark, the lalrus, the 
 jaw of the sea-wolf paved with crushing teeth, the weapons 
 of the grampus, and other warriors hidden in the sea, are 
 hints of ferocity in the interiors of nature. Let us not deny 
 it up and down. Providence has a wild, rough, incalculable 
 road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its 
 huLT \ mixed instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific bene 
 factor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a student in 
 divinity. 
 
\\\ 
 
 320 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Will you say, the disasters which threaten mankind are excep 
 tional, and one need not lay his account for cataclysms every 
 day 1 Ay, but what happens once may happen again, and so 
 long as these strokes are not to be parried by us, they must be 
 feared. 
 
 But these shocks and ruins are less destructive to us, than 
 the stealthy power of other laws which act on us daily. An 
 expense of ends to means is fate ; organization tyrannizing 
 over character. The menagerie, or forms and powers of the 
 spine, is a book of fate : the bill of the bird, the skull of the 
 snake, determines tyrannically its limits. So is the scale of 
 races, of temperaments ; so is sex ; so is climate ; so is the 
 reaction of talents imprisoning the vital power in certain direc 
 tions. Every spirit makes its house ; but afterwards the house 
 confines the spirit. 
 
 The gross lines are legible to the dull : the cabman is phre 
 nologist so far : he looks in your face to see if his shilling is 
 sure. A dome of brow denotes one thing ; a pot-belly another ; 
 a squint, a pug-nose, mats of hair, the pigment of the epider 
 mis, betray character. People seem sheathed in their tough 
 organization. Ask Spurzheim, ask the doctors, ask Quetelet, 
 if temperaments decile nothing? or if there be anything they 
 do not decide 1 Read the description in medical books of the 
 four temperaments, and you will think you are reading your 
 own thoughts which you had not yet told. Find the part which 
 black eyes, and which blue eyes, play severally in the company. 
 How shall a man escape from his ancestors, or draw off from 
 his veins the black drop which he drew from his father s or his 
 mother s life 1 It often appears in a family, as if all the quali 
 ties of the progenitors were potted in several jars, some rul 
 ing quality in each son or daughter of the house, and some 
 times the unmixed temperament, the rank unmitigated elixir, 
 the family vice, is drawn off in a separate individual, and the 
 others are proportionally relieved. We sometimes see a change 
 of expression in our companion, and say, his father, or his 
 mother, comes to the windows of his eyes, and sometimes a 
 remote relative. In different hours, a man represents each of 
 several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us 
 rolled up in each man s skin, seven or eight ancestors at 
 least, and they constitute the variety of notes for that new 
 piece of music which his life is. At the corner of the street, 
 you read the possibility of each passenger, in the facial angle, 
 in the complexion, in the depth of his eye. His parentage 
 
l- ATE. 321 
 
 determines it. Men are what their mothers made them. You 
 may as well ask a loom which \v, aves huckaback, why it does 
 not make cashmere, as expect poetry from this engineer, or a 
 chemical discovery from that jobber. Ask the diuuer in the 
 ditch to explain Newton s laus; the tine organs of liis hrain 
 have heen pinched by overwork and squalid poverty from 
 fat her to son, lor a hundred vears. When each comes forth 
 from his mother s womh, the gate of gifts closes hehind him. 
 Let him value his hands and fed. he has hut one pair. So he 
 lias hut one future, and that is already predetermined in his 
 lobes, and described in that little fatty face, pig-eye, and squat 
 form. All the privilege and all the legislation of the world 
 cannot meddle or help) to make-a poet or a prince of him. 
 
 -said, "When he lookcth on her, he hath committed 
 adultery." Hut lie is an adulterer before he has yet looked on 
 the woman, hy the superfluity of animal, and the defect of 
 thought in his constitution. Who meets him, or who meets her, 
 in the street, sees that they are ripe to be each other s victim. 
 
 In certain men. digestion and sex absorb the vital force, and 
 the stronger the>e are, the individual is so much weaker. The 
 more of these drones perish, the better for the hive. If, later, 
 th"y L r ive birth to some superior individual, with force enough 
 to add to this animal a new aim, and a complete apparatus to 
 work it out, all the ancestors are gladly forgotten. Most men 
 and most women are merely one couple more. Now and then, 
 one has a new cell or camarilla opened in his brain, an archi 
 tectural, a musical, or a philological knack, some stray ta>to 
 or talent for flowers, or chemistry, or pigments, or story-telling, 
 1 hand for drawing, a good foot for dancing, an athletic 
 frame for wide JMiirni yinir. iVe.. which skill nowise alters rank 
 in the scale of nature, but serves to pass the time, the life of 
 sensation going on as before. At la>t. these hints and tenden 
 cies are fixed in one, or in a succession. Kach absorbs so much 
 food and force as to become itself a new centre. The new- 
 talent draws otf so rapidly the vital force, that not enough re 
 mains for the animal functions, hardly enough for health; so 
 that, in the second generation, if the like genius appear, the 
 health is visibly deteriorated, and the irenerative force impaired. 
 
 People arc born with the moral or with the material bias; 
 uterine brothers with this diverging destination: and I 
 Oppose, with high magnifiers. Mr. Frauenhofer or Dr. Carpen 
 ter miirht come to distinguish in the embryo at the fourth day, 
 this is a Whig, and that a Frce-soilcr. 
 
 U* u 
 
322 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 It was a poetic attempt to lift this mountain of Fate, to 
 reconcile this despotism of race with liberty, which led the 
 Hindoos to say, "Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in 
 a prior state of existence." I find the coincidence of the ex 
 tremes of Eastern and Western speculation in the daring state 
 ment of Schelling, " There is in every man a certain feeling, 
 that he has been what he is from all eternity, and by no 
 means became such in time." To say it less sublimely, in 
 the history of the individual is always an account of his con 
 dition, and he knows himself to be a party to his present 
 estate. 
 
 A good deal of our politics is physiological. Now and then, 
 a man of wealth in the heyday of youth adopts the tenet of 
 broadest freedom. In England, there is always some man of 
 wealth and large connection planting himself, during all his 
 years of health, on the side of progress, who, as soon as he 
 begins to die, checks his forward play, calls in his troops, and 
 becomes conservative. All conservatives are such from per 
 sonal defects. They have been effeminated by position or 
 nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, 
 and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive. But strong 
 natures, backwoodsmen, New Hampshire giants, Napoleons, 
 Burkes, Broughams, Websters, Kossuths, are inevitable pa 
 triots, until their life ebbs, and their defects and gout, palsy 
 and money, warp them. 
 
 The strongest idea incarnates itself in majorities and na- 
 tions, in the healthiest and strongest. Probably, the election 
 goes by avoirdupois weight, and, if you could weigh bodily the 
 tonnao-e of any hundred of the Whig and the Democratic 
 party in a town on the Dearborn balance, as they passed the 
 hayscales, you could predict with certainty which party would 
 carry it. On the whole, it would be rather the speediest way 
 of deciding the vote, to put the selectmen or the mayor and 
 aldermen at the hayscales. 
 
 In science, we have to consider two things : power and cir 
 cumstance. All we know of the egg, from each successive 
 discovery, is, another vesicle ; and if, after five hundred years, 
 you get" a better observer, or a better glass, he finds within 
 the last observed another. In vegetable and animal tissue, it 
 is just alike, and all that the primary power or spasm operates, 
 is, still, vesicles, vesicles. Yes, but the tyrannical Circum 
 stance ! A vesicle in new circumstances, a vesicle lodged in 
 darkness, Oken thought, became animal ; in light, a plant 
 
FATE. 323 
 
 Lodged in the parent animal, it suffers changes, which end in 
 un>heathiiii: miraculous capability in the unaltered vesicle, 
 and it unlocks itself to tish, bird, or quadruped, head and foot, 
 eve and rla\v. The ( ireunistance is Nature*. Nature is what 
 you may do. There is much you may not. We have two 
 things, the circumstance and the life. Once we thought, 
 positive power was all. Now we learn, that negative power, 
 or circumstance, is half. Nature is the tyrannous circum 
 stance, the thick skull, the sheathed snake, the ponderous, 
 rock-like jaw; neressitatcd activity; violent direction; tho 
 conditions of a tool, like the locomotive, strong enough on its 
 track, but which can do nothing but mischief off of it ; or 
 skates, which are wings on the ice, but fetters on the ground. 
 
 The book of Nature is the book of Fate. She turns tho 
 gigantic pages, leaf after leaf, never re-turning one. 
 One leaf she lays down, a floor of granite ; then a thousand 
 ;ind a lied of slate ; a thousand ages, and a measure of 
 co il ; a thousand ages, and a layer of marl and mud : vege 
 table forms appear: her first misshapen animals, zoophyte, 
 trilobinm, fish; then, sanrians, rude forms, in which sho 
 has only blocked her future statue, concealing under these 
 unwieldy monsters the fine type of her coming king. The 
 face of the planet cools and dries, the races meliorate, and 
 man is born. J3ut when a race has lived its term, it comes no 
 more again. 
 
 The population of the world is a conditional population ; 
 not the best, but the best that could live now ; and the scale 
 of tribes, and the steadiness with which victory adheres to 
 one tribe, and defeat to another, is as uniform as the super 
 position of strata. We know in history what weight belongs 
 to race. We see the English, French, and Germans planting 
 themselves on every shore and market of America and Austra 
 lia, and monopolizing the commerce of these countries. We 
 like the nervous and victorious habit of our own branch of 
 the family. We follow the step of the Jew, of the Indian, 
 of the Negro. We see how much will has been expended to 
 extinguish the Jew, in vain. Look at the unpalatable con 
 clusions of Knox, in his " Fragment of Races," a rash and 
 unsatisfactory writer, but charged with pungent and unforget- 
 able truths. " Nature respects race, and not hybrids." " Every 
 race has its own hnhitat" " Detach a colony from the race, 
 and it deteriorates to the crab. See the shades of the picture. 
 The German and Irish millions, like the Negro, have a great 
 
324 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 deal of guano in their destiny. They are ferried over the At 
 lantic, and carted over America, to ditch and to drudge, to 
 make corn cheap, and then to lie down prematurely to make a 
 spot of green grass on the prairie. 
 
 One more fagot of these adamantine bandages, is, the new- 
 science of Statistics. It is a rule, that the most casual and 
 extraordinary events if the basis of population is broad 
 enough become matter of fixed calculation. It would not 
 be safe to say when a captain like Bonaparte, a singer like 
 Jenny Lind, or a navigator like Bowditch, would be born in 
 Boston : but, on a population of twenty or two hundred mil 
 lions, something like accuracy may be had.* 
 
 T is frivolous to fix pedantically the date of particular in 
 ventions. They have all been invented over and over fifty 
 times. Man is the arch machine, of which all these shifts 
 drawn from himself are toy models. He helps himself on 
 each emergency by copying or duplicating his own structure, 
 just so far as the need is. T is hard to find the right Homer, 
 Zoroaster, or Menu ; harder still to find the Tubal Cain, or 
 Vulcan, or Cadmus, or Copernicus, or Fust, or Fulton, the in 
 disputable inventor. There are scores and centuries of them. 
 " The air is full of men." This kind of talent so abounds, 
 this constructive tool-making efficiency, as if it adhered to the 
 chemic atoms, as if the air he breathes were made of Vau- 
 cansons. Franklins, and Watts. 
 
 Doubtless, in every million there will be an astronomer, a 
 mathematician, a comic poet, a mystic. No one can read the 
 history of astronomy, without perceiving that Copernicus, 
 Newton, Laplace, are not new men, or a new kind of men, but 
 that Thales, Anaximenes, Hipparchus, Empedocles, Aristar- 
 chus, Pythagoras, (Enipodes, had anticipated them : each had 
 the same tense geometrical brain, apt for the same vigorous 
 computation and logic, a mind parallel to the movement of 
 the world. The Roman mile probably rested on a measure 
 of a degree of the meridian. Mahometan and Chinese know 
 what we know of leap-year, of the Gregorian calendar, and of 
 the precession of the equinoxes. As, in every barrel of cow 
 ries, brought to New Bedford, there shall be one orangia, so 
 there will, in a dozen millions of Malays and Mahometans, be 
 
 * " Everything which pertains to the human specie?, considered as a whole, 
 belongs to the order of physical facts. The greater the number of individu 
 als, the more does the influence of the individual will disappear, leaving pre 
 dominance to a series of general facts dependent ou causes by which society 
 exists, and is preserved." QUETELET. 
 
FATE. 325 
 
 one or two astronomical skulls. In a large city, the most cas 
 ual thirds, and things whose l>cauty lies in their casualty, an- 
 produced :is punctually and to order as the baker s muffin for 
 breakfast Punch makes exactly one capital joke a week ; and 
 the journals contrive to furnish one good piece of news every 
 day. 
 
 And not less work the laws of repression, the penalties of 
 violated functions. Famine, typhus, frost, war, suicide, and 
 effete races, must be reckoned calculable parts of the system 
 of the world. 
 
 These are pebbles from the mountain, hints of the terms 
 by which our life is walled up, and which show a kind of me 
 chanical exactness, as of a loom or mill, in what we call cas 
 ual or fortuitous events. 
 
 The force with which we resist these ton-cuts of tendency 
 looks so ridiculously inadequate, that it amounts to little more 
 than a criticism or a protest made by a minority of one, 
 under compulsion of millions. I seemed, in the height of a 
 tempest, to see men overboard struggling in the waves, and 
 driven about here and there. They glanced intelligently at 
 each other, but t was little they could do for one another ; 
 t was much if each could keep afloat alone. Well, they had 
 a right to their eye-beams, and all the rest was Fate. 
 
 We cannot trifle with this reality, this cropping-out in out 
 planted gardens of the core of the world. No picture of lifo 
 can have any veracity that does not admit the odious facts, 
 A man s power is hooped in by a necessity, which, by many 
 experiments, he touches on every side, until he learns its arc. 
 
 The clement running through entire nature, which we pop 
 ularly call Kate, is known to us as limitation. Whatever linv 
 its us, we call Kate. If we are brute and barbarous, the fato 
 takes a brute and dreadful shape. As we refine, our cheeks 
 ben une finer. If we rise to spiritual culture, the antagonism 
 takes a spiritual form. In the Hindoo fables, Vishnu follows 
 Maya through all her ascending changes, from insect and 
 craw-fish up to elephant ; whatever form she took, he took the 
 male form of that kind, until she became at last woman and 
 goddess, and he a man and a god. The limitations refine as 
 the soul purifies, but the ring of necessity is always perched 
 at the top. 
 
 When the gods in the Norse heaven were unable to bind 
 the Kenris Wolf with steel or with weight of mountains, the 
 
326 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 one he snapped and the other he spurned with his heel, 
 they put round his foot a limp band softer than silk or cob 
 web, and this held him : the more he spurned it, the stiffer it 
 drew. So soft and so stanch is the ring of Fate. Neither 
 brandy, nor nectar, nor sulphuric ether, nor hell-fire, nor ichor, 
 nor poetry, nor genius, can get rid of this limp band. For if 
 we give it the high sense in which the poets use it, even 
 thought itself is not above Fate : that too must act according 
 to eternal laws, and all that is wilful and fantastic in it is in 
 Apposition to its fundamental essence. 
 
 And last of all, high over thought, in the world of morals, 
 Fate appears as vindicator, levelling the high, lifting the low, 
 requiring justice in man, and always striking soon or late, 
 when justice is not done. What is useful wilLJast ; what is 
 hurtful will sink. " The doer must suffer," said the Greeks : 
 ^ou^would-soothe a Deity not to be soothed." "God him 
 self cannot procure good for the wicked," said the Welsh triad. 
 " God may consent, but only for a time," said the bard of 
 Spain. The limitation is impassable by any insight of man. 
 In its last and loftiest ascensions, insight itself, and the free 
 dom of the will, is one of its obedient members. But we must 
 not run into generalizations too large, but show the natural 
 bounds or essential distinctions, and seek to do justice to the 
 other elements as well. 
 
 ~~ 7 Thus we trace Fate, in matter, mind, and morals, in race, 
 in retardations of strata, and in thought and character as well. 
 It is everywhere bound or limitation. But Fate has its lord ; 
 limitation its limits ; is different seen from above and from 
 below ; from within and from without. For, though fate is 
 immense, so is power, which is the other fact in the dual world, 
 immense. If Fate follows and limits power, power attends 
 and antagonizes Fate. We must respect Fate as natural 
 history, but there is more than natural history. For who and 
 what is this criticism that pries into the matter 1 Man is not 
 order of nature, sack and sack, belly and members, link in a 
 chain, nor any ignominious baggage, but a stupendous an 
 tagonism, a dragging together of the poles of the Universe. 
 He betrays his relation to what is below him, thick-skulled, 
 small-brained, fishy, quadrumanous, quadruped ill-disguised, 
 hardly escaped into biped, and has paid for the new powers by 
 loss of some of the old ones. But the lightning which ex 
 plodes and fashions planets, maker of planet and suns, is m 
 
FATE. 327 
 
 him. On one side, elemental order, sandstone and granite, 
 rock-tedget, peat4)0g, forest, sea and shore ; and, on the other 
 part, thought, the spirit which composes and decomposes 
 nature, here they are, side by side, god and devil, mind and 
 matter, king and conspirator. U-lt and spasm, riding peacefully 
 ther in the eye and brain of every man. 
 
 Nor can he blink the freewill. To hazard the contradiction, 
 freedom is necessary. If you please to plant yourself on 
 the side of Fate, and say, Fate is all ; then we say, a part of 
 Fate is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of 
 choosing and acting in the soul. Intellect annuls Fate. So _ 
 far as a man thinks, he is free. And though nothing is more 
 disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most 
 men an 1 , and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper 
 preamble like a "Declaration of Independence," or the statute 
 right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act, 
 yet it is wholesome to man to look not at Fate, but the other 
 way : the practical view is the other. His sound relation to 
 these facts is to use and command, not to cringe to them. "Look 
 not on nature, for her name is fatal," said the oracle. The too 
 much contemplation of these limits induces meanness. They 
 who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, etc., are in a lower 
 dangerous plane, and invite the evils they fear. 
 
 I cited the instinctive and heroic races as proud believers in 
 Destiny. They conspire with it ; a loving resignation is with 
 the event. But the dogma makes a different impression, wheu 
 it is held by the weak and la/y. T is weak and vicious peopK- 
 who cast the blame on Fate. The right use of Fate is to br; 
 apouroonducj to the loftiness of nature, llude and invinci 
 ble except by themselves arc the elements. So let man be. 
 Let him empty his breast of his windy conceits, and show 1, 
 lordship by manners and deeds on the scale of nature. Let 
 him hold his purpose as with the tug of gravitation. xSo 
 power, no persuasion, no bribe shall make him give up his 
 point. A man ought to compare advantageously with a river, 
 an oak, or a mountain. He shall have not less the flow, the ex 
 pansion, and the resistance of these. 
 
 T is the best use of Fate to t<>ach a fatal courage. (<> fare 
 the fire at sea, or the cholera in your friend s house, or the 
 burglar in your own, or what danger lies in the way of duty, 
 knowing you are guarded by the rhcrubim of Dot in\ . If you 
 believe in Fate to your harm, believe it, at least, for your 
 good. 
 
328 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 For, if Fate is so prevailing, man also is part of it, and can 
 confront fate with fate. If the Universe have these savage 
 accidents, our atoms are as savage in resistance. We should 
 be crushed by the atmosphere, but for the reaction of the air 
 within the body. A tube made of a film of glass can resist the 
 shock of the ocean, if filled with the same water. If there be 
 omnipotence in the stroke, there is omnipotence of recoil. 
 
 1. But Fate against Fate is only parrying and defence : 
 there are, also, the noble creative forces. The revelation of 
 Thought takes man out of servitude into freedom. We rightly 
 say of ourselves, we were born, and afterward we were born 
 again, and many times. We have successive experiences so 
 important, that the new forgets the old, and hence the mythol 
 ogy of the seven or the nine heavens. The day of days, the 
 great day of the feast of life, is that in which the inward eye 
 opens to the Unity in things, to the omnipresence of law; - 
 sees that what is must be, and ought to be, or is the best. 
 This beatitude dips from on high down on us, and we see. It 
 is not in us so much as we are in it. If the air come to our 
 lungs, we breathe and live ; if not, we die. If the light come 
 to our eyes, we see ; else not. And if truth come to our 
 mind, we suddenly expand to its dimensions, as if we grew to 
 worlds. We are as lawgivers ; we speak for Nature ; we proph 
 esy and divine. 
 
 This insight throws us on the party and interest of the 
 Universe, against all and sundry ; against ourselves, as much as 
 others. A man speaking from insight affirms of himself what 
 is true of the mind : seeing its immortality, he says, I am im 
 mortal ; seeing its invincibility, he says, I am strong. It is 
 not in us, but we are in it. It is of the maker, not of what is 
 made. All things are touched and changed by it. This uses, 
 and is not used. It distances those who share it, from those 
 who share it not. Those who share it not are flocks and herds. 
 It dates from itself; not from former men or better men, 
 gospel, or constitution, or college, or custom. Where it shines, 
 Nature is no longer intrusive, but all things make a musical 
 or pictorial impression. The world of men show like a comedy 
 without laughter : populations, interests, government, his 
 tory ; t is all toy figiires in a toy house. It does not over 
 value particular truths. We hear eagerly every thought and 
 word. quoted from an intellectual man. But, in his presence, 
 our own mind is roused to activity, and we forget very fast 
 what he says, much more interested in the new play of our 
 
FATE. 329 
 
 own thought, th:in in any thought of his. T is the majesty 
 into which we have suddenly mounted, the impersonality, the 
 scorn of egotisms, the sphere of laws, that engage us. < >ncu 
 \\e were stepping a little this way, and a little that way ; now, 
 we are as men in a balloon, and do not think so much of the 
 point we have left, or the jxiint we would make, us of the lib 
 erty and u lory of the way. 
 
 Jttri as much intellect as you add, so much organic power, 
 lie who sees through the design, presides over it, and must 
 will that which must l>e. We sit and rule, and. though we 
 sleep, our dream will come to puss. Our thought, though it 
 were onlv an hour old, allirms an oldest necessity, not to be 
 separated from thought, and not to bo separated from will. 
 They must always have co-existed. It apprises us of its sov 
 ereignty and godhead, which refuse to be severed from it. 
 It is not, mine or thine, but the will of all mind. It is poured 
 into the souls of all men, as the soul itself which constitutes 
 them men. 1 know not whether there he, as is alleged, in the 
 upper region of our atmosphere, a permanent westerly cm-rent, 
 which carries with it all atoms which rise to that height, but 
 hat when souls reach a certain clearness of perception, 
 they accept a knowledge und motive above selfishness. A__ 
 breath of will blows eternally through the universe of souls 
 hi the direction of the Ki-ht and Necessary. J It is the air 
 which all intellects inhale and exhale, and it is the wind which 
 blows the worlds into order and orbit. 
 
 Thought dissolves the material universe, by carrying the 
 mind up into a sphere where all is plastic. Of two men, each 
 obeying his own thought, he whose thought is deepest will be_^ 
 the strongest character. Always one man more than another 
 represents the will of Divine Providence to the period. / 
 
 [f thought makes free, so does the moral sentiment. The . 
 mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse to be analv/ed. Yet we 
 can see that with the perception <f truth is joined the d 
 that it shall prevail. That affection is essential to will. More 
 over, when a strong will appears, it usually results from a cer 
 tain unity of organization, as if the whole energy of body ami 
 mind flowed in one direction. All ureat, force is real and ele 
 mental. There is no manufacturing a strung will. There 
 must be a pound to balance a |>ound. Where power is shown 
 in will, it must rest on the universal force. Alaric and Iim:i- 
 parte must believe they rest on a truth. <r their will can ho 
 bought or bent. There is a bribe possible for any finite will 
 
330 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 But the pure sympathy with universal ends is an infinite force, 
 and cannot be bribed or bent. Whoever has had experience 
 of the moral sentiment cannot choose but believe in unlimited 
 power. Each pulse from that heart is an oath from the Most 
 High. I know not what the word sublime means, if it be not 
 the intimations in this infant of a terrific force. A text of 
 heroism, a name and anecdote of courage, are not arguments, 
 but sallies of freedom. One of these is the verse of the Per 
 sian Hafiz, " T is written on the gate of heaven, Woe unto 
 him who suffers himself to be betrayed by Fate ! Does the 
 reading of history make us fatalists 1 What courage does not 
 the opposite opinion show ! A little whim of will to be free 
 gallantly contending against the universe of chemistry. 
 
 But insight is not will, nor is affection will. Perception is 
 cold, and goodness dies in wishes ; as Voltaire said, t is the 
 misfortune of w r orthy people that they are cowards ; " un 
 des j)lus grands malkeurs des honnetes gens Jest quails sont des 
 Idches" There must be a fusion of these two to generate the 
 energy of will. There can be no driving force, except through 
 the conversion of the man into his will, making him the will, 
 and the will him. And one may say boldly, that no man has 
 a right perception of any truth, who has not been reacted on 
 bv it, so as to be ready to be its martyr. 
 
 * yThe one serious and formidable thing in nature is a will. 
 Society is servile from want of will, , and therefore the world 
 wants saviours and religions. \ One way is right to go : the 
 hero sees it, and moves on thltt aim, and has the world under 
 him for root and support. Jle is to others as the world. His 
 approbation is honor ; his dissent, infamy. The glance of his 
 eye has the force of sunbeams. A personal influence towers up 
 in memory only worthy, and we gladly forget numbers, money, 
 climate, gravitation, and the rest of Fate. 
 
 We can afford to allow the limitation, if we know it is the 
 meter of the growing man. We stand against Fate, as chil 
 dren stand up against the wall in their father s house, and 
 notch their height from year to year. But when the boy grows 
 to man, and is master of the house, he pulls down that wall, 
 and builds a new and bigger. T is only a question of time. 
 Every brave youth is in training to ride and rule this dragon. 
 His science is to make weapons and wings of these passions 
 and retarding forces. Now whether, seeing these two things, 
 fate and power, we are permitted to believe in unity I The 
 
FATE. 331 
 
 bulk of mankind believe in two_gods. They are under one do- 
 mtnion~hereTn the house, as friend and parent, in social cir 
 cles, in letters, in art, in love, in religion : but in mechanics, 
 in dealing with steam and eliniate, in trade, in politics, they 
 think they come under another ; and that it would lie a prac 
 tical blunder to transfer the method and way of working of one 
 sphere, into the other. What -nod, honest, generous men at 
 home, will be wolves and foxes on change ! What pious men 
 in the parlor will vote for what reprobates at the polls! To a 
 certain point, they believe themselves the care of a Providence. 
 But, in a steamboat, in an epidemic, in war, they believe a 
 malignant energy rules. 
 
 But relation and connection are not somewhere and some 
 times, but everywhere and always. The divine order does not 
 stop where their sight stops. The friendly power works on the 
 same rules, in the next farm, and the next planet. But, where 
 they have not experience, they run against it. and hurt them 
 selves. Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under 
 the fire of thought ; for causes which are impenetrated. 
 
 But every jeLflf rhaos which threatens to exterminate us, 
 is convertible bv intellect into wholesome force. Fate is im 
 penetrated causes. The water drowns ship and sailor, like 
 a grain of dust. But learn to swim, trim your bark, and the 
 wave which drowned it will be cloven by it, and carry it, like 
 its own foam, a plume and a power. The cold is inconsider 
 ate of persons, tinirles your blood, freezes a man like a dew- 
 drop. But learn to skato, and the ice will give you a graceful, 
 sweet, and poetic motion. The cold will brace your limbs and 
 brain to genius, and make you foremost men of time. Cold 
 and sea will train an imperial Saxon race, which nature cannot 
 bear to lose, and, after cooping it up for a thousand years in 
 yonder Kn-land, irives a hundred Knglands, a hundred Mexi- 
 All the bloods it shall absorb and domineer: and more 
 than Mexicos. the secrets of water and steam, the spasms 
 of electricity, the ductility of metals, the chariot of the air, the 
 ruddered balloon, are awaiting you. 
 
 The annual slaughter from typhus far exceeds that of war ; 
 but right drainage destroys typhus. The plague in the sea- 
 service from scurvy is healed hv lemon-juice and other diets 
 portable or procurable : the depopulation by cholera and small 
 pox is ended by drainage and vaccination : and every other 
 pest is not less in the chain of cause and effect, and may be 
 fought off. And, whilst art draws out the venom, it common- 
 
332 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 ly extorts some benefit from the vanquished enemy. The 
 mischievous torrent is taught to drudge for man : the wild 
 beasts he makes useful for food, or dress, or labor ; the chemic 
 explosions are controlled like his watch. These are now the 
 steeds on which he rides. Man moves in all modes, by legs 
 of horses, by wings of wind, by steam, by gas of balloon, by 
 electricity, and stands on tiptoe threatening to hunt the eagle 
 in his own element. There s nothing he will not make his 
 carrier. 
 
 Steam was, till the other day, the devil which we dreaded. 
 Every pot made by any human potter or brazier had a hole 
 in its cover, to let off the enemy, lest he should lift pot and 
 roof, and carry the house away. But the Marquis of Worces 
 ter, Watt, and Fulton bethought themselves, that, where was 
 power, was not devil, but was God ; that it must be availed of, 
 and not by any means let oft and wasted. Could he lift pots 
 and roofs and houses so handily 1 he was the workman they 
 were in search of. He could be used to lift away, chain, and 
 compel other devils far more reluctant and dangerous, namely, 
 cubic miles of earth, mountains, weight or resistance of water, 
 machinery, and the labors of all men in the world ; and time 
 he shall lengthen, and shorten space. 
 
 It has not fared much otherwise with higher kinds of steam. 
 The opinion of the million was the terror of the world, and it 
 was attempted, either to dissipate it, by amusing nations, or 
 to pile it over with strata of society, a layer of soldiers ; 
 over that, a layer of lords ; and a king on the top ; with 
 clamps and hoops of castles, garrisons, and police. But, some 
 times, the religious principle would get in, and burst the hoops, 
 and ride every mountain laid on top of it. The Fultons and 
 \Vatts of politics, believing in unity, saw that it was a power, 
 and, by satisfying it, (as justice satisfies everybody,) through 
 a different disposition of society, grouping it on a level, in 
 stead of piling it into a mountain, they have contrived to 
 make of this terror the most harmless and energetic form of a 
 State. 
 
 Very odious, I confess, are the lessons of Fate. Who likes 
 to have a dapper phrenologist pronouncing on his fortunes ? 
 Who likes to believe that he has hidden in his skull, spine, and 
 pelvis, all the vices of a Saxon or Celtic race, which will be 
 sure to pull him down with what grandeur of hope and 
 resolve he is fired, into a selfish, huckstering, servile, dodg 
 ing animal 1 A learned physician tells us, the fact is invariable 
 
FATE. 333 
 
 with the Neapolitan, that, when mature, lie assumes the forms 
 of the unmistakable .scoundrel. That is a little overrated, 
 but may j 
 
 lint thi-M- are maga/ines and arsenals. A man must thank 
 his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents. A tran 
 scendent talent draws so largely on his forces, as to lame him ; 
 a detect pays him revenues on the other side. The sufferance, 
 which is the badge of the Jew, has made him, in these days, 
 the ruler of the rulers of the earth. If Fate is ore and quarry, 
 if evil is good in the making, if limitation is power that shall 
 be, if ealamities, oppositions, ami weights are wings and means, 
 we are reconciled. 
 
 Fate involves the melioration. No statement of the Uni 
 verse can have any soundness, which does not admit its ascend 
 ing effort. The direction of the whole, and of the parts, is 
 toward benefit, and in proportion to the health. Ik-hind every 
 individual closes organixation : before him, opens liberty, 
 the lietter, the Best. The first and worst races are dead. The 
 second and imj>erfect races are dying out, or remain for the 
 maturing of higher. In the lateM race, in man, every generos 
 ity. very new perception, the love and praise he extorts from 
 his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom. 
 Liberation of the will from the sheaths and clegs of organiza 
 tion which he has outgrown, is the end and aim of this world. 
 Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint ; and where his en 
 deavors do not yet fully avail, they tell as tendency. The 
 whole circle of animal life, tooth against tooth, devouring 
 war, war for food, a yelp of pain and a grunt of triumph, until, 
 at last, the whole menagerie, the whole chemical mass is mel 
 lowed and refined tor higher use, pleases at a sufficient 
 perspective. 
 
 But to see how fate slides into freedom, and freedom into 
 fate, observe how far the roots of every creature run, or find, 
 if you can, a point where there is no thread of connection. 
 Our life is consentaneous and far-related. This knot of nature 
 is so well tied, that nobody was ever cunning enoii-h to find 
 the two ends. Nature is intricate, overlapped, interweaved, 
 and endless. Christopher Wren said of the beautiful King s 
 College, chapel, "that, if anybodv would tell him where \<> lav 
 the first stum-, he would build such another." But where shall 
 we find the first atom in this house of man, which is all con 
 sent, inosculation, and balance of par 
 
 The web of relation is shown in Imhitnt, shown in hyberna- 
 
334 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 tion. When hybernation was observed, it was found, that, 
 whilst some animals became torpid in winter, others were torpid 
 in summer : hyberuation then was a false name. The long 
 sleep is not an effect of cold, but is regulated by the supply of 
 food proper to the animal. It becomes torpid when the fruit 
 or prey it lives on is not in season, and regains its activity 
 when its food is ready. 
 
 Eyes are found in light ; ears in auricular air ; feet on land ; 
 fins in water ; wings in air ; and, each creature where it was 
 meant to be, with a mutual fitness. Every zone has its own 
 Fauna. There is adjustment between the animal and its food, 
 its parasite, its enemy. Balances are kept. It is not allowed 
 to diminish in numbers, nor to exceed. The like adjustments 
 exist for man. His food is cooked, when he arrives ; his coal 
 in the pit ; his house ventilated ; the mud of the deluge dried ; 
 his companions arrived at the same hour, and awaiting him 
 with love, concert, laughter, and tears. These are coarse ad 
 justments, but the invisible are not less. There are more 
 belongings to every creature than his air and his food. His 
 instincts must be met, and he has predisposing power that 
 bends and fits what is near him to his use. He is not possible 
 until the invisible things are right for him, as well as the visi 
 ble. Of what changes, then, in sky and earth, and in finer 
 skies and earths, does the appearance of some Dante or Colum 
 bus apprise us ! 
 
 How is this effected ? Nature is no spendthrift, but takes 
 the shortest way to her ends. As the general says to his 
 soldiers, " If you want a fort, build a fort," so nature makes 
 every creature do its own work and get its living, is it planet, 
 animal, or tree. The planet makes itself. The animal cell 
 makes itself ; then, what it wants. Every creature wren 
 or dragon shall make its own lair. As soon as there is life, 
 there is self-direction, and absorbing and using of material. 
 Life is freedom, life in the direct ratio of its amount. You 
 may be sure, the new-born man is not inert. Life works both 
 voluntarily and supernaturally in its neighborhood. Do you 
 suppose, he can be estimated by his weight in pounds, or, that 
 he is contained in his skin, this reaching, radiating, jaculat- 
 ing fellow 1 The smallest candle fills a mile with its rays, and 
 the papillae of a man run out to every star. 
 
 When there is something to be done, the world knows how 
 to get it done. The vegetable eye makes leaf, pericarp, root, 
 bark, or thorn, as the need is ; the first cell converts itself into 
 
FATE. 335 
 
 stomach, mouth, nose, <>r n;iil, according t< the want : the 
 w<rlJ throws its life int.. a hero <>r a shepherd ; and puts him 
 where he is wanted. Dante and Columbus were Italians, in 
 their time : they would he Russians or Americans to-day. 
 Things ripen, new men come. The adaptation is not capri 
 cious. The ulterior aim, the purpose beyond itself, the corre 
 lation hv which planet.s suhside and crystalli/e, then animate 
 beasts an<l men, will not stop, hut will work into liner partieu- 
 
 tud from finer to finest. 
 
 The seeret of the world is, the tie between person and event. 
 Person makes event, and event person. The "times," "the 
 age/ what is that, but a few profound persons and a few 
 active persons who epitomize the times? Goethe, Hegel, 
 Metternich, Adams, Calhoun, (Juizot, Peel, Cobden, Kossuth, 
 Rothschild, Aator, I .runel, and the rest. The same fitness 
 must he presumed between a man and the time and event, as 
 between the sexes, or between a race- of animals and the food 
 it eats, or the inferior races it uses, lie thinks his fate alien, 
 because the copula i.s hidden. But the soul contains the event 
 that shall befall it, for the event is only the actualization of its 
 thoughts ; and what we prav to ours -Ives for is always granted. 
 The event is the print of your form. It fits you like your 
 skin. What each does is proper to him. Events are the 
 children of his body and mind. We learn that the soul of 
 Fate is the soul of us, as Hafiz sings, 
 
 Alas ! till now I had not kno\m, 
 
 My guide and fortune s guide are one. 
 
 All the toys that infatuate men, and which they play for, 
 houses, land, money, luxury, power, fame, are the selfsame 
 thing, with a new gauze or two of illusion overlaid. And of 
 all the drums and rattles by which men are made willing to 
 have their heads broke, and are led out solemnly every morn 
 ing to parade, the most admirable is this by which we are 
 brought to believe that events are arbitrary, and independent 
 of actions. At the conjurer s, we detect the hair by which he 
 moves his puppet, but we have not eyes sharp enough to desery 
 the thread that ties cause and effect. 
 
 Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by making 
 these the fruit of his character. Ducks take to the water, 
 eagles to the sky, waders to the sea margin, hunters to the 
 forest, clerks to countinir-rooms. soldiers to the frontier. Thus 
 events grow on the same st-m with persons : are sub-persons. 
 The pleasure of life is according to the man that lives it, and 
 
336 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 not according to the work or the place. Life is an ecstasy. 
 We know what madness belongs to love, what power to paint 
 a vile object in hues of heaven. As insane persons are indif 
 ferent to their dress, diet, and other accommodations, and, as 
 we do in dreams, with equanimity, the most absurd acts, so, a 
 drop more of wine in our cup of life will reconcile us to strange 
 company and work. Each creature puts forth from itself its 
 own condition and sphere, as the slug sweats out its slimy 
 house on the pear-leaf, and the woolly aphides on the apple 
 perspire their own bed, and the fish its shell. In youth, we 
 clothe ourselves with rainbows, and go as brave as the zodiac. 
 In age, we put out another sort of perspiration, gout, fever, 
 rheumatism, caprice, doubt, fretting, and avarice. 
 
 A man s fortunes are the fruit of his character. A mans 
 friends are his magnetisms. We go to Herodotus and Plutarch 
 fbr~examples of Fate ; but we are examples. "Qvt8Q*e suos 
 patimur manes." The tendency of every man to enact all that 
 is in his constitution is expressed in the old belief, that the 
 efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to 
 lead us into it : and I have noticed, a man likes better to be 
 complimented on his position, as the proof of the last or total 
 excellence, than on his merits. 
 
 A man will see his character emitted in the events that seem 
 w meet, but which exude from and accompany him. Events 
 expand with the character. As once he found himself among 
 toys, so now he plays a part in colossal systems, and his growth 
 is declared in his ambition, his companions, and his perform 
 ance. He looks like a piece of luck, but is a piece 6f causation ; 
 the mosaic, angulated and ground to fit into the gap he fills. 
 Hence in each town there is some man who is, in his brain and 
 performance, an explanation of the tillage, production, factories, 
 banks, churches, ways of living, and society, of that town, 
 you do not chance to meet him, all that you see will leave you 
 a little puzzled : if you see him, it will become plain. We 
 know in Massachusetts who built New Bedford, who built 
 Lynn, Lowell, Lawrence, Clinton, Fitchburg, Holyoke, Port 
 land, and many another noisy mart. Each of these men, if 
 they were transparent, would seem to you not so much men, 
 as walking cities, and, wherever you put them, they would 
 build one. 
 
 - History is the action and reaction of these two, Nature 
 and Thought ; two boys pushing each other on the curb-stone of 
 the pavement. Everything is pusher or pushed : and matter 
 
FATE. 
 
 and mind are in perpetual tilt and balance, so. Whilst the man 
 is weak, tin 1 earth takes up to him. He plants his brain and 
 affections. I .y and by lie will take up the earth, and have his 
 gardens and vineyards in the beautiful order and productive 
 ness of his thought Every solid in the universe is ready to 
 become fluid on the approach of the mind, and the power to 
 flux it is the measure of the mind. If the wall remain adamant, 
 it accuses the want of thought. To a subtler force, it will 
 stream into new forms, expressive of the character of the mind. 
 What is the city in which we sit here, but an aggregate of 
 incongruous materials, which have obeyed the will of some 
 man ] The granite was reluctant, but his hands were stronger, 
 and it came. Iron was deep in the ground, and well com 
 bined with stone, but could not hide from his fires. Wood, 
 lime, stuffs, fruits, gums, were dispersed over the earth and 
 sea, in vain. Here they are, within reach of every man s day- 
 labor, what he wants of them. The whole world is the flux 
 of matter over the wires of thought to the poles or points 
 where it would build. The races of men rise out of the ground 
 preoccupied with a thought which rules them, and divided into 
 parties ready armed and angry to fight for this metaphysical 
 abstraction. The quality of the thought differences the Egyp 
 tian and the lloman, the Austrian and the American. The 
 men who come on the stage at one period are all found to bo 
 related to each other. Certain ideas are in the air. We are 
 all impressionable, for we are made of them ; all impression 
 able, but some more than others, and these first express them. 
 This explains the curious contemporaneousness of inventions 
 and discoveries. The truth is in the air, and the most impres 
 sionable brain will announce it first, but all will announce it 
 a few minutes later. So women, as most susceptible, are the 
 best index of the coming hour. So the great man, that is, the 
 man most imbued with the spirit of the time, is the impres 
 sionable man, of a fibre irritable and delicate, like iodine to 
 li.irht. Hefeels the infinitesimal attractions. His mind is 
 righter than others, because he yields to a current so feeble as 
 can be felt only by a needle delicately poised. 
 
 The correlation is shown in defects. M oiler, in his Essay 
 on Architecture, taught that the building which was fitted ac 
 curately to answer its end, would turn out to be beautiful, 
 though beauty had not been intended. I find the like unity 
 in human structures rather virulent and pervasive ; that a 
 crudity in the blood will appear in the argument ; a hump in 
 
 VOL n. is r 
 
338 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 the shoulder will appear in the speech and handiwork. If 
 his mind could be seen, the hump would be seen. If a man 
 has a seesaw in his voice, it will run into his sentences, into 
 his poem, into the structure of his fable, into his specula 
 tion, into his charity. And, as every man is hunted by his 
 own demon, vexed by his own disease, this checks all his 
 activity. 
 
 So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A strong, 
 astringent, bilious nature has more truculent enemies than the 
 slugs and moths that fret my leaves. Such an one has cur- 
 culios, borers, knife-worms : a swindler ate him first, then a 
 client, then a quack, then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter 
 and selfish as Moloch. 
 
 This correlation really existing can be divined. If the 
 threads are there, thought can follow and show them. Es 
 pecially when a soul is quick and docile ; as Chaucer sings : 
 
 " Or if the soul of proper kind 
 Be so perfect as men find, 
 That it wot what is to come, 
 And that he warneth all and some 
 Of every of their aventures, 
 By previsions or figures; 
 But that our flesh hath not might 
 It to understand aright 
 For it is warned too darkly." 
 
 Some people are made up of rhyme, coincidence, omen, perio 
 dicity, and presage: they meet the person they seek ; what 
 their companion prepares to say to them, they first say to 
 him ; and a hundred signs apprise them of what is about to 
 befall. 
 
 Wonderful intricacy in the web, wonderful constancy in the 
 design, this vagabond life admits. We wonder how the fly 
 finds its mate, and yet year after year we find two men, two 
 women, without legal or carnal tie, spend a great part of their 
 best time within a few feet of each other. And the moral is, 
 that what we seek we shall find ; what we flee from flees from 
 us ; as Goethe said, " what we wish for in youth, comes in 
 heaps on us in old age," too often cursed with the granting of 
 our prayer : and hence the high caution, that, since we are 
 sure of having what we wish, we beware to ask only for high 
 things. 
 
 One key, one solution to the mysteries of human condition, 
 one solution to the old knots of fate, freedom and foreknowl 
 edge, exists, the propounding, namely, of the double con 
 sciousness. A man must ride alternately on the horses of his 
 
FATE. 339 
 
 private and his public nature, as the equestrians in the circus 
 throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or plant one foot 
 on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of the 
 other. So when a man is the victim of his fate, has sciatica 
 in his loins, and cramp in his mind ; a club-foot and a club in 
 his wit ; a sour face, and a selfish temper ; a strut in his gait, 
 and a conceit in his affection ; or is ground to powder by the- 
 vice of his race ; he is to rally on his relation to the Universe, 
 which his ruin benefits. Leaving the demon who suffers, he 
 is to take sides with the Deity who secures universal benefit 
 by his pain. 
 
 To offset the drag of temperament and race, which pulls 
 down, learn this lesson, namely, that by the cunning co-pres 
 ence of two elements, which is throughout nature, whatever 
 lames or paralyzes you, draws in with it the divinity, in some 
 form, to repay. A good intention clothes itself w r ith sudden 
 power. When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will 
 bud and shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a horse. 
 
 Let us build altars to the Blessed Unity which holds na 
 ture and souls in perfect solution, and compels every atom to 
 serve an universal end. I do not wonder at a snow-flake, a 
 shell, a summer landscape, or the glory of the stars ; but at 
 the necessity of beauty under which the universe lies ; that 
 all is and must be pictorial ; that the rainbow, and the curve 
 of the horizon, and the arch of the blue vault, are only results 
 from the organism of the eye. There is no need for foolish 
 amateurs to fetch me to admire a garden of flowers, or a sun- 
 gilt cloud, or a waterfall, when I cannot look without seeing 
 splendor and grace. How idle to choose a random sparkle 
 here or there, when the indwelling necessity plants the rose of 
 beauty on the brow of chaos, and discloses the central inten 
 tion of Nature to be harmony and joy. 
 
 Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity. If we 
 thought men were free in the sense, that, in a single excep 
 tion one fantastical will could prevail over the law of things, 
 it were all one as if a child s hand could pull down the sun. 
 If, in the least particular, one could derange the order of na 
 ture, who would accept the gift of life ? 
 
 Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity, which se 
 cures that all is made of one piece ; that plaintiff and defend 
 ant, friend and enemy, animal and planet, food and eater, are 
 of one kind. In astronomy is vast space, but no foreign sys 
 tem ; in geology, vast time, but the same laws as to-day 
 
340 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Why should we be afraid of Nature, which is no other than 
 " philosophy and theology embodied " 1 Why should we fear 
 to be crushed by savage elements, we who are made up of the 
 same elements ? Let us build to the Beautiful Necessity, 
 which makes man brave in believing that he cannot shun a 
 danger that is appointed, nor incur one that is not ; to the Ne 
 cessity which rudely or softly educates him to the perception 
 that there are no contingencies ; that Law rules throughout ex 
 istence, a Law which is not intelligent but intelligence, not 
 personal nor impersonal, it disdains words and passes under 
 standing ; it dissolves persons ; it vivifies nature ; yet solicits 
 the pure in heart to draw on all its omnipotence. 
 
II. 
 
 POWER. 
 
 flis tongue was framed to music, 
 And his hand wa- armed with skill, 
 His face was the mould of beauty, 
 And his heart the throne of will." 
 
UEI7ERSITT1 
 
 POWER. 
 
 THERE is not yet any inventory of a man s faculties, any 
 more than a bible of his opinions. Who shall set a lim 
 it to the influence of a human being ] There are men, who, 
 by their sympathetic attractions, carry nations with them, and 
 lead the activity of the human race. And if there be such a 
 tie, that, wherever the mind of man goes, nature will accom 
 pany him, perhaps there are men whose magnetisms are of 
 that force to draw material and elemental powers, and, where 
 they appear, immense instrumentalities organize around them. 
 Life is a search after power ; and this is an element with 
 which the world is so saturated, there is no chink or crev 
 ice in which it is not lodged, that no honest seeking goes 
 unrewarded. A man should prize events and possessions as 
 the ore in which this fine mineral is found ; and he can well 
 afford to let events and possessions, and the breath of the body 
 go, if their value has been added to him in the shape of pow 
 er. If he have secured the elixir, he can spare the wide 
 gardens from which it was distilled. \ cultivated man. wise 
 to know and bold to perform, is the end to which nature works, 
 and the education of the will is the flowering and result of 
 all this geology and astronomy. 
 
 All successful men have a-iv. <! in one thing, they w^ere 
 cgwationist*. They believed that things wont not by luck, 
 but by law ; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in 
 the chain that joins the first and last of things. A belief in 
 causality, or strict connection between every pulse-beat and the 
 principle of being, and, in consequence, belief in computa 
 tion, or, that nothing is got for nothing, character!/- 
 valuable minds, ami must control every effort that is mad<- by 
 an industrious one. The most valiant men are the best believ 
 ers in the tension of the laws. " All the great captains," said 
 
344 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Bonaparte, " have performed vast achievements by conforming 
 with the rules of the art, by adjusting efforts to obstacles." 
 
 The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as 
 the young orators describe ; the key to all ages is Imbecili 
 ty ; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, 
 even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments j victims 
 of gravity, custom, and fear. This gives force to the strong, 
 that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or origi 
 nal action. 
 
 We must reckon success a constitutional trait. Courage, 
 the old physicians taught (and their meaning holds, if their 
 physiology is a little mythical), courage, or the degree of 
 life, is as the degree of circulation of the blood in the arteries^ 
 " During passion, anger, fury, trials of strength, wrestling, 
 fighting, a large amount of blood is collected in the arteries, 
 the maintenance of bodily strength requiring it, and but little 
 is sent into the veins. This condition is constant with intrepid 
 persons." Where the arteries hold their blood, is courage 
 and adventure possible. Where they pour it unrestrained into 
 the veins, the spirit is low and feeble. For performance of 
 great mark, it needs extraordinary health. If Eric is in robust 
 health, and has slept well, and is at the top of his condition, 
 and thirty years old, at his departure from Greenland, he will 
 steer west, and his ships will reach Newfoundland. But take 
 out Eric, and put in a stronger and bolder man, Biorn, or 
 Thorfin, and the ships will, with just as much ease, sail six 
 hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred miles farther, and 
 reach Labrador and New England. There is no chance in re 
 sults. With adults, as with children, one class enter cordially 
 into the game, and whirl with the whirling world ; the others 
 have cold hands, and remain bystanders ; or are only dragged 
 in by the humor and vivacity of those who can carry a dead 
 weight. The first wealth is health. Sickness is poor-spirited, 
 and cannot serve any one : it must husband its resources to" 
 live. But health or" fulness answers its own ends, and has to 
 spare, runs over, and inundates the neighborhoods and creeks 
 of other men s necessities. 
 
 All power is of one kind, a sharing of the nature of the 
 world. The mind that is parallel with the laws of nature will 
 be in the current of events, and strong with their strength. 
 One man is made of the same stuff of which events are made ; 
 :s in sympathy with the course of things ; can predict it. 
 Whatever befalls, befalls him first; so that he is equal to 
 
rowr.u. 345 
 
 whatever shall happen. A man who knows men, can talk well 
 on politics, trade, law. war, religion. For, everywhere, men 
 are led in the same manners. 
 
 The advantage of a strong pulse is not to be supplied by 
 auv labor, art. <>r concert. It is like the climate, which easily 
 rears a crop, \\hich no glass, or irrigation, or tillage, or manures, 
 can elsewhere rival. lr is like the opportunity of a city like 
 New York, or Constantinople, which needs no diplomacy to 
 force capital or genius or labor to it. They come of themselves, 
 as the waters How to it. So a broad, healthy, massive un 
 derstanding seems to lie on the shore of unseen rivers, of un 
 seen oceans, which are covered with barks, that, night and day, 
 are drifted to this point. That is poured into its lap, which 
 other men lie plotting for. It is in everybody s secret ; anti 
 cipates everybody s discovery ; and if it do not command every 
 fact of the genius and the scholar, it is because it is large and 
 sluggish, and does not think them worth the exertion which 
 you do. 
 
 This affirmative force is in one, and is not in another, as one 
 horse has the spring in him, and another in the whip. "On 
 the neck of the young man," said Hatiz, " sparkles no gem so 
 gracious as enterprise." Import into any stationary district, 
 as into an old Dutch population in New York or Pennsylvania, 
 or among the planters of Virginia, a colony of hardy Yankees, 
 with Nothing brains, heads full of steam-hammer, pulley, 
 crank, and toothed wheel, and everything begins to shine 
 with values. \Vnat enhancement to all the water and land iu 
 England, is the arrival of James Watt or Brunei ! In every 
 company, there is not only the active and passive sex, but in 
 both men and women, a deeper and more important sex of 
 in > ,/. namely, the inventive or creative class of both men and 
 women, and the uninventive or accepting class. Each plus 
 man represents his ist, and, if he have the ac -idental advan- 
 f persaual ascendency, which implies neither more nor 
 talent. "Wt merely the temperamental or taming eye of 
 a soldier or a s-.-hn.ihnaster, (which one has, and one has not, 
 as one has a black moustache and one a blond.) then quite 
 easily and without, envy or resistance, all his coadjutors and 
 feeders will admit his right to absorb them. The merchant 
 works by book-keeper and cashier ; the lawyer s authorities are 
 hunted up hv clerks : the geol<r_: it reports rlie survevs of his 
 subalterns ; Commander Wilkes appropriates the results of all 
 the naturalists attached to the Expedition ; Thorwaldsen s 
 
 15* 
 
346 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 statue is finished by stone-cutters ; Dumas has journeymen ; 
 and Shakespeare was theatre-manager, and used the labor of 
 many young men, as well as the pi ay books. 
 
 There is always room for a man of force, and he makes room 
 for many. Society is a troop of thinkers, and the best heads 
 among them take the best places. A feeble man can see the 
 farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. 
 The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye 
 makes estates, as fast as the sun breeds clouds. 
 
 When a new boy comes into school, when a man travels, and 
 encounters strangers every day, or, when into an old club a 
 new comer is domesticated, that happens which befalls, when 
 a strange ox is driven into a pen or pasture where cattle are 
 kept ; there is at once a trial of strength between the best pair 
 of horns and the new comer, and it is settled thenceforth which 
 is the leader. So now, there is a measuring of strength, very 
 courteous, but decisive, and an acquiescence thenceforward 
 when these two meet. Each reads his fate in the other s eyes. 
 The weaker party finds, that none of his information or wit 
 quite fits the occasion. He thought he knew this or that : he 
 finds that he omitted to learn the end of it. Nothing that 
 he knows will quite hit the mark, whilst all the rival s arrows 
 are good, and well thrown. But if he knew all the facts in 
 the encyclopedia, it would not help him : for this is an affair 
 of presence of mind, of attitude, of aplomb : the opponent 
 has the sun and wind, and, in every cast, the choice of weapon 
 and mark ; and, when he himself is matched with some other 
 antagonist, his own shafts fly well and hit. T is a question 
 of stomach and constitution. The second man is as good as 
 the first, perhaps better ; but has not stoutness or stomach, 
 as the first has, and so his wit seems over-fine or under-fine. 
 
 Health is good, power, life, that resists disease, poison, 
 and all enemies, and is conservative, as well as creative. Here 
 is question, every spring, whether to graft with wax, or 
 whether with clay ; whether to whitewash or to potash, or to 
 prune ; but the one point is the thrifty tree. A good tree, 
 that agrees with the soil, will grow in spite of blight, or bug;, 
 or pruning, or neglect, by night and by day, in all weathers and 
 all treatments. Vivacity, leadership, must be had, and we are 
 not allowed to be nice in choosing. We must fetch the pump 
 with dirty water, if clean cannot be had. If we will make 
 bread, we must have contagion, yeast, emptyings, or what i 
 to induce fermentation into the dough : as the torpid artist 
 
POWER. 347 
 
 seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend 
 or bv fiend, by prayer or by wine. And we have a certain in 
 stinct, that where is great amount of life, though gross and 
 pecymt, it has its own checks and purifications, and will be 
 fount! at last in harmony with moral laws. 
 
 We watch in children with pathetic interest, the degree in 
 which they possess recuperative force. When they are hurt 
 by us, or by each other, or go to the bottom of the class, or 
 miss the annual prizes, or are beaten in the game, if they 
 art, and remember the mischance in their chamber at 
 home, they have a serious check. But if they have the buoy 
 ancy and resistance that preoccupies them with new interest 
 in the new moment, the wounds cicatrize, and the fibre is 
 the tougher for the hurt. 
 
 One comes to value this plus health, when he sees that all 
 difficulties vanish before it. A timid man listening to the 
 alarmists in Congress, and in the newspapers, and observing 
 the profligacy of party, sectional interests urged with a fury 
 which shuts its eyes to consequences, with a mind made up to 
 desperate extremities, ballot in one hand, and rifle in the 
 other, might easily believe that he and his country have 
 seen their best days, and he hardens himself the best he can 
 against the coming ruin. But. after this has been foretold 
 with equal confidence fifty times, and government six per 
 cents have not declined a quarter of a mill, he discovers that 
 the enormous elements of strength which are here in play 
 make our politics unimportant. Personal power, freedom, and 
 the resources of nature strain every faculty of every citizen. 
 We prosper with such vigor, that, like thrifty trees, which 
 crow in spite of ice, lice, mice, and borers, so we do not suffer 
 from the profligate swarms that fatten on the national treasury. 
 The huge animals nourish huge parasites, and the rancor of 
 the disease attests the strength of the constitution. The 
 same energy in the Greek Demos drew the remark, that the 
 evils of popular government appear greater than they are ; 
 there is compensation for them in the spirit and energy it 
 awakens. The rough-and -ready style which belongs to a peo 
 ple of sailors, foresters, fanners, and mechanics, has its ad 
 vantages. Power educates the potentate. As long as our 
 people quote English standards they dwarf their own propor 
 tions. A Westi-rn lawyer of eminence said to me he wished 
 it were a penal offence to bring an English law-book into a 
 court in this country, so pernicious had he found in his expe- 
 
348 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 rience our deference to English precedent. The very word 
 * commerce has only an English meaning, and is pinched to 
 the cramp exigencies of English experience. The commerce 
 of rivers, the commerce of railroads, and who knows but\ the 
 commerce of air-balloons, must add an American extension to 
 the pond-hole of admiralty. As long as our people quote 
 English standards, they will miss the sovereignty of power ; 
 but let these rough riders, legislators in shirt-sleeves, 
 Hoosier, Sucker, Wolverine, Badger, or whatever hard head 
 Arkansas, Oregon, or Utah sends, half orator, half assassin, to 
 represent its wrath and cupidity at Washington, let these 
 drive as they may ; and the disposition of territories and pub 
 lic lands, the necessity of balancing and keeping at bay the 
 snarling majorities of German, Irish, and of native millions, 
 will bestow promptness, address, and reason, at last, on our 
 buffalo-hunter, and authority and majesty of manners. The 
 instinct of the people is right. Men expect from good whigs, 
 put into office by the respectability of the country, much less 
 skill to deal with Mexico, Spain, Britain, or with our own mal 
 content members, than from some strong transgressor, like 
 Jefferson, or Jackson, who first conquers his own government, 
 and then uses the same genius to conquer the foreigner. The 
 senators who dissented from Mr. Folk s Mexican Avar were not 
 those who knew better, but those who, from political position, 
 could afford it ; not Webster, but Benton and Calhoun. 
 
 This power, to be sure, is not clothed in satin. T is the 
 power of Lynch law, of soldiers and pirates ; and it bullies the 
 peaceable and loyal. But it brings its own antidote ; and here 
 is my point, that all kinds of power usually emerge at the 
 same time ; good energy, and bad ; power of mind, with physi 
 cal health ; the ecstasies of devotion, with the exasperations 
 of debauchery. The same elements are always present, only 
 sometimes these conspicuous, and sometimes those ; what was 
 yesterday foreground, being to-day background, what was 
 surface, playing now a not less effective part as basis. The 
 longer the drought lasts, the more is the atmosphere sur 
 charged with water. The faster the ball falls to the sun, the 
 force to fly off is by so much augmented. And, in morals, 
 wild liberty breeds iron conscience ; natures with great im 
 pulses have great resources, and return from far. In politics, 
 the sons of democrats will be whigs ; whilst red republicanism, 
 in the father, is a spasm of nature to engender an intolerable 
 tyrant in the next age. On the other hand, conservatism, ever 
 
POWER. 349 
 
 more timorous and narrow, disgusts the children, and drives 
 them for a mouthful of fresh air into radicalism. 
 
 Those who have most of this coarse energy, the bruisers, 
 who have run the gauntlet of caucus and tavern through the 
 county or the state, have their own vices, but they have the 
 good-nature of strength and courage. Fierce and unscrupu 
 lous, they are usually frank and direct, and above falsehood. 
 Our politics fall into bad hands, and churchmen and men of 
 refinement, it seems agreed, are not fit .persons to send to Con 
 gress. Politics is a deleterious profession, like some poisonous 
 handicrafts. Men in power have no opinions, but may be had 
 cheap for any opinion, for any purpose, and if it be only a 
 question bctwcen the most civil and the most forcible, I lean to 
 the last. These Hoosiers and Suckers arc really better than 
 the snivelling opposition. Their wrath is at least of a bold 
 and manly cast. They see, against the unanimous declarations 
 of the people, how much crime the people will bear ; they pro 
 ceed from step to step, and they have calculated but too justly 
 upon their Excellencies, the New England governors and upon 
 their Honors, the New England legislators. The messages of 
 the governors and the resolutions of the legislatures are a 
 proverb for expressing a sham virtuous indignation, which, in 
 the course of events, is sure to be belied. 
 
 In trade, also, this energy usually carries a trace of ferocity. 
 Philanthropic and religious bodies do not commonly make their 
 executive officers out of saints. The communities hitherto 
 founded by Socialists, the Jesuits, the Port-Royalists, the 
 American communities at New Harmony, at Brook Farm, at 
 Zoar, are only possible, by installing Judas as steward. The 
 rest of the offices may be filled by good burgesses. The pious 
 and charitable proprietor has a foreman not quite so pious and 
 charitable. The most amiable of country gentlemen has a 
 certain pleasure in the teeth of the bulldog which guards his 
 orchard. Of the Shaker society, it was formerly a sort of 
 proverb in the country, that they always sent the devil to 
 market. And in representations of the Deity, painting, poetry, 
 and popular religion have ever drawn the wrath from Hell. 
 It is an esoteric doctrine of society, that a little wickedness is 
 good to make muscle ; as if conscience were not good for hands 
 and legs, as if poor decayed formalists of law and order cannot 
 run like wild goats, wolves, and conies ; that, as there is a use 
 in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without 
 rogues ; that public spirit and the ready hand are as well found 
 
350 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 among the malignants. T is not very rare, the coincidence of 
 sharp private and political practice, with public spirit, and good 
 neighborhood. 
 
 I knew a burly Boniface who for many years kept a public- 
 house in one of our rural capitals. He was a knave whom the 
 town could ill spare. He was a social, vascular creature, 
 grasping and selfish. There was no crime which he did not or 
 could not commit. But he made good friends of the selectmen, 
 served them with his best chop, when they supped at his house, 
 and also with his honor the Judge, he was very cordial, grasp 
 ing his hand. He introduced all the fiends, male and female, 
 into the town, and united in his person the functions of buJly, 
 incendiary, swindler, bar-keeper, and burglar. He girdled the 
 trees, and cut off the horses tails of the temperance people, 
 in the night, He led the * rummies and radicals in town- 
 meeting with a speech. Meantime, he was civil, fat, arid easy, 
 in his house, and precisely the most public-spirited citizen. He 
 was active in getting the roads repaired and planted with 
 shade-trees ; he subscribed for the fountains, the gas, and the 
 telegraph ; he introduced the new horse-rake, the new scraper, 
 the baby-jumper, and what not, that Connecticut sends to the 
 admiring citizens. He did this the easier, that the pedler 
 stopped at his house, and paid his keeping, by setting up his 
 new trap on the landlord s premises. 
 
 Whilst thus the energy for originating and executing work 
 deforms itself by excess, and so our axe chops off our own 
 fingers, this evil is not without remedy. All the elements 
 whose aid man calls in will sometimes become his masters, 
 especially those of most subtle force. Shall he, then, renounce 
 steam, fire, and electricity, or shall he learn to deal with them 1 
 The rule for this whole class of agencies is, all plus is good ; 
 T)nly put it in the right place. 
 
 Men of this surcharge of arterial blood cannot live on nuts, 
 herb-tea, and elegies ; cannot read novels, and play whist ; 
 cannot satisfy all their wants at the Thursday Lecture, or the 
 Boston Athenseum. They pine for adventure, and must go to 
 Pike s Peak ; had rather die by the hatchet of a Pawnee, than 
 eit all day and every day at a counting-room desk. They are 
 made for war, for the sea, for mining, hunting, and clearing ; 
 for hair-breadth adventures, huge risks, and the joy of eventful 
 living. Some men cannot endure an hour of calm at sea. I 
 remember a poor Malay cook, on board a Liverpool packet, 
 who, when the wind blew a gale, could not contain his joy ; 
 
POWER. 351 
 
 11 Blow ! " he cried, " me do tell you, blow ! " Their friends 
 And governors must see that some vent for their explosive com 
 plexion is provided. The roisters who ;ire destined for infamy 
 at home, if sent to Mexico, will "cover you with glory," and 
 come back heroes and generals. There are Oregons, ( aliibrnias, 
 and KxploriiiL Kxpeditions enough :ippertaining to America, 
 to find them in files t<> LHKIW. and in crocodiles to eat. The 
 young Kngli>h arc tine animals, full of blood, and when they 
 have no wars to breathe their riotous valors in, they seek for 
 travels as dangerous as war, diving into Maelstroms ; swimming 
 Hellesponts ; wading up the snowy Himmaleh ; hunting lion, 
 rhinoceros, elephant, in South Africa ; gypsying with Borrow 
 in Spain and Algiers; riding alligators in South America with 
 "\Vaterton ; utilizing Bedouin, Sheik, and Pacha, with Layard ; 
 yachting among the icebergs of Lancaster Sound ; peeping into 
 craters on the equator ; or running on the creases of Malays 
 in Borneo. 
 
 The excess of virility has the same importance in general 
 history, as in private and industrial life. Strong race or 
 strong individual rests at last on natural forces, which are best 
 in the savage, who, like the beasts around him, is still in re 
 ception of the milk from the teats of Nature. Cut off the 
 connection between any of our works, and this aboriginal 
 source, and the work is shallow. The people lean on this, and 
 the mob is not quite so bad an argument as we sometimes say, 
 for it has this good side. " March without the people," said a 
 French deputy from the tribune, " and you march into night : 
 their instincts are a finger-pointing of providence, always 
 turned toward real benefit. But when you espouse an Orleans 
 party, or a Bourbon, or a Montalembert party, or any other 
 but an organic party, though yon mean well, you have a per 
 sonality instead of a principle, which will inevitably drag you 
 into a corner." 
 
 The best anecdotes of this force are to be had from savage 
 life, in explorers, soldiers, and buccaneers. But who cares 
 for fallings-out of assassins, and tights of bears, or grinding 
 of icebergs] Physical force has n value, where there is noth 
 ing else. Snow in snow-banks^ fire in volcanoes and soltataras 
 is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and mid 
 summer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our 
 hearth : and of electricity, not volleys of the charged cloud, 
 but the manageable stream on the battery -wires. So of spirit, 
 or energy ; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral / 
 man are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific. 
 
352 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 In history, the great moment is, when the savage is just 
 ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength 
 directed on his opening sense of beauty : and you have 
 Pericles and Phidias, not yet passed over into the Corin 
 thian civility. Everything good in nature and the world is in 
 that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow 
 plentifully from nature, but their astringency or acridity is 
 got out by ethics and humanity. 
 
 The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to 
 war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, 
 whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port 
 and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power cul 
 minated ; the compression and tension of these stern condi 
 tions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can 
 rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some anal 
 ogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war. 
 
 We say that success is constitutional ; depends on a plus 
 condition of mind and body, on power of work, on courage \ 
 that it is of main efficacy in carrying on the world, and, 
 though rarely found in the right state for an article of com 
 merce, but oftener in the supersaturate or excess, which makes 
 it dangerous and destructive, yet it cannot be spared, and 
 must be had in that form, and absorbents provided to take 
 oft" its edge. 
 
 The affirmative class monopolize the homage of mankind. 
 They originate and execute all the great feats. What a force 
 was coiled up in the skull of Napoleon ! Of the sixty thou 
 sand men making his army at Eylau, it seems some thirty 
 thousand were thieves and burglars. The men whom, in 
 peaceful communities, we hold if we can, with iron at their 
 legs, in prisons, under the muskets of sentinels, this man dealt 
 with, hand to hand, dragged them to their duty, and won 
 his victories by their bayonets. 
 
 This aboriginal might gives a surprising pleasure when it 
 appears under conditions of supreme refinement, as in the 
 proficients in high art. When Michel Angelo was forced to 
 paint the Sistine Chapel in fresco, of which art he knew noth 
 ing, he went down into the Pope s gardens behind the Vatican, 
 and with a shovel dug out ochres, red and yellow, mixed them 
 with glue and water with his own hands, and having, after 
 many trials, at last suited himself, climbed his ladders, and 
 painted away, week after week, month after mouth, the sibyls 
 and prophets. He surpassed his successors in rough vigor, as 
 
POWER. 353 
 
 much as in purity of intellect and refinement. He was not 
 crushed by his one picture left unfinished at last. Michel was 
 wont to draw his figures first in skeleton, then to clothe them 
 with flesh, and lastly to drape them. " Ah ! " said a brave 
 painter to me, thinking on these things, " if a man has failed, 
 you will find he has dreamed instead of working. There is 
 no wuy to success in our art, but to take off your coat, grind 
 paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every 
 day." 
 
 Success goes thus invariably with a certain phis or positive 
 power : an ounce of power must balance an ounce of weight. 
 And. though a man eaimot return into his mother s womb, :md 
 be born with new amounts of vivacity, yet there are two econo 
 mies, which are the best succedanea which the case admits. 
 The first is, the stopping oft decisively our miscellaneous activ 
 ity, and concentrating our force on one or a few points ; as the 
 gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one 
 or two vigorous limbs, instead of suffering it to spindle into a 
 sheaf of twigs. 
 
 " Enlarge not thy destiny," said the oracle : " endeavor not 
 to do more than is given thee in charge." The one prudence 
 in life is concentration ; the one evil is dissipation : and it 
 makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or 
 fine ; property and its cares, friends? and a social habit, or 
 politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes 
 away <me plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to 
 add one stroke of faithful work. Friends, books, pictures, 
 lower duties, talents, flatteries, hopes, all are distractions 
 which cause oscillations in our giddy balloon, and make a good 
 poise and a straight course impossible. You must elect your 
 work ; you shall take what your brain can, and drop all the rest. 
 Only so, can that amount of vital force accumulate, which 
 can make the step from knowing to doing. No matter how 
 much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing 
 to doiiiLT is rarely taken. T is a step out of a chalk circle of 
 imbecility into fruitfulness. Many an artist lacking this, lacks 
 all : he sees the masculine Angelo or Cellini with despair. 
 He, too, is up ti Nature and the First Cause in his thought. 
 But the spasm to collect and swing his whole being into one 
 act, he has not. The poet Campbell said, that "a man ac 
 customed to work was equal to any achievement he resolved 
 on, and, that, for himself, necessity, not inspiration, was the 
 prompter of his muse." 
 
354 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 x Concentration is the secret of strength__in politics, in war, 
 in trade, in short, in all management of human affairs. One 
 of the high anecdotes of the world is the reply of Newton to the 
 inquiry, " how he had been able to achieve his discoveries ?" 
 " By always intending my mind." Or if you will have a 
 text from politics, take this from Plutarch : " There was, in 
 the whole city, but one street in which Pericles was ever seen, 
 the street which led to the market-place and the council-house. 
 He declined all invitations to banquets, and all gay assemblies 
 and company. During the whole period of his administration, 
 he never dined at the table of a friend." Or if we seek an 
 example from trade, "I hope," said a good man to Roth 
 schild, " your children are not too fond of money and business : 
 I am sure you would not wish that." " I am sure I should 
 wish that : I wish them to give mind, soul, heart, and body to 
 business, that is the way to be happy. It requires a great 
 deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great 
 fortune, and when you have got it, it requires ten times as 
 much wit to keep it. If I were to listen to all the projects 
 proposed to me, I should ruin myself very soon. Stick to one 
 business, young man. Stick to your brewery (he said this to 
 young Buxton), and you will be the great brewer of London. 
 Be brewer, and banker, and merchant, and manufacturer, and 
 you will soon be in the Gazette." 
 
 Many men are knowing, many are apprehensive and tena 
 cious, but they do not rush to a decision. But in our flow 
 ing affairs a decision must be made, the best, if you can ; 
 but any is better than none. There are twenty ways of going 
 to a point, and one is the shortest ; but set out at once on 
 one. A man who has that presence of mind which can bring 
 to him on the instant all he knows, is worth for action a dozen 
 men who know as much, but can only bring it to light slowly. 
 The good Speaker in the House is not the man who knows the 
 theory of parliamentary tactics, but the man who decides off 
 hand. The good judge is not he who does hair-splitting justice 
 to every allegation, but who, aiming at substantial justice, 
 rules something intelligible for the guidance of suitors. The 
 good lawyer is not the man who has an eye to every side and 
 angle of contingency, and qualifies all his qualifications, but 
 who throws himself on your part so heartily, that he can get 
 you out of a scrape. Dr. Johnson said, in one of his flowing 
 sentences : " Miserable beyond all names of wretchedness is 
 that unhappy pair, who are doomed to reduce beforehand to the 
 
POWER. 355 
 
 principles of abstract reason all the details of each domestic 
 day. There are cases where little can be said, and much must 
 be done," 
 
 The second substitute for temperament is drill, the power 
 of use and routine. The hack is a better roadster than the | 
 Arab barb. In chemistry, the galvanic stream, slow, but con 
 tinuous, is equal in power to the electric spark, and is, in our 
 arts, a better agent So in human action, against the spasm 
 of energy, we offset the continuity of drill. We spread the 
 same amount of force over much time, instead of condensing 1 
 it into a moment. T is the same ounce of gold here in a ball, 
 and there in a leaf. At West Point, Col. Buford, the chief 
 engineer, pounded with a hammer on the trunnions of a can 
 non, until he broke them off. He fired a piece of ordnance 
 some hundred times in swift succession, until it burst Now / 
 which stroke broke the trunnion 1 Every stroke. Which blast 
 burst the piece ? Every blast. "Diliyen.ce passe sens,"" Henry 
 VIII. was wont to say, or, great is drill. John Kemble said, 
 that the worst provincial company of actors would go through a 
 play better than the best amateur company. Basil Hall likes 
 to show that the worst regular troops will beat the best volun 
 teers. Practice is nine tenths. A course of mobs is good 
 practice for orators. All the great speakers were bad speakers 
 at first Stumping it through England for seven years made 
 Cobden a consummate debater. Stumping it through New 
 England for twice seven trained Wendell Phillips. The way 
 to learn German, is, to read the same dozen pages over and 
 over a hundred times, till you know every word and particle 
 in them and can pronounce and repeat them by heart. No 
 genius can recite a ballad at first reading, so well as medioc 
 rity can at the fifteenth or twentieth reading. The rule for 
 hospitality and Irish help, is, to have the same dinner every 
 day throughout the year. At last, Mrs. O Shaughnessy learns 
 to cook it to a nicety, the host learns to carve it, and the 
 guests are well served. A humorous friend of mine thinks, 
 that the reason why Nature is so perfect in her art, and gets 
 up such inconceivably fine sunsets, is, that she has learned 
 how, at last, by dint of doing the same thing so very often. 
 Cannot one converse better on a topic on which he has experi 
 ence, than on one which is new ? Men whose opinion is 
 valued on Change, are only such as have a special experience, 
 and off that ground their opinion is not valuable. " More 
 are made good by exercitation, than by nature," said Democ- 
 
356 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 ritus. The friction in nature is so enormous that we cannot 
 spare any power. It is not question to express our thought, 
 to elect our way, but to overcome resistances of the medium 
 and material in everything we do. Hence the use of drill, and 
 the worthlessness of amateurs to cope with practitioners. Six 
 hours every day at the piano, only to give facility of touch ; six 
 hours a day at painting, only to give command of the odious 
 materials, oil, ochres, and brushes. The masters say that 
 they know a master in music, only by seeing the pose of the 
 hands on the keys ; so difficult and vital an act is the com 
 mand of the instrument. To have learned the use of the 
 tools, by thousands of manipulations; to have learned the arts 
 of reckoning, by endless adding and dividing, is the power of 
 the mechanic and the clerk. 
 
 I remarked in England, in confirmation of a frequent ex 
 perience at home, that, in literary circles, the men of trust 
 nd consideration, bookmakers, editors, university deans and 
 professors, bishops, too, were by no means men of the largest 
 literary talent, but usually of a low and ordinary intellectual 
 ity, with a sort of mercantile activity and working talent. 
 Indifferent hacks and mediocrities tower, by pushing their 
 forces to a lucrative point, or by working power, over multi 
 tudes of superior men, in Old as in New England. 
 
 I have not forgotten that there are sublime considerations 
 which limit the value of talent and superficial success. We 
 can easily overpraise the vulgar hero. There are sources on 
 which we have not drawn. I know what I abstain from. I 
 adjourn what I have to say on this topic to the chapters on 
 Culture and Worship. But this force or spirit, being the 
 means relied on by Nature for bringing the work of the day 
 about, as far as we attach importance to household life, and 
 the prizes of the world, we must respect that. And I hold, 
 that an economy maybe applied to it ; it is as much a subject 
 of exact law and arithmetic as fluids and gases are ; it may be 
 husbanded, or wasted ; every man is efficient only as he is a 
 container or vessel of this force, and never was any signal act 
 or achievement in history, but by this expenditure. This 
 is not gold, but the gold -maker; not the fame, but the ex 
 ploit. 
 
 If these forces and this husbandry are within reach of our 
 will, and the laws of them can be read, we infer that all suc 
 cess, and all conceivable benefit for man, is also, first or last, 
 within his reach, and has its own sublime economies by which 
 
POWI.K. 357 
 
 it may be attained. Tin- world is mathematical, and has no 
 
 casualty, in all its vast and flowing curve. Success has no 
 more eccentricity, than the ginuham and muslin we weave in 
 our mills. 1 know no more aHcctin^ lesson to our busy, plot 
 ting New KiiLrland brains, than to go into one of the factories 
 with which we have lined all the water-courses in the States. 
 A man hardly knows how much he is a machine, until he be 
 gins to make telegraph, loom, press, and locomotive, in his 
 own image. But in these, he is forced to leave out his follies 
 and hindrances, so that when we go to the mill, the machine 
 is more moral than we. Let a man dare go to a loom, and see 
 if he be equal to it. Let machine confront machine, and see 
 how they come out. The world-mill is more complex than the 
 calico-mill, and the architect stooped less. In the gingham- 
 mill, a broken thread or a shred spoils the web through a 
 piece of a hundred yards, and is traced back to the girl that 
 wove it, and lessens her wauvs. The stockholder, on being 
 shown this, rubs his hands with delight. Are you so cunning, 
 Mr. Profitless, and do you expect to swindle your master and 
 employer, in the web you weave 1 A day is a more magnificent 
 cloth than any muslin, the mechanism that makes it is in 
 finitely cunninger, and you shall not conceal the slcezy, fraudu 
 lent, rotten hours you have slipped into the piece, nor fear 
 that any honest thread, or straighter steel, or more inflexible 
 shaft, will not testify in the web. 
 
III. 
 WEALTH. 
 
 Who shall tell what did befall, 
 
 Far away in time, when once, 
 
 Over the lifeless ball, 
 
 Hung idle stars and -uns? 
 
 What god the element obeyed ? 
 
 Wings of what wind the lichen bore, 
 
 Waning the puny seeds of power, 
 
 Which, lodged in rock, the rock abrade? 
 
 And well the primal pioneer 
 
 Knew the -trong task to it assigned 
 
 Patient through Heaven s enormous year 
 
 To build in matter home for mind. 
 
 From air the creeping centuries drew 
 
 The matted thicket low and wide, 
 
 This must the leaves of ages strew 
 
 The granite slab to clothe and hide, 
 
 Ere wheat can wave its golden pride. 
 
 What smiths and in what furnace, rolled 
 
 (In dizxv a ons dim and mute 
 
 The reeling brain can ill compute) 
 
 Copper and iron, lead, and gold? 
 
 What oldest star the fame can save 
 
 Of races perishing to pave 
 
 The planet with a floor of lime? 
 
 Dust is their pyramid and mole: 
 
 Who saw what ferns and palms were pressed 
 
 Under the tumbling mountain s breast, 
 
 In tho safe herbal of the coal ? 
 
 But when the quarried means were piled, 
 
 All is waste and worthless, till 
 
 Arrives the \vj-e -electing will. 
 
 And, out of slime and chaos, Wit 
 
 Draws the threads of fair and fit. 
 
 Then temples rose, and towns, and marts, 
 
 The shop of toil, the hall of arts ; 
 
 Then flew the sail across the seas 
 
 To feed the North from tropic trees; 
 
 The storm-wind wove, the torrent span, 
 
 Where they were bid the rivers ran; 
 
 New slaves fulfilled the poet s dream, 
 
 Galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam. 
 
 Then docks were built, and crops were stored, 
 
 And ingot- added to tin- hoard. 
 
 But, though light-headed man forget, 
 
 Remembering Matter pay- her debt: 
 
 Still, through her mote- ami ma-ses, draw 
 
 Klectric thrills and tie< of Law, 
 
 Which bind the strengths of Nature wild 
 
 To the conscience of a child. 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 WEALTH. 
 
 AS soon as a stranger is introduced into any company, one 
 of the first questions which all wish to have answered, 
 is, How does that man get his living? And with reason. He 
 is no whole man until he knows how to earn a blameless liveli 
 hood. Society is barbarous, until every industrious man can 
 get his living without dishonest customs. 
 
 Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. 
 He fails to make his place good in the world, unless he not 
 only pays his debt, but also adds something to the common 
 wealth. Nor can he do justice to his genius, without making 
 some larger demand on the world than a bare subsistence. He 
 is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich. 
 
 Wealth has its source in applications of the mind to nature, 
 from the rudest strokes of spade and axe, up to the last 
 secrets of art. Intimate ties subsist between thought and 
 all production ; because a better order is equivalent to vust 
 amounts of brute labor. The forces and the resistances are 
 Nature s, but the mind acts in bringing things from where 
 they abound to where they are wanted ; in wise combining ; 
 in directing the practice of the useful arts, :ui<l in the creation 
 of finer values, by fine art, by eloquence, by song or the re 
 productions of memory. Wealth is in applications of mind 
 to nature ; and the art of getting rich consists not in indus 
 try, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, 
 in being at the right spot. One man has stronger anus, 
 or longer legs ; another sees by the course of streams, and 
 growth of markets, where land will be wanted, makes a clear 
 ing to the river, goes to sleep, and wakes up rich. Steam 
 is no stronger now, than it was a hundred years airo ; but 
 is put to letter use. A clever fellow was acquainted with 
 the expansive force of steam; he also saw the wealth of 
 
 VOL. II. 16 
 
3G2 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 wheat and grass rotting in Michigan. Then he cunningly 
 screws on the steam-pipe to the wheat-crop. Puff now, 
 Steam ! The steam puffs and expands as before, but this 
 time it is dragging all Michigan at its back to hungry New 
 York and hungry England. Coal lay in ledges under the 
 ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass 
 brings it to the surface. We may well call it black diamonds. 
 Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable 
 climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and 
 the polar circle ; and it is the means of transporting itself 
 whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered 
 in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal 
 will draw tivo tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by 
 boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its com 
 fort brings its industrial power. 
 
 When the farmer s peaches are taken from under the tree, 
 and carried into town, they have a new look, and a hundred 
 fold value over the fruit which grew on the same bough, and 
 lies fulsomely on the ground. The craft of the merchant is this 
 bringing a thing from where it abounds, to where it is costly. 
 
 Wealth begins in a tight roof that keeps the rain and wind 
 out ; in a good pump that yields you plenty of sweet water ; 
 in two suits of clothes, so to change your dress when you are 
 wet ; in dry sticks to burn ; in a good double-wick lamp ; and 
 three meals ; in a horse, or a locomotive, to cross the land ; 
 in a boat to cross the sea ; in tools to work with ; in books to 
 read ; and so, in giving, on all sides, by tolls and auxiliaries, 
 the greatest possible extension to our powers, as if it added feet, 
 and hands, and eyes, and blood, length to the day, and knowl 
 edge, and good-will. 
 
 Wealth begins with these articles of necessity. And here 
 we must recite the iron law which Nature thunders in these 
 northern climates. First, she requires that each man should 
 feed himself. If, happily, his fathers have left him no inher 
 itance, he must go to work, and by making his wants less, or 
 his gains more, he must draw himself out of that state of pain 
 and insult in which she forces the beggar to lie. She gives 
 him no rest until this is done ; she starves, taunts, and tor 
 ments him, takes away warmth, laughter, sleep, friends, and 
 daylight, until he has fought his way to his own loaf. Then, 
 less peremptorily, but still with sting enough, she urges him 
 to the acquisition of such things as belong to him. Every 
 warehouse and shop-window, every fruit-tree, every thought of 
 
WEALTH. 363 
 
 every hour, opens a new want to him, which it concerns his 
 power and dignity to ^ratify. It is of no use to argue the 
 wants down : tin- philosophers have laid the greatness of man 
 m making his wants few ; but will a man content himself with 
 a hut and a handful of dried pease ? He is born to be rich. 
 He is thoroughly related ; and is tempted out by his appetites 
 and fancies to the conquest of this and that piece of nature, 
 until he finds his well-being in the use of his planet, and of 
 more planets than his own. Wealth requires, besides the crust 
 of bread and the roof, the freedom of the city, the freedom 
 of the earth, travelling, machinery, the benefits of science, 
 music, and fine arts, the best culture, and the best company. 
 He is the rich man who can avail himself of all men s faculties. 
 He is the richest man who knows how to draw a benefit from 
 the labors of the greatest number of men, of men in distant 
 countries, and in past times. The same correspondence that 
 is between thirst in the stomach, and water in the spring, ex 
 ists between the whole of man and the whole of nature. 
 The elements offer their service to him. The sea, washing 
 the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the 
 power and empire that follow it, day by day to his craft and 
 audacity. Beware of me, it says, but if you can hold me, I 
 am the key to all the lands. Fire offers, on its side, an equal 
 power. Fire, steam, lightning, gravity, ledges of rock, mines 
 of iron, lead, quicksilver, tin, and gold ; forests of all woods ; 
 fruits of all climates ; animals of all habits ; the powers of til 
 lage ; the fabrics of his chemic laboratory ; the webs of his 
 loom ; the masculine draught of his locomotive, the talismans 
 of the machine-shop ; all grand and subtile things, minerals, 
 gases, ethers, passions, war, trade, government, are his natural 
 playmates, and, according to the excellence of the machinery 
 in each human being, is his attraction for the instruments he 
 is to employ. The world is his tool-chest, and he is successful, 
 or his education is carried on just so far, as is the marriage of 
 his faculties with nature, or, the degree in which he takes up 
 things into himself. 
 
 The strong race is strong on these terms. The Saxons are 
 the merchants of the world ; now, for a thousand years, the 
 leading race, and by nothing " v than their quality of per 
 sonal independence, and, in its special modification, pecuniary 
 independence. No reliance for bread and games on the gov 
 ernment, no clanship, no patriarchal style of living by the 
 revenues of a chief, no marrying-on, no system of clientship 
 
364 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 suits them ; but every man must pay his scot. The English 
 are prosperous and peaceful, with their habit of considering 
 that every man must take care of himself, and has himself 
 to thank, if he do not maintain and improve his position in 
 society. 
 
 The subject of economy mixes itself with morals, inasmuch as 
 it is a peremptory point of virtue that a man s independence is 
 secured. Poverty demoralizes. A man in debt is so far a slave ; 
 and Wall Street thinks it easy for a millionnaire to be a man 
 of his word, a man of honor, but, that, in failing circumstances, 
 no man can be relied on to keep his integrity. And when one 
 observes in the hotels and palaces of our Atlantic capitals the 
 habit of expense, the riot of the senses, the absence of bonds, 
 clanship, fellow-feeling of any kind, he feels, that, when a man 
 or a woman is driven to the wall, the chances of integrity are 
 frightfully diminished, as if virtue were coming to be a luxury 
 . which few could afford, or, as Burke said, " at a market almost 
 too high for humanity." He may fix his inventory of necessi 
 ties and of enjoyments on what scale he pleases, but if he 
 wishes the power and privilege of thought, the chalking out 
 his own career, and having society on his own terms, he must 
 bring his wants within his proper power to satisfy. 
 
 The manly part is to do with might and main what you can 
 do. The world is full of fops who never did anything, and 
 who have persuaded beauties and men of genius to wear their 
 fop livery, and these will deliver the fop opinion, that it is 
 not respectable to be seen earning a living ; that it is much 
 more respectable to spend without earning ; and this doctrine 
 of the snake will come also from the elect sons of light ; for 
 wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak five times 
 from their taste or their humor, to once from their reason. 
 The brave workman, who might betray his feeling of it in 
 his manners, if he do not succumb in his practice, must re 
 place the grace or elegance forfeited, by the merit of the work 
 done. No matter whether he make shoes, or statues, or 
 laws. It is the privilege of any human work which is well 
 done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can 
 well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer 
 for him. The mechanic at his bench carries a quiet heart and 
 assured manners, and deals on even terms with men of any 
 condition. The artist has made his picture so true, that it 
 disconcerts criticism. The statue is so beautiful that it con 
 tracts no stain from the market, but makes the market a 
 
WKALTII. 365 
 
 silent gallery for itself. The case of the young lawyer was 
 pitiful t<> disgust. -a paltry matter of buttons or twee/.er- 
 easesj Imt thr determined youth sa\v in it an aperture to 
 insert his dangerous wedges, made the insignificance of tin 
 thing forgotten, and gave fame by his BOOM and energy to the 
 name and affairs of the Tittletou snuil -box factory. 
 ^Societj in large towns is babyish, and wealth is made a toy. 
 The life of pleasure is so ostentatious, that a shallow observer 
 must believe that this is the agreed best use of wealth, and, 
 whatever is pretended, it ends in cosseting. But, if this 
 were the main use of surplus capital, it would bring us to 
 barricades, burned towns, and tomahawks, presently. Men of 
 sense esteem wealth to be the assimilation of nature to them 
 selves, the converting of the sap and juices of the planet to the 
 incarnation and nutriment of their design. Power is what 
 they want, not candy, power to execute their design, 
 power to give legs and feet, form and actuality, to their 
 thought, which, to a clear-sighted man, appears the end for 
 whi:-h the Tniverse exists, and all its resources might be well 
 applied. Columbus thinks that the sphere is a problem for prac- 
 tieal navigation, as well as for closet geometry, and looks on 
 all kings and peoples as cowardly landsmen, until they dare fit 
 him out. 1 Yw men on the planet have more truly belonged 
 to it. But he was forced to leave much of his map blank. 
 His successors inherited his map, and inherited his fury tu 
 complete it. 
 
 So the men of the mine, telegraph, mill, map, and survey. 
 the monomaniacs, who talk up their project in marts, and 
 offices, and entreat men to subscribe : how did our factories 
 get built? how did North America get netted with iron rails, 
 except by the importunity of these orators, who dragged all 
 the prudent men in ? Is party the madness of many for the 
 gain of a few ? This .<j,r.-nl<it, r,> genius is the madness of few 
 for the gain of the world. The projectors are sacrificed, but 
 the public is the gainer. Each of these idealists, working af 
 ter his thought, would make it tyrannical, if he could. He is 
 met and antaironi/.ed by other speculators, as hot as he. The 
 equilibrium is preserved by these counteractions, as one tree 
 keeps down another in the forest, that it may not absorb all 
 the sap in the ground. And the supply in nature of railroad 
 presidents, copper-miners, grand-jiinet ioners. smoke burners, 
 nre-annihilators, kc., is limited by the same law which keeps 
 the proportion in the supply of carbon, of alum, and of hydro 
 gen. 
 
366 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 To be rich is to have a ticket of admission to the master- 
 works and chief men of each race. It is to have the sea, by 
 voyaging ; to visit the mountains, Niagara, the Nile, the des 
 ert, Home, Paris, Constantinople ; to see galleries, libraries, 
 arsenals, manufactories. The reader of Humboldt s " Cosmos " 
 follows the marches of a man whose eyes, ears, and mind are 
 armed by all the science, arts, and implements which man 
 kind have anywhere accumulated, and who is using these to 
 add to the stock. So is it with Denon, Beckford, Belzoni, 
 Wilkinson, Layard, Kane, Lepsius, and Livingston. " The 
 rich man," says Saadi, " is everywhere expected and at home." 
 The rich take up something more of the world into man s life. 
 TEey include the country as well as the town, the ocean-side, 
 the White Hills, the Far West, and the old European home 
 steads of man, in their notion of available material. The 
 world is his who has money to go over it. He arrives at the 
 sea-shore, and a sumptuous ship has floored and carpeted for 
 him the stormy Atlantic, and made it a luxurious hotel, amid 
 the horrors of tempests. The Persians say, " T is the same 
 to him who wears a shoe, as if the whole earth were covered 
 with leather." 
 
 Kings are said to have long arms, but every man should 
 have long arms, and should pluck his living, his instruments, 
 his power, and his knowing, from the sun, moon, and stars. Is 
 not then the demand to be rich legitimate 1 Yet, I have 
 never seen a rich man. I have never seen a man as rich as 
 all men ought to be, or, with an adequate command of nature. 
 The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing 
 the thirst for wealth ; but if men should take these moralists 
 at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists 
 would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love of power in the 
 people, lest civilization should be undone. Men are urged by 
 their ideas to acquire the command over nature. Ages derive 
 a culture from the wealth of Roman Caesars, Leo Tenths, mag 
 nificent Kings of France, Grand Dukes of Tuscany, Dukes of 
 Devonshire, Townleys, Vernons, and Peels, in England } or 
 whatever great proprietors. It is the interest of all men, that 
 there should be Vaticans and Louvres full of noble works of 
 art ; British museums, and French Gardens of Plants, Phila 
 delphia Academies of Natural History, Bodleian, Ambrosian, 
 Royal, Congressional Libraries. It is the interest of all that 
 there should be Exploring PJxpeditions ; Captain Cooks to 
 voyage round the world, Rosses, Franklins, Richardsons, and 
 
WEALTH. 367 
 
 Kanes, to find the magnetic and the geographic poles. We 
 are all richer for tin- measurement of a degree of latitude on 
 the earth s surface. Our navigation is safer for the chart. 
 How intimately our knowledge f the system of the Universe 
 rests on that ! and a true economy in a state or an individ 
 ual will forget its frugality in behalf of claims like these. 
 
 Whilst it is each man s interest, that, not only ease and 
 convenience of living, but also wealth or surplus product 
 should exist somewhere, it need not be in his hands. Often 
 it is very undesirable to him. Goethe said well, " Nobody 
 should be rich but those who understand it." Some men 
 are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others 
 cannot : their owning is not graceful ; seems to be a compro 
 mise of their character : they seem to steal their own divi 
 dends. They should own who can administer ; not they who 
 hoard and conceal ; not they who, the greater proprietors they 
 are, are only the greater beggars, but they whose work carves 
 out work for more, opens a path for all. For he is the rich 
 man in whom the people are rich, and he is the poor man in 
 whom the people are poor ; and how to give all access to the 
 masterpieces of ait and nature, is the problem of civilization. 
 The socialism of our day has done good service in setting men 
 on thinking how certain civilizing hem-tits, now only enjoyed 
 by the opulent, can be enjoyed by all. For example, the pro 
 viding to each man the means and apparatus of science, and 
 of the arts. There are many articles good for occasional use, 
 which few men are able to own. Every man wishes to see the 
 ring of Saturn, the satellites and belts of Jupiter ami Mars ; 
 the mountains and craters in the moon : yet how few can buy 
 a telescope ! and of those, scarcely one would like the trouble 
 of keeping.it in order, and exhibiting it. So of electrical and 
 chemical apparatus, and many the like things. Every man 
 may have occasion to consult books which he does not care to 
 possess, such as cyclopaedias, dictionaries, tables, charts, maps, 
 and public documents : pictures also of birds, beasts, fishes-, 
 shells, trees, flowers, whose names he desires to know. 
 
 There is a refining influence from the arts of Design on a 
 prepared mind, which is as positive as that of music, and not 
 to l>e supplied from any other source. But pictures, engrav 
 ings, statues, and casts, beside their first cost, entail expenses, 
 as of galleries and keepers for the exhibition : and the use 
 which any man can make of them is rare, and their value, 
 too, is much enhanced by the numbers of men who can share 
 
368 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 their enjoyment. In the Greek cities, it was reckoned pro 
 fane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of 
 art, which belonged to all who could behold it. I think some 
 times, could I only have music on my own terms ; could 
 I live in a great city, and know where I could go whenever I 
 wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves, that 
 were a bath and a medicine. 
 
 If properties of this kind were owned by states, towns, and 
 lyceums, they would draw the bonds of neighborhood closer. 
 A town would exist to an intellectual purpose. In Europe, 
 where the feudal forms secure the permanence of wealth in 
 certain families, those families buy and preserve these things, 
 and lay them open to the public. But in America, where 
 democratic institutions divide every estate into small portions, 
 after a few years, the public should step into the place of 
 these proprietors, and provide this culture and inspiration for 
 the citizen. 
 
 Man was born to be rich, or, inevitably grows rich by the 
 use of his faculties ; by the union of thought with nature. 
 Property is an intellectual production. The game requires 
 coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the 
 players. Cultivated labor drives out brute labor. An infi 
 nite number of shrewd men, in infinite years, have arrived at 
 certain best and shortest ways of doing, and this accumulated 
 skill in arts, cultures, harvestings, curings, manufactures, 
 navigations, exchanges, constitutes the worth of our world 
 to-day. 
 
 Commerce is a game of skill, which every man cannot play, 
 which few men can play well. The right merchant is one 
 who has the just average of faculties we call common sense ; a 
 man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision 
 on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the 
 truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, 
 for his good or bad fortune, and so, in making money. Men 
 talk as if there were some magic about this, and believe in 
 magic, in all parts of life. He knows, that all goes on the old 
 road, pound for pound, cent for cent, for every effect a per 
 fect cause, and that good luck is another name for tenacity 
 of purpose. He insures himself in every transaction, and 
 likes small and sure gains. Probity and closeness to the 
 facts are the basis, but the masters of the art add a certain 
 long arithmetic. The problem is, to combine many and 
 remote operations, wkh the accuracy and adherence to th 
 
\VI:ALTH. 369 
 
 facts, which is easy in near and small transactions; so to 
 arrive at u r iu r antic result*, without any compromise of safety. 
 Napoleon ^ = s 1" 11( 1 of telling tin- story of the Marseilles bunk 
 er, who said to his visitor, surprised at the contrast between 
 the splendor of the banker s chateau and hospitality, and the 
 meanness of the counting room in which lie had seen him: 
 11 Yoimi: man, vou are too young to understand how masses 
 are formed, the true and only power, whether composed 
 of monev, water, or men, it is all alike, amass is an im 
 mense centre of motion, but it. must be begun, it must be 
 kept up": and he mi-lit have added, that the way in which 
 it must be begun and kept up, is, by obedience to the law of 
 particles. 
 
 Success consists in close appliance to the laws of the world, 
 and, since those 4aws are intellectual and moral, an intellec 
 tual and moral obedience. Political Kconomy is as -ood a book 
 wherein to read the life of man, and the ascendency of laws 
 over all private and hostile influences, as any Bible which has 
 coje down to us. 
 
 Monev is representative, and follows the nature and fortunes 
 of the owner. The coin is a delicate metre of civil, social, and 
 moral changes. The farmer is covetous of his dollar, and with 
 :i. It is no waif to him. He knows how many strokes 
 of labor it represents. His bones ache with the day s work 
 that earned it. He knows how much land it represents ; 
 how much rain, frost, and sunshine. He knows that, in the 
 dollar, he Lrives you so much discretion and patience, so much 
 hoeing and threshing. Try to lift his dollar : you must lift 
 all that weight. In the city, where money follows the skit 
 of a pen, or a lucky rise in exchange, it comes to be looked on 
 ns light. I wish the farmer held it dearer, and would spend it 
 only for real bread ; force for force. 
 
 The farmer s dollar is heavy, and the clerk s is light and 
 nimble ; leaps out of his pocket : jumps on to cards and faro- 
 tables : but still more curious is its susceptibilit v to metaphys 
 ical changes. It is the finest barometer of social storms, and 
 announces revolutions. 
 
 Kvery step of civil advancement makes every man s dollar 
 worth more. In California, the country where it grew, 
 what would it buy } A few years since, it would buy a shanty, 
 dysentery, hunger, had company, and crime. There arc wide 
 countries, like Siberia, where it would buy little else today, 
 than some petty mitigation of suffering. In Rome, it will buy 
 l6 x 
 
370 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 beauty and magnificence. Forty years ago, a dollar would not 
 buy much in Boston. Now it will buy a great deal more in 
 our old town, thanks to railroads, telegraphs, steamers, and 
 the contemporaneous growth of New York, and the whole 
 country. Yet there are many goods appertaining to a capital 
 city, which are not yet purchasable here, no, not with a moun 
 tain of dollars. A dollar in Florida is not worth a dollar in 
 Massachusetts. A dollar is not value, but representative of 
 value, and, at last, of moral values. A dollar is rated for the 
 corn it will buy, or to speak strictly, not for the corn or house- 
 room, but for Athenian corn, and Roman house-room, for 
 the wit, probity, and power, which we eat bread and dwell in 
 houses to share and exert. Wealth is mental ; wealth is mor 
 al. The value of a dollar is, to buy just things : a dollar goes 
 on increasing in value with all the genius, and all the virtue 
 of the world. A dollar in a university is worth more than a 
 dollar in a jail ; in a temperate, schooled, law-abiding commu 
 nity, than in some sink of crime, where dice, knives, and ar 
 senic are in constant play. 
 
 The " Bank-Note Detector " is a useful publication. But 
 the current dollar, silver or paper, is itself the detector of the 
 ri"-ht and wrong where it circulates. Is it not instantly en 
 hanced by the increase of equity 1 If a trader refuses to sell 
 his vote, or adheres to some odious right, he makes so much 
 more equity in Massachusetts ; and every acre in the State is 
 more worth, in the hour of his action. If you take out of 
 State Street the ten honestest merchants, and put in ten roguish 
 persons, controlling the same amount of capital, - 
 of insurance will indicate it ; the soundness of banks will 
 show it the highways will be less secure : the schools will : 
 the children will bring home their little dose of the poison : the 
 iudo-e will sit less firmly on the bench, and his decisions be less 
 uprio-ht ; he has lost so much support and constraint, which 
 all need ; and the pulpit will betray it, in a laxer rule of life. 
 An apple-tree, if you take out every day for a number of days, 
 a load of loam, and put in a load of sand about its roots, 
 will find it out. An apple-tree is a stupid kind of creature, 
 but if this treatment be pursued for a short time, 1 think it 
 would begin to mistrust something. And if you should take 
 out of the powerful class engaged in trade a hundred goc 
 men, and put in a hundred bad, or, what is just the same 
 thing, introduce a demoralizing institution, would not the dol 
 lar, which is not much stupider than an apple-tree, presently 
 
WEALTH. 371 
 
 find it out ? The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by 
 society. Kvcry man who removes into this city, with any pur 
 chasable talent or skill in him, gives to every man s labor in 
 the city a new worth. If a talent is anywhere born into the 
 world, the community of nations is eoriobed; and, much more, 
 with a new degree of probity. The expense of crime, one of 
 the principal charges of every nation, is so far stopped. Ill 
 Europe, crime is observed to increase or abate with the price 
 of bread. If the Rothschilds at Paris do not accept bills, the 
 people at Manchester, at Paisley, at Birmingham, are ibived 
 into the highwav, and landlords are shot down in Ireland. 
 The police records attest it. The vibrations are presently felt 
 in New York, New Orleans, and Chicago. Not much other^ 
 wise, the economical power touches the masses through the 
 political lords. Rothschild refuses the Russian loan, and there 
 is peace, and the harvests are saved. He takes it, and there 
 is war, and an agitation through a large portion of mankind, 
 with every hideous result, ending in revolution, and a new 
 order. 
 
 Wealth brings with it its own checks and balances. The 
 basis of political economy is non-interference. The only safe 
 rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. 
 Do not legislate. Meddle, and you snap the sinews with your 
 sumptuary laws. Give no bounties : make equal laws : secure 
 life and property, and you need not give alms. Open the doors 
 of opportunity to talent and virtue, and they will do them 
 selves justice, and property will not be in bail hands. In a 
 free and just commonwealth, property rushes from the idle 
 and imbecile, to the industrious, brave, and pcrscverinir. 
 
 The laws of nature play through trade, as a toy-battery ex 
 hibits the effects of electricity. The level of the sea is not 
 more surely kept, than is the equilibrium of value in society, 
 by the demand and supply ; and artifice or legislation punishes 
 itself by reactions, gluts, and bankruptcies. The sublime laws 
 play indifferently through atoms and galaxies. Whoever 
 knows what happens in the getting and spending of a loaf of 
 bread and a pint of beer ; that no wishing will change the 
 rigorous limits of pints and penny loaves ; that, for all that is 
 consumed, so much less remains in the basket and pot; but 
 what is gone out of these is not wasted, but well spent, if it 
 nourish his body, and enable him to finish his task ; knows 
 all of political economy that the budgets .f empires can teach 
 him. The interest of petty economy is this symbolization of 
 
372 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 the great economy ; the way in which a house, and a private 
 man s methods, tally with the solar system, and the laws of 
 give and take, throughout nature ; and however wary we are 
 of the falsehoods and petty tricks which we suicidally play off 
 on each other, every man has a certain satisfaction, whenever 
 his dealing touches on the inevitable facts ; when he sees that 
 things themselves dictate the price, as they always tend to do, 
 and, in large manufactures, are seen to do. Your paper is not 
 fine or coarse enough, is too heavy, or too thin. The manu 
 facturer says, he will furnish you with just that thickness or 
 thinness you want ; the pattern is quite indifferent to him ; 
 here is his schedule ; any variety of paper, as cheaper or 
 dearer, with the prices annexed. A pound of paper costs so 
 much, and you may have it made up in any pattern you fancy. 
 
 There is in all our dealings a self-regulation that supersedes 
 chaffering. You will rent a house, but must have it cheap. 
 The owner can reduce the rent, but so he incapacitates himself 
 from making proper repairs, and the tenant gets not the house 
 he would have, but a worse one ; besides, that a relation a little 
 injurious is established between landlord and tenant. You 
 dismiss your laborer, saying, Patrick, I shall send for you as 
 soon as I cannot do without you. Patrick goes off contented, 
 for he knows that the weeds will grow with the potatoes, the 
 vines must be planted, next week, and, however unwilling you 
 may be, the cantelopes, crook-necks, and cucumbers will send 
 for him. Who but must wish that all labor and value should 
 stand on the same simple and surly market 1 If it is the best 
 of its kind, it will. We must have joiner, locksmith, planter, 
 priest, poet, doctor, cook, weaver, ostler ; each in turn, through 
 the year. 
 
 If a St. Michael s pear sells for a shilling, it costs a shilling 
 to raise it. If, in Boston, the best securities offer twelve per 
 cent for money, they have just six per cent of insecurity. 
 You may not see that the fine pear costs you a shilling, but it 
 costs the community so much. The shilling represents the 
 number of enemies the pear has, and the amount of risk in 
 ripening it. The price of coal shows the narrowness of the 
 coal-field, and a compulsory confinement of the miners to a 
 certain district. All salaries are reckoned on contingent, as 
 well as on actual services. " If the wind were always south 
 west by west," said the skipper, " women might take ships to 
 sea." One might say, that all things are of one price ; that 
 nothing is cheap or dear ; and that the apparent disparities 
 
373 
 
 that strike us arc only a shopman s trick of concealing the 
 damage in your bargain. A youth coming into the city from 
 his native New Hampshire farm, with its hard t aiv still fresh 
 in his remembrance, hoards at a first-class hotel, and believes 
 lie must somehow have outwitted Dr. Franklin and Malt 1ms, 
 for luxuries arc cheap. But he pays for the one convenience 
 of a better dinner, by the loss of some of the richest social 
 and educational advantages. He has lost what guards ! what 
 incentives! He will perhaps find by and by, that he left the 
 Muses at the door of the hotel, and found the Furies inside. 
 Money often costs too much, and power and pleasure are not 
 cheap. The ancient poet said, " The gods sell all things at a 
 fair price." 
 
 There is an example of the compensations in the commercial 
 history of this country. "NYhi ii the European wars threw the 
 earn ing-trade of the world, from 1800 to 1812, into American 
 bottoms, a seizure was now and then made of an American 
 ship. Of course, the loss was serious to the owner, but the 
 country was indemnified ; for we charged threepence a pound 
 for carrying cotton, sixpence for tobacco, and so on ; which 
 paid for the risk and loss, and brought into the country an im- 
 mense prosperity, early marriages, private wealth, the building 
 of cities, and of states ; and, after the war was over, we re 
 ceived compensation over and above, by treaty, for all the 
 seizures. Well, the Americans grew rich and great. But the 
 pay-day comes round. Britain, France, and Germany, which 
 our extraordinary profits had impoverished, send out, attracted 
 by the fame of our advantages, first their thousands, then their 
 millions, of poor people, to share the crop. At first, we em 
 ploy them, and increase our prosperity ; but, in the artificial 
 system of society and of protected labor, which we also have 
 adopted and enlarged, there come presently checks and stop 
 pages. Then we refuse to employ these poor men. But they 
 will not so be answered. They go into the poor rates, and, 
 though we refuse wages, we must now pay the same amount in 
 the form of taxes. Again, it turns out that the largest pro 
 portion of crimes are committed by foreigners. The cost of 
 the crime, and the expense of courts, and of prisons, we must 
 bear, and the standing army of preventive police we must pay. 
 The cost of education of the posterity of this great colony, I 
 will not compute. But the gross amount of these costs will 
 begin to pay back what we thought was a net gain from our 
 Transatlantic customers of 1800. It is vain to refuse this pay- 
 
374 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 ment. We cannot get rid of these people, and we cannot get 
 rid of their will to be supported. That has become an inevita 
 ble element in our politics ; and, for their votes, each of the 
 dominant parties courts and assists them to get it executed. 
 Moreover, we have to pay, not what would have contented them 
 at home, but what they have learned to think necessary here ; 
 so that opinion, fancy, and all manner of moral considerations 
 complicate the problem. 
 
 These were the prevalent opinions in 1850. Yet this result 
 is no more final than the last. We have hardly time to study 
 this adjustment and deplore these disadvantages, before the 
 scale rights itself again, this time disclosing new and immense 
 benefits. For this countless host of immigrants are now seen 
 to be adding by their labor to the wealth of the country. 
 They plant the wilderness with wheat and corn, work the 
 mines for coal and lead and copper and gold, build roads and 
 towns and states, create a market for the manufactures and 
 commerce of either sea-coast, and swell by their taxes the 
 national treasury. 
 
 There are a few measures of economy which will bear to be 
 named without disgust ; for the subject is tender, and we may 
 easily have too much of it ; and therein resembles the hideous 
 animalcules of which our bodies are built up, which, offen 
 sive in the particular, yet compose valuable and effective 
 masses. Our nature and genius force us to respect ends, 
 whilst we use means. We must use the means, and yet, in 
 our most accurate using, somehow screen and cloak them, as 
 we can only give them any beauty, by a reflection of the glory 
 of the end. That is the good head, which serves the end, and 
 commands the means. The rabble are corrupted by their 
 means : the means are too strong for them, and they desert 
 their end. 
 
 1. The first of these measures is that each man s expense 
 must proceed from his character. As long as your genius 
 buys, the investment is safe, though you spend like a monarch. 
 Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him 
 to do easily some feat impossible to any other, and thus makes 
 him necessary to society. This native determination guides 
 his labor and his spending. He wants an equipment of 
 means and tools proper to his talent. And to save on this 
 point, were to neutralize the special strength and helpfulness 
 of each mind. Do your work, respecting the excellence of the 
 
WEALTH. 375 
 
 work, and not its acceptableness. This is so much economy, 
 that, rightly read, it is the sum of economy. Profligacy con- 
 si -ts uot in spending years of time or chests of money, but 
 in spending them off the line of your career. The crime 
 which bankrupts men and states, is, job-work ; declining 
 from your main design, to serve a turn here or there. Noth 
 ing i beneath you, if it is in the direction of your life : noth 
 ing is great or desirable, if it is oft from that. I think we are 
 entitled here to draw a straight line, and say, that society can 
 never prosper, but must always be bankrupt, until every man 
 does that which he was created to do. 
 
 Spend for your expense, and retrench the expense which is 
 not yours. Allston, the painter, was wont to say, that he 
 built a plain house, and filled it with plain furniture, because 
 he would hold out no bribe to any to visit him, who had not 
 similar tastes to his own. We are sympathetic, .and, like chil 
 dren, want everything we see. But it is a large stride to inde 
 pendence, when a man, in the discovery of his proper talent, 
 has sunk the necessity for false expenses. As the betrothed 
 maiden, by one secure affection, is relieved from a system of 
 slaveries, the daily inculcated necessity of pleasing all, so 
 the man who has found what he can do, can spend on that, 
 and leave all other spending. Montaigne said : " When he was 
 a younger brother, he went brave in dress and equipage, but 
 afterward his chateau and farms might answer for him." Let 
 a man who belongs to the class of nobles, those, namely, who 
 have found out that they can do something, relieve himself 
 of all vague squandering on objects not his. Let the realist 
 not mind appearances. Let him delegate to others the costly 
 courtesies and decorations of social life. The virtues are 
 economists, but some of the vices are also. Thus, next to 
 humility, I have noticed that pride is a pretty good husband. 
 A good pride is, as I reckon it, worth from five hundred to fif 
 teen hundred a year. Pride is handsome, economical : prido 
 eradicates so many vices, letting none subsist but itself, that 
 it seems as if it were a great gain to exchange vanity for 
 pride. Pride can go without domestics, without fine clothes, 
 can live in a house with two rooms, can eat potato, purslain, 
 beans, lyed corn, can work on the soil, can travel afoot, can 
 talk with poor men, or sit silent well-contented in fine saloons. 
 But vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health, 
 and peace, and is still nothing at last, a long way leading 
 nowhere. Only one drawback ; proud people are intolerably 
 selfish, and the vain are gentle and giving. 
 
376 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a genius for 
 painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes 
 a bad husband, and an ill provider, and should be wise in sea 
 son, and not fetter himself with duties which will embitter his 
 days, and spoil him for his proper work. We had in this re 
 gion, twenty years ago, among our educated men, a sort of 
 Arcadian fanaticism, a passionate desire to go upon the land, 
 and unite farming to intellectual pursuits. Many effected 
 their purpose, and made the experiment, and some became 
 downright ploughmen ; but all were cured of their faith that 
 scholarship and practical farming (I mean, with one s own 
 hands) could be united. 
 
 With brow bent, with firm intent, the pale scholar leaves 
 his desk to draw a freer breath, and get a juster statement of 
 his thought, in the garden-walk. He stoops to pull up a purs- 
 lain, or a dock, that is choking the young corn, and finds there 
 are two : close behind the last, is a third ; he reaches out his 
 hand to a fourth ; behind that are four thousand and one. 
 He is heated and untuned, and, by and by, wakes up from his 
 idiot dream of chickweed and red-root, to remember his morn 
 ing thought, and to find, that, with his adamantine purposes, 
 he has been duped by a dandelion. A garden is like those 
 pernicious machineries we read of, every month, in the news 
 papers, which catch a man s coat-skirt or his hand, and draw 
 in his arm, his leg, and his whole body to irresistible destruc 
 tion. In an evil hour he pulled down his wall, and added a 
 field to his homestead. No land is bad, but land is worse. 
 If a man own land, the land owns him. Now let him leave 
 home, if he dare. Every tree and graft, every hill of melons, 
 row of corn, or quickset hedge, all he has done, and all he 
 means to do, stand in his way, like duns, when he would go 
 out of his gate. The devotion to these vines and trees he 
 finds poisonous. Long free walks, a circuit of miles, free his 
 brain, and serve his body. Long marches are no hardship to 
 him. He believes he composes easily on the hills. But this 
 pottering in a few square yards of garden is dispiriting and 
 drivelling. The smell of the plants has drugged him, and 
 robbed him of energy. He finds a catalepsy in his bones. 
 He grows peevish and poor-spirited. The genius of reading 
 and of gardening are antagonistic, like resinous and vitreous 
 electricity. One is concentrative in sparks and shocks : the 
 other is diffuse strength ; so that each disqualifies its work 
 man for the other s duties. 
 
WI.ALTH. 377 
 
 An engraver whose hands must be of an exquisite delicacy 
 of stroke should not lay stone-walls. Sir David lin-wstrr 
 gives rxuct instructions for microscopic observation: Lie 
 down on your back, and hold the single lens and object over 
 your eve," iVi\, Arc. How much more the seeker of abstract 
 truth, who needs periods of isolation, and rapt concentration, 
 and almost a going out of the body to think ! 
 
 2. Spend after your genius, and by system. Nature goes by 
 rule, not by sallies and saltations. There must be system in 
 the economies. Saving and unexpensiveness will not keep 
 the most pathetic family from ruin, nor will bigger incomes 
 make free spending safe. The secret of success lies never in 
 the amount of money, but in the relation of income to outgo ^ 
 as if, after expense has been fixed at a certain point, then new^ 
 and steady rills of income, though never so small, being added, 
 wealth begins. But in ordinary, as means increase, spending 
 increases faster, so that, large incomes, in England and else 
 where, are found not to help matters ; the eating quality of 
 debt does not relax its voracity. When the cholera is in the 
 potato, what is the use of planting larger crops ] In England, 
 the richest country in the universe, I was assured by shrewd 
 observers, that great lords and ladies had no more guineas to 
 give away than other people ; that liberality with money is as 
 rare, and as immediately famous a virtue as it is here. Want 
 is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large 
 enough to cover. I remember in Warwickshire, to have been 
 shown a fair manor, still in the same name as in Shakespeare s 
 time. The rent-roll, I was told, is some fourteen thousand 
 pounds a year : but, when the second son of the late proprie 
 tor was born, the father was perplexed how to provide for him. 
 The eldest son must inherit the manor ; what to do with this 
 supernumerary] He was advised to breed him for the Church, 
 and to settle him in the rectorship, which was in the gift of the 
 family ; which was done. It is a general rule in that country, 
 that bigger incomes do not help anybody. It is commonly 
 observed, that a sudden wealth, like a prize drawn in a lottery, 
 or a large bequest to a poor family, does not permanently 
 enrich. They have served no apprenticeship to wealth, 
 and, with the rapid wealth, come rapid claims : which they 
 do not know how to deny, and the treasure is quickly dis 
 sipated. 
 
 A system must be in every economy, or the best single ex 
 pedients are of no avail. A farm is a good thing when it be* 
 
378 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 gins and ends with itself, and does not need a salary, or a 
 shop, to eke it out. Thus, the cattle are a main link in the 
 chain-ring. If the non-conformist or aesthetic farmer leaves 
 out the cattle, and does not also leave out the want which 
 the cattle must supply, he must fill the gap by begging or 
 stealing. When men now alive were born, the farm yielded 
 everything that was consumed on it. The farm yielded no 
 money, and the farmer got on without. If he fell sick, his 
 neighbors came in to his aid : each gave a day s work ; or a 
 half-day ; or lent his yoke of oxen, or his horse, and kept his 
 work even : hoed his potatoes, mowed his hay, reaped his rye ; 
 well knowing that no man could afford to hire labor, without 
 selling his land. In autumn, a farmer could sell an ox or a 
 hog, and get a little money to pay taxes withal. Now, the 
 farmer buys almost all he consumes, tin-ware, cloth, sugar, 
 tea, coffee, fish, coal, railroad tickets, and newspapers. 
 
 A master in each art is required, because the practice is 
 never with still or dead subjects, but they change in your 
 hands. You think farm buildings and^ broad acres a solid prop 
 erty : but its value is flowing like water. It requires as much 
 watching as if you were decanting wine from a cask. The 
 farmer knows what to do with it, stops every leak, turns all 
 the streamlets to one reservoir, and decants wine ; but a blun 
 derhead comes out of Cornhill, tries his hand, and it all leaks 
 away. So is it with granite streets, or timber townships, as 
 with fruit or flowers. Nor is any investment so permanent, 
 that it can be allowed to remain without incessant watching, 
 as the history of each attempt to lock up an inheritance 
 through two generations for an unborn inheritor may show. 
 
 When Mr. Cockayne takes a cottage in the country, and will 
 keep his cow, he thinks a cow is a creature that is fed on hay, 
 and gives a pail of milk twice a day. But the cow that he 
 buys gives milk for three months ; then her bag dries up. 
 What to do with a dry cow ? who will buy her ? Perhaps he 
 bought also a yoke of oxen to do his work ; but they^get blown 
 and lame. What to do with blown and lame oxen 1 The 
 farmer fats his after the spring work is done, and kills them in 
 the fall. But how can Cockayne, who has no pastures, and 
 leaves his cottage daily in the cars, at business hours, be poth 
 ered with fatting and killing oxen 1 He plants trees ; but 
 there must be crops, to keep the trees in ploughed land. What 
 shall be the crops 1 He will have nothing to do with trees, 
 but will have grass. After a year or two, the grass must 
 
WEALTH. 379 
 
 be turned up and ploughed : now what crops 1 Credulous 
 Cockayne ! 
 
 3. Help comes in the custom of the country, and the rule 
 of /)/// i- t ]><< ndo. The rule is not to dictate, nor to insist 
 on carrying out each of your schemes by ignorant wilfulness, 
 but to learn practically the secret spoken from all nature, that 
 things themflehrea refuse to be mismanaged, and will show to 
 the watchful their own law. Nobody need stir hand or foot. 
 ThlTcustom of the country will do it all. I know not how to 
 build or to plant ; neither how to buy wood, nor what to do 
 with the house-lot, the field, or the wood-lot, when bought. 
 Never fear ; it is all settled how it shall be, long beforehand, 
 in the custom of the country, whether to sand, or whether to 
 clay it, when to plough, and how to dress, whether to grass, or 
 to corn ; and you cannot help or hinder it. Nature has her 
 own best mode of doing each thing, and she has somewhere 
 told it plainly, if we will keep our eyes and ears open. If not, 
 she will not be slow in undeceiving us, when we prefer our own 
 way to hers. How often we must remember the art of the 
 Mir-von, which, in replacing the broken bone, contents itself 
 with releasing the parts from false position ; they fly into place 
 by the action of the muscles. On this art of nature all our 
 arts rely. 
 
 Of the two eminent engineers in the recent construction of 
 railways in England, Mr. Brunei went straight from terminus 
 to terminus, through mountains, over streams, crossing high- 
 wax -s, cutting ducal estates in two, and shooting through this 
 man s cellar, and that man s attic window, and so arriving at 
 his end, at great pleasure to geometers, but with cost to his 
 company. Mr. Stephenson, on the contrary, believing that the 
 river knows the way, followed his valley, as implicitly as our 
 \\Y>tcrn Railroad follows the Westfield River, and turned out 
 to be the safest and cheapest engineer. We say the cows laid 
 out Boston. Well, there are worse surveyors. Every pedes 
 trian in our pastures has frequent occasion to thank the cows 
 for cutting the best path through the thicket, and over the hills ; 
 and travellers and Indians know the value of a butialo trail, 
 which is sure to be the easiest possible pass through the ridge. 
 
 When a citizen, fresh from Dock Square, or Milk Street, 
 comes out and buys land in the country, his first thought is to 
 a fine outlook from his windows ; his library must command a 
 western view : a sunset every day bathing the should 
 Blue Hills, Wachusett, and the peaks of Moiuulnoc and Unca- 
 
#80 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 noonuc. What, thirty acres, and all this magnificence for fif 
 teen hundred dollars ! It would be cheap at fifty thousand. 
 He proceeds at once, his eyes dim with tears of joy, to fix the 
 spot for his corner-stone. But the man who is to level the 
 ground thinks it will take many hundred loads of gravel to 
 fill the hollow to the road. The stone-mason who should build 
 the well thinks he shall have to dig forty feet : the baker doubts 
 he shall never like to drive up to the door: the practical 
 neighbor cavils at the position of the barn ; and the citizen 
 comes to know that his predecessor the farmer built the house 
 in the right spot for the sun and wind, the spring, and water- 
 drainage, and the convenience to the pasture, the garden, the 
 field, and the road. So Dock Square yields the point, and 
 things have their own way. Use has made the farmer wise, 
 and the foolish citizen learns to take his counsel. From step 
 to step he comes at last to surrender at discretion. The farm 
 er affects to take his orders ; but the citizen says, You may 
 ask me as often as you will, and in what ingenious forms, for 
 an opinion concerning the mode of building my wall, or sink 
 ing my well, or laying out my acre, but the ball will rebound 
 to you. These are matters on which I neither know, nor need 
 to know anything. These are questions which you and not I 
 shall answer. 
 
 Not less, within doors, a system settles itself paramount and 
 tyrannical over master and mistress, servant and child, cousin 
 and acquaintance. T is in vain that genius or virtue or energy 
 of character strive and cry against it. This is fate. And t is 
 very well that the poor husband reads in a book of a new way 
 of living, and resolves to adopt it at home : let him go home 
 and try it, if he dare. 
 
 4. Another point of economy is to look for seed of the same 
 kind as you sow : and not to hope to buy one kind with anoth 
 er kind. Friendship buys friendship ; justice, justice ; mili 
 tary merit, military success. Good husbandry finds wife, chil 
 dren, and household. The good merchant, large gains, ships, 
 stocks, and money. The good poet, fame, and literary credit ; 
 but not either, the other. Yet there is commonly a confusion 
 of expectations on these points. Hotspur lives for the mo 
 ment ; praises himself for it ; and despises Furlong, that he 
 does not. Hotspur, of course, is poor ; and Furlong, a good 
 provider. The old circumstance is, that Hotspur thinks it a 
 superiority in himself, this improvidence, which ought to be 
 i-ewarded with Furlong s lands. 
 
WEALTH. 381 
 
 I have not at all completed my design. But we must not 
 l<-a vi- the topic, without casting one glance into the interiof 
 08, It is a doctrine of philosophy, that man is a liehiij; 
 of degrees ; that there is nothing in the world, which is not 
 repeated in his body ; his body being a sort of miniature of 
 summary of the world : then that there is nothing in his body, 
 which is not repeated as in a celestial sphere in his mind : then, 
 there is nothing in his brain, which is not repeated in a Lighcf 
 sphere, in his moral system. 
 
 5. Now these things are so in Nature. All things ascend, 
 and the royal rule of economy is, that it shoidd ascend also, 
 or, whatever we do must have a higher aim. Thus it is a 
 maxim, that money is another kind of blood, Pecunid alter 
 ifiHiiHis: or, the estate of a man is only a larger kind of body, 
 and admits of regimen analogous to his bodily circulations. So 
 there is no maxim of the merchant, which does not admit of 
 an extended sense, e. g. " The best use of money is to pay 
 debts"; " Every business by itself"; "Best time is present 
 time " ; " The right investment is in tools of your trade " ; and 
 the like. The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are 
 laws of the Universe. The merchant s economy is a coarse 
 symbol of the soul s economy. It is. to spend for power, and 
 not for pleasure. It is to invest income ; that is to say, to take 
 up particulars into generals ; days into integral eras, literary, 
 emotive, practical, of its life, and still to ascend in its invest 
 ment. The merchant has but one rule, absorb and invest : he 
 is to be capitalist : the scraps and filings must be gathered 
 back into the crucible ; the gas and smoke must be burned, 
 and earnings must not go to increase expense, but to capital 
 airain. Well, the man must be capitalist. Will he spend his 
 income, or will he invest ? His body and every organ is under 
 the same law. His body is a jar, in which the liquor of life is 
 stored. Will he spend for pleasure 1 The way to ruin is short 
 and facile. Will he not spend, but hoard for power r \ It 
 passes through the sacred fermentations, by that law of Xature 
 whereby everything climbs to higher platforms, and bodily 
 viir>r becomes mental and moral vigor. The bread he eats is 
 first strength and animal spirits ; it becomes, in higher labora 
 tories, imagery and thought ; and in still higher results, cour 
 age and endurance. This is the right compound interest ; this 
 is capital doubled, quadrupled, centupled ; man raised to his 
 highest power. 
 
 The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane ; to 
 
382 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in 
 spiritual creation, and not in augmenting animal existence. 
 Nor is the man enriched, in repeating the old experiments of 
 animal sensation, nor unless through new powers and ascend- 
 ing pleasures, he knows himself by the actual experience of 
 higher good, to be already on the way to the highest. 
 
IV. 
 
 CULTURE 
 
 Can rules or tutors educate 
 
 The semigod whom we await ? 
 
 He must be musical, 
 
 Tremulous impnMonal, 
 
 Alive to gentle influence 
 
 Of land-cape and of sky, 
 
 And tender to the spirit-touch 
 
 Of man s or maiden s eye : 
 
 But, to his native centre fa<t, 
 
 Shall into Future fuse the Past, 
 
 And the world s flowing fates in his own mould recast. 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 CULTURE. 
 
 THE word of ambition at the present day is Culture. I 
 Whilst all the world is in pursuit of power, and of wealth 
 as a means of power, culture corrects the theory of success. A 
 man is the prisoner of his power. A topical memory makes him 
 an almanac ; a talent for debate, a disputant ; skill to get money 
 makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture reduces these 
 inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the 
 dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. It 
 watches success. Jj]ox4icjjormance, Nature has no mercy, and 
 sacrifices the jrerformcr to get it done ; makes a dropsy or a 
 tympany of him. If she wants a thumb, she makes one at the 
 cost of arms and legs, and any excess of power in one part 
 I is usually paid for at once by some defect in a contiguous 
 part. 
 
 Our efficiency depends so much on our concentration, that 
 Nature usually in the instances where a marked man is sent 
 into the world, overloads him with bias, sacrificing his sym 
 metry to his working power. It is said, a man can write but 
 one book : and if a man have a detect, it is apt to leave its im 
 pression on all his performances. If she creates a policeman 
 like Fourhi , be is made up of suspicions and of plots to circum 
 vent them. "The air," said Fouehe, "is full of poniards." 
 The physician Sanetorins spent bis life in a pair of scales, 
 weL hinir bis food. Lord < okf, valued Ohaneer highly, because 
 the Cam m Veman s Tale illustrates the statute fifth//. IV. 
 ( /("/>. 4. against alchemy. I saw a man who believed the 
 principal mischiefs in the Finnish state were derived from the 
 devotion to musical concerts. A freemason, not long since, 
 . set out to explain to this country, that the principal cause of 
 the success of (li-m-ral Washington, was, the aid he derived 
 from the freemasons. 
 
 VOL. II. 17 T 
 
386 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 But worse than the harping on one string, Nature has 
 secured individualism, by giving the private person a high 
 conceit of his weight in the system. ^The^ejiLoLsQcieiyLis 
 egotists. There are dull and bright, sacred and profane, coarse 
 and fine egotists. T is a disease that, like influenza, falls on 
 all constitutions. In the distemper known to physicians as 
 chorea, the patient sometimes turns round, and continues to 
 spin slowly on one spot. Is egotism a metaphysical variety 
 of this malady ? The man runs round a ring formed by his 
 own talent, falls into an admiration of it, and loses relation to 
 the world. It is a tendency in all minds. One of its annoy 
 ing forms is a craving for sympathy. The sufferers parade their 
 miseries, tear the lint from their bruises, reveal their indictable 
 crimes, that you may pity them. They like sickness, because 
 physical pain will extort some show of interest from the by 
 standers, as we have seen children, who, finding themselves of 
 no account when grown .people come in, will cough till they 
 choke, to draw attention. 
 
 This distemper is the scourge of talent, of artists, invent 
 ors, and philosophers. Eminent spiritualists shall have an 
 incapacity of putting their act or word aloof from them, and 
 seeing it bravely for the nothing it is. Beware of the man 
 who says, I am on the eve of a revelation. It is speedily 
 punished, inasmuch as this habit invites men to humor it, and 
 by treating the patient tenderly, to shut him up in a narrower 
 selfism, and exclude him from the great world of God s cheer- 
 fid fallible men and women. Let us rather be insulted, 
 whilst we are insultable. Religious literature has eminent ex 
 amples, and if we run over 6ur private list of poets, critics, 
 philanthropists, and philosophers, we shall find them infected 
 with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we ought to have 
 tapped. 
 
 This goitre of egotism is so frequent among notable persons, 
 that we must infer some strong necessity in nature which it 
 subserves ; such as we see in the sexual attraction. The pres 
 ervation of the species was a point of such necessity, that 
 Nature has secured it at all hazards by immensely overloading 
 the passion, at the risk of perpetual crime and disorder. So 
 egotism has its root in the cardinal necessity by which each 
 individual persists to be what he is. 
 
 This individuality is not only not inconsistent with culture, 
 but is the basis of it. Every valuable nature is there in its 
 right, and the student we speak to must have a mothel- 
 
CULTn;i:. 387 
 
 wit invincible by his culture, which uses all books, arts, facili 
 ties, and eleirancio f intercourse, but is never subdued and 
 lost in them. lie only is a well-made man who lias a -ood 
 determination. And the end <>f culture is not to destroy this, 
 God forbid ! but to train away all impediment and mixture, 
 and leave nothing but pure power. Our student must have a 
 Style and determination, and be a master in his own specialty. 
 But, having this, he must put it behind him. lie must have 
 a catholicity, a power to see with a free and disenga^-d look 
 everv object. Yet is this private interest and self so over 
 charged, that, if a man seeks a companion who can look at ob 
 jects for their own sake, and without all eetion or self - re fere nee, 
 lie will find the fewest who will u ive him that satisfaction ; 
 whilst most men are atllicted with a coldness, an incuriosity, 
 as soon as anv object does not connect with their sell love. 
 Though they talk of the object before them, they are thinking 
 of themselves, and their vanity is laying little traps for your 
 admiration. 
 
 I Jut after a man lias discovered that there are limits to the 
 interest which his private history has for mankind, he still 
 converses with his familv, or a few companions, perhaps with 
 half a dozen personalities that are famous in his neighborhood. 
 In 1 . "Ston, the question of life is the names of some eight or 
 ten men. Have you seen Mr. Allston, Doctor ( hannin-j-. Mr. 
 Adams, Mr. Webster, Mr. Greeiiougli ? Have vu heard 
 T. Carrisou. Father Taylor, Theodore Parker? Have 
 you talked with Messieurs Turbinewhccl, Summitlevel, and 
 Laeofrupees } Then you may as well die. In New York, the 
 question is of some other eiirht, or ten, or twentv. Have you 
 seen a few lawyers, merchants, and brokers, two or three 
 scholars, two or three capitalists, two or three editors of news 
 papers ( New fork ia ft fucked orange. All conversation is 
 at an end, when we have discharged our>e]ves of a do/en per 
 sonalities, domestic or imported, which make up our American 
 DOa Nor do we e.v>ect anybody to be other than a faint 
 copy of these heroes. 
 
 Life is very narrow. Brinir any club or company of intelli 
 gent men together airain after ten years, and if the presence 
 of some penetratiiu - ,nu< ralmimr Lfenius could dispose th -m 
 to tV;ini-;ne--. what a confession of insanities would come tip! 
 The "causes" to which we have sacrificed. Tariff or Democ 
 racy. Whi _rism or Abolition. Temperance or Socialism, would 
 show like roots of bitterness and dragons of wrath ; and our 
 
388 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 talents are as mischievous as if each had been seized upon by 
 some bird of prey, which had whisked him away from fortune, 
 from truth, from the dear society of the poets, some zeal, 
 some bias, and only when he was now gray and nerveless, 
 was it relaxing its claws, and he awaking to sober percep 
 tions. 
 
 Culture is the suggestion from certain best thoughts, that a 
 man has a range of affinities, through which he can modulate 
 the violence of any master-tones that have a droning prepon 
 derance in his scale, and succor him against himself. Culture 
 redresses his balance, puts him among his equals and superi 
 ors, revives the delicious sense of sympathy, and warns him 
 of the dangers of solitude and repulsion. J 
 
 T is not a compliment but a disparagement to consult a 
 man only on horses, or on steam, or on theatres, or on eating, 
 or on books, and, whenever he appears, considerately to turn 
 the conversation to the bantling he is known to fondle. In 
 the Norse heaven of our forefathers, Thor s house had five 
 hundred and forty floors ; and man s house has five hundred 
 and forty floors. His excellence is facility of adaptation and 
 of transition through many related points, to wide contrasts 
 and extremes. Culture kills his exaggeration, his conceit of 
 his village or his city. We must leave our pets at home, 
 wlien we go into the street, and meet men on broad grounds 
 of good meaning and good sense. No performance is worth 
 loss of geniality. T is a cruel price we pay for certain fancy 
 goods called fine arts and philosophy. In the Norse legend^ 
 Allfadir did not get a drink of Mimir s spring, (the fountain 
 of wisdom,) until he left his eye in pledge. And here is a 
 pedant that cannot unfold his wrinkles, nor conceal his wrath 
 at interruption by the best, if their conversation do not fit his 
 impertinency, here is he to afflict us with his personalities. 
 T is incident to scholars, that each of them fancies he is 
 pointedly odious in his community. Draw him out of this lim 
 bo of irritability. Cleanse with healthy blood his parchment 
 skin. You restore to him his eyes which he left in pledge at 
 Mimir s spring. If you are the victim of your doing, who 
 cares what you do 1 We can spare your opera, your gazetteer, 
 your chemic analysis, your history, your syllogisms. Your 
 manof genius pays dearly for his distinction. His head runs 
 lip into a spire, and instead of a healthy man, merry and wise, 
 he is some mad dominie. Nature is reckless of the individual 
 When she has points to carry, she carries them. To wade ;n 
 
CULTII:!.. 389 
 
 m.r.shos and sea margins is the destiny of certain birds, and 
 they are so accurately made for this, that they are imprisoned 
 in those places. Kach animal out of its /uitn fiit would starve. 
 I o tin 1 jih\ siciaii, each man, each woman, is an Amplification 
 of one organ. A soldier, a locksmith, a hank-clerk, and a dan 
 cer could not exchange functions. And thus we are victims 
 of adaptation. 
 
 The antidotes against this organic egotism, are, the range 
 and varietv of attract ions, as gained by acquaintance with the 
 world, with men of merit, with classes of society, with travel, 
 with eminent persons, and with the high resources of philoso 
 phy, art, and religion : hooks, travel, society, solitude. 
 
 The hardiest sceptic who has seen a horse broken, a pointer 
 trained, or, who has visited a menagerie, or the exhibition of 
 the Industrious Kit-as, will not deny the validity of education. 
 " A boy," says Plato, M is the most vicious of all wild be,: 
 and, in the same spirit, the old English poet (Jascoknie ^ays, 
 " A boy is better unborn than untaught." The city h veds 
 one kind of speech and manners; the back country a different 
 style ; the sea, another: the army, a fourth. AYc know that 
 an army which can be confided in, may be formed by disci 
 pline ; that, by systematic discipline all men may be made 
 heroes : Marshal Lannes said to a French officer, " Know, ( ol<- 
 nel, that none but a poltroon will boast that he .never was 
 afraid." A great part of courage is the courage of Iiavin^ 
 done the thing before. And, in all human action, those facul 
 ties will be strong which are used. Robert Owen snjrt, " (Jive 
 me a ti-vr and I will educate him." T is inhuman vo want 
 faith in the power of education, since to meliorate is the law 
 of nature ; and men are valued precisely as they -.-xert. on 
 ward or meliorating force. On the other hand, poltroonery is 
 the acknowledging a .fault to be incurable. 
 
 Incapacity of melioration is the only mortal distemper. 
 There are people wlio can* never understand a trm , or any 
 second or expanded sense L iven to your words, or any humor ; 
 but remain literalists. after hearing the music, and p->etry, and 
 rhetoric, and wit, of seventy or eighty years. They are past 
 the help of surgeon or clergy. But even these r;"i understand 
 pitchforks and the cry of Fire ! and I have noticed in some 
 of this class a marked dislike of earthquakes. 
 
 Let us make our education brave and preventive. Politics 
 is an after-work, a poor patching. \\"e an- always a little late. 
 The evil is done, the law is passed, and we begin the uphill 
 
 ; 
 
390 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 agitation for repeal of that of which we ought to have prevented 
 the enacting. We shall one day learn to supersede politics 
 by education. What we call our root-and-branch reforms df 
 slavery, war, gambling, intemperance, is only medicating the 
 symptoms. We must begin higher up, namely, in Education. 
 
 Our arts and tools give to him who can handle them much 
 the same advantage over the novice, as if you extended hn 
 life ten, fifty, or a hundred years. And I think it the part 
 of good sense to provide every fine soul with such culture, 
 that it shall not, at thirty or forty years, have to say, * This 
 which I might do is made hopeless through my want of weap 
 ons. 
 
 But it is conceded that much of our training fails of effect ; 
 tliac all success is hazardous and rare ; that a large part of 
 our cost and pains is thrown away. Nature takes the matter 
 .into her own hands, and, though we must not omit any jot of 
 our system, we can seldom be sure that it has availed much, 
 or, that as much good would not have accrued from a different 
 system. 
 
 Books, as containing the finest records of human wit, must 
 always enter into our notion of culture. The best heads 
 that ever existed, Pericles, Plato, Julius Ctesar, Shakespeare, 
 Goethe, Milton, were well-read, universally educated men, and 
 quite too wise to undervalue letters. Their opinion has weight, 
 because they had means of knowing the opposite opinion. We 
 look that a great man should be a good reader, or, in propor 
 tion to the spontaneous power, should be the assimilating 
 power. Good criticism is very rare, and always precious. I 
 am always happy to meet persons who perceive the transcend 
 ent superiority of Shakespeare over all other writers. I like 
 people who like Plato. .Because this love does not consist 
 with self-conceit. 
 
 But books are good only as far as a boy is ready for them. 
 He sometimes gets ready very slowly. You send your child 
 to the schoolmaster, but t is the school-boys who educate him. 
 You send him to the Latin class, but much of his tuition 
 conies, on his way to school, from the shop-windows. You 
 like the strict rules and the long terms ; and he finds his best 
 leading in a by-way of his own, and refuses any companions 
 but of his choosing. He hates the grammar and Gradus, and 
 loves guns, fishing-rods, horses, and boats. Well, the boy is 
 right ; and you are not fit to direct his bringing up, if your 
 theory leaves out his gymnastic training. Archery, cricket, 
 
CULTTHK. 391 
 
 pun and fishing-roil, horse and boat, are all educators, lihoral- 
 izers; and so arc dan- . and tho street talk: and - 
 
 provided only the boy has resources, and is of a noble aim 
 ingenuous strain these will not servo him loss than the 
 hooks. Hole,. -. whist, dancing, and theatricals. The 
 
 father obeerrofl that another hoy has learned algebra and 
 geometry in the same time. But tho first hoy has acquired 
 much more than those poor panics aloiii, with them. He is 
 infatuated for weeks with whist and ehess ; hut pre>ently will 
 find out, as you did, that when he rises from the game toe 
 loiiu r i -laved, he is vacant and forlorn, and despises himself. 
 Thenceforward it takes place with other things, and has its 
 due weight in his experience. These minor skills and accom 
 plishments, for example, dancing, are tickets of admission to 
 the dress-circle of mankind, and the heii>L r master of them <-n- 
 ahles the youth to judge intelligently of much, on which, 
 otherwise, he would give a pedantic squint. Landor said, "I 
 have snlfered more from my had (lancing, than from all the 
 misfortunes and miseries of my life put together." Provided 
 always rhe l"v is teachahle, (for we are not proposing to make 
 a statue out of punk,) foothall, cricket, archery, swimming, 
 skating, climbinur, fencing, ridinir, are lessons in the art of 
 power, which it is his main business to learn; riding, 
 specially, of which Lord Herbert of Chorbury said, " A good 
 rider on a <rood horse is as much above himself and others as 
 the world can make him." Besides, the gun, fishing-rod, boat, 
 and horse, constitute, among all who use them, secret free- 
 
 masonries. They are as if they belonged to one club. 
 
 There is also a negative value in these arts. Their chief use 
 to the youth, is, not amusement, but to IKS known for what 
 they are, and not to remain to him occasions of heartburn. 
 We are full of superstitions. Each cl its eyes on the 
 
 advantages it has not; the refined, on rude strength, the 
 democrat, on birth and breeding. One of the benefits of a 
 college education is, to show the boy its little avail. I knew 
 a lemlincr man in a loading city, who, having set his heart on 
 an education at the university, and missed it, could never 
 quite feel himself the equal of his own brothers who had gone 
 thither. His easy superiority to multitudes of professional 
 men could never quite countervail to him this imaginary de 
 fect. Balls, riding, wine-parties, and billiards pass to a poor 
 boy for something line and romantic, which they are not : and 
 a free admission to them on an equal footing, if it were possi- 
 
392 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 ble, only once r.r twice, would be worth ten times its cost, by 
 undeceiving them. 
 
 I am not much an advocate for travelling, and I observe 
 that men run away to other countries, because they are not 
 good in their own, and run back to their own, because they 
 pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only 
 the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to 
 keep you at home 1 I have been quoted as saying captious 
 thipgs about travel ; but I mean to do justice. I think there 
 is a restlessness in our people, which argues want of character. 
 All educated Americans, first or last, go to Europe ; perhaps, 
 because it is their mental home, as the invalid habits of this 
 country might suggest. An eminent teacher of girls said, 
 " The idea of a girl s education, is, whatever qualifies her for 
 going to Europe." Can we never extract this tapeworm of 
 Europe from the brain of our countrymen 1 One sees very 
 well what their fate must be. He that does not fill a place 
 at home, cannot abroad. He only goes there to hide his 
 insignificance in a larger crowd. You do not think you will 
 find anything there which you have not seen at home 1 The 
 stuff of all countries is just the same. Do you suppose, there 
 is any country where they do not scald milkpans, and swaddle 
 the infants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish 1 
 What is true anywhere is true everywhere. And let him go 
 where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth as he 
 carries. 
 
 Of course, for some men, travel may be useful. Naturalists, 
 discoverers, and sailors are born. Some men are made for 
 couriers, exchangers, envoys, missionaries, bearers of despatches, 
 as others are. for farmers and workingmen. And if the man 
 is of a light and social turn, and Nature has aimed to make a 
 legged and winged creature, framed for locomotion, we must 
 follow her hint, and furnish him with that breeding which gives 
 currency, as sedulously as with that which gives worth. But 
 let us not be pedantic, but alloAv to travel its full effect. The 
 boy grown up on the farm, which he has never left, is said in 
 the country to have had no chance, and boys and men of that 
 condition look upon work on a railroad, or drudgery in a city, 
 as opportunity. Poor country boys of Vermont and Connecti 
 cut formerly owed what knowledge they had to their peddling 
 trips to the Southern States. California and the Pacific 
 Coast is now the university of this class, as Virginia was in 
 old times. * To have some chance is their word. And the 
 
CULTURE. 393 
 
 phrase to know the \v<>rld, or to travel, is synonymous with 
 all men s ideas of advantage and superiority. No doubt, to a 
 man of sense, travel oilers advantages. As many languages as 
 he lias, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many 
 tiiii is he a man. A foreign country is a point of compari 
 son, wherefrom to judge his own. One use of travel, is, to 
 recommend the hooks and works of home, for we go to 
 Europe to lie Amcricani/ed ; and another, to find men. For, 
 as Nature has put fruits apart in latitudes, a new fruit ill 
 every decree, so knowledge and tine moral quality she lodges 
 in distant men. And thus, of the six or seven teachers whom 
 each man wants among his contemporaries, it often happens 
 that one or two of them live on the other side of the world. 
 
 Moreover, there is in every constitution a certain solstice, 
 when the stars stand still in our inward firmament, and when 
 there is required some foivign force, some diversion or altera 
 tive to prevent stagnation. And, as a medical remedy, travel 
 seems one of the best. Just as a man witnessing the admira 
 ble effect of ether to lull pain, and meditating on the contin 
 gencies of wounds, cancers, lockjaws, rejoices in Dr. Jackson s 
 benign discovery, so a man who looks at Paris, at Naples, 
 or at London, says: If I should he driven from my own 
 home, here, at least, my thoughts can be consoled by the most 
 prodigal amusement and occupation which the human race in 
 ages could contrive and accumulate. 
 
 Akin to the benefit of foreign travel, the aesthetic value of 
 railroads is to unite the advantages of town and country life, 
 neither of which we can spare. A man should live in or near 
 a large town, because, let his own genius be what it may, it 
 will repel quite as much of agreeable and valuable talent as it 
 draws, and, in a city, the total attraction of all the citizens is 
 sure to conquer, first or last, every repulsion, and drag the 
 improbable hermit within its walls some day in the year. 
 In town, lie can find the swimming school, the gymnasium, the 
 dancing-master, the shooting gallery, opera, theatre, and pano 
 rama : the chemist s shop, the museum of natural history ; 
 the gallery of tine arts; the national orators, in their turn ; 
 foreign travellers, the libraries. a:id his club. In the country, 
 he ran find solitude and reading, manly labor, cheap living, 
 and his old shoes; moors for game, hills for geologv, and LTOVC* 
 for devotion. Aubrey I I have heard Thomas llobbes 
 
 say, that, in tin- Karl of l>evon s house, in Derbyshire, there 
 was a good librarv and books enough for him, and his lordship 
 17* 
 
394 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 stored the library with what books he thought fit to be bought. 
 But the want of good conversation was a very great inconveni 
 ence, and, though he conceived he could order his thinking as 
 well as another, yet he found a great defect. In the country, 
 in long time, for want of good conversation, one s understand 
 ing and invention contract a moss on them, like an old paling 
 in an orchard." 
 
 Cities give us collision. T is said, London and New York 
 take the nonsense out of a man. A great part of our educa 
 tion is sympathetic and social. Boys and girls who have been 
 Brought up with well-informed and superior people show in 
 heir manners an inestimable grace. Fuller says, that " Wil- 
 iam, Earl of Nassau, won a subject from the King of Spain, 
 every time he put off his hat." You cannot have one well- 
 i)red man, without a whole society of such. They keep each 
 other up to any high point. Especially women ; it requires 
 a great many cultivated women, saloons of bright, elegant, 
 reading women, accustomed to ease and refinement, to specta 
 cles, pictures, sculpture, poetry, and to elegant society, in 
 order that you should have one Madame de Stael. The head 
 of a commercial house, or a leading lawyer or politician is 
 brought into daily contact with troops of men from all parts 
 of the country, and those too the driving-wheels, the business 
 men of each section, and one can hardly suggest for an ap 
 prehensive man a more searching culture. Besides, we must 
 remember the high social possibilities of a million of men. 
 The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, 
 is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one 
 can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to 
 exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to 
 confront their counterparts. 
 
 I wish cities could teach their best lesson, of quiet man 
 ners. It is the foible especially of American youth, pre 
 tension. The mark of the man of the world is absence of 
 pretension. He x does not make a speech ; he takes a low 
 business-tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, 
 promises not at all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, 
 hugs his fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name, 
 and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon. His 
 conversation clings to the weather and the news, yet he allows 
 himself to be surprised into thought, and the unlocking of his 
 learning and philosophy- How the imagination is piqued by 
 Aecdotes of some grvivt ^nan passing incognito, as a king in 
 
CULTURE. 
 
 gray clothes, of Napoleon affecting a plain suit at his gll- 
 tering levee ; of l>urn>, or Scott, or iJeet hoven, or Wellington^ 
 or (Joethe, or any container of transcendent power, parsing for 
 nobody; of Epamin<ndas, who never says any thing, but will 
 listen eternally"; of ( Joethe, who pivfenvd trilling subjects 
 and common expressions in intercourse with si rangers, \\OI-M- 
 rather than better clothes, and to appear a little more ca 
 pricious than he was. There are advantages in the old hat 
 and box-coat. I have heard, that, throughout this country, a 
 certain respect is paid to good broadcloth ; but dress makes 
 a little restraint : men will not commit themselves. But the 
 box-coat is like wine it unlocks the tongue and men say what 
 they think. An old poet says, 
 
 " Oo fur and po sparing, 
 For you 11 find it certain, 
 
 The poorer mill the l>a-er yon appear, 
 The more you 11 look through still." * 
 
 Not .much otherwise Milncs writes, in the " Lay of the 
 Humble," 
 
 " To me men arc for what thr-y are, 
 They wear no masks with nie." 
 
 T is odd that our people should have, not water on the 
 brain, but a little gas there. A shrewd foreigner said of 
 the Americans, that, " whatever they say has a little tin- air 
 of a speech." Yet one of the traits down in the books as dis 
 tinguishing the Anglo-Saxon, is, a trick of self-disparagement 
 To be sure^ in old, dense countries, among a million of good 
 coats, a fine coat comes to be no distinction, aaid you find 
 humorists. In an English party, a man with no marked man 
 ners or features, with a face like red dough, unexpectedly dis 
 closes wit, learning, a wide range of topics, and personal fa 
 miliarity with good men in all parts of the world, until you 
 think you have fallen upon some illustrious personage. Can 
 it be that the American forest has refreshed some weeds of old 
 Pictish barbarism just ready to die out, the love of the 
 scarlet feather, of beads, and tinsel 1 The Italians are fond 
 of red clothes, peacock plumes, and embroidery ; and I re 
 member one rainy morning in the city of Palermo, the 81 
 was in a blaze with scarlet umbrellas. The English have a 
 plain taste. The equipages of the grandees are plain. A 
 gorgeous livery indicates new and awkward city wealth. Mr. 
 Pitt, like Mr. Pym, thought the title of Mitter good against 
 
 * Beaumont and Fletcher, The Tamer Tamed 
 
396 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 any king in Europe. They have piqued themselves on govern 
 ing the whole world in the poor, plain, dark Committee-room 
 which the House of Commons sat in, before the fire. 
 
 Whilst we want cities as the centres where the best things 
 are found, cities degrade us by magnifying trifles. The 
 countryman finds the town a chop-house, a barber s shop. 
 He has lost the lines of grandeur of the horizon, hills and 
 plains, and with them, sobriety and elevation. He has come 
 among a supple, glib-tongued tribe, who live for show, servile 
 to public opinion. Life is dragged down to a fracas of pitiful 
 cares and disasters. You say the gods ought to respect a life 
 whose objects are their own ; but in cities they have betrayed 
 you to a cloud of insignificant annoyances : 
 
 " Mirmidons, race fe"conde, 
 Mirmidons, 
 
 Enfin nous commandons ; 
 Jupiter livre le monde 
 Aux mirmidons, aux mirmidons." * 
 
 T is heavy odds 
 
 Against the gods, 
 
 When they will match with myrmidons. 
 
 We spawning, spawning myrmidons, 
 
 Our turn to-day ! we take command, 
 
 Jove gives the globe into the hand 
 
 Of myrmidons, of myrmidons. 
 
 What is odious but noise, and people who scream and be 
 wail 1 people whose vane points always east, who live to dine, 
 who send for the doctor, who coddle themselves, who toast 
 their feet on the register, who intrigue to secure a padded 
 chair, and a corner out of the draught. Suffer them once to 
 begin the enumeration of their infirmities, and the sun will 
 go down on the unfinished tale. Let these trifles put us out 
 of conceit with petty comforts. To a man at work, the frost 
 is but a color : the rain, the wind, he forgot them when he 
 came in. Let us learn to live coarsely, dress" plainly, and lie 
 hard. The least habit of dominion over the palate has certain 
 good effects not easily estimated. Neither will we be driven into 
 a quiddling abstemiousness. T is a superstition to insist on a 
 special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms. 
 
 A man in pursuit of greatness feels no little wants. How 
 can you mind diet, bed, dress, or salutes or compliments, or 
 the figure you make in company, or wealth, or even the bring 
 ing things to pass, when you think how paltry are the machin 
 ery and the workers 1 Wordsworth was praised to me, in 
 
 * Be ranger. 
 
CULTURE. 367 
 
 Westmoreland, for having afforded to his country neighbors an 
 example of a modest household where comfort and culture 
 we iv secured, without display. And a tender hoy who wears 
 his rustv cap and outgrown coat, that he may secure the cov 
 eted place in college, and the right ill the library, is educated 
 to some purpose. There is a great deal of self-denial and 
 manliness in poor and middle-class houses, in town and coun 
 try, that has not got into literature, and never will, but that 
 keep* the e;irth sweet ; that saves on superfluities, and spends 
 on essentials ; that goes rusty, and educates the hoy ; that sells 
 the horse, but builds the school ; works early and late, takes 
 two looms in the factory, three looms, six looms, but pa\> oft 
 the mortgage on the patemal farm, and then goes back cheer 
 fully to work again. 
 
 We can ill spare the commanding social benefits of cities ; 
 they must be used ; yet cautiously, and haughtily, and will 
 yield their best values to him who best can do without them. 
 Keep the town for occasions, but the habits should bo formed 
 to retirement. Solitude, thj safeguard of mediocrity, is to 
 genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult 
 the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. Ho 
 who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from trav 
 elling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, read 
 ing, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. 
 " In the morning, solitude," said Pythagoras ; that Nature 
 ma\ speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, 
 and that her favorite may make acquaintance with those 
 divine strengths which disclose themselves to serious and 
 abstracted thought. T is very certain that Plato, Plotinus, 
 Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not 
 ..ive in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time ar 
 
 tctors ; and the wise instructor will press this point o 
 securing to the young soul in the disposition of time and the 
 arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude. The 
 hiirh advantage of university life is often the mere mechanical 
 one, I mav call it, of a separate chamber and fire, which 
 pan-Tits will allow the boy without hesitation at Cambridge, 
 but do not think needful at home. We say solitude, to mark 
 the character of the tone of thought ; but if it can be shared 
 between two or more than two, it is happier, and not less 
 noble. " We four." wrote Neauder to his sacred friends, 
 "will enjoy at Halle the inward hlroedness of a r />// /> l>. /, 
 whose foundations are forever friendship. The more I know 
 
398 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 you, the more I dissatisfy and must dissatisfy all my wontea 
 companions. Their very presence stupefies me. The common 
 understanding withdraws itself from the one centre of all ex 
 istence." 
 
 Solitude takes off the pressure of present importunities that 
 more catholic and humane relations may appear. The saint 
 and poet seek privacy to ends the most public and universal ; 
 and it is the secret of culture, to interest the man more in his 
 public than in his private quality. Here is a new poem, 
 which elicits a good many comments in the journals, and in 
 conversation. From these it is easy, at last, to eliminate the 
 verdict which readers passed upon it ; and that is, in the main, 
 unfavorable. The poet, as a craftsman, is only interested in 
 the praise accorded to him, and not in the censure, though it 
 be just. And the poor little poet hearkens only to that, and 
 rejects the censure, as proving incapacity in the critic. But 
 the poet cultivated becomes a stockholder in both companies, 
 sa y Mr. Curfew, in the Curfew stock, and in the humani 
 ty stock ; and, in the last, exults as much in the demonstra 
 tion of the unsoundness of Curfew, as his interest in the 
 former gives him pleasure in the currency of Curfew. For, 
 the depreciation of his Curfew stock only shows the immense 
 values of the humanity stock. As soon as he sides with his 
 critic ao-ainst himself, with joy, he is a cultivated man. ^ 
 
 We must have an intellectual quality in all property and in 
 all action, or they are naught. I must have children, I must 
 have events, I must have a social state and history, or my 
 thinkine and speaking want body or basis. But to give these 
 accessories any value, I must know them as contingent and 
 rather showy possessions, which pass for more to the people 
 than to me. We see this abstraction in scholars, as a matter 
 of course ; but what a charm it adds when observed in prac 
 tical men. Bonaparte, like Caesar, was intellectual, and could 
 look at every object for itself, without affection. Though an 
 egotist a Foutrance, he could criticise a play, a building, a 
 character, on universal grounds, and give a just opinion. A 
 man known to us only as a celebrity in politics or m trade 
 gains largely in our esteem if we discover that he has some in 
 tellectual taste or skill ; as when we learn of Lord Fairfax the 
 Lono- Parliament s general, his passion for antiquarian studies ; 
 or of the French regicide Carnot, his sublime genius in mathe 
 matics ; or of a living banker, his success in poetry ; or of a 
 partisan journalist, his devotion to ornithology. So, if in 
 
cri/rrRi:. 309 
 
 travelling in the dreary wildernesses of Arkansas or Texas, we 
 sin. i ild observe on the next seat a man reading Horace, or 
 Martial, or Calderon, we should wish to hug him. In callings 
 that require roughest energy, soldiers, sea-captains, and civil 
 engineers sometimes betray a tine insight, if only through a 
 ivrtain gentleness when off duty ; a good-natured admission 
 that there are illusions, and who shall say that he is not their 
 sport I We onlv vary the phrase, not the doctrine, when we 
 say that culture opens the sense of beauty. A man is a beg 
 gar who onlv lives to the useful, and, however he may serve M 
 a pin or rivet in the social machine, cannot be said to have ar 
 rived at self-possession. I suffer, every day, from the want of 
 perception^ beauty in people. They do not know the charm 
 with which all moments and objects can be embellished, tho 
 charm of manners, of self-command, of benevolence. Kepo^e 
 and cheerfulness are the badge of the gentleman, repose in 
 energy. The Greek battle-pieces are calm; the heroes, in 
 whatever violent actions engaged, retain a serene aspect : :is 
 we say of Niagara, that it falls without speed. A cheerful, in 
 telligent face is the end of culture, and success enough. For 
 it indicates the purpose of Nature and wisdom attained. 
 
 When our higher faculties are in activity, we are domesti 
 cated, and awkwardness and discomfort give place to natural 
 and agreeable movements. It is noticed, that the considera 
 tion of the great periods and spaces of astronomy induces a 
 dignity of mind, and an indifference to death. The influence 
 of tine scenery, the presence of mountains, appeases our irri 
 tations and elevates our friendships. Even a high dome, and 
 the expansive interior of a cathedral, have a sensible effect on 
 manners. 1 have heard that stiff people lose something of 
 their awkwardness under high ceilings, and in spacious halls. 
 I think sculpture and painting have an effect to teach us 
 manners, and abolish hurry. 
 
 But, over all, culture must reinforce from higher influx the 
 empirical skills of eloquence, or of politics, or of trade, and 
 the useful arts. There is !i certain loftiness of thought and 
 power to marshal ami adjust particulars, which can only come 
 from an insight of their whole connection. The orator who 
 has onre seen things in their divine order, will never quite 
 lose sight of this, and will come to affairs as from a higher 
 ground, and, though he will say nothing of philosophy, he 
 will have a certain mastery in dealing with them, and an in 
 capableness of being dazzled or frighted, which will distinguish 
 
400 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 his handling from that of attorneys and factors. A man who 
 stands on a good footing with the heads of parties at Wash 
 ington, reads the rumors of the newspapers, and the guesses 
 of provincial politicians, with a key to the right and wrong in 
 each statement, and sees well enough where all this will end. 
 Archimedes will look through your Connecticut machine, at a 
 glance, and judge of its fitness. And much more, a wise man 
 who knows not only what Plato, but what Saint John can 
 show him, can easily raise the affair he deals with to a 
 certain majesty. Plato says Pericles owed this elevation to 
 the lessons of Anaxagoras. Burke descended from a higher 
 sphere when he would influence human affairs. Franklin, 
 Adams, Jefferson, Washington, stood on a fine hiftnauity, be 
 fore which the brawls of modern senates are but pot-house 
 politics. 
 
 But there are higher secrets of culture, which are not for 
 the apprentices, but for proficients. These are lessons only 
 for the brave. We must know our friends under ugly masks. 
 The calamities are our friends. Ben Jonson specifies in his 
 address to the Muse : 
 
 " Get him the time s long grudge, the court s ill-will, 
 And, reconciled, keep him suspected still, 
 Make him lose all his friends, and, what is worse, 
 Almost all ways to any better course ; 
 With me thou leav st a better Muse than thee, 
 And which thou brought st me, blessed Poverty." 
 
 We wish to learn philosophy by rote, and play at heroism. 
 But the wiser God says, Take the shame, the poverty, and the 
 penal solitude, that belong to truth-speaking. Try the rough 
 water as well as the smooth. Rough water can teach lessons 
 worth knowing. When the state is unquiet, personal qualities 
 are more than ever decisive. Fear not a revolution which 
 will constrain you to live five years in one. Don t be so ten 
 der at making an enemy now and then. Be willing to go to 
 Coventry sometimes, and let the populace bestow on you their 
 coldest contempts. The finished man of the world must eat of 
 every apple once. He must hold his hatreds also at arm s 
 length, and not remember spite. He has neither friends nor 
 enemies, but values men only as channels of power. 
 
 He who aims high must dread an easy home and popular 
 manners. Heaven sometimes hedges a rare character about 
 with ungainliness and odium, as the burr that protects the 
 fruit. If there is any great and good thing in store for you, 
 it will not come at the first or the second call, nor in the shape 
 
CULTURE. 401 
 
 of fashion, case, and city drawing-rooms. Popularity is for 
 dolls. "Steep and cra-_ r u y," said Porphyry, "is the path of 
 the gods." Open your Marcus Antoninus. In the opinion of 
 the ancients, he was the- irivat man who sconied to shine, and 
 who contested the frowns of fortune. They preferred the 
 noble vessel t.<n late for the tide, contending with winds and 
 waves, dismantled and unri^ed, to her companion borne into 
 harbor with colors flying and guns firing. There is none of 
 the social goods that may not be purchased too dear, and mere 
 aniiableness must not take rank with high aims and self-sub- 
 
 Bettine replies to Goethe s mother, who chides her disregard 
 of dress, " If I cannot do as I have a mind, in our poor 
 Frankfort, I shall not carry things far." And the youth must 
 rate at its true mark the inconceivable levity of local opinion. 
 The longer we live, the more we must endure the elementary 
 existence of men and women; and every brave heart must 
 treat society as a child, and never allow it to dictate. 
 
 " All that class of the severe and restrictive virtues," said 
 Burke, "are almost too costly for humanity." Who wishes to 
 be severe ? Who wishes to resist the eminent and polite, in 
 behalf of the poor, and low, and impolite ? and who that dares 
 do it, can keep his temper sweet, his frolic spirits ] The high 
 virtues are not debonair, but have their redress in being illus 
 trious at last. \Yhat forests of laurel we bring, and the tears 
 of mankind, to those who stood firm against the opinion of 
 their contemporaries ! The measure of a master is his suc 
 cess in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years 
 later. 
 
 Let me say here, that culture cannot begin too early. In 
 talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder com 
 panions those years of boyhood which alone could give imagi 
 native literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem. 
 I find, too, that the chance for appreciation is much increa-ed 
 by l.eingthe son of an apprcciator, and that these boys who 
 now grow up are caught not only years too late, but two or 
 three births too late, to make the best scholars of. And I 
 think it a presentable motive to a scholar, that, as, in an old 
 community, a well-born proprietor is usually found, after the 
 first heats of youth, to be a careful husband, and to feel a 
 habitual desire that the estate shall suffer no harm by his ad 
 ministration, but shall be delivered down to the next heir in 
 as good condition as he received it ; so, a considerate man 
 
 z 
 
02 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 will reckon himself a subject of that secular melioration by 
 which mankind is mollified, cured, and refined, and will shun 
 every expenditure of his forces on pleasure or gain, which will 
 jeopard this social and secular accumulation. 
 
 The fossil strata show us that Nature began with rudimen- 
 tal forms, and rose to the more complex, as fast as the earth 
 was fit for their dwelling-place ; and that the lower perish, as 
 the higher appear. Very few of our race can be said to be 
 yet finished men. We still carry sticking to us some remains 
 of the preceding inferior quadruped organization. We call 
 these millions men ; but they are not yet men. Half engaged 
 in the soil, pawing to get free, man needs all the music that 
 can be brought to disengage him. If Love, red Love with 
 tears and joy; if Want with his scourge; if War with his 
 cannonade ; if Christianity with his charity ; if Trade with its 
 money ; if Art with its portfolios ; if Science with her tele.- 
 graphs through the deeps of space and time ; can set his dull 
 nerves throbbing, and by loud taps on the tough chrysalis, can 
 break its walls, and let the new creature emerge erect and 
 free, make way, and sing paan ! The age of the quadruped 
 is to go out, the age of the brain and of the heart is to come 
 in The time will come when the evil forms we have known 
 can no more be organized. Man s culture can spare nothing, 
 wants all the material. He is to convert all impediments into 
 , instruments, all enemies into power. The formidable mis 
 chief will only make the more useful slave. And if one shall 
 read the future of the race hinted in the organic effort of Na 
 ture to mount and meliorate, and the corresponding impulse 
 to the Better in the human being, we shall dare affirm that 
 there is nothing he will not overcome and convert, until at 
 last culture shall absorb the chaos and gehenna. He will con 
 vert the Furies into Muses, and the hells into benefit. 
 
V. 
 
 BEHAVIOR 
 
 Grace, Beauty, and Caprice 
 
 Build this golden portal; 
 
 Graceful women, cho-iMi men 
 
 Dazzle every mortal: 
 
 Their sweet and lofty countenance 
 
 His enchanting food; 
 
 He need not -TO to them, their forms 
 
 Px-t-t hi- solitude. 
 
 He looketh seldom in their face, 
 
 Hi- eve- explore the <_ r romid, 
 
 The p-een L r ra i- a lOoking-glftM 
 
 Whereon tlieir traits are found. 
 
 Little he says to them, 
 
 So dances his heart in his hreast, 
 
 Their tranquil mien hereaveth him 
 
 Of wit, of words, of re-r. 
 
 Too weak to win, too fond to shun 
 
 The tyrants of his doom. 
 
 The much deceived Kndymion 
 
 Slips behind a tomb. 
 
f .DIVERSITY 1 
 
 BEHAVIOR. 
 
 r I "HE soul which animates Nature is not less significantly 
 published in the figure, movement, and gesture of ani 
 mated bodies, than in its last vehicle of articulate speech. 
 This silent and subtile language is Manners ; not what, but Innr. 
 Life expresses. A statue lias no tongue, and needs none. Good 
 tableaux do not need declamation. Nature tells every secret 
 once. Yes, but in man she tells it all the time, by form, atti 
 tude, gesture, mien, face, and parts of the face, and by the 
 whole action of the machine. The visible carriage or action 
 of the individual, as resulting from his organization and his 
 will combined, we call manners. What are they but thought 
 entering the hands and feet, controlling the movements of the 
 body, the speech and behavior 1 ? 
 
 There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to 
 boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things ; 
 each once a stroke of genius or of love,- now repeated and 
 hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with 
 which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. 
 If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a 
 depth to the morning meadows. Manners are very communi 
 cable ; men catch them from each other. Consuelo. in the; 
 romance, boasts of the lessons she had given the nobles in 
 manners, on the stage : and, in real life, Talma taught Napo 
 leon the arts of behavior, (ienius invents fine manners, \\hidi 
 the baron and the baroness copy very fast, and, by the advan- 
 taLT - of a palace, better the instruction. They stereotype the 
 lesson they have learned into a mode. 
 
 The power of manners is ineessant, an clement as nm-oi,- 
 cealable as fire. The nobility cannot in any country be dis 
 guised, and no more in a republic or a denn-ra-y. than in a 
 kingdom. No man can resist their influence. There ar- 
 tain manners which are learned in good society, of that force, 
 
406 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 that, if a person have them, he or she must be considered, and 
 is everywhere welcome, though without beauty, or wealth, or 
 genius. Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you 
 give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes. 
 He has not the trouble of earning or owning them; they solicit 
 him to enter and possess. We send girls of a timid, retreating 
 disposition to the boarding-school, to the riding-school, to the 
 ball-room, or wheresoever they can come into acquaintance 
 and nearness of leading persons of their own sex ; where they 
 might learn address, and see it near at hand. The power of a 
 woman of fashion to lead, and also to daunt and repel, derives 
 from their belief that she knows resources and behaviors not 
 known to them ; but when these have mastered her secret, 
 they learn to confront her, and recover their self-possession. 
 
 Every day bears witness to their gentle rule. People who 
 would obtrude, now do not obtrude. The mediocre circle learns 
 to demand that which belongs to a high state of nature or of 
 culture. Your manners are always under examination, and by 
 committees little suspected, a police in citizens clothes, 
 
 Vbut are awarding or denying you very high prizes when you 
 least think of it. 
 We talk much of utilities, but t is our manners that as 
 sociate us. In hours of business, we go to him who knows, or 
 has, or does this or that which we want, and we do not let our 
 taste or feeling stand in the way. But this activity over, we 
 return to the indolent state, and wish for those we can be at 
 ease with ; those who will go where we go, whose manners do 
 not offend us, whose social tone chimes with ours. When we 
 reflect on their persuasive and cheering force ; how they recom 
 mend, prepare, and draw people together ; how, in all clubs, 
 manners make the members ; how manners make the fortune 
 of the ambitious youth ; thai;, for the most part, his manners 
 marry him, and, for the most part, he marries manners ; when 
 we think what keys they are, and to what secrets ; what high 
 lessons and inspiring tokens of character they convey ; and 
 what divination is required in us, for the reading of this fine 
 telegraph, we see what range the subject has, and what rela 
 tions to convenience, power, and beauty. S 
 
 Their first service is very low, when they are the minor 
 morals : but t is the beginning of civility, to make us, I 
 mean, endurable to each other. We prize them for their rough- 
 plastic, abstergent force ; to get people out of the quadruped 
 state ; to get them washed, clothed, and set up on end ; to 
 
BEHAVIOR. 407 
 
 slough their animal husks and habits; compel them to be 
 clean ; overawe their spite and meanness, teaeh them to stifle 
 the base, juul choose the generous expression, and make them 
 know how much happier the generous behaviors are. 
 
 Had behavior the laws cannot reach. Society is infested 
 with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey 
 upon the rest, and whom, a public opinion concentrated into 
 good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can 
 reach: the contradictors and railers at public and private 
 tallies, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog 
 of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the 
 house by barking him out of sight : I have seen men 
 wh-> neigh like a horse when you contradict them, or say some 
 thing which they do not understand : then the overbold, who 
 make their own invitation to your hearth ; the persevering 
 talker, who gives you his society in large, saturating doses; 
 the pitiers of themselves, a perilous class; the frivolous 
 Asmodeus, who relies on you to find him in ropes of sand to 
 twist ; the monotones; in short, every stripe of absurdity ; 
 these are social inflictions which the magistrate cannot cure 
 or defend you from, and which must be intrusted to the re 
 straining force of custom, and proverbs, and familiar rules of 
 behavior impressed on young people in their school-days. 
 
 In the hotels on the hanks of the Mississippi, they print, or 
 used to print, among the rules of the house, that " no gentle 
 man can be permitted to come to the public table without his 
 coat " ; and in the same country, in the pews of the churches, 
 little placards plead with the worshipper against the fury of 
 expectoration. Charles Dickens self-sacrincingly undertook 
 the reformation of our American manners in unspeakable par 
 ticulars. 1 think the lesson was not <juito lost ; that it held 
 bad manners up, so that the churls could see the deformity. 
 I nhappily. the- book had its own deformities. It ought not to 
 need to print in a reading-room a caution to strangers not to 
 speak loud ; nor to persons who look over fine en -ravines, that 
 may should be handled like cobwebs and butterflies wind s ; 
 nor to persons who look at marble statues, that they shall not 
 smite them with canes. But. even in the perfect civili/ation 
 of this city, such cautions are not quite needless in the Athe- 
 n.eum and City Library. 
 
 Manners are factitious, and irrow out of circumstance as well 
 as out of character. If you look at the pictures of patricians 
 and of peasants, of different periods and countries, you will see 
 
408 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 how well they match the same classes in our towns. The 
 modern aristocrat not only is well drawn in Titian s Venetian 
 doges, and in Roman coins and statues, but also in the pictures 
 which Commodore Perry brought home of dignitaries in Japan. 
 Broad lands and great interests not only arrive to such heads 
 as can manage them, but form manners of power. A keen eye, 
 too, will see nice gradations of rank, or see in the manners the 
 degree of homage the party is wont to receive. A prince who 
 is accustomed every day to be courted and deferred to by the 
 highest grandees, acquires a corresponding expectation, and a 
 becoming mode of receiving and replying to this homage. 
 
 There are always exceptional people and modes. English 
 grandees affect to be farmers. Claverhouse is a fop, and, under 
 the finish of dress, and levity of behavior, hides the terror of 
 his war. But nature and Destiny are honest, and never fail to 
 leave their mark, to hang out a sign for each and for every 
 quality. It is much to conquer one s face, and perhaps the 
 ambitious youth thinks he has got the whole secret when he 
 has learned, that disengaged manners are commanding. Don t 
 be deceived by a facile exterior. Tender men sometimes have 
 strong wills. We had, in Massachusetts, an old statesman, 
 who had sat all his life in courts and in chairs of state, without 
 overcoming an extreme irritability of face, voice, and bearing : 
 when he spoke, his voice would not serve him ; it cracked, it 
 broke, it wheezed, it piped ; little cared he ; he knew that it 
 had got to pipe, or wheeze, or screech his argument and his 
 indignation. When he sat down, after speaking, he seemed in 
 a sort of fit, and held on to his chair with both hands : but 
 underneath all this irritability was a puissant will, firm, and 
 advancing, and a memory in which lay in order and method 
 like geologic strata every fact of his history, and under the 
 control of his will. 
 
 Manners are partly factitious, but, mainly, there must be 
 capacity for culture in the blood. Else all culture is vain. 
 The obstinate prejudice in favor of blood, which lies at the base 
 of the feudal and monarchical fabrics of the Old World, has some 
 reason in common experience. Every man mathematician, 
 artist, soldier, or merchant looks with confidence for some 
 traits and talents in his own child, which he would not dare to 
 presume in the child of a stranger. The Orientalists are very 
 orthodox on this point. " Take a thorn-bush," said the emir 
 Abdel-Kader, " and sprinkle it for a whole year with water ; 
 it will yield nothing but thorns. Take a date-tree, leave it 
 
BEHAVIOR. 409 
 
 without culture, and it will always produce dates. Nobility is 
 
 the date tn-c uii l the Aral, populace is a liusli of thorns." 
 A main tart in the history of manners is the wonderful CX- 
 .eiiess of the hnniaii body. If it were made of - lass, or 
 
 of air, Mid the thought* were written on steel tablets within, 
 it could not publish more truly its meaning than now. Wise 
 men read very sharply all your private history in your look 
 and gait and behavior. The whole economy of natmv is bent 
 on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. Men are 
 like (Jeneva watches with crystal faces which expose the whole 
 movement. They carry the liquor of life flowing up and down 
 in these beautiful bottles, and announcing to the curious how- 
 it is with them. The face and eyes reveal what the spirit is 
 doing, how old it is, what aims it has. The eyes indicate the 
 antiojiity of the soiiL^r^ through how many forms it ha* al- 
 rea3jas^endejj._ It almost violates the proprieties, if we say 
 above Fnebreath here, what the confessing eyes do not hesitate 
 to utter to every street passenger. 
 
 Man cannot fix his eye on the sun, and so far seems imper 
 fect. In Siberia, a late traveller found men who could see the 
 satellites of Jupiter with their unarmed eye. In some respects 
 the animals excel us. The birds have a longer sight, beside 
 the advantage by their winics of a higher observatory. A cow 
 can bid her calf, by secret signal, probably of the eye, to run 
 away, or to lie down and hide itself. The jockeys say of certain 
 I, that "they look over the whole ground." The out 
 door life, and hunting, and labor, givec |nal rigor to the human 
 Bye, A farmer looks out at you as strong as the horse ; his 
 eve beam is like the stroke of a staff. An eye can threaten 
 like a loaded and levelled gnu, or can insult like hissing or 
 kicking ; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can 
 make the heart dance with joy. 
 
 The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind. When a 
 thought strikes us, the eyes fix, and remain ga/ing at a dis 
 tance ; in enumerating the names of persons or of countries, 
 as France, (lermany, Spain, Turkey, the eyes wink at 
 new name. There is no nicety of learning sought by the 
 mind, which ti, I not vie in acquiring. "An Artist," 
 
 aid Michel Angelo, "must hare his measuring tools not in the 
 haiH. but iii M: and there is no end to the catalogue 
 
 of its performances, whether in indolent vision, (that of health 
 and beauty,) 01 in strained vision, (that of art and labor.) 
 
 lives are bold as lions, roving, running, leaping, 
 
 VOL. II. 13 
 
410 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 and there, far and near. They speak all languages. They 
 wait for no introduction ; they are no Englishmen ; ask no 
 leave of age or rank they respect neither poverty nor riches, 
 neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, 
 and come again, and go through and through you, in a mo 
 ment of time. What inundation of life and thought is dis 
 charged from one soul into another, through them ! The 
 glance is natural magic. The mysterious communication 
 established across a house between two entire strangers, moves 
 all the springs of wonder. The communication by the glance 
 is hi the greatest part not subject to the control of the will. 
 It is the bodily symbol of identity of nature. We look into 
 the eyes to know if this other form is another self, and the 
 eyes will not lie, but make a faithful confession what inhab 
 itant is there. The revelations are sometimes terrific, 
 confession of a low, usurping devil is there made, and the ob 
 server shall seem to feel the stirring of owls, and bats, and 
 horned hoofs, where he looked for innocence and simplicity. 
 T is remarkable, too, that the spirit that appears at the win 
 dows of the house does at once invest himself in a new form 
 of his own, to the mind of the beholder. 
 
 The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, with 
 the advantage, that the ocular dialect needs no dictionary, but 
 is understood all the world over. When the eyes say one 
 thin", and the tongue another, a practised man relies on the 
 lano-uage of the first. If the man is off his centre, the eyes 
 show it You can read in the eyes of your companion, wheth 
 er your argument hits him, though his tongue will not confess 
 it There is a look by which a man shows he is going to say 
 a good thin-, and a look when he has said it. Vain and for 
 gotten are all the fine offers and offices of hospitality, if there 
 is no holiday in the eye. How many furtive inclinations 
 avowed by the eye, though dissembled by the lips . 
 comes awav from "a company, in which, it may easily happen, 
 he has said nothing, and no important remark has been 
 addressed to him, and yet, if in sympathy with the society, 
 he shall not have a sense of this fact, such a stream of 1 
 has been flowing into him, and out from him, through the 
 eves. There are eves, to be sure, that give no more admis 
 sion into the man" than blueberries. Others are liquid and 
 deep, wells that a man might fall into ; others are 
 aggressive and devouring, seem to call out the police, take 
 all too much notice, and require crowded Broadways, and 
 
BEHAVIOR. 4 1 1 
 
 the security of millions, to protect individuals against tin-in. 
 The military eve 1 meet, now darkly sparkling under eln-j- 
 cal, now under rustic brows. "V is the city of Laccdjemon ; 
 tis a stack of bayonets. There are asking eyes, asserting 
 prowling eyes; and eyes full of fate, some of good, 
 and some of sinister omen. The alleged power to charm 
 down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the 
 eye. It must he a victory achieved in the will, before it can 
 be signified in the eye. T is very certain that each man 
 carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the 
 immen.se scale of men, and we are always learning to read 
 it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his per 
 sonal presence. Whoever looked on him would consent to 
 his will, being certitied that his aims were generous and 
 universal. The reason why men do not obey us, is because 
 they see the mud at the bottom of our eye. 
 
 If the organ of sight is such a vehicle of power, the other 
 features have their own. A man finds room in the few square 
 inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors ; for the 
 expression of all his history, and his wants. The sculptor, and 
 Winckelmann, and Lavater, will tell you how significant a fea 
 ture is the nose ; how its forms express strength or weakness 
 of will, and good or bad temper. The nose of Julius < 
 of Dante, and of Pitt suggest "the terrors of the beak." 
 What refinement, and what limitations, the teeth betray ! 
 " Beware you don t laugh," said the wise mother, " for then 
 you show all your faults. 
 
 Balzac left in manuscript a chapter, which he called " The- 
 orie de la demarche" in which he says : " The look, the voice, 
 the respiration, and the attitude or walk, are identical. But, 
 as it has not been given to man, the power to stand guard, at 
 once over these four different simultaneous expressions of his 
 thought, watch that one which speaks out the truth, and you 
 will know the whole man." 
 
 Palaces interest us mainly in the exhibition of manners, 
 which in the idle and expensive society dwelling in them arc 
 raised to a high art. The maxim of courts is that manner is 
 power. A calm and resolute bearing, a polished speech, an 
 embellishment of trifles, and the art of hiding all uncoml oria- 
 ble feeling, are essential to the courtier; and Saint Simon, and 
 Cardinal de Ketz, and llccdcrer, and an encyclopiedia of Me- 
 moires, will instruct you, if you wish, in those potent secrets. 
 Thus, it is a point of pride with kings, to remember faces and 
 
412 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 names. It is reported of one prince, that his head had the 
 air of leaning downwards, in order not to humble the crowd. 
 There are people who come in ever like a child with a piece of 
 good news. It was said of the late Lord Holland, that he 
 always came down to breakfast with the air of a man who had 
 just met with some signal good-fortune. In " Notre Dame" the 
 grandee took his place on the dais, with the look of one who 
 is thinking of something else. But we must not peep and 
 eavesdrop at palace-doors. 
 
 Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others. 
 A scholar may be a well-bred man, or he may not. The en 
 thusiast is introduced to polished scholars in society, and is 
 chilled and silenced by finding himself not in their element. 
 They all have somewhat which he has not, and, it seems, ought 
 to have. But if he finds the scholar apart from his compan 
 ions, it is then the enthusiast s turn, and the scholar has no 
 defence, but must deal on his terms. Now they must fight 
 the battle out on their private strengths. What is the talent 
 of that character so common, the successful man of the 
 world, in all marts, senates, and drawing-rooms 1 Manners : 
 manners of power ; sense to see his advantage, and manners 
 up to it. See him approach his man. He knows that troops 
 behave as they are handled at first; that is his cheap secret; 
 just what happens to every two persons who meet on any af 
 fair, one instantly perceives that he has the key of the situa 
 tion, that his will comprehends the other s will, as the cat 
 does the mouse ; and he has only to use courtesy, and furnish 
 good-natured reasons to his victim to cover up the chain; lest 
 he be shamed into resistance. 
 
 The theatre in which this science of manners has a formal 
 importance is not with us a court, but dress-circles, wherein, 
 after the close of the day s business, men and women meet at 
 leisure, for mutual entertainment, in ornamented drawing- 
 rooms. Of course, it has every variety of attraction and merit : 
 but, to earnest persons, to youths or maidens who have great 
 objects at heart, we cannot extol it highly. A well-dressed, 
 talkative company, where each is bent to amuse the other, 
 yet the high-born Turk who came hither fancied that every 
 woman seemed to be suffering for a chair ; that all the talkers 
 were brained and exhausted by the deoxygenated air : it 
 spoiled the best persons : it put all on stilts. Yet here are 
 the secret biographies written and read. The aspect of that 
 man is repulsive ; I do not wish to deal with him. The other 
 
BEHAVIOR. 413 
 
 is irritable, shy, and on his guard. The youth looks humble 
 and manly: l" ch"<e him. Look on this woman. There is 
 not beauty, nor brilliai/ I |n.\vcr to 
 
 serve vmi ; but all see her gladly ; her whole air and ii: 
 sion are healthful. Here come the sentimentalists, and the 
 inval: is Elise, who caught eold in coining into the 
 
 world, and has always increased it since. Here are 
 manners : and thievish manners. "Look at Nrtl. 
 said Fuscli ; he looks like a rat that has seen a cat." In the 
 shallow company, easily excited, easily tired, here is the col 
 umnar Bernard : the Alleghanies do not express more repose 
 than his behavior. Here are the sweet following eyes of 
 Cecile : it seemed always that >he demanded the heart, 
 ing can be more excellent in kind than the Corinthian grace 
 of Gertrude s manners, and yet Blanche, who has no manners, 
 has better manners than she ; for +he movements of Blanche 
 are the sallies of a spirit which is sufficient for the moment, 
 and she can afford to express even- thought by instant I 
 
 Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a con 
 trivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is 
 shrewd to detect those who do not belong to her train, and 
 seldom wastes her attentions. Society is very swift in its in 
 stincts, and, if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers at 
 you ; or quietly drops you. The first weapon enrages the 
 party attacked : the second is still more effective, but is not 
 to be resisted, as the date of the transaction is not 
 found. People grow up and grow old under this infliction, and 
 never suspect the truth, ascribing the solitude which acts on 
 them very injuriously to any cause but the right one. 
 
 The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Necessity is the 
 law of all who are not self-possessed. Those who are not self- 
 possessed obtrude and pain us. Some men appear to feel that 
 they belong to a Pariah caste. They fear to offend, they bend 
 and apologize, and walk through life with a timid step, 
 sometimes dream that we are in a well-dressed company with 
 out a ^ mo Godfrey acts ever as if he suffered from some 
 mortifying circumstance. The hero should find himself at 
 home, wherever he is ; should impart comfort by his own se 
 curity and good-nature to all beholders. The hero is suffered 
 to be himself. A person of strong mind comes to pt 
 that for him an immunity is secured so long as he renders to 
 society that service which is native and proper to him, an 
 immunity from all the observances, yea, and duties, which so- 
 
414 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 ciety so tyrannically imposes on the rank and file of its mem 
 bers. "Euripides," says Aspasia, "has not the fine manners 
 of Sophocles : but," she adds good-humoredly, " the movers and 
 masters of our souls have surely a right to throw out their 
 limbs as carelessly as they please, on the world that belongs to 
 them, and before the creatures they have animated." 1 * 
 
 Manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar than haste. 
 Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, 
 and not crushed into corners. Friendship requires more time 
 than poor busy men can usually command. Here comes to me 
 Roland, with a delicacy of sentiment leading and inwrapping 
 him like a divine cloud or holy ghost. T is a great destitution 
 to both that this should not be entertained with large leis 
 ures, but contrariwise should be balked by importunate affairs. 
 
 But through this lustrous varnish, the reality is ever shin 
 ing. T is hard to keep the what from breaking through this 
 pretty painting of the liow. The core will come to the sur 
 face. Strong will and keen perception overpower old manners, 
 and create new ; and the thought of the present moment has 
 a greater value than all the past. In persons of character, we 
 do not remark manners, because of their instantaneousness. 
 We are surprised by the thing done, out of all power to watch 
 the way of it. Yet nothing is more charming than to recog 
 nize the great style which runs through the actions of such. 
 People masquerade before us in their fortunes, titles, offices, 
 and connections, as academic or civil presidents, or senators, 
 or professors, or great lawyers, and impose on the frivolous, 
 and a good deal on each other, by these fames. At least, it is 
 a point of prudent good manners to treat these reputations 
 tenderly, as if they were merited. But the sad realist knows 
 these fellows at a glance, and they know him ; as when in 
 Paris the chief of the police enters a ball-room, so many dia 
 monded pretenders shrink and make themselves as inconspicu 
 ous as they can, or give him a supplicating look as they pass. 
 " I had received," said a sib} 7 !, "I had received at birth the 
 fatal gift of penetration " ; and these Cassandras are always born. 
 
 Manners impress as they indicate real power. A man who 
 is sure of his point, carries a broad and contented expression, 
 which everybody reads. And you cannot rightly train one to 
 an air and manner, except by making him the kind of man of 
 whom that manner is the natural expression. Nature forever 
 puts a premium on reality. What is done for effect, is seen 
 
 * Landor, Pericles and Aspasia. 
 
BEHAVIOR. 415 
 
 to be done for effect ; what is done for love, is felt to be done 
 for love. A man inspires allectinn and honor, Uvaiisr he \vas 
 B0t lying in wait for these. The things of a man tor which 
 we visit him, were done in the dark ami the cold. A little in 
 tegrity is better than any career. So deep are the sources of 
 this surface-action, that even the size of your companion seems 
 to vary with his treed.. in of thought. Not only is he lar^-r, 
 when at ease, and his thoughts generous, but everything 
 around him becomes variable with expression. No carpenter s 
 rule, no rod and chain, will measure the dimensions of any 
 house or house-lot : go into the house : if the proprietor is 
 constrained and deterring, t is of no importance how large his 
 house, how l>eautiful his grounds, you quickly come to the 
 end of all : but if the man is self-possessed, happy, and at 
 home, his house is deep-founded, indefinitely lar-e and interest 
 ing, the roof and dome buoyant as the sky. I nder the hum 
 blest, roof, the commonest person in plain clothes sits there 
 massive, cheerful, yet formidable like the Egyptian colossi. 
 
 Neither Aristotle, nor Leibnitz, nor Junius, nor Champollion 
 has set down the grammar-rules of this dialect, older than 
 SaiiM-rit : but they who cannot yet read English, can read this. 
 Men take each other s measure, when they meet for the first 
 time, and every time they meet. How do they get this 
 rapid knowledge, even before they speak, of each other s pow 
 er and dispositions 1 One would say, that the persuasion of 
 their speech is not in what they say, or, that men do not 
 convince by their argument, but by their personality, by 
 who they are, and what they said and did heretofore. A man 
 already strong is listened to, and everything he says is ap 
 plauded. Another opposes him with sound argument, but the 
 argument is scouted, until by and by it gets into the mind 
 of some weighty person ; then it begins to tell on the com 
 munity. 
 
 Self-reliance is the basis of behavior, as it is the guaranty 
 that the powers are not squandered in too much demonstra 
 tion. In this country, where school education is universal, 
 we have a superficial culture, and a profusion of reading and 
 writing and expression. We parade our nobilities in poems 
 and orations, instead of working them up into happiness. 
 There is a whisper out of the ages to him who can understand 
 it, whatever is known to thyself alone has always very 
 great value. There is some reason to believe, that, when a 
 man does not write his poetry, it escapes by other vents 
 
416 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 through him, instead of the one vent of writing; clings to 
 his form and manners, whilst poets have often nothing poetical 
 about them except their verses. Jacobi said, that " when a 
 man has fully expressed his thought, he has somewhat less 
 possession of it." One would say, the rule is, What a man 
 is irresistibly urged to say, helps him and us. In explaining 
 his thought to others, he explains it to himself : but when he 
 opens it for show, it corrupts him. 
 
 Society is the stage on which manners are shown ; novels 
 are their literature. Novels are the journal or record of man 
 ners ; and the new importance of these books derives from the 
 fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat 
 this part of life more worthily. The novels used to be all 
 alike, and had a quite vulgar tone. The novels used to lead 
 us on to a foolish interest in the fortunes of the boy and girl 
 they described. The boy was to be raised from a humble to a 
 high position. He was in want of a wife and a castle, and the 
 object of the story was to supply him with one or both. 
 We watched sympathetically, step by step, his climbing, until, 
 at last, the point is gained, the wedding-day is fixed, and we 
 follow the gala procession home to the bannered portal, when 
 the doors are slammed in our face, and the poor reader is left 
 outside in the cold, not enriched by so much as an idea, or a 
 virtuous impulse. 
 
 But the victories of character are instant, and victories for 
 all. Its greatness enlarges all. We are fortified by every 
 heroic anecdote. The novels are as useful as Bibles, if they 
 teach you the secret, that the best of life is conversation, and 
 the greatest success is confidence, or perfect understanding be 
 tween sincere people. T is a French definition of friendship, 
 rien que ^entendre, good understanding. The highest compact 
 we can make with our fellow, is, * Let there be truth be 
 tween us two forevermore. That is the charm in all good 
 novels, as it is the charm in all good histories, that the heroes 
 mutually understand, from the first, and deal loyally, and with 
 a profound trust in each other. It is sublime to feel and say 
 of another, I need never meet, or speak, or write to him : we 
 need not reinforce ourselves, or send tokens of remembrance : 
 I rely on him as on myself: if he did thus or thus, I know it 
 was right. 
 
 In all the superior people I have met, I notice directness, 
 truth spoken more truly, as if everything of obstruction of 
 malformation, had been trained away. What have they to 
 
BEHAVIOR. 417 
 
 conceal? What have they to exhibit? Between simple and 
 noble persons, there is always a quick intelligence : they rec- 
 ogni/e at sight, and meet on a better ground than the talents 
 and skills they may chance to possess, namely, on sincerity 
 and uprightness. For, it is not what talents or genius a man 
 has, but how he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship 
 and character. The man that stands by himself, the uni 
 stands bv him also. It is related of the monk Basle, tha<, 
 being excommunicated by the 1 ope, he was, at his death, sent 
 in charge of an angel to find a tit place of suffering in hell ; 
 but. sii.-h was the eloquence and good-humor of the monk, 
 that, wherever he went he was received gladly, and civilly 
 tn-ated, even by the most uncivil angels : and, when he came 
 to discourse with them, instead of contradicting or forcing him, 
 they took his part, and adopted his manners : and even good 
 angels came from far, to see him, and take up their abode 
 with him. The angel that was sent to find a place of torment 
 for him attempted to remove him to a worse pit, but with no 
 better success ; for such was the contented spirit of the monk, 
 that he found something to praise in every place and company, 
 though in hell, and made a kind of heaven of it. At last the 
 escorting angel returned with his prisoner to them that sent 
 him, saying, that no phlegethon could be found that would 
 burn him ; for that, in whatever condition, Basle remained in 
 corrigibly Basle. The legend says, his sentence was remitted, 
 and he was allowed to go into heaven, and was canonized as a 
 saint. 
 
 There is a stroke of magnanimity in the correspondence of 
 Bonaparte with his brother Joseph, when the latter was King 
 of Spain, and complained that he missed in Napoleon s letters 
 the affectionate tone which had marked their childish corre 
 spondence. "I am sorry," replies Napoleon, "you think you 
 shall find your brother again only in the Klysian Fields. It is 
 natural, that at forty, he should not feel toward- YOU as he did 
 at twelve. But his feelings towards you have greater truth 
 and .-tmigth. His friendship has the features of his mind." 
 
 Hew much we forgive in those who yield us the rare specta 
 cle of heroic manners ! We will pardon them the want of 
 books, of arts, and even of the gentler virtues. How tena 
 ciously we remember them ! Here is a lesson which I brought 
 along with me in boyhood from the Latin School, and which 
 ranks with the best of Roman anecdotes. Marcus Scaurus 
 was accused by Quintus Varius Hispanus, that he had excited 
 
 18* AA 
 
418 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 the allies to take arms against the Republic. But he, full of 
 firmness and gravity, defended himself in this manner : " Quin- 
 tus Varius Hispanus alleges that Marcus Scaurus, President of 
 the Senate, excited the allies to arms : Marcus Scaurus, Presi 
 dent of the Senate, denies it. There is no witness. Which 
 do you believe, Romans 1 " " Utri creditis, Quirites ? " When 
 he had said these words, he was absolved by the assembly of 
 the people. 
 
 I have seen manners that make a similar impression with 
 personal beauty ; that give the like exhilaration, and refine us 
 like that ; and, in memorable experiences, they are suddenly 
 better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly. But 
 they must be marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with 
 real beauty. They must always show self-control : you shall 
 not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word ; 
 and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. 
 Then they must be inspired by the good heart. There is no 
 beautilicr of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish 
 to scatter joy and not pain around us. T is good to give a 
 stranger a meal, or a night s lodging. T is better to be hospi 
 table to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a 
 companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to 
 a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good 
 light. Special precepts are not to be thought of : the talent 
 of well-doing contains them all. Every hour will show a duty 
 as paramount as that of my whim just now ; and yet I will 
 write it, that there is one topic peremptorily forbidden to 
 all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. 
 If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have 
 headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, 1 beseech 
 you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the 
 morning, to which all the housemates bring serene and pleasant 
 thoughts, by corruption and groans. Come out of the azure. 
 Love the day. Do not leave the sky out of your landscape. 
 The oldest and the most deserving person should come very 
 modestly into any newly awaked company, respecting the divine 
 communications, out of which all must be presumed to have 
 newly come. An old man who added an elevating culture to 
 a large experience of life, said to me : " When you come into 
 the room, I think I will study how to make humanity beautiful 
 to you." 
 
 As respects the delicate question of culture, T do not think 
 that any other than negative rules can be laid down. For 
 
BEHAVIOR. 419 
 
 positive rules, for suggestion, Nature alone inspires it. Who 
 dan- assume to guide a youth, a maid, to perfect manners? 
 the golden mcaii is so delicate, difficult, say frankly, unat 
 tainable. NY hat finest hands would not be clumsy to sketch 
 the genial precepts of the young girl s demeanor ] The chances 
 seem infinite against success ; and yet success is continually 
 attained. There must not be secondariness, and tis a thousand 
 to one that her air and manner will at once betray that she is 
 not primary, but that there is some other one or many of her 
 class, to whom she habitually postpones herself. But Nature 
 lifts her easily, and without knowing it, over these impossibili 
 ties, and we are continually surprised with graces and felicities 
 not only uuteachable, but undescribable. 
 
VI. 
 
 WORSHIP 
 
 Tli is is he, who, felled by foes, 
 
 Sprung harmless up. refreshed by blowi: 
 
 H.- i<. captivity wa- sold, 
 
 But him no priMD-bm would hold: 
 
 Though they >ealed him in :i rock, 
 
 Mountain chains he can unlock: 
 
 1 hrown t<> lion- lor their moat, 
 
 The crouching lion kied his feet: 
 
 Bound to the Stake, no flames appalled, 
 
 But arched o er him an honoring vault. 
 
 This is he men miscall Fate, 
 
 Threading dark ways, arriving late, 
 
 But ever cominp iiTtime to crown 
 
 The truth, and hurl wrongdoers down. 
 
 He is the oldest, and best known, 
 
 More near than aught thou call st thy own, 
 
 Yet, greeted in another - 
 
 Di-roncorts with glad urpri-r. 
 
 Thi- is Jove, who. deaf to prayers, 
 
 Floods with blessings unawares. 
 
 Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, 
 
 S.-v.-rinjr rightly his from thine, 
 
 Which is human, which dirine. 
 

 WORSHIP. 
 
 SOME of my friends have complained, when the preceding 
 papers were read, that we discussed Fate, Power, and 
 Wealth, on too low a platform; gave too much line to the evil 
 spirit of the times ; too many cakes to Cerberus; that we ran 
 Cudworth s risk of making, by excess of candor, the argument 
 of atheism so strong, that he "could not answer it. 1 have no 
 fears of being forced in my own despite to play, as we say, the 
 devil s attorney. I have no infirmity of faith; no belief that 
 it is of much importance what I or any man may say : I am 
 sure that a certain truth will be said through me, though I 
 should be dumb, ,r though 1 should try to say the reverse. 
 N..r do I fear scepticism for any good soul. A just thinker 
 will allow full swing to his scepticism. I dip my pen in the 
 blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot. 
 I have no sympathy with a poor man I knew, who, when sui 
 cides abounded, told me he dared not look at his razor. We 
 are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may 
 be said to be at heart on the side of truth. 
 
 I see not why we should give ourselves such sanctified airs. 
 If the Divine Providence has hid from men neither disease, 
 nor deformity, nor corrupt society, but has stated itself out in 
 passions, in war, in trade, in the love of power and pleasure, 
 in hunger and need, in tyrannies, literatures, and arts, let 
 us not be so nice that we cannot write these facts down O 
 ly as they stand, or doubt but there is a counter-statement as 
 ponderous, which we can arrive at, and which, being put, will 
 make all square. The solar system has no anxiety about its 
 reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe ; nor 
 have ! any le-ir that a sceptical bias can be given by leaning 
 hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which 
 the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh. The strength of 
 
424 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 that principle is not measured in ounces and pounds ; it tyran 
 nizes at the centre of Nature. We may well give scepticism 
 as much line as we can. The spirit will return and fill us. It 
 drives the drivers. It counterbalances any accumulations of 
 power. 
 
 " Heaven kindly gave our blood a moral flow." 
 
 We are born loyal. The whole creation is made of hooks and 
 eyes, of bitumen, of sticking-plaster, and whether your com 
 munity is made in Jerusalem or in California, of saints or of 
 wreckers, it coheres in a perfect ball. Men as naturally make 
 a state, or a church, as caterpillars a web. If they were more 
 refined, it would be less formal, it would be nervous like that 
 of the Shakers, who, from long habit of thinking and feeling 
 together, it is said, are affected in the same way, at the same 
 time, to work and to play, and as they go with perfect sympa 
 thy to their tasks in the field or shop, so are they inclined for 
 a ride or a journey at the same instant, and the horses come 
 up with the family carriage unbespoken to the door. 
 
 We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears 
 apples. A self-poise belongs to every particle ; and a rectitude 
 to every mind, and is the Nemesis and protector of every society. 
 I and my neighbors have been bred in the notion, that, unless 
 we came soon to some good church, Calvinism, or Behmen- 
 ism, or Romanism, or Mormonism, there would be a univer 
 sal thaw and dissolution. No Isaiah or Jeremy has arrived. 
 Nothing can exceed the anarchy that has followed in our skies. 
 The stern old faiths have all pulverized. T is a whole popu 
 lation of gentlemen and ladies out in search of religions. T is 
 as flat anarchy in our ecclesiastic realms, as that which ex 
 isted in Massachusetts, in the Revolution, or which prevails 
 now on the slope of the Rocky Mountains or Pike s Peak. 
 Yet we make shift to live. Men are loyal. Nature has self- 
 poise in all her works ; certain proportions in which oxygen 
 and azote combine, and, not less a harmony in faculties, a fit 
 ness in the spring and the regulator. 
 
 The decline of the influence of Calvin, or Fenelon, or Wes 
 ley, or Channing, need give us no uneasiness. The builder of 
 heaven has not so ill constructed his creature as that the re 
 ligion, that is, the public nature, should fall out : the public 
 and the private element, like north and south, like inside and 
 outside, like centrifugal and centripetal, adhere to every soul, 
 and cannot be subdued, except the soul is dissipated. God 
 builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and 
 religions. 
 
WORSHIP. 425 
 
 In the last chapters, wo t routed some particulars of the 
 question of culture. Hut the whole state of man is a state of 
 culture ; and its flowering and completion may bo described ftl 
 Religion, or "Worship. There is always some religion, some 
 hope and fear extended into the invisible, from the hlind 
 boding which nails a horseshoe to the mast or the threshold, 
 up to the song of the Klders in the Apocalypse. But the re 
 ligion cannot rise above the state of the votary. Heaven al- 
 wavs bears some proportion to earth. The god of the canni 
 bals will ho a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the 
 merchants a merchant. In all ages, souls out of time, ex- 
 traonlinarv, prophetic, are born, who are rather related to the 
 svstmi of the \\orld, than to their particular age and locality. 
 These announce absolute truths, which, with whatever rever 
 ence received, are speedily dragged down into a savage inter 
 pretation. The interior tribes of our Indians, and some of 
 the Pacific-Islanders, flog their gods, when things take an un 
 favorable turn. The Greek poets did not hesitate to let loose 
 their petulant wit on their deities also. Laomedon, in his 
 anger at Neptune and Apollo, who had built Troy for him, and 
 demanded their price, does not hesitate to menace them that 
 he will cut their ears oft*.* Among our Norse forefathers, King 
 Olaf s mode of converting Ky vind to Christianity was to put a 
 pan of glowing coals on his belly, which burst asunder. " Wilt 
 thou now, Ey vind, believe in Christ 1 " asks Olaf, in excellent 
 faith. Another argument was an adder put into the mouth 
 of the reluctant disciple Rand, who refused to believe. 
 
 Christianity, in the romantic ages, signified European cul 
 ture, the grafted or meliorated tree in a crab forest. And 
 to marry a pagan wife or husband was to marry Beast, and 
 voluntarily to take a step backwards towards the baboon. 
 
 " Honrit had verament, 
 
 A daughter Koth fair and pent, 
 
 But she was heathen Sarazine, 
 
 And Vortipjern for love fine 
 
 Her took to fere ;ind to wife, 
 
 And was cursed in all hi> life; 
 
 For he let Christian wed heathen, 
 
 And mixed our blood as flesh and mathen." t 
 
 "What Gothic mixtures the Christian creed drew from the pagan 
 sources, Richard of Devizes s chronicle of Richard I. s crusade, 
 in the twelfth century, may show. King Richard taunts God 
 with forsaking him : " fie ! how unwilling should I be to 
 
 * Iliad, Book xxi. 1. 455. t Moths or worms. 
 
426 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 forsake thee, in so forlorn and dreadful a position, were I thy 
 lord and advocate, as thou art mine. In sooth, my standards 
 will in future be despised, not through my fault, but through 
 thine ; in sooth, not through any cowardice of my warfare, art 
 thou thyself, my king and my God, conquered this day, and 
 not Richard thy vassal." The religion of the early English 
 poets is anomalous, so devout and so blasphemous, in the same 
 breath. Such is Chaucer s extraordinary confusion of heaven 
 and earth in the picture of Dido. 
 
 " She was so fair, 
 
 So young, so lusty, with her even glad, 
 That if that God that heaven and earthe made 
 Would have a love for beauty and goodness, 
 And womanhede, truth, and seernliness, 
 Whom should he loven but this lady sweet? 
 There n is no woman to him half so meet." 
 
 With these grossnesses, we complacently compare our own 
 taste and decorum. We think and speak with more temper 
 ance and gradation, but is not indifferentism as bad as 
 superstition 1 
 
 We live in a transition period, when the old faiths which 
 comforted nations, and not only so, but made nations, seem to 
 have spent their force. I do not find the religions of men at 
 this moment very creditable to them, but either childish and 
 insignificant, or unmanly and effeminating. The fatal trait is 
 the divorce between religion and morality. Here are know- 
 nothing religions, or churches that prescribe intellect ; scorta- 
 tory religions ; slave-holding and slave-trading religions ; and, 
 even in the decent populations, idolatries wherein the white 
 ness of the ritual covers scarlet indulgence. The lover of the 
 old religion complains that our contemporaries, scholars as well 
 as merchants, succumb to a great despair, have corrupted 
 into a timorous conservatism, and believe in nothing. In our 
 large cities, the population is godless, materialized, no bond, 
 no fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm. These are not men, but 
 hungers, thirsts, fevers, and appetites walking. How is it peo 
 ple manage to live on, so aimless as they are ? After their 
 peppercorn aims are gained, it seems as if the lime in their 
 bones alone held them together, and not any worthy purpose. 
 There is no faith in the intellectual, none in the moral universe. 
 There is faith in chemistry, in meat, and wine, in wealth, in 
 machinery, in the steam-engine, galvanic battery, turbine- 
 wheels, sewing machines, and in public opinion, but not in 
 divine causes. A silent revolution has loosed the tension of the 
 
WORSHIP. 427 
 
 old religious soots, and, in place of the gravity and permanence 
 of those tociettafl of opinion, they run into freak and extrava 
 gance. In creeds never was such levity; witness the heathcn- 
 i>ni< in Christianity, the periodic " revivals," the Millennium 
 mathematics, tin- peacock ritualism, the retrogression to IVpery, 
 tlie maundering of Mormons, the squalor t .f Mesmerism, the 
 deliration of rappings, the rat and mouse revelation, thumps 
 in table drawers, and Mack art. The architecture, the music, 
 the prayer, partake of the madness: the arts sink into shift 
 and make-believe. Not knowing what to do, we ape our an 
 cestors ; the churches stagger backward to the mummeries of 
 the Dark Ages. 13y the irresistible maturing of the general 
 mind, the Christian traditions have lost their hold. The dogma 
 of the mystic offices of Christ being dropped, and he standing 
 on his genius as a moral teacher, t is impossible to maintain 
 the old emphasis of his personality : and it recedes, as all per 
 sons must, before the sublimity of the moral laws. From this 
 change, and in the momentary absem-e of any religious genius 
 that could offset the immense material activity, there is a 
 feeling that religion is gone. When Paul Leronx offered 
 his article " Dicti " to the conductor of a leading French 
 journal, he replied, "La >/t f*ft<>/t de Dieu manqite cTactualite" 
 In Italy, Mr. < ;iad>tone said of the late King of Naples, " It 
 has been a proverb, that he has erected the negation of God 
 into a system of government. 1 In this country, the like stupe 
 faction was in the air, and the phrase "higher law" became a 
 political jibe. What proof of infidelity, like the toleration 
 and propagandism of slavery 1 What, like the direction of 
 education 1 What, like the facility of conversion ? What, like 
 the externality of churches that once sucked the roots of right 
 and wrong, and now have perished away till they are a speck 
 of whitewash on the wall ] What proof of scepticism like the 
 base rate at which the highest mental and moral gifts are held ] 
 Let a man attain the highest and broadest culture that any 
 American lias possessed, then let him die by sea-storm, railroad 
 collision, or other accident, and all America will acquiesce that 
 the best thing lias happened to him; that, after the education 
 has gone far, such is the expensiveness of America, that the 
 best use to put a fine person to, is, to drown him to save his 
 board. 
 
 Another scar of this scepticism is the distrust in human vir 
 tue. It is believed by well-dressed proprietors that there is no 
 more virtue than they possess ; that the solid portion of socie- 
 
428 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 ty exist for the arts of comfort : that life is an affair to put 
 somewhat between the upper and lower mandibles. How 
 prompt the suggestion of a low motive ! Certain patriots in 
 England devoted themselves for years to creating a public 
 opinion that should break down the corn-laws and establish 
 free trade. Well, says the man in the street, Cobden got 
 a stipend out of it. Kossuth fled hither across the ocean to 
 try if he could rouse the New World to a sympathy with 
 European liberty. * Ay, says New York, he made a hand 
 some thing of it, enough to make him comfortable for life. 
 
 See what allowance vice finds in the respectable and well- 
 conditioned class. If a pickpocket intrude into the society of 
 gentlemen, they exert what moral force they have, and he 
 finds himself uncomfortable, and glad to get away. But if an 
 adventurer go through all the forms, procure himself to be 
 elected to a post of trust, as of senator, or president, 
 though by the same arts as we detest in the house-thief, the 
 same gentlemen who agree to discountenance the private 
 rogue, will be forward to show civilities and marks of respect 
 to the public one : and no amount of evidence of his crimes 
 will prevent them giving him ovations, complimentary dinners, 
 opening their own houses to him, and priding themselves on his 
 acquaintance. We were not deceived by the professions of 
 the private adventurer, the louder he talked of his honor, 
 the faster we counted our spoons ; but we appeal to the sanc 
 tified preamble of the messages and proclamations of the 
 public sinner, as the proof of sincerity. It must be that they 
 who pay this homage have said to themselves, On the whole, 
 we don t know about this that you call honesty ; a bird in the 
 hand is better. 
 
 Even well-disposed, good sort of people are touched with 
 the same infidelity, and for brave, straightforward action, use 
 half-measures and compromises. Forgetful that a little meas 
 ure is a great error, forgetful that a wise mechanic uses a 
 sharp tool, they go on choosing the dead men of routine. But 
 the official men can in no wise help you in any question of to 
 day, they deriving entirely from the old dead things. Only 
 those can help in counsel or conduct who did not make a 
 party pledge to defend this or that, but who were appointed by 
 God Almighty, before they came into the world, to stand for 
 this which they uphold. 
 
 It has been charged that a want of sincerity in the leading 
 men is a vice general throughout American society. But the 
 
WORSHIP. 429 
 
 multitude of the siek shall not make us deny the existence of 
 
 health. In spite of our imbecility and terrors, and "universal 
 of religion." fa, fa., tin- moral B6HM reappears to-day 
 With the Bmme morning newness that has been from of old 
 the fountain of beauty and strength. You say, there is no 
 religion now. T is like Siiying in rainy weather, there is no 
 sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one of his super 
 lative etiects. The religion of the cultivated elass now, to be 
 sure, consists in an avoidance of acts and engagements which it 
 was once their religion to assume. But this avoidance will 
 yield spontaneous forms in their due hour. There is a princi 
 ple which is the basis of things, which all speech aims to say, 
 and all action to evolve, a simple, quiet, undescribed, uiule- 
 scrihable presence, dwelling very peacefully in us, our rightful 
 lord ; we are not to do, but to let do ; not to work, but t he 
 worked upon ; and to this homage there is a consent^ of all 
 thoughtful and just men in all ages and conditions. To this 
 sentiment belong vast and sudden enlargements of power. 
 T is remarkable that our faith in ecstasy consists with total 
 inexperience of it, It is the order of the world to educate 
 with accuracy the senses and the understanding; and the en 
 ginery at work to draw out these powers in priority, no 
 doubt, has its office. But we are never without a hint that 
 these powers arc mediate and servile, and that we arc one day 
 to deal with real being,- -688611060 with essences. Even the 
 fury of material activity has some results friendly to moral 
 health. The energetic action of the times develops individu 
 alism, and the religious appear isolated. I esteem this 
 in the right direction. Heaven deals with us on no represent 
 ative svstem. Souls are not saved in bundles. The Spirit 
 saith to the man, How is it with thee ? thee personally ? is it 
 well] is it ill] Fora great nature, it is a happiness to es 
 cape a religions training, -- religion of character is so apt to 
 be invaded. Religion must always be a crab fruit : it cannot 
 be grafted and keep its wild beauty. " I have seen." said a 
 traveller who had known the extremes of society, " I have 
 seen human nature in all its forms, it is everywhere the same, 
 but the wilder it is, the more virtuous." 
 
 . the old forms of religion decay, and that a scepti 
 cism devastates the community. I do nut think it can be cured 
 or stayed by any modification of the<l.>_:ic en eds, much less 
 by theolugic discipline. The cure for false theology is mother- 
 wit. Forget your books and traditions, and obey your moral 
 
430 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 perceptions at this hour. That which is signified by the words 
 Amoral " and " spiritual " is a lasting essence, and, with what 
 ever illusions we have loaded them, will certainly bring back 
 the words, age after age, to their ancient meaning. I know no 
 words that mean so much. In our definitions, we grope after 
 the spiritual by describing it as invisible. The true meaning 
 of spiritual is real; that law which executes itself, which works 
 without means, and which cannot be conceived as not existing 
 Men talk of " mere morality," which is much as if one should 
 say Poor God, with nobody to help him. 1 find the omni 
 presence and the almightiness in the reaction of every atom in 
 Nature T can best indicate by examples those reactions by 
 which every part of Nature replies to the purpose of the actor, 
 beneficently to the good, penally to the bad. Let us replace 
 sentimeiitalism by realism, and dare to uncover those simple 
 and terrible laws, which, be they seen or unseen, pervade and 
 
 Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. 
 But a day comes when he begins to care that he do not cheat 
 his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his mar 
 ket-cart into a chariot of the sun. What a day dawns, when 
 we have taken to heart the doctrine of faith ! to prefer, as a 
 better investment, being to doing ; being to seeming ; logic j to 
 rhythm and to display ; the year to the day ; the life to 1 
 year; character to performance ; and have come to know 
 that justice will be done us ; and, if our genius is slow, the 
 term will be lone:. ,. , 
 
 T is certain that worship stands in some commanding rela* 
 tion to the health of man, and to his highest powers, so as 
 be, in some manner, the source of intellect. All the great ages 
 have been ages of belief. I mean, when there was any extraor 
 dinary power of performance, when great national movements 
 began, when arts appeared, when heroes existed when poems 
 were made, the human soul was in earnest, and had fixed its 
 thoughts on spiritual verities, with as strict a grasp as that of 
 the hands on the sword, or the pencil, or the trowel It is 
 true that genius takes its rise out of the mountains ot : 
 tude that all beauty and power which men covet are some 
 how born out of that" Alpine district ; that any extraordinary 
 de-ree of beauty in man or woman involves a moral charm 
 Thus I think, we very slowly admit in another man a higher 
 de-ree of moral sentiment than our own, - a finer conscience, 
 more impressionable, or, which marks minuter degrees ; an ei 
 
WORSHIP. 431 
 
 to hear acuter notes of right and wrong, than we can. I think 
 we listen suspiciously and very slowly to any evidence to that 
 point. But, onee satisfied of such superiority, we set no limit 
 to our expectation of his genius. l n i* s i ( h p T-ons are nearer 
 to the secret of Cod than others; are bathed l>y Bl 
 waters; they hear notices, tliey see visions, where otliers are 
 vacant. \Ye believe that holiness confers a certain insight, 
 because not by our private, but by our public force, can we. 
 share and know the natmv of thin--;. 
 
 . There is an intimate intenU prudence of intellect and morals. 
 (liven the equality of two intellects, which will form the 
 mo>t reliable judgments, the good, or the bad hearted? "The 
 heart has its arguments, with which the understanding is not 
 acquainted." For the heart is at once aware of the state of 
 health or disease, which is the controlling state, that is, of 
 sanity or of insanity, prior, of course, to all question of the 
 ingenuity of ar-unu-nt>. tin- amount of facts, or the elegance 
 of rhetoric. So intimate is this alliance of mind and heart, 
 that talent uniformly sinks with character. The bias of errors 
 of principle carries awav men into perilous courses, as soon as 
 their will does not control their passion or talent. Hence the 
 extraordinary blunder.-, and tinal wrong head, into which men 
 spoiled by ambition usually fall. Hence the remedy for all 
 blunders, the cure of blindness, the cure of crime, is love. 
 u A- much love, so much mind," said the Latin proverb. The 
 superiority that has no superior ; the redeemer and instructor 
 of soids, as it is their primal essence, is love. 
 
 The moral must be the measure of health. If your eye is 
 on the eternal. voiir intellect will grow, and your opinions and 
 actions will have a beauty which no learning or combined ad 
 vantages of other men can rival. The moment of your ! 
 faith, and acceptance of the lucrative standard, will be marked 
 in the pause, or solstice of genius, the sequent retro-r 
 and the inevitable loss of attraction toother minds. The vul 
 gar are sensible of the change in you, and of your descent, 
 thou-h they clap you on the luck, and congratulate you on 
 your incivasod common sei. 
 
 Our recent culture ha* been in natural science. "We have 
 learned the manners of the sun and of the moon, of the rivers 
 and the rains, of the mineral and elemental kingdom*, of 
 plants and animals. Man has learned to weigh the sun. and 
 its weight neither loses nor gains. The path of a star, tho 
 moment of an eclipse, can be determined to the fraction of a 
 
432 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 second. Well, to him the book of history, the book of love, 
 the lures of passion, and the commandments of duty are 
 opened ; and the next lesson taught, is, the continuation of the 
 inflexible law of matter into the subtile kingdom of will, and 
 of thought ; that, if, in sidereal ages, gravity and projection 
 keep their craft, and the ball never loses its way in its wild 
 path through space, a secreter gravitation, a secreter pro 
 jection, rule not less tyrannically in human history, and keep 
 the balance of power from age to age unbroken. For, though 
 the new element of freedom and an individual has been admit 
 ted, yet the primordial atoms are prefigured and predetermined 
 to moral issues, are in search of justice, and ultimate right is 
 done. Religion or worship is the attitude of those who see 
 this unity, intimacy, and sincerity ; who see that, against all 
 appearances, the nature of things works for truth and right 
 forever. 
 
 T is a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of 
 gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth. Those laws do 
 not stop where our eyes lose them, but push the same geome 
 try and chemistry up into the invisible plane of social and ra 
 tional life, so that, look where we will, in a boy s game, or in 
 the strifes of races, a perfect reaction, a perpetual judgment 
 keeps watch and ward. And this appears in a class of facts 
 which concerns all men, within and above their creeds. 
 
 Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances : It 
 was somebody s name, or he happened to be there at the time, 
 or, it was so then, and another day it would have been other 
 wise. Strong men believe in cause and effect. The man was 
 born to do it, and his father was born to be the father of him 
 and of this deed, and, by looking narrowly, you shall see there 
 was no luck in the matter, but it was all a problem in arith 
 metic, or an experiment in chemistry. The curve of the flight 
 of the moth is preordained, and all things go by number, rule, 
 and weight. 
 
 Scepticism is unbelief in cause and effect. A man does not 
 see, that, as he eats, so he thinks : as he deals, so he is, and so 
 he appears ; he does not see, that his son is the son of his 
 thoughts and of his actions ; that fortunes are not exceptions 
 but fruits ; that relation and connection are not somewhere 
 and sometimes, but everywhere and always ; no miscellany, no 
 exemption, no anomaly, bat method, and an even web ; and 
 what comes out, that was put in. As we are, so we do ; and 
 as we do, so is it done to us ; we are the builders of our for- 
 
WORSHIP. 433 
 
 tunes ; cant and lying and the attempt to secure a good which 
 QOt I doiii; to us. arc, once for all, balked and vain. But, 
 in the human mind, this tie of faith is made alive. The law- 
 is the basis of the human mind. In us, it is inspiration ; out 
 there in Nature, we see its fatal strength. We call it the mor 
 al sentiment. 
 
 We owe t" the Hindoo Scriptures a definition of Law, which 
 compares well with any in our Western books. " Law it is, 
 which is without name, or color, or hands, or feet ; which is 
 smallest of the least, and largest of the large ; all, and know 
 ing all things; which hears without ears, sees without eyes, 
 moves without feet, and sei/es without hands." 
 
 If any reader tax me with using vague and traditional 
 phrases, let me suggest to him, by a few examples, what kind 
 of a trust this is, and how real. Let me show him that the 
 dice are loaded ; that the colors are fast, because they are the 
 native colors of the fleece ; that the globe is a battery, because 
 every atom is a magnet ; and that the police and sincerity of 
 the Universe are secured by God s delegating his divinity to 
 every particle ; that there is no room for hypocrisy, no margin 
 for choice. 
 
 The -countryman leaving his native village, for the first time, 
 and going abroad, finds all his habits broken up. In a new 
 nation and language, his sect, as Quaker, or Lutheran, is lost. 
 What ! it is not then necessary to the order and existence of 
 society] He misses this, and the commanding eye of his 
 neighborhood, which held him to decorum. This is the peril 
 of New York, of New Orleans, of London, of Paris, to young 
 men. But aft r a little experience, he makes the discovery 
 that there are no large cities, none large enough to hide in ; 
 that the censors of action are as numerous and as near in 
 Paris, as in Littleton or Portland ; that the gossip is as prompt 
 and vengeful. There is no concealment, and, for each offence, 
 ral veiiuvanee ; that, reaction, or m>thin i / nlh nnj, or, 
 
 are "> /// /// cu ///- ;/ "/> /"/ //, is not a rule for Littleton or 
 Portland, but for the 1 niver-r. 
 
 We cannot span the coarsest muniment of virtue. We are 
 disgusted by iTMssip : yet it is of importance to keep the angels 
 in their proprieties, The smallest flv will draw blood, and 
 gossip is a weapon impossible to exclude from the privatest, 
 lectest Nature created a police of many ranks. 
 God has delegated himself to a million deputies. From these 
 low external penalties, the scale ascends. Next come the re- 
 
 TOL. II. 19 B B 
 
434 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 Bentments, the fears, which injustice calls out; then, the false 
 relations in which the offender is put to other men ; and the 
 reaction of his fault on himself, in the solitude and devasta 
 tion of his mind. 
 
 You cannot hide any secret. If the artist succor his flag 
 ging spirits by opium or wine, his work will characterize itself 
 as the effect of opium or wine. If you make a picture or a 
 statue, it sets the beholder in that state of mind you had, 
 when you made it. If you spend for show, on building, or 
 gardening, or on pictures, or on equipages, it will so appear 
 We are all physiognomists and penetrators of character, and 
 things themselves are detective. If you follow the suburban 
 fashion in building a sumptuous-looking house for a 1 
 monev, it will appear to all eyes as a cheap dear house. There 
 is no" privacy that cannot be penetrated. No secret can be 
 kept in the civilized world. Society is a masked ball where 
 every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding. 
 If a man wish to conceal anything he carries, those whom he 
 meets know that he conceals somewhat, and usually know what 
 he conceals. Is it otherwise if there be some belief or some 
 purpose he would bury in his breast] T is as hard to hid 
 as fire He is a strong man who can hold down his opinion. 
 A man cannot utter two or three sentences, without disclosing 
 to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and though 
 namely, whether in the kingdom of the senses and the under- 
 standing, or, in that of ideas and imagination in the realm of 
 intSs and duty. People seem not to see that their opinion 
 of the worM is aL a confession of character. We can only 
 see what we are, and if we misbehave we suspect others. The 
 le of Shakespeare or of Voltaire, of Thomas a Kempis or 
 of Bonaparte, characterizes those who give it. As gaslight 
 found Jbe the best nocturnal police, so the universe protects 
 
 ^^T^ffi 7 -!"* necessarily with musket an, 
 pike. Happy, if, seeing these, he can feel that he has better 
 
 To e 
 
 pe. , , , 
 
 muskets and pikes in his energy and cons ancy. 
 creature is his own weapon, however ^ llf ^\ co ^ eal f et m 
 himself a good while. His work is sword and shield Let hm, 
 a "se nofe, let him injure none. The way to mend the bad 
 | world is to create the right world. Here is a low political econo 
 my plotting to cut the throat of foreign competition and c 
 Hsh our own ; excluding others by force, or making war on 
 them or%y cunning tariffs, giving preference to worse wares 
 
WORSHIP. 435 
 
 of ours. But the real and lasting victories are those of peace, 
 and not of war. The way to conquer the foreign artisan, is, 
 not to kill him, hut to beat his work. And tin- Crystal I al 
 ;iid World Fairs, with their committees and pri/es on all 
 kinds of industry, are the result <>f this feeling. The Ameri 
 can workman who strikes ten blows with his hammer, whilst 
 the foreign workman only strikes one, is as ivally vanquishing 
 that foreigner, as if the blows were aimed at and told on his 
 person. I look on that man as happy, who, when there is 
 question of success, looks into his work for a reply, not into 
 the market, not into opinion, not into i atronage. In every 
 variety of human employment, in the mechanical and in the 
 tine arts, in navigation, in farming, in legislating, there are 
 among the numbers who do their task perfunctorily, as we 
 say, or just to pass, and as badly as they dare, there are 
 the workingmen, on whom the burden of the business falls, 
 those who love work, and love to see it rightly done, who 
 finish their task for its own sake ; and the state and the world 
 is happy, that has the most of such finishers. The world will 
 always do justice at last to such finishers : it cannot other 
 wise. He who has acquired the ability may wait securely the 
 occasion of making it felt and appreciated, and know that it 
 will not loiter. .Men talk as if victory were something fortu 
 nate. Work is victory. Wherever work is done, victory is 
 obtained. There is no chance, and no blanks. You want hut 
 one verdict : if you have your own, you are secure .of the 
 rest. And yet, if witnesses are wanted, witnesses are near. 
 There was never a man born so wise or good, but one or more 
 companions came into the world with him, who delight in his 
 faculty and report it. 1 cannot see without awe, that no man 
 thinks alone, and no man acts alone, but the divine 
 who came up with him into life, now under one disguise, 
 now under another, like a police in citi/.ens clothes, walk 
 with him. step for step, through the kingdom of time. 
 
 This reaction, this sincerity, is the property of all things. 
 To make our word or act sublime, we must make it real. It 
 is our system that counts, not the single word or unsupported 
 action. I se what laiiLfua-je you will, you can never say any 
 thing lint what you are. What I am, and what I think, is 
 conveyed to you, in spite of my efforts to hold it back. What 
 1 am has been secretly conveyed from me to another, whilst I 
 was vainly making up my mind to tell him it. He has heard 
 from me what I never spoke. 
 
436 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 As men get on in life, they acquire a love for sincerity, and 
 somewhat less solicitude to be lulled or amused. In the pro 
 gress of the character, there is an increasing faith in the moral 
 sentiment, and a decreasing faith in propositions. Young peo 
 ple admire talents, and particular excellences. As we grow 
 older, we value total powers and effects, as the spirit, or qual 
 ity of the man. We have another sight, and a new standard ; 
 an insight which disregards what is done for the eye, and 
 pierces to the doer ; an ear which hears not what men say, but 
 hears what they do not say. 
 
 There was a wise, devout man who is called, in the Catholic 
 Church St. Philip Neri, of whom many anecdotes touching 
 his discernment and benevolence are told at Naples and Home. 
 Amoncr the nuns in a convent not far from Rome, one had ap 
 peared who laid claim to certain rare gifts of inspiration arid 
 prophecy, and the abbess advised the Holy Father, at Rome 
 of the wonderful powers shown by her novice. The Pope < 
 not well know what to make of these new claims, and 1 tulip 
 coming in from a journey, one day, he consulted him. Phi lip 
 undertook to visit the nun, and ascertain her character, 
 threw himself on his mule, all travel-soiled as he was, and 
 hastened through the mud and mire to the distant convent. 
 He told the abbess the wishes of his Holiness, and begged her 
 to summon the nun without delay. The nun was sent for 
 and as soon as she came into the apartment, Philip stretched 
 out his leg all bespattered with mud, and desired her to draw 
 off his boots. The young nun, who had become the object of 
 much attention and respect, drew back with anger, and refused 
 the office Philip ran out of doors, mounted his mule, and re 
 turned instantly to the Pope : " Give yourself no uneasiness, 
 Holy Father, any longer : here is no miracle, for here i 
 
 humility." 
 
 We need not much mind what people please to say, bn 
 what they must say ; what their natures say though their 
 busy, artful, Yankee understandings try to hold back, and 
 choke that word, and to articulate something different, 
 will sit quietly, what they ought to say is said, with their 
 will or against their will. We do not care for you, let us pre 
 tend" what we will; we are always looking through you to 
 the dim dictator behind you. Whilst your habit or whim 
 chatters, we civilly and impatiently wait until that wise supe 
 rior shall speak again. Even children are not deceived by the 
 false reasons which their parents give in answer to then 
 
WORSHIP. i: >7 
 
 questions, whether touching natural farts, or religion, or JUT- 
 SOUS. When the parent, instead of thinking how it really is. 
 p lts tin-in rtf with a traditional or a hypocritical answer, the 
 children perceive that it is traditional OT hypocritical To a 
 sound constitution the detect of another is ;it once manifest ; 
 and the marks of it are only concealed from us by our own 
 dislocation. An anatomical observer remarks, that the sympa 
 thies of the chest. abdomen, and pelvis tell at last on the 
 face, and on all its features. Not only does our be.iiity waste, 
 hut it leaves word how it went to waste. Physiognomy and 
 phrenology are not new sciences, but declarations of the soul 
 that it is aware of certain new sources of information. And 
 ii^w sciences of broader scope are starting up behind these. 
 And so for ourselves, it is really of little importance what 
 blunders in statement we make, so only we make no wilful de 
 partures from the truth. How a man s truth comes to mind, 
 long after we have forgotten all his words! How it comes to 
 us in silent hours, that truth is our only armor in all pa- 
 of life and death ! Wit is cheap, and anger is cheap ; but if 
 you cannot argue or explain yourself to the other partv. 
 cleave to the truth against me, against thee, and you gain a 
 st-ition from which you cannot be dislodged. The other party 
 will forget the words that you spoke, but the part you took 
 continues to plead for you. 
 
 Whv should I hasten to solve every riddle which life offers 
 me I l am well assured that the Questioner, who brings me 
 BO manv problems, will bring the answers also in due time. 
 Yerv rich, very potent, very cheerful (liver that he is, he shall 
 have it all his own wax for me. Why should I give up my 
 thought, because 1 cannot answer an objection to it { Consider 
 only, whether it remains in my life the same it was. Tha*. 
 onlv which we have within, can we see without. If we UK el 
 nogods.it is because we harbor none. If there is grandeur 
 in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps. He 
 onlv is riirhtlv immortal, to whom all things are immortal. 1 
 have read somewhere, that none is accomplished, SO long as 
 any are incomplete ; that the happiness of one cannot consist 
 with the misery of any other. 
 
 The Buddhists say. No seed will die ": every seed will 
 grow. Where is the service which can escape its remunera 
 tion I What is vulgar, and the essence (.fall vulgarity, hut the 
 avarice of reward ! T is the difference of artisan and artist, 
 of talent and genius, of sinner and saint. The man 
 
438 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 eyes are nailed not on the nature of his act, but on the wages, 
 whether it be money, or office, or fame, -is almost .equally 
 low He is great, whose eyes are opened to see that the re- 
 wlrd of actions cannot be escaped, because he is transformed 
 into his action, and taketh its nature, which bears its owt> fruit, 
 like everv other tree. A great man cannot be hindered of the 
 effect of his act, because it is immediate. The genius of life 
 is friendly to the noble, and in the dark brings them friends 
 from far. Fear God, and where you go, men shall thmk they 
 walk in hallowed cathedrals. 
 
 And so I look on those sentiments which make the glory o 
 the human being, love, humility, faith as being alsc 3 m- 
 timacy of Divinity in the atoms; and, that, as soon as the 
 man is right, assurances and previsions emanate from the in 
 terior of his body and his mind ; as, when flowers reach their 
 ripeness incense exhales from them, and, as a beautiful atmos 
 phere is generated from the planet by the averaged emanations 
 from all its rocks and soils. 
 
 Thus man is made equal to every event He can ^ tace 
 danger for the right. A poor, tender, painful body, he can 
 run into flame or bullets or pest.lence, with duty for his gu de 
 He feels the insurance of a just employment. I an, 
 afraid of accident, as long as I am m my place It is strang 
 that superior persons should not feel that they have some 
 better resistance against cholera, than avoiding green peas and 
 salads. Life is hardly respectable, -is itl if it has no gen 
 erous, guaranteeing task, no duties or affections, that const, 
 a necessity of existing. Every man s task ,s his life-preserver 
 The conviction that his work is dear to God and cannot be 
 spared, defends him. The lightning-rod that disarms the 
 cloud of its threat is his body in its duty. A high aim reacts 
 on the means, on the days, on the organs of the body. A 
 hi-h aim is curative, as well as arnica. "Napoleon, says 
 Goethe, "visited those sick of the plague, in order to prove 
 that the man who could vanquish fear, could vanquish t 
 plague also ; and he was right. T is incredible what force the 
 wilfhas in such cases : it penetrates the body, and puts it m 
 a state of activity, which repels all hurtful influences ; whilst 
 
 f Orange, that, whilst he was 
 besieging a town on the continent, a gentleman sent ^tc ,him on 
 public business came to his camp, and, learning that the King 
 was before the walls, he ventured to go where he was. 
 
WORSHIP. 439 
 
 found him directing the operation of his gunners, and, having 
 
 explained his errand, and received his answer, the Kinu r said : 
 " Do you not know, sir. tliat every moment \<>u spend here is at 
 the risk of yotir life (" " 1 run no more risk," replied t he -entle- 
 man, "than yinir Majesty." " Yes," said tlu- Kin;:, "hut my 
 duty brings tin- here, and yours does not/ In a few minutes, 
 a eannon-l>all fell on the spot, and the gentleman was killed. 
 
 Thus ean the faithful student rovers*- all the warnings of 
 his early instinct, under the guidance of a deeper instinct. 
 He learns to welcome misfortune, learns that adversity is the/ 
 prosperity of the great. He learns the greatness of humility. 
 He shall work in the dark, work against failure, pain, and ill- 
 will. If he is insulted, he can be insulted ; all his affair is not 
 to insult. Hafiz writes : 
 
 At the last day, men shall wear 
 On their houd s the dust. 
 As enHirn and a> ornament 
 Of their lowly trust. 
 
 The moral equalizes all ; enriches, empowers all. It is the 
 coin which huys all, and which all find in their pocket. Under 
 the whip of the driver, the slave shall feel his equality with 
 saints and heroes. In the greatest destitution and calamity, 
 it surprises man with a feeling of elasticity which makes noth 
 ing of loss. 
 
 I recall some traits of a remarkable person whose life and 
 discourse betrayed many inspirations of this sentiment. 
 Benedict was always great in the present time. He had 
 hoarded nothing from the past, neither in his cabinets, neither 
 in his memory. He had no designs on the future, neither for 
 what he should do to men, nor for what men should do for 
 him. He said: I am never beaten until I know that I am 
 beaten. I meet powerful brutal people to whom I have no 
 skill to reply. They think they have defeated me. It is so 
 published in society, in the journals ; I am defeated in this 
 fashion, in all men s sight, perhaps on a dozen different lines. 
 My l u r er may show that I am in debt, cannot yet make my 
 ends meet, and vanquish the enemy so. My race may not be 
 prospering : we are sick, ugly, obscure, unpopular. My chil 
 dren may be worsted. I seem to fail in my friends and clients, 
 too. That is to say, in all the encounters that have yet chanced, 
 I have not been weaponed for that particular occasion, and 
 have been historically beaten ; and yet, I know, all the time, 
 that I have never been beaten ; have never yet fought, shall 
 
440 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 certainly fight, when my hour comes, and shall beat. " A 
 man," says the Vishnu Sarma, " who having well compared 
 his own strength or weakness with that of others, after all 
 doth not know the difference, is easily overcome by his 
 enemies." 
 
 I spent, he said, ten months in the country. Thick- 
 starred Orion was my only companion. Wherever a squirrel 
 or a bee can go with security, I can go. I ate whatever was 
 set before me ; I touched ivy and dogwood. When I went 
 abroad, I kept company with every man on the road, for I 
 knew that my evil and my good did not come from these, but 
 from the Spirit, whose servant I was. For I could not stoop 
 to be a circumstance, as they did, who put their life into their 
 fortune and their company. I would not degrade myself by 
 casting about in my memory for a thought, nor by waiting for 
 one. If the thought come, I would give it entertainment. It 
 should, as it ought, go into my hands and feet ; but if it come 
 not spontaneously, it comes not rightly at all. If it can spare 
 me, I am sure I can spare it. It shall be the same with my 
 friends. I will never woo the loveliest. I will not ask any 
 friendship or favor. When I come to my own, we shall both 
 know it. Nothing will be to be asked or to be granted. 
 Benedict went out to seek his friend, and met him on the way ; 
 but he expressed no surprise at any coincidences. On the 
 other hand, if he called at the door of his friend, and he was 
 not at home, he did not go again ; concluding that he had 
 misinterpreted the intimations. 
 
 He had the whim not to make an apology to the same indi 
 vidual whom he had wronged. For this, he said, was a piece 
 of personal vanity ; but he would correct his conduct in that 
 respect in which he had faulted, to the next person he should 
 meet. Thus, he said, universal justice was satisfied. 
 
 Mira came to ask what she should do with the poor Genesee 
 woman who had hired herself to work for her, at a shilling a 
 day, and, now sickening, was like to be bedridden on her hands. 
 Should she keep her, or should she dismiss her 1 But Benedict 
 said, Why ask ? One thing will clear itself as the thing to 
 be done, and not another, when the hour comes. Is it a ques 
 tion, whether to put her into the street. Just as much whether 
 to thrust the little Jenny on your arm into the street. The 
 milk and meal you give the beggar will fatten Jenny. Thrust 
 the woman out, and you thrust your babe out of doors, whether 
 it so seem to you or not. 
 
WORSHIP. 441 
 
 In the Shakers, so called. I find one piece of belief, in the 
 doctrine which they faithfully hold, that encourages them to 
 open their doors to every wayfaring man who proposes to come 
 among them ; for, they say, tin- Spirit will presently manifest 
 to the man himself, and to the society, what manner of person 
 he is, and whether he helmi^s annum them. They do not re- 
 OetTe him. they do not reject him. And not in vain have they 
 worn their elav coat, and drudged in their fields, and shuffled 
 in their bruin dance, from year to year, if they have truly 
 learned thus much wisdom. 
 
 Honor him whose life is perpetual victory ; him, who, by 
 svmpathy with the invisible and real, finds support in labor, in 
 stead of praise : who does not shine, and would rather not. With 
 ey.-s ..pen, he makes the choice of virtue, which outrages the 
 virtuous ; of religion, which churches stop their discords to 
 burn and exterminate : for the highest virtue is always against 
 the law. 
 
 Miracle comes to the miraculous, not to the arithmetician. 
 Talent and success interest me but moderately. The great 
 aitta, they who affect our imagination, the men who could not 
 make their hands meet around their objects, the rapt, the lost, 
 the fools of ideas, they suggest what they cannot execute. 
 Th"y speak to the ages, and are heard from afar. The Spirit 
 does not love cripples and malformations. If there ever was 
 a good man, be certain there was another, and will be more. 
 
 And so in relation to that future hour, that spectre clothed 
 with beauty at our curtain by night, at our table by day, 
 the apprehension, the assurance of a coming change. The 
 race of mankind have always offered at least this implied 
 thanks for the gift of existence, namely, the terror of its 
 being taken away : the insatiable curiosity and appetite for its 
 continuation, the whole revelation that is vouchsafed us, is, 
 the gentle trust, which, in our experience we find, will cover 
 also with flowers the -slopes of this chasm. 
 
 Of immortality, the soul, when well employed, is incurious. 
 It is so well, that it is sure it will be well. It asks no ques 
 tions of the Supreme Power. The son of Antiochus asked his 
 father, when he would join battle. " I )o^t thou fear," re 
 plied the King, "that thou only in all the army wilt not hear 
 the trumpet " T is a higher thing to confide, that, if it is 
 best we should live, we shall live, tis higher to have this 
 conviction than to have the lea^e of indefinite centuries and 
 millenniums and seons. Higher than the question of our 
 19* 
 
442 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will 
 come to such as are fit for it, and he who would be a great 
 soul in future, must be a great soul now. It is a doctrine too 
 great to rest on any legend, that is, on any man s experience 
 but our own. It must be proved, if at all, from our own ac 
 tivity and designs, which imply an interminable future for their 
 play. 
 
 What is called religion effeminates and demoralizes. Such 
 as you are, the gods themselves could not help you. Men 
 are too often unfit to live, from their obvious inequality 
 to their own necessities, or, they suffer from politics, or bad 
 neighbors, or from sickness, and they would gladly know that 
 they were to be dismissed from the duties of life. But the 
 wise instinct asks, How will death help them ] These are 
 not dismissed when they die. You shall not wish for death out 
 of pusillanimity. The weight of the Universe is pressed down 
 on the shoulders of each moral agent to hold him to his task. 
 The only path of escape known in all the worlds of God is per 
 formance. You must do your work, before you shall be re 
 leased. And as far as it is a question of fact respecting the 
 government of the Universe, Marcus Antoninus summed the 
 whole in a word: " It is pleasant to die, if there be gods ; and 
 sad to live, if there be none." 
 
 And so I think that the last lesson of life, the choral song 
 which rises from all elements and all angels, is, a voluntary 
 obedience, a necessitated freedom. Man is made of the same 
 atoms as the world is, he shares the same impressions, predis 
 positions, and destiny. When his mind is illuminated, when 
 his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the sublime 
 order, and does, with knowledge, what the stones do by struc 
 ture. 
 
 The religion which is to guide and fulfil the present and 
 coming ages, whatever else it be, must be intellectual. The 
 scientific mind must have a faith which is science. " There 
 are two things," said Mahomet, " which I abhor, the learned 
 in his infidelities,, and the fool in his devotions." Our times 
 are impatient of both, and specially of the last. Let us have 
 nothing now which is not its own evidence. There is surely 
 enough for the heart and imagination in the religion itself. 
 Let us not be pestered with assertions and half-truths, with 
 emotions and snuffle. 
 
 There will be a new church founded on moral science, at 
 first cold and naked, a babe in a manger again, the algebra 
 
WORSHIP. 443 
 
 and mathematics of ethical law, the church of men to come, 
 without shawms, or psalter} , or sackbut ; but it will have 
 heaven and earth for its beams and rafters ; science for sym 
 bol and illustration ; it will fast enough gather beauty, music, 
 picture, poetry. Was never stoicism so stern and exigent as 
 this shall be. It shall send man home to his central solitude, 
 shame these social, supplicating manners, and make him know 
 that much of the time he must have himself to his friend. 
 IK shall expect no co-operation, he shall, walk with no compan 
 ion. The nameless Thought, the nameless Power, the super- 
 personal Heart, he shall repose alone on that. He needs 
 only his own verdict. No good fame can help, no bad fame 
 can hurt him. The Laws are his consolers, the good Laws 
 themselves are alive, they know if we have kept them, they 
 animate him with the leading of great duty, and an endless 
 horizon. Honor and fortune exist to him who always recog- 
 ni/cs the neighborhood of the great, always feels himself in 
 the presence of high causes. 
 
VII. 
 CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 
 
 Hear what British Merlin sung, 
 
 Of keenest eye and truest tongue. 
 
 Say not, the chiefs who first arrive 
 
 Usurp the seats for which all strive; 
 
 The forefathers this land who found 
 
 Failed to plant the vantage-ground; 
 
 Ever from one who comes to-morrow 
 
 Men wait their good and truth to borrow. 
 
 But wilt thou measure all thy road, 
 
 See thou lift the lighte-t kMUL 
 
 Who has little, to him who has less, can spare, 
 
 And thou, ryndyllan s son! beware 
 
 Ponderous gold and stall s to bear, 
 
 To falter ere thou thy task fulfil, 
 
 Only the light-armed climb the hill. 
 
 The richest of nil lord* is L se, 
 
 And ruddy Health the loftiest Muse. 
 
 Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, 
 
 Drink the wild air s salubrity: 
 
 Where the star Canope shines in May, 
 
 Shepherds are thankful, and nations gay. 
 
 The music that can deepest reach, 
 
 And cure all ill, is cordial speech: 
 
 Mask thy wisdom with delight, 
 
 Toy with the bow, yet hit the white. 
 
 Of all wit - uses, the main one 
 
 Is to live \voll with who has none. 
 
 Cleave to thine acre: the round year 
 
 Will fetch .-ill fruits and virtues here: 
 
 Fool and foe may harmless roam, 
 
 Loved and lovers bide at home. 
 
 A dav for toil, an hour lor sport, 
 
 But for a friend is life too short. 
 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 
 
 A LTHOUGH this garrulity of advising is born with us, I 
 ^\ confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of 
 didactics. So much fate, so much irresistible dictation from 
 temperament and unknown inspiration enters into it, that we 
 doubt we can say anything out of our own experience whereby 
 to help each other. All the professions are timid and expec 
 tant agencies. The priest is glad if his prayers or his sermon 
 meet the condition of any soul ; if of two, if of ten, t is a 
 signal success. But he walked to the church without am as 
 surance that he knew the distemper, or could heal it. The 
 physician prescribes hesitatingly out of his few resources, the 
 same tonic or sedative to this new and peculiar constitution, 
 which he has applied with various success to a hundred men 
 before. If the patient mends, he is glad and surprised. The 
 lawyer advises the client, and tells his story to the jury, and 
 it with them, and is as gay and as much relieved as the 
 client, if it turns out that he has a verdict. The judge 
 weighs the arguments, and puts a brave face on the matter, 
 and, since there must be a decision, decides as he can, and 
 hopes he has done justice, and iriven satisfaction to the com 
 munity ; but is only an advocate after all. And so is all life 
 a timid and unskilful spectator. \Y*e do what we must, and 
 call it by the U-sf names. W<- like very well to be praised 
 for our action, but our conscience says, " Not unto us." T is 
 little we can do for each other. We accompany the youth 
 with sympathy, and manifold old saving s of the wise, to the 
 <_ ate of the arena, but t is certain that not by strength of 
 ours, or of the old sayings, but only on strength of his own, 
 unknown to us or to any, he must stand or fall. That by 
 which a man conquers in any passage, is a profound secret to 
 every other being in the world, and it is only as he turns hia 
 
448 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 back on us and all men, and draws on this most private wis 
 dom, that any good can come to him. What we have, there 
 fore, to say of life, is rather description, or, if you please, cele 
 bration, than available rules. 
 
 Yet vigor is contagious, and whatever makes us either 
 think or feel strongly, adds to our power and enlarges our 
 field of action. We have a debt to every great heart, to 
 every fine genius ; to those who have put life and fortune on 
 the cast of an act of justice ; to those who have added new 
 sciences \ to those who have refined life by elegant pursuits. 
 T is the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called fine 
 society. Fine society is only a self-protection against the vul 
 garities of the street and the tavern. Fine society, in the 
 common acceptation, has neither ideas nor aims. It renders 
 the service of a perfumery, or a laundry, not of a farm or fac 
 tory. T is an exclusion and a precinct. Sidney Smith said, 
 " A few yards in London cement or dissolve friendship." It is 
 an unprincipled decorum ; an affair of clean linen and coaches, 
 of gloves, cards, and elegance in trifles. There are other 
 measures of self-respect for a man, than the number of clean 
 shirts he puts on every day. Society wishes to be amused. 
 I do not wish to be amused. I wish that life should not be 
 cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, 
 fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank-days, by some debt 
 which is to be paid us, or which we are to pay, or some pleas 
 ure we are to taste. Is all we have to do to draw the breath 
 in, and blow it out again ? Porphyry s definition is better : 
 " Life is that which holds matter together." The babe in 
 arms is a channel through which the energies we call fate, love, 
 and reason, visibly stream. See what a cometary train of aux 
 iliaries man carries with him, of animals, plants, stones, gases, 
 and imponderable elements. Let us infer his ends from this 
 pomp of means. Mirabeau said : " Why should we feel our 
 selves to be men, unless it be to succeed in everything, every 
 where. You must say of nothing, That is beneath me, nor feel 
 that anything can be out of your power. Nothing is impossi 
 ble to the man who can will. Is that necessary ? That shall le: 
 this is the only law of success." Whoever said it, this is in 
 the right key. But this is not the tone and genius of the men 
 in the -street. In the streets, we grow cynical. The men we 
 meet are coarse and torpid. The finest wits have their sedi 
 ment. What quantities of fribbles, paupers, invalids, epicures, 
 antiquaries, politicians, thieves, and triflers of both sexes, 
 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 449 
 
 might be advantageously spared ! Mankind divides itself into 
 two classes, benefactors and malefactors. The second class 
 is vast, the first a handful. A person sclduUL falls_8icX-but 
 the bystajider8_are_aniniate(l with a faint hope that he will 
 die : _ Tqimntities of poor lives ; of distressing invalids ; of 
 cases for a gun. Franklin said : " Mankind are very superficial 
 and dastanlly : they lcu r in upon a thing, but, meeting with a 
 difficulty, they fly from it discouraged : but they have capaci 
 ties, if thev would employ them." Shall we then judge a 
 country by the majority, or by the minority] By the minor 
 ity, surely. T is pedantry to estimate nations by the census, 
 or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance 
 to the mind of the time. 
 
 Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses 
 are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and in 
 fluence, and need not to be flattered but to be schooled. I 
 wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, 
 divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them. 
 The worst of charity is, that the lives you are asked to pre 
 serve are not worth preserving. Masses ! the calamity is the 
 masses. I do not wish any mass at all, but honest men only, 
 lovely, sweet, accomplished women only, and no shovel-handed, 
 narrow-brained, gin-drinking million stockingers or lazzaroni at 
 all. If government knew how, I should like to see it check, 
 not multiply the population. When it reaches its true law o? 
 action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential. 
 Away with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the con 
 siderate vote of single men spoken on their honor and their 
 conscience. In old Egypt, it was established law, that the 
 vote of a prophet be reckoned equal to a hundred hands. I 
 think it was much underestimated. " Clay and clay differ in 
 dignity," as we discover by our preferences every day. What 
 a vicious practice is this of our politicians at Washington pair 
 ing off ! as if one man who votes wrong, going away, could 
 excuse you, who mean to vote right, for going away ; or, as if 
 your presence did not tell in more ways than in your vote. 
 Suppose the three hundred heroes at Thermopylae had paired 
 off with three hundred PeVsians : would it have been all the 
 same to Greece, and to history 1 ? Napoleon was culled l>y his 
 men Cent Mi lie. Add honesty to him, and they might have 
 called him Hundred Million. 
 
 Nature makes fifty poor melons for one that is good, and 
 shakes down a tree full of gnarled, wormy, unripe crabs, before 
 
 cc 
 
450 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 you can find a dozen dessert apples ; and she scatters nations 
 of naked Indians, and nations of clothed Christians, with two 
 or three good heads among them. Nature works very hard, 
 and only hits the white once in a million throws. In mankind, 
 she is contented if she yields one master in a century. The 
 more difficulty there is in creating good men, the more they are 
 used when they come. I once counted in a little neighborhood, 
 and found that every able-bodied man had, say from twelve to 
 fifteen persons dependent on him for material aid, to whom 
 he is to be for spoon and jug, for backer and sponsor, for 
 nursery and hospital, and many functions beside : nor does it 
 seem to make much difference whether he is bachelor or patri 
 arch ; if he do not violently decline the duties that fall to 
 him, this amount of helpfulness will in one way or another be 
 brought home to him. _This is^the tax which his abilities j)a.____ 
 The good men are employed for private centres of use, and for 
 larger influence. All revelations, whether of mechanical or 
 intellectual or moral science, are made, not to communities, but 
 to single persons. All the marked events of our day, all the 
 cities, all the colonizations, may be traced back to their origin 
 in a private brain. All the feats which make our civility were 
 the thoughts of a few good heads. 
 
 Meantime, this spawning productivity is not noxious or need 
 less. You would say, this rabble of nations might be spared, 
 But no, they are all counted and depended on. Fate keeps 
 everything alive so long as the smallest thread of public neces 
 sity holds it on to the tree. The coxcomb and bully and thief 
 class are allowed as proletaries, every one of their vices being 
 the excess or acridity of a virtue. The mass are animal, in 
 pupilage, and near chimpanzee. But the units, whereof this 
 mass is composed are neuters, every one of which may be 
 grown to a queen-bee. The rule is, we are used as brute atoms, 
 until we think : then, we use all the rest. Nature turns all 
 malfaisance to good. Nature provided for real needs. No 
 sane man at last distrusts himself. His existence is a perfect 
 answer to all sentimental cavils. If he is, he is wanted, and 
 has the precise properties that are required. That we are here, 
 is proof we ought to be here. We have as good right, and the 
 same sort of right to be here, as Cape Cod or Sandy Hook have 
 to be there. 
 
 To say then, the majority are wicked, means no malice, no 
 bad heart in the observer, but, simply, that the majority are 
 unripe, and have not yet come to themselves, do not yet know 
 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 451 
 
 their opinion. That, if they knew it, is an oracle for them and 
 for all. But in the passing moment, the quadruped interest is 
 very prone to prevail : uml this beast-force, whilst it makes the 
 discipline of the world, the school of heroes, the glory of mar 
 tyrs, has provoked in every age the satire of wits, and the tears 
 of good men. They tind the journals, the clubs, the govern 
 ments, the churches, to he in the interest, and the pay of 
 the l>evil. And wise men have met this obstruction in their 
 times, like Socrates, with his famous irony; like Bacon, with 
 life-long dissimulation; like Erasmus, witli his book "The 
 Praise of Folly " ; like Rabelais, with his satire rending the 
 nations. " They were the fools who cried against me, you will 
 sav." wrote the Chevalier de Boufflers to (irimm ; ay, but 
 the fools have the advantage of numbers, and t is that which 
 decides. T is of no use for us to make war with them : we 
 shall not weaken them ; they will always be the masters. 
 There will not be a practice or an usage introduced, of which 
 they are not the authors." 
 
 In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of history is 
 the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes 
 a better. T is the oppressions of William the Norman, savage 
 forest-laws, and crushing despotism, that made possible the 
 inspirations of Mayna Charta under John. Edward I. wanted 
 money, armies, castles, and as much as he could get. It was 
 necessary to call the people together by shorter, swifter ways, 
 and the House of Commops arose. To obtain subsidies, he 
 paid in privileges. In the twenty-fourth year of his reign, he 
 decreed, "that no tax should be levied without consent of 
 Lords and Commons"; which is the basis of the Knglish 
 Constitution. Plutarch affirms that the cruel wars which fol 
 lowed tin- march of Alexander, introduced the civility, language, 
 und arts of Creece into the savage East : introduced marriag- ; 
 built seventy cities : and united hostile nations under on. 
 eminent. The barbarians who broke up the Roman empire 
 did not arrive a day too soon. Schiller says, the Thirty Years 
 War made Germany a nation. Rough, selfish despots serve men 
 immensely, as Henry VIII. in the contest with the Pope; as 
 the infatuations no less than the wisdom of Cromwell : as the 
 ferocity of the llussian e/ars ; MS the fanaticism of the French 
 les of 17S!>. The frost which kills the harvest of a year, 
 sav.-- the harvests of a century, by destroying the weevil or 
 the locust. Wars, fires, plagues, break up immovable routine, 
 clear the ground of rotten races, and dens of distemper, and 
 
452 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 open a fair field to new men. There is a tendency in things 
 to right themselves, and the war or revolution or bankruptcy 
 that shatters a rotten system, allows things to take a new and 
 natural order. The sharpest evils are bent into that periodicity 
 which makes the errors of planets, and the fevers and distem 
 pers of men, self-limiting. Nature is upheld by antagonism. 
 Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the 
 strength we have overcome. Without war, no soldier ; with 
 out enemies, no hero. The sun were insipid, if the universe 
 were not opaque. And the glory of character is in affronting 
 the horrors of depravity, to draw thence new nobilities of 
 power : as Art lives and thrills in new use and combining of 
 contrasts, and mining into the dark evermore for blacker pits 
 of night. W T hat would painter do, or what would poet or 
 saint, but for crucifixions and hells 1 And evermore in the 
 world in this marvellous balance of beauty and disgust, mag 
 nificence and rats. Not Antoninus, but a poor washerwoman 
 said : " The more trouble, the more lion ; that s my principle." 
 
 I do not think very respectfully of the designs or the doings 
 of the people who went to California, in 1849. It was a rush 
 and a scramble of needy adventurers, and, in the western 
 country, a general jail-delivery of all the rowdies of the rivers. 
 Some of them went with honest purposes, some with very bad 
 ones, and all of them with the very commonplace wish to find 
 a short way to wealth. But Nature watches over all, and 
 turns this uialfaisance to good. California gets peopled and 
 subdued, civilized in this immoral way, and, on this fic 
 tion, a real prosperity is rooted and grown. T is a decoy- 
 duck ; t is tubs thrown to amuse the whale : but real ducks, 
 and whales that yield oil, are caught. And out of Sabine 
 rapes, and out of robbers forays, real Romes and their hero 
 isms come in fulness of time. 
 
 In America, the geography is sublime, but the men are not : 
 the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes 
 ashamed of. The agencies by which events so grand as the 
 opening of California, of Texas, of Oregon, and the junction 
 of the two oceans, are effected, are paltry, coarse selfishness, 
 fraud, and conspiracy : and most of the great results of his 
 tory are brought about by discreditable means. 
 
 The benefaction derived in Illinois, and the great West, from 
 railroads, is inestimable, and vastly exceeding any intentional 
 philanthropy on record. What is the benefit done by a good 
 King Alfred, or by a Howard, or Pestalozzi, or Elizabeth Fry, 
 
CONSIDERATIONS in II IK WAY. 4f>3 
 
 or Florence Nightingale, or any lover, less or larger, com 
 pared with the involuntarv blessing wrought on nations by the 
 selfish capitalists who built the Illinois. Michigan, and the net 
 work of the Mississippi valley roads, which have evoked not 
 only all the wealth of the soil, but the energy of millions of 
 men. T is a sentenf of anrient wisdom, "that (Jod hangs 
 the greatest weights on the smallest wires. 
 
 What happens thus to nations, befalls every day in private 
 houses. When the friends of a gentleman brought to his no 
 tice the follies of his sons, with many hints of their danger, 
 he replied, that he knew so much mischief when he was a 1>< y, 
 and had turned out on the \\hole so successfully, that he was 
 not alarmed by the dissipation of boys ; t was dangerous wa 
 ter, but, he thought, they would soon touch bottom, and then 
 swim to the top. This is bold practice, and there are many 
 failures to a good escape. Yet one would say, that a good un- 
 derBtanding would suttice as well as moral sensibility to keep 
 one erect ; the gratifications of the passions are so quickly 
 seen to be damaging, and what men like least seriously 
 lowering them in social rank. Then all talent sinks with 
 character. 
 
 /"// : woi. r,-rrenr fnixsi ton merit <" said V-oltairc. We 
 see those who surmount, by dint of some egotism or infatua 
 tion, obstacles from which the prudent recoil. The ri-jht par 
 tisan is a heady narrow man, who, because he does not see 
 many thin - me one thing with heat and exaggeration, 
 
 and. if he falls amonir other narrow men, or on objects which 
 have a brief importance, as some trade or politics of the 
 hour, he prefers it to the universe, and seems inspired, and a 
 godsend to those who wish to magnify the mutter, and carry a 
 point. Better, certainly, if we could secure the strength and 
 fire which rude, passionate men bring into BOOiety, <piite clear 
 of their vices. But who dares draw out tin 1 linchpin from the 
 wa:_r"n-wheel 1 T is so manifest, that there is no moral de 
 formity but is a good passion out of place : that there is no 
 man who is not indebted to his foibles ; that. acordinir to the 
 old oracle, "the Furies arc the bonds of men " : that the poi 
 sons are our principal medicines, which kill the disease, and 
 save the life. In the hiirh prophetic phrase. //- ;IHS?X fhr 
 irratlt <>f jn in f<> i>r<i>. hint, and t wists and wrenches our evil 
 
 to our good. Shakespeare wrote, 
 
 " T is said, best men are moulded of their faults " 
 
454 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 and great educators and lawgivers, and especially generals, 
 and leaders of colonies, mainly rely on this stuff, and esteem 
 men of irregular and passional force the best timber. A man 
 of sense and energy, the late head of the Farm School in 
 Boston Harbor said to me : " I want none of your good boys, 
 give me the bad ones." And this is the reason, I suppose, 
 why, as soon as the children are good, the mothers are scared, 
 and think they are going to die. Mirabeau said : " There are 
 none but men of strong passions capable of going to great 
 ness ; none but such capable of meriting the public gratitude." 
 Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring. Any 
 absorbing passion has the effect to deliver from the little coils 
 and cares of every day : t is the heat which sets our human 
 atoms spinning, overcomes the friction of crossing thresholds, 
 and first addresses in society, and gives us a good start afid 
 speed, easy to continue, when once it is begun. In short, 
 there is no man who is not at some time indebted to his vices, 
 as no plant that is not fed from manures. We only insist 
 that the man meliorate, and that the plant grow upward, and 
 convert the base into the better nature. 
 
 The wise workman will not regret the poverty or the solitude 
 which brought out his working talents. The youth is charmed 
 with the fine air and accomplishments of the children of for 
 tune : but all great men come out of the middle classes. T is 
 better for the head ; t is better for the heart. Marcus An 
 toninus says, that Fronto told him, " that the so-called 
 high-born are for the most part heartless " ; whilst noth 
 ing is so indicative of deepest culture as a tender considera 
 tion of the ignorant. Charles James Fox said of England : 
 " The history of this country proves, that we are not to 
 expect from men in affluent circumstances the vigilance, 
 energy, and exertion without which the House of Commons 
 would lose its greatest force and weight. Human nature is 
 prone to indulgence, and the most meritorious public services 
 have always been performed by persons in a condition of life 
 removed from opulence." And yet what we ask daily, is to 
 be conventional. Supply, most kind gods ! this defect in my 
 address, in my form, in my fortunes, which puts me a little 
 out of the ring : supply it, and let me be like the rest whom 
 I admire, and on good terms with them. But the wise gods 
 say, No, we have better things for thee. By humiliations, by 
 defeats, by loss of sympathy, by gulfs of disparity, learn a 
 wider truth and humanity than that of a fine gentleman. A 
 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 4 .",." 
 
 Fifth-Avenue landlord, a West-End householder, is not the 
 highest style of man ; and, though good hearts and sound 
 minds are of no condition, yet he who is to IK- wise for many, 
 must not 1)* protecte 1. He must know tin- huts where poor 
 lu-ii lie, and the chores which poor men do, The first -class 
 minds. Homer, . K>op, Socrates, Alfred, Cervantes, Shake 
 speare, Franklin, had the, poor man s feeling and mortification. 
 A rich man was never insulted in his life; but this man must 
 be stung. A rich man was never in danger from cold, or 
 lrin_r,T, or war, or rulhans, and you can see he was not, from 
 the moderation of his ideas. T is a fatal disadvantage to bj 
 cockered, and to cat too much cake. What tests of manhood 
 could he stand I Take him out of his protections. He is a 
 go d book-keeper ; or he is a shrewd adviser in the insurance 
 oih v : perhaps he could pass a college examination, and take 
 his decrees : perhaps he can give wise counsel in a court of 
 law. Now plant him down among farmers, firemen, Indians, 
 and emigrants. Set a dog on him : set a highwayman on 
 him : try him with a course of mobs : send him to Kansas, to 
 Pike s Peak, to Oregon : and, if he h.ivc true faculty, this may 
 be the clement he wants, and he will come out of it with 
 broader wisdom and m inly power. .Esop, Saadi, Cervantes, 
 Regnard, have be -n taken by corsairs, left for dead, sold for 
 slaves, and know the realities of human life. 
 
 Pud times have a scientific value. These are occasions a 
 good learner would not miss. As we g> gladly to Fanenil 
 Hall, to be played upon by the stormy winds and strong fin 
 f enrage I patriotism, so is a fanatical persecution, civil 
 w.ir, nation il bankruptcy, or revolution, more rich in the cen 
 tral tones than languid years of prosperity. What had hern, 
 ever since our memory, solid continent, yawns apart, and dis- 
 - its composition and gen -sis. We learn geology the 
 morning after the earthquake, >n ghastlv diagrams of cloven 
 mountains, upheaved plains, and the dry bed of the sea. 
 
 In our life and culture, everything is worked up ami comes 
 in use, passion, war, revolt, bankruptcy, and not less, folly 
 and blunders, insult, ennui, and bad company. Xature is a 
 r t_r merchant, who works up every shred and ort and end 
 into new creations ; like a good chemist, whom I found, the 
 other day, in his laboratory, converting his old shirts into 
 pure white sugar. Life is a boundless privilege, and when 
 you pay for your ticket, and g -t info the car, you have ID 
 g less what good company you shall find there. You buy 
 
456 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 much that is not rendered in the bill. Men achieve a certain 
 greatness unawares, when working to another aim. 
 
 If now in this connection of discourse, we should venture 
 on laying down the first obvious rules of life, 1 will not here 
 repeat the first rule of economy, already propounded once and 
 again, that every man shall maintain himself, but I will say, 
 get health. No labor, pains, temperance, poverty, nor exer 
 cise, that can gain it, must be grudged. For sickness is a 
 cannibal which eats up all the life and youth it can lay hold 
 of, and absorbs its own sons and daughters. I figure it as a 
 pale, wailing, distracted phantom, absolutely selfish, heedless 
 of what is good and great, attentive to its sensations, losing its 
 soul, and afflicting other souls with meanness and mopiiigs, 
 and with ministration to its voracity of trifles. Dr. Johnson 
 said severely, " Every man is a rascal as soon as he is sick." 
 Drop the cant, and treat it sanely. In dealing with the 
 drunken, we do not affect to be drunk. We must treat the 
 sick with the same firmness, giving them, of course, every aid, 
 but withholding ourselves. I once asked a clergyman in a 
 retired town, who were his companions 1 what men of ability 
 he saw 7 he replied, that he spent his time with the sick and 
 the dying. I said, he seemed to me to need quite other com 
 pany, and all the more that he had this : for if people were 
 sick and dying to any purpose, we would leave all and go to 
 them, but, as far as I had observed, they were asivolous as 
 the rest, and sometimes much more frivolous. Let; us engage 
 our companions not to spare us. I knew a wise woman who 
 said to her friends, " When I am old, rule me." And the best 
 part of health is fine disposition. It is more essential than 
 talent, even in the works of talent. Nothing will supply the 
 want of sunshine to peaches, and, to make knowledge valuable, 
 you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom. Whenever you 
 are sincerely pleased, you are nourished. The joy of the spirit 
 indicates its strength. All healthy things are sweet-tempered. 
 Genius works in sport, and goodness smiles to the last ; and, 
 for the reason, that whoever sees the law which distributes 
 things does not despond, but is animated to great desires 
 and endeavors. He who desponds betrays that he has not 
 seen it. 
 
 / T is a Dutch proverb, that " paint costs nothing," such are 
 its preserving qualities in damp climates. Well, sunshine costs 
 less, yet is finer pigment. And so of cheerfulness, or a good 
 temper, the more it is spent, the more of it remains. The 
 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 457 
 
 latent heat of an ounce of wood or stone is inexhaustible. You 
 mav nil) the same chip of pine to the point of kindling, a hun 
 dred times ; and the power of happiness of any soul is not to be 
 computed or drained. It is observed that a depression of spir 
 its develops the germs of a plague in individuals and nations. 
 It is an old commendation of right behavior, "J///.v A^/VX, 
 S ij>nita .--/A/, 1 which our English proverb translates, "lie merry 
 ami wise." 1 know how easy it is to men of the world to look 
 grave and sneer at your sanguine youth, and its glittering 
 dreams. But I find the gayest castles in the air that were 
 ever piled, far better for comfort and for use, than the dungeons 
 in the air that are daily dug and eaverned out by grumbling, 
 discontented people. 1 know those miserable fellows, and I 
 hate them, who see a black star always riding through the light 
 and colored clouds in the sky overhead : waves of light pass 
 over and hide it for a moment, but the black star keeps fast in 
 the zenith. But power dwells with cheerfulness ; hope puts 
 us in a working mood, whilst despair is no muse, and untunes 
 the active powers. A man should make life and Nature 
 happier to us, or he had better never been born. "When the 
 political economist reckons up the unproductive classes, he 
 should put at the head this class of pitiers of themselves, crav- 
 ers of sympathy, bewailing imaginary disasters. An old French 
 verse runs, in my translation : 
 
 Some of your pjiefs you have cured, 
 
 And tlio sharpest you still have survived; 
 
 But what toniHMits of pain you endured 
 From evils that never arrived ! 
 
 There are three wants which never can be satisfied : that of 
 the rich, who wants something more ; that of the sick, who 
 wants something different; and that of the traveller. \\ho 
 says: Anywhere but here. The Turkish cadi said to Lay- 
 ard, " After the fashion of thy people, thou hast wandered from 
 one plaee to another, until thou art happy and content in 
 none." My countrymen are not less infatuated with the m<;,,- 
 toy of Italy. All America seems on the point of embarking 
 for Europe. But we shall not always tra\. and lands 
 
 with light purposes, and for pleasure, as we say. One day we 
 shall cast out the passion for Kumpe, by the passion for America. 
 Culture will give gravity and domestic rest to those \\ h< now 
 travel only as not knowing how else to spend money. Already, 
 who provoke pity like that excellent family party just arriving 
 in their well-appointed carriage, as far from home and any 
 
 VOL. II. 20 
 
458 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 holiest end as ever 1 ? Each nation has asked successively, 
 What are they here for 1 until at last the party are shame 
 faced, and anticipate the question at the gates of each town. 
 
 Genial manners are good, and power of accommodation to 
 
 j any circumstance, but the high prize of life, the crowning for- 
 
 I V tune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, 
 
 which finds him in employment and happiness, whether it 
 
 be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statutes, or 
 
 songs. I doubt not this was the meaning of Socrates, when he 
 
 pronounced artists the only truly wise, as being actually, not 
 
 apparently so. 
 
 In childhood, we fancied ourselves walled in by the horizon, 
 as by a glass bell, and doubted not, by distant travel, we 
 should reach the baths of the descending sun and stars. On 
 experiment, the horizon flies before us, and leaves us on an 
 endless common, sheltered by no glass bell. Yet t is strange 
 how tenaciously we cling to that bell-astronomy, of a protecting 
 domestic horizon. I find the same illusion in the search after 
 happiness, which I observe, every summer, recommenced in 
 this neighborhood, soon after the pairing of the birds. The 
 young people do not like the town, do not like the sea-shore, 
 they will go inland ; find a dear cottage deep in the mountains, 
 secret as their hearts. They set forth on their travels in 
 search of a home : they reach Berkshire ; they reach Vermont ; 
 they look at the farms ; good forms, high mountain-sides ; 
 but where is the seclusion 1 The farm is near this ; t is near 
 that ; they have got far from Boston, but t is near Albany, or 
 near Burlington, or near Montreal. They explore a farm, 
 but the house is small, old, thin ; discontented people lived 
 there, and are gone : there s too much sky, too much out 
 doors ; too public. The youth aches for solitude. When he 
 comes to the house, he passes through the house. That does 
 not make the deep recess he sought. Ah ! now, I perceive, 
 he says, it must be deep with persons ; friends only can give 
 depth. Yes, but there is a great dearth, this year, of friends ; 
 hard to find, and hard to have when found : they are just go 
 ing away : they too are in the whirl of the flitting world, and 
 have engagements and necessities. They are just starting for 
 Wisconsin ; have letters from Bremen : see you again, soon. 
 Slow, slow to learn the lesson, that there is but one depth, but 
 one interior, and that is, his purpose. When joy or calamity 
 or genius shall show him it, then woods, then forms, then city 
 shopmen and cab-drivers, indifferently with prophet or friend, 
 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 459 
 
 will mirror back to him its unfathomable heaven, its populous 
 solitude. 
 
 The uses of travel are occasional, and short ; but the best 
 fruit it finds, when it finds it, is conversation ; and this is a/ 
 main t unetion of life. What a difference in the hospitality of V 
 minds ! Inestimable is lie to whom we can say what we can 
 not say to ourselves. Others are involuntarily hurtful to us, 
 and bereave us of the power of thought, impound and imprison 
 us. As, when there is sympathy, there needs but one wise man 
 in a company, and all are wise, so a blockhead makes a 
 blockhead of his companion. Wonderful power to benumb 
 >es this brother. When he comes into the office or pub 
 lic room, the society dissolves ; one after another slips out, and 
 the apartment is at his disposal. W T hat is incurable but a 
 frivolous habit 1 A fly is as untamable as a hyena. Yet folly 
 in the sense of fun, fooling, or dawdling can easily be borne ; 
 as Talleyrand said, " 1 find nonsense singularly refreshing " ; 
 but a virulent, aggressive fool taints the reason of a household. 
 1 have seen a whole family of quiet, sensible people unhinged 
 and beside themselves, victims of such a rogue ; for the steady 
 wrongheadedness of one perverse person irritates the best : since 
 we must withstand absurdity, lint resistance only exasperates 
 the acrid fool, who believes that Nature and gravitation are 
 quite wrong, and he only is right. Hence all the dozen in 
 mates are soon perverted, with whatever virtues and industries 
 they have, into contradictors, accusers, explainers, and repairers 
 of this one malefactor ; like a boat about to be overset, or a 
 carriage run away with, not only the foolish pilot or driver, 
 but everybody on board is forced to assume strange and ridicu 
 lous attitudes, to balance the vehicle and prevent the upsetting. 
 For remedy, whilst the case is yet mild, I recommend phlegm 
 and truth : let all the truth that is spoken or done be at the 
 zero of indifferency, or truth itself will be folly. Hut, when 
 the case is seated and malignant, the only safety is in amputa 
 tion ; as seamen say, you shall cut and run. How to live with 
 unfit companions? for, with such, life is for the most part 
 spent : and experience teaches little better than our earliest 
 instinct of self-defence, namely, not to engage, not to mix your 
 self in any manner with them ; but let their madness spend 
 itself unopposed. 
 
 Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for 
 his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day 
 while they live. Our habit of thought take men as thej 
 
460 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 rise is not satisfying ; in the common experience, I fear, it 
 is poor and squalid. The success which will content them is 
 a bargain, a lucrative employment, an advantage gained over a 
 competitor, a marriage, a patrimony, a legacy, and the like. 
 With these objects, their conversation deals with surfaces : 
 politics, trade, personal defects, exaggerated bad news, and the 
 rain. This is forlorn, and they feel sore and sensitive. Now, 
 if one comes who can illuminate this dark house with thoughts, 
 show them their native riches, what gifts they have, how indis 
 pensable each is, what magical powers over nature and men ; 
 what access to poetry, religion, and the powers which consti 
 tute character ; he wakes in them the feeling of worth, his 
 suggestions require new ways of living, new books, new men, 
 new arts and sciences, then we come out of our egg-shell 
 existence into the great dome, and see the zenith over and the 
 nadir under us. Instead of the tanks and buckets of knowl 
 edge to which we are daily confined, we come down to the 
 shore of the sea, and dip our hands in its miraculous waves. 
 T is wonderful the effect on the company. They are not the 
 men they were. They have all been to California, and all have 
 come back millionnaires. There is no book and no pleasure in 
 life comparable to it. Ask what is best in our experience, and 
 we shall say, a few pieces of plain-dealing with wise people. 
 Our conversation once and again has apprised us that we be 
 long to better circles than we have yet beheld ; that a mental 
 power invites us, whose generalizations are more worth for joy 
 and for effect than anything that is now called philosophy or 
 literature. In excited conversation, we have glimpses of the 
 Universe, hints of power native to the soul, far-darting lights 
 and shadows of an Andes landscape, such as \ve can hardly 
 attain in lone meditation. Here are oracles sometimes profusely 
 given, to which the memory goes back in barren hours. 
 
 Add the consent of will and temperament, and there exists 
 the covenant of friendship. Our chief want in life, is, some 
 body who shall make us do what we can. This is the service 
 of a friend. With him we are easily great. There is a sub 
 lime attraction in him to whatever virtue is in us. How he 
 flings wide the doors of existence ! What questions we ask 
 of him ! what an understanding we have ! how few words are 
 needed ! It is the only real society. An Eastern poet, Ali 
 Ben Abu Taleb, writes with sad truth : 
 
 " He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, 
 And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere." 
 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 461 
 
 But few writers have said anything better to this point than 
 Hafiz, who indicates this relation as the test of mental health : 
 "Thou learnest no secret until thou knowest friendship, since 
 to the unsound no heavenly knowledge outers." Neither is 
 lite IOHL: enough for friendship. That is a serious and majes 
 tic atlair, like a royal presence, or a religion, and not a postil 
 ion s dinner to he eaten on the run. There is a pudency 
 about friendship, as about love, and though fine souls never 
 lose sight of it, yet they do not name it. With the first 
 class of men our friendship or good understanding goes quite 
 behind all accidents of estrangement, of condition, of reputa 
 tion. And yet we do not provide for the greatest good of 
 life. We take care of our health ; we lay up money : we 
 make our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient ; but who 
 provides wisely that he shall not be wanting in the best 
 property of all, friends 1 We know that all our training is 
 to fit us for this, and we do not take the step towards it. 
 How long shall we sit and wait for these benefactors 1 
 
 It makes no difference, in looking back five years, how you 
 have been dieted or dressed ; whether you have been lodged 
 on the first floor or the attic ; whether you have had pin lei is 
 and baths, good cattle and horses, have been carried in a neat 
 equipage, or in a ridiculous truck : these things are forgotten 
 so quickly, and leave no effect. But it counts much whether 
 we have had good companions, in that time, almost as 
 much as what we have been doing. And see the overpower 
 ing importance of neighborhood in all association. As it is 
 marriage, fit or unfit, that makes our home, so it is who lives 
 near us of equal social decree, a few people at convenient 
 distance, no matter how bad company, these, and these 
 only, shall be your life s companions : and all those who are 
 native, congenial, and by many an oath of the heart, sacra- 
 mented to you, aro gradually and totally lost. You can 
 not deal systematically with this fine element of society, and 
 one may take a good deal of pains to bring people together, 
 and to organize clubs and debating societies, and yet no re 
 sult come of it. But it is certain that there is a great deal 
 of good in us that does not know itself, and that a habit of 
 union and competition brings people up and keeps them up 
 to their highest point ; that life would be twice or ten times 
 life, if spent with wise and fruitful companions. The obvious 
 inference is, a little useful deliberation and preconcert, when 
 one goes to buy. house and land. 
 
\ 
 
 462 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 But we live with people on other platforms ; we live with 
 dependents, not only with the young whom we are to teach 
 all we know, and clothe with the advantages we have earned, 
 but also with those who serve us directly, and for money. 
 Yet the old rules hold good. Let not the tie be mercenary, 
 though the service is measured by money. Make yourself ne 
 cessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any. This 
 point is acquiring new importance in American social life. 
 Our domestic service is usually a foolish fracas of unreason 
 able demand on one side, and shirking on the other. A man 
 of wit was asked, in the train, what was his errand in the city ? 
 He replied, " I have been sent to procure an angel to do cook 
 ing." A lady complained to me, that, of her two maidens, 
 one was absent-minded, and the other was absent-bodied. 
 And the evil increases from the ignorance and hostility of 
 every ship-load of the immigrant population swarming into 
 houses and farms. Few people discern that it rests with the 
 master or the mistress what service comes from the man or 
 the maid ; that this identical hussy was a tutelar spirit in 
 one house, and a haridan in the other. All sensible people are 
 selfish, and nature is tugging at every contract to make the 
 terms of it fair. If you are proposing only your own, the 
 other party must deal a little hardly by you. If you deal 
 generously, the other, though selfish and unjust, will make 
 an exception in your favor, and deal truly with you. When 
 I asked an iron-master about the slag and cinder in railroad 
 iron, " 0," he said, " there s always good iron to be had : 
 if there s cinder in the iron, t is because there was cinder in 
 the pay." 
 
 But why multiply these topics, and their illustrations, 
 which are endless 1 Life brings to each his task, and, what 
 ever art you select, algebra, planting, architecture, poems, 
 commerce, politics, all are attainable, even to the miracu 
 lous triumphs, on the same terms, of selecting that for which 
 you are apt ; begin at the beginning, proceed in order, step 
 by step. T is as easy to twist iron anchors, and braid can 
 nons, as to braid straw, to boil granite as to boil water, if you 
 take all the steps in order. Wherever there is failure, there 
 is some giddiness, some superstition about luck, some step 
 omitted, which Nature never pardons. The happy conditions 
 of life may be had on the same terms. Their attraction for 
 you is the pledge that they are within your reach. Our 
 prayers are prophets. There must be fidelity, and there must 
 
CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 40 3 
 
 be adherence. How respectable the life that clings to its ob 
 jects! Youthful aspirations are fine things, your theories 
 and plans of lite are fair and commendable : but will you 
 stick( Not one, 1 fear, in that Common full of people, or, in 
 a thousand, but one : and when you tax them \\ith treachery, 
 anil remind them of their high resolutions, they have for 
 gotten that they made a vow. The individuals are fugit ive, 
 and in the act of becoming something else, and irresponsible. 
 The race is great, the ideal fair, but the men whittling and 
 unsure. The hero is he who is immovably centred. The 
 main difference between people seems to be, that one man can 
 come under obligations on which you can rely. is obligable ; 
 and another is not. As he lias not a law within him, there s 
 nothing to tie him to. 
 
 T is inevitable to name particulars of virtue, and of con 
 dition, and to exaggerate them. But all rests at last on that 
 integrity which dwarfs talent, and can spare it. Sanity con 
 sists in not being subdued by your means. Fancy prices are 
 paid for position, and for the culture of talent, but to the 
 grand interests, superficial success is of no account. The 
 man, it is his attitude, not feats, but forces, not on set 
 days and public occasions, but at all hours, and in repose alike 
 as in energy, still formidable, and not to be disposed of. The 
 populace says, with Home Tooke, " If you would be powerful, 
 pretend to be powerful." I prefer to say, with the old prophet, 
 " Seekest thou great things *? seek them not " : or, what was 
 said of a Spanish prince, " The more you took from him, the 
 greater he looked." Plus on lui ote, 2}lus il est grand. 
 
 The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points 
 steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the obscurest farm, 
 and in the miscellany of metropolitan life, and that these few 
 are alone to be regarded, the escape from all false ties ; 
 courage to be what we are ; and love of what is simple and 
 beautiful ; independence, and cheerful relation, these are the 
 essentials, these, and the wish to serve, - to add somewhat 
 to the well-being of men. 
 
VIII. 
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 Was never form and never faco 
 So sweet t> SKVD as only grace 
 Which did nut slumber fike a stone 
 But hovered gleaming and was gone. 
 Beauty cha-cd lie everywhere, 
 In flame, in storm, in clouds of air. 
 He -mote the lake to feed his eye 
 
 With the beryl beam of the broken wave; 
 He filing in pebble* well to hear 
 
 The moment s mii^c which they gave. 
 Oft pealed for him a lofty tone 
 From nodding pole and belting zone. 
 He heard a voice none el-e eoiild hear 
 From centred and from errant sphere. 
 The quaking earth did quake in rhyme, 
 Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime. 
 In dens of passion, and pits of woe, 
 He saw strong Kros struggling through, 
 To >nn the dark and solve the curse, 
 And beam to the hounds of the universe. 
 While thus to love he gave his days 
 In loyal worship, scorning praise, 
 How spread their lures for him, in vain, 
 Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain! 
 He thought it happier to be dead, 
 To die for Beauty, thivn, live for bread. 
 
 VOL. II 20* DD 
 
BEAUTY. 
 
 THE spiral tendency of vegetation infects education also. 
 Our books approach very slowly the things we must wish 
 to know. What a parade we make of pur science, and how 
 far oil , and at arm s length, it* is from its^ojbjccts ! Our botany 
 is all names, not powers : poets and romancers talk of herbs 
 of grace and healin.n : but what does the botanist know of the 
 virtues of his weeds I The geologist lays bare the strata, and 
 can tell them all on his fingers : but does he know what effect 
 gaggtsjnto the man who builds his house in them ] w hat effect; 
 on the race that inhabits a granite shelf { what on the in 
 habitants of marl and of alluvium] 
 
 We should go to the ornithologist with a new feeling, if he 
 could teach us what the social birds say, when they sit in the 
 autumn council, talking together in the trees. The want of 
 sympathy makes his record a dull dictionary. His result is 
 a dead bird. The bird is not in its ounces and inches, but in 
 its relations to Nature ; and the slun or skeleton Ton show 
 me is no more a heron, than a heap of ashes or a bottle of 
 gases into which his body has been reduced, is Dante or 
 Washington. The naturalist is led from the road- by the 
 whole distance of his fancied advance. The boy had juster 
 views when he gaxed at the shells on the beach, or the flowers 
 in the meadow, unable to call them by their names, than the 
 man in the pride of his nomenclature. Astrology intended 
 us, for it tied man to the system. Instead of an isolated beg 
 gar, the farthest star felt him, and he felt the star. However 
 rash and however falsified by pretenders and traders in it, the 
 hint was tme and divine, the soul s avowal of its large rela 
 tions, and that climate, century, remote natures, as well as 
 near, are part of its biography. Chemistry takes to pieces, 
 but it does not construct. Alchemy which sought to trans 
 
468 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 mute one element into another, to prolong life, to arm with 
 power, that was in the right direction. All our science 
 lacks a human side. The tenant is more than the house. 
 Bugs and stamens and spores, on which we lavish so many 
 years, are not finalities, and man, when his powers unfold in 
 order, will take Nature along with him, and emit light into all 
 her recesses. The human heart concerns us more than the 
 poring into miscroscopes, and is larger than can be measured 
 by the pompous figures of the astronomer. 
 
 We are just so frivolous and sceptical. Men hold them 
 selves cheap and vile : and yet a man is a fagot of thunder 
 bolts. All the elements pour through his system : he is the 
 flood of the flood, and fire of the fire ; he feels the antipodes 
 and the pole, as drops of his blood : they are the extension of 
 his personality. His duties are measured by that instrument 
 he is ; and a right and perfect man would be felt to the centre 
 of the Copernican system. T is curious that we only believe 
 as deep as we live. We do not think heroes can exert any 
 more awful power than that surface-play which amuses us. A 
 deep man believes in miracles, waits for them, believes in 
 magic, believes that the orator will decompose his adversary ; 
 believes that the evil eye can wither, that the heart s blessing 
 can heal ; that love can exalt talent ; can overcome all odds. 
 From a great heart secret magnetisms flow incessantly to draw 
 great events. But we prize very humble utilities, a prudent 
 husband, a good son, a voter, a citizen, and deprecate any 
 romance of character ; and perhaps reckon only his money 
 value, his intellect, his affection, as a sort of bill of ex 
 change, easily convertible into fine chambers, pictures, music, 
 and wine. 
 
 The motive of science was the extension of man, on all 
 sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his 
 eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language 
 of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind ; and, through his 
 sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that 
 is not our science. These geologies, chemistries, astronomies, 
 seem to make wise, but they leave us where they found us. 
 The invention is of use to the inventor, of questionable help 
 to any other. The formulas of science are like the papers in 
 your pocket-book, of no value to any but the owner. Science 
 in England, in America, is jealous of theory, hates the name 
 of love and moral purpose. There s a revenge for this inhu 
 manity. What manner of man does science make ? The boy 
 
BEAUTY. 469 
 
 is not attracted. He says, I do not wish to be such a kind of 
 man as my professor is. The collector lias dried all the plant* 
 in liis herbal, Imt he has lost weight and humor. He lias ^<>t all 
 snakes and lizards in his phials, hut science lias done for him 
 also, and h;ts put the man into a liottle. Our reliance on tho 
 physician is a kind of despair of ourselves. The cleriry have 
 bronchitis, \\hich docs imt seem a certificate of spiritual health. 
 Mai-ready thought it came of thejfefretfo of their voicing. An 
 Indian prince, Tisso, one day riding in the forest, saw a herd 
 of elk sporting. "Sec how happy," he said, "these browsing 
 elks are ! Why should not priests, lodged and fed comfortably 
 in the temples, also amuse themselves ] " Returning home, 
 he imparted this reflection to the king. The king, on the 
 next day, conferred the sovereignty on him, saying, " Prince, 
 administer this empire for seven days : at the termination of 
 that period, I shall put thee to death." At the end of the 
 seventh day, the king inquired, " From what cause hast thou 
 become so emaciated ? " He answered, " From the horror of 
 death." The monarch rejoined: "Live, my child, and be 
 wise. Thou hast ceased to take recreation, saying to thyself, 
 In seven days I shall be put to death. These priests in tho 
 temple incessantly meditate on death ; how can they enter 
 into healthful diversions]" But the men of science or the 
 doctors or the clergy are not victims of their pursuits, more 
 than others. The miller, the lawyer, and the merchant dedi 
 cate themselves to their own details, and do not come out 
 men of more force. Have they divination, grand aims, hospi 
 tality of soul,- and the equality to any event, which we demand 
 in man, or only the reactions of the mill, of the wares, of the 
 chicane ] 
 
 No object really interests us but man, and in man onlv his 
 superiorities ; and though we are aware of a perfect "law in 
 Nature, it has fascination for us only through Rarelation to 
 him, or, as it is rooted in the mind. \\t the birth of \Vinekel- 
 maini, more than a hundred years :igo, side by side with this 
 arid, departmental, i*t-initrti-tii science, rose an enthusiasm in 
 the study of Beauty ; and perhaps some sparks from it may 
 yet light a eoafiagffction in the other. Knowledge of men, 
 knowledge of manners, the power of torm, and our sensibility 
 to personal influence, never LT<> out of tashimi. These are facts 
 of a science which we study without book, whose teachers and 
 subjects are always near us. 
 
 So inveterate is our habit of criticism, that much of our 
 
470 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 knowledge m this direction belongs to the chapter of pathol- 
 o" The crowd in the street oftener furnishes degradations 
 than aiK-els or redeemers; but they all prove the transparency. 
 Every spirit makes its house ; and we can give a shrew I guess 
 from the house to the inhabitant. But not ess does Na e 
 furnish us with every sign of gce and goodness The d 
 cious faces of children, the beauty of school-girls " the sweet 
 seriousness of sixteen," the lofty air of k^weB-brtd 
 boys, the passionate histories m the looks and mam ers ot 
 Jouth and P carly manhood, and the varied power m all hat 
 well-known company that escort us through life, we I 
 how these forms thrill, paralyze, provoke, inspire, and enlarge 
 
 US Beautv is the form under which the intellect prefers to study 
 the world All privilege is that of beauty; for there are many 
 teluties as, of generaf nature, of the human face and form of 
 manners, of brain, or method, moral beauty, or beauty of the 
 
 S The ancients believed that a genius or demon took posses 
 sion at brth of each mortal, to guide him; that these genu 
 Tere sometimes seen as a flame of fire partly immersed ,n the 
 bodies which they governed; -on an evil man .resting on hi, 
 head- in a good man, mixed with his substance, 
 thought the same genius, at the death of ^-^ entered a 
 new-born child, and they pretended to i guess the p do t b j the 
 sailin" of the ship. We recognize obscurely the same 1 
 tho h we give it our own names. We say, that every man 
 I s er^itled to be valued by his best moment We measure ou 
 friends so. We know, they have mterva ^ ^rlich 
 tike no heed, but wait the reappearmgs of the genius, win 
 arc sure and beautiful. On the other side, everybody knows 
 peopl who appear bedridden, and who with all degrees of 
 abilitv, never impress us with the air of free agency. They 
 know it too and peep with their eyes to see if you detect the r 
 know it too, an pwp pronounce the solving word, 
 
 fiwdom The remedy seems never to be far off, since the 
 tep Ito thoiight lifts this mountain of necessity. Though 
 
 and power await him. 
 
BEAUTY. 471 
 
 The question of Beauty takes us out of surfaces, to think- 
 in ,L <>f thr foundation* of things. (loethe said : "The beautiful 
 is a manifestation of secret laws of Nature, which, hut for 
 this appearance, had been forever concealed from us." And 
 the working of this deep instinct makes all the excitement 
 much >f it superficial and aksurd enough about works of art, 
 which leads armies of vain travellers everv year to Italy, (} recce, 
 and Kgypt. Kvery man values every acquisition he makes in 
 th- science of beauty, above his possessions. The most use 
 ful man in the most useful world, so long as only commodity 
 was served, would remain unsatisfied. But, as fast as he sees 
 beauty, life acquires a very high value. 
 
 I am warned by the ill fate of many philosophers not to 
 attempt a definition of Beauty. I will rather enumerate a 
 few of its qualities. We ascribe beauty to that which is 
 simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly an 
 swers its end ; which stands related to all things ; which is 
 the mean of many extremes. It is the most enduring qual 
 ity, and the most ascending quality. "\Yc say love is blind, 
 and the figure of Cupid is drawn with a bandage round his 
 eyes. Blind: yes. because he does not see what he does 
 not like ; but the sharpest-flighted hunter in the universe is 
 Love, for finding what he seeks, and only that ; and the my- 
 thologists tell us, that Vulcan was painted lame, and Cupid 
 blind, to call attention to the fact, that one was all limbs, and 
 the other, all eyes. In the true mythology, Love is an im 
 mortal child, and Beauty leads him as a guide: nor can \\e 
 express a deeper sense than when we say, Beauty is the pilot 
 of the young soul. 
 
 Beyond their sensuous delight, the forms and colors of Na 
 ture have a new charm for us in our perception, that not one 
 ornament was added for ornament, but each is a sign of some 
 brtter health, or more excellent action. Kh-ganci- of form in 
 bird or beast, or in the human figure, marks some excellence 
 of structure : or beauty is only an invitation from what be 
 longs to us. T is a law of botany, that in plants, the same 
 virtues follow the same forms. It is a rule of largest applira- 
 \ tion, true in a plant, true in a loaf of bread, that in tin- OOn- 
 stniction of any fabric or organism, any real increase of 
 fitness to its end, is an increase of beauty. 
 
 The less. .n tauirht by the study of (Jreek and of (Jothic 
 art, of antique and of Pre-Raphaelite painting, was worth all 
 the research, namely, that all beauty must be organic; 
 
472 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 | that outside embellishment is deformity. It is the sound 
 ness of the bones that ultimates itself in a peach-bloom com 
 plexion : health of constitution that makes the sparkle and 
 the power of the eye. T is the adjustment of the size and of 
 the joining of the sockets of the skeleton, that gives grace 
 of outline and the finer grace of movement. The cat and the 
 deer cannot move or sit inelegantly. The dancing-master can 
 never teach a badly built man to walk well. The tint of the 
 flower proceeds from its root, and the lustres of the sea-shell 
 begin with its existence. Hence our taste in building rejects 
 paint, and all shifts, and shows the original grain of the wood : 
 refuses pilasters and columns that support nothing, and allows 
 the real supporters of the house honestly to show themselves. 
 
 Every necessary or organic action pleases the beholder. A 
 man leading a horse to water, a farmer sowing seed, the labors 
 of haymakers in the field, the carpenter building a ship, the 
 smith at his forge, or, whatever useful labor, is becoming to 
 
 /the wise eye. But if it is done to be seen, it is mean. How 
 beautiful are ships on the sea ! but ships in the theatre, or 
 ships kept for picturesque effect on Virginia Water, by George 
 IV., and men hired to stand in fitting costumes at a penny an 
 hour! What a difference in effect between a battalion of 
 troops marching to action, and one of our independent compa 
 nies on a holiday ! In the midst of a military show, and a 
 festal procession gay with banners, I saw a boy seize an old 
 tin pan that lay resting under a wall, and poising it on the 
 top of a stick, he set it turning, and made it describe the 
 most elegant imaginable curves, and drew away attention from 
 the decorated procession by this startling beauty. 
 
 Another text from the mythologists. The Greeks fabled 
 that Venus was born of the foam of the sea. Nothing inter 
 ests us which is stark or bounded, but only what streams with 
 life, what is in act or endeavor to reach somewhat beyond. 
 The pleasure a palace or a temple gives the eye, is, that an 
 order and method has been communicated to stones, so that 
 they speak and geometrize, become tender or sublime with ex 
 pression. Beauty is the moment of transition, as if the form 
 were just ready to flow into other forms. Any fixedness, 
 heaping, or concentration on one feature, a long nose, a 
 sharp chin, a hump-back, is the reverse of the flowing, and 
 therefore deformed. Beautiful as is the symmetry of any form, 
 if the form can move, we seek a more excellent symmetry. 
 The interruption of equilibrium stimulates the eye to desire 
 
BEAUTY. 473 
 
 the restoration of symmetry, and to watch the steps through 
 which it is attained. This is the charm of running water, sea- 
 waves, tlie flight of birds, and the locomotion of animals. This 
 is the theory of dancing, to recover continually in changes the 
 lost equilibrium, uot by abrupt and angular, but by gradual 
 and curving movements. I have been told by persons of ex 
 perience in matters of taste, that the fashions follow a law <>f 
 gradation, and are never arbitrary. The new mode is always 
 only a step onward in the same direction as the last mode ; 
 and a cultivated eye is prepared for and predicts the new 
 fashion. This fact suggests the reason of all mistakes and of 
 fence in our own modes. It is necessary in music, when you 
 strike a discord, to let down the ear by an intermediate note 
 or two to the accord again : and many a good experiment, 
 born of good sense, and destined to succeed, fails, only be 
 cause it is offensively sudden. I suppose, the Parisian milli 
 ner who dresses the world from her imperious boudoir, will 
 know how to reconcile the Bloomer costume to the eye of 
 mankind, and make it triumphant over Punch himself, by in 
 terposing the just gradations. I need not say how wide the 
 same law ranges ; and how much it can be hoped to effect. 
 All that is a little harshly claimed by progressive parties may 
 easily come to be conceded without question, if this rule be 
 observed. Thus the circumstances may be easily imagined, 
 in which woman may speak, vote, argue causes, legislate, and 
 drive a coach, and all the most naturally in the world, if only 
 it come by degrees. To this streaming or flowing belongs the 
 beauty that all circular movement has ; as, the circulation of 
 waters, the circulation of the blood, the periodical motion of 
 planets, the annual wave of vegetation, the action and reac 
 tion of Nature ; and, if we follow it out, this demand in our 
 thought for an ever-onward action is the argument for the 
 immortality. 
 
 One more text from the mythologists is to the same purpose, 
 Bediitii riilts <>)> i linn. Heautv rests on necessities. The 
 line of beauty is the result of perfect economy. The cell of 
 the bee is built at that angle which gives the most strength 
 with the least wax ; the bone or the quill of the bird gives the 
 most alar strength with the least weight. " It is the purga 
 tion of superfluities," said Michel Angelo. There is not a 
 particle to spare in natural structures. There is a compelling 
 reason in the uses of the plant, for every novelty of color or 
 form : and our art saves material, by more skilful arrangement, 
 
474 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 and reaches beauty by taking every superfluous ounce that can 
 be spared from a wall, and keeping all its strength in the 
 poetry of columns. In rhetoric, this art of omission is a chief 
 secret of power, and, in general, it is proof of high culture, to 
 say the greatest matters in the simplest way. 
 
 Veracity first of all, and forever. Rien de beau que le vrai. 
 In all design, art lies in making your object prominent, but 
 there is a prior art in choosing objects that are prominent. 
 The fine arts have nothing casual, but spring from the instincts 
 of the nations that created them. 
 
 Beauty is the quality which makes to endure. In a house 
 that I know, I have noticed a block of spermaceti lying about 
 closets and mantel-pieces, for twenty years together, simply 
 because the tallow-man gave it the form of a rabbit ; and, I 
 suppose, it may continue to be lugged about unchanged for a 
 century. Let an artist scrawl a few lines or figures on the 
 back of a letter, and that scrap of paper is rescued from danger, 
 is put in portfolio, is framed and glazed, and, in proportion 
 to the beauty of the lines drawn, will be kept for centuries. 
 Burns writes a copy of verses, and sends them to a newspaper, 
 and the human race take charge of them that they shall not 
 perish. 
 
 As the flute is heard farther than the cart, see how surely a 
 beautiful form strikes the fancy of men, and is copied and re 
 produced . without end. How many copies are there of the 
 Belvedere Apollo, the Venus, the Psyche, the Warwick Vase, 
 the Parthenon, and the Temple of Vesta ? These are objects 
 of tenderness to all. In our cities, an ugly building is soon 
 removed, and is never repeated, but any beautiful building is 
 copied and improved upon, so that all masons and carpenters 
 work to repeat and preserve the agreeable forms, whilst the 
 ugly ones die out. 
 
 The felicities of design in art, or in works of Nature, are 
 shadows or forerunners of that beauty which reaches its per 
 fection in the human form. All men are its lovers. Wherever 
 it goes, it creates joy and hilarity, and everything is permitted 
 to it. It reaches its height in woman. " To Eve," say the 
 Mahometans, " God gave two thirds of all beauty." A beauti 
 ful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage mate, plant 
 ing tenderness, hope, and eloquence in all whom she ap 
 proaches. Some favors of condition must go with it, since a 
 certain serenity is essential, but we love its reproofs and su 
 periorities. Nature wishes that woman should attract man, 
 
BEAUTY. 475 
 
 yet she often cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, 
 which seems to say, Yes, 1 am willing to attract, but to at 
 tract a little better kind of man than any I yet behold. 
 Frenrh w <? ///"//> .< of the fifteenth century celebrate the name 
 of Pauline de Yiguiere, a virtuous and accomplished maiden, 
 who so tired the enthusiasm of her contemporaries, by her en 
 chanting frm, that the citizens of her native city of Toulouse 
 obtained the aid of the civil authorities to compel her to ap 
 pear publicly on the balcony at least twice a week, and, as 
 often as she showed herself, the crowd was dangerous to life. 
 Not less, in England, in the last century, was the lame of the 
 Gunnings, of whom Kli/abeth married the Duke of Hamilton ; 
 and Maria, the Earl of Coventry. Walpole Baya : u The con 
 course was so great, when the Duchess of Hamilton was pre 
 sented at court, on Friday, that even the noble crowd in the 
 drawing-room clambered on chairs and tables to look at her. 
 There are mobs at their doors to see them get into their chairs, 
 and people go early to get places at the theatres, when it is 
 known they will be there." "Such crowds," he adds, else 
 where-, " ilork to see the Duchess of Hamilton, that seven 
 hundred people sat up all night, in and about an inn, in York 
 shire, to see her get into her post-chaise next morning." 
 
 But whv need we console ourselves with the fames of Helen 
 of Argos, or Corinna, or Pauline of Toulouse, or the Duchess 
 of Hamilton ] We all know this magic very well, or can di 
 vine it. It does not hurt weak eyes to look into beautiful 
 eyes never so lonir. Women stand related to beautiful Nature 
 around us, and the enamored youth mixes their form with 
 moon and stars, with woods and waters, and the pomp of sum 
 mer. They heal us of awkwardness by their words and looks. 
 We observe their intellectual influence on the most serious 
 student. They refine and clear his mind ; teach him to put a 
 pleasing method into what is dry and difficult. We talk to 
 them and wish to be listened to ; we fear to fatigue them, and 
 acquire a facility of expression which passes from conversation, 
 into habit of style. 
 
 That Beauty is the normal state, is shown by the perpetual 
 effort of Nature to attain it. Mirabeau had an uirly face on 
 a handsome ground ; and we see f:n-rs 0Y6TJ dav which have a 
 good type, but have been marred in the casting: a proof that 
 we are all entitled to beauty, should have been beautiful, if 
 our ancestors had kept the laws, as every lily and 
 rose is well. But our bodies do not fit us, but caricature and 
 
476 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 satirize us. Thus, short legs, which constrain to short, min 
 cing steps, are a kind of personal insult and contumely to the 
 owner ; and long stilts, again, put him at perpetual disadvan 
 tage, and force him to stoop to the general level of mankind. 
 Martial ridicules a gentleman of his day whose countenance 
 resembled the face of a swimmer seen under water. Saadi 
 describes a schoolmaster " so ugly and crabbed, that a sight 
 of him would derange the ecstasies of the orthodox." Faces 
 are rarely true to any ideal type, but are a record in sculpture 
 of a thousand anecdotes of whim and folly. Portrait painters 
 say that most faces and forms are irregular and unsymmetrical ; 
 have one eye blue, and one gray ; the nose not straight ; and 
 one shoulder higher than another ; the hair unequally distrib 
 uted, etc. The man is physically as well as metaphysically a 
 thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good 
 and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start. 
 
 A beautiful person, among the Greeks, was thought to betray 
 by this sign some secret favor of the immortal gods ; and we 
 can pardon pride, when a woman possesses such a figure, that 
 wherever she stands, or moves, or throws a shadow on the wall, 
 or sits for a portrait to the artist, she confers a favor on the 
 world. And yet it is not beauty that inspires the deepest 
 passion. Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait. 
 Beauty, without expression, tires. Abbe Menage said of the 
 President Le Bailleul, " that he was fit for nothing tout to sit 
 for his portrait." A Greek epigram intimates that the force 
 of love is not shown by the courting of beauty, but when the 
 like desire is inflamed for one who is ill-favored. And petulant 
 old gentlemen, who have chanced to suifer some intolerable 
 weariness from pretty people, or who have seen cut flowers to 
 some profusion, or who see, after a world of pains have been 
 successfully taken for the costume, how the least mistake in 
 sentiment takes all the beauty out of your clothes, affirm, 
 
 that the secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in 
 
 ; being uninteresting. 
 
 We love any forms, however ugly, from which great qualities 
 shine. If command, eloquence, art, or invention exist in the 
 most deformed person, all the accidents that usually displease, 
 please, and raise esteem and w r onder higher. The great orator 
 was an emaciated, insignificant person, but he was all brain. 
 Cardinal De Retz says of De Bouillon, " With the physiognomy 
 of an ox, he had the perspicacity of an eagle." It was said of 
 Hooke, the friend of Newton, " He is the most v and promises 
 
BEAUTY. 477 
 
 the least, of any man in Kngland." " Since I am so ugly/ 
 said 1 u (Jueselin, "it behooves that I be bold." Sir Philip 
 Sidnev, the darling of mankind, Hen .lonson tells us, " was no 
 pit a>ant man in count rnaiu-e, liis face being spoiled with pim 
 ples, and of high blood, and long." Those who have ruled 
 human destinies, like planets, for thousands of years, were not 
 handsome men. If a man can raise a small city to he a great 
 kingdom, can make bread cheap, can irrigate deserts, can join 
 oceans by canals, can subdue steam, can organize victory, can 
 lead the opinions of mankind, can enlarge knowledge, tis no 
 matter whether his no>e is parallel to his spine, as it ought to 
 f whether he has a nose at. all ; whether his legs are 
 straight, or whether his legs are amputated ; his deformities 
 will come to be reckoned ornamental and advantageous on the 
 
 whole. This is the- triumph <>f expression, degrading beauty, 
 
 charming us with a power so tine and friendly and intoxicating, 
 that it makes admired persons insipid, and the thought of 
 passing our lives with them insupportable. There are faces so 
 iluid with expression, so flushed and rippled by the play of 
 thought, that we can hardly find what the mere features really 
 are. When the delicious beauty of lineaments loses its power, 
 it is because a more delicious beauty has appeared : that an 
 interior and durable form has been disclosed. Still, Beauty 
 rides on her lion, as before. Still, " it was for beauty that the 
 world was made." The lives of the Italian artists, who estab 
 lished a despotism of genius amidst the dukes and kings and 
 mobs of their stormy epoch, prove how loyal men in all times 
 are to a finer brain, a tiner method, than their own. If a man 
 can cut such a head on his stone g:.ti--j..st as shall draw and 
 keep a crowd about it all day, by its grace, good-nature, and 
 inscrutable meaning ; if a man ca n build a plain cotl.-.ue with 
 such symmetry, as to make all the fine palaces look cheap and 
 vulgar; Can take such advantage of Nature that all her powers 
 serve him ; making use of geometry, instead of expense ; tap 
 ping a mountain for his water-jet : causing the sun and moon 
 in only the decorations of his estate : this is still the 
 legitimate dominion of beauty. 
 
 The radiance of the human form, though sometinu s u-toii- 
 isliiiiir, is only a burst of beauty f, .r a few years or a few 
 months, at the perfeetion of youth, and in most, rapidly de 
 clines. But we remain lovers of it, only transferri; 
 interest to interior excellence. And it is not only admirable 
 in singular and salient talents, but also in the world of manners. 
 
478 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 But the sovereign attribute remains to be noted. Things 
 are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they 
 speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful. This is the reason 
 why beauty is still escaping out of all analysis. It is not yet 
 possessed, it cannot be handled. Proclus says, " It swims on 
 the light of forms," It is properly not in the form, but in the 
 mind. It instantly deserts possession, and flies to an object in 
 the horizon. If I could put my hand on the north star, would 
 it be as beautiful 1 The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in 
 it, the beauty forsakes all the near water. For the imagina 
 tion and senses cannot be gratified at the same time. Words 
 worth rightly speaks of " a light that_ never was on sea or 
 land," meaning, that it was supplied by the observer, and the 
 Welsh bard warns his countrywomen, that 
 
 " Half of their charms with Cadwallon shall die." 
 
 The new virtue which constitutes a thing beautiful is a cer 
 tain cosmical quality, or, a power to suggest relation to the 
 whole world, and so lift the object out of a pitiful individuality. 
 Every natural feature sea, sk} T , rainbow, flowers, musical 
 tone has in it somewhat which is not private, but universal, 
 speaks of that central benefit which is the soul of Nature, and 
 thereby is beautiful. And, in chosen men and women, I find 
 somewhat in form, speech, and manners, which is not of their 
 person and family, but of a humane, catholic, and spiritual 
 character, and we love them as the sky. They have a large 
 ness of suggestion, and their face and manners carry a certain 
 grandeur, like time and justice. 
 
 The feat of the imagination is in showing the convertibility 
 of everything into every other thing. Facts which had never 
 before left their stark common sense suddenly figure as Eleu- 
 sinian mysteries. My boots and chair and candlestick are fairies 
 in disguise, meteors and constellations. All the facts in Nature 
 are nouns of the intellect, and make the grammar of the 
 eternal language. Every word has a double, treble, or centuple 
 use and meaning. What ! has my stove and pepper-pot a false 
 bottom ! I cry you mercy, good shoe-box ! I did not know you 
 were a jewel-case. Chaff and dust begin to sparkle, and are 
 clothed about with immortality. And there. is a joy in per 
 ceiving the representative or symbolic character of a fact, which 
 no bare fact or event can ever give. There are no days in life 
 so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the 
 imagination. 
 
BEAUTY. 479 
 
 The poets are quite right in decking their mistresses with 
 the spoils of the landscape, flower pinions, L r enis, rainbows, 
 flushes of morning, and stars of night, since all beauty points 
 at identity, and whatsoever thing does not express to me the 
 sea and sky, day and night, is somewhat forbidden and wrong. 
 Into every beautiful object there enters somewhat immeasura 
 ble and divine, and just as much into form bounded by out 
 lines, like mountains on the horizon, as into tones of music, or 
 depths of space. Polari/.ed light showed the secret architecture 
 of bodies ; and when the tKoml+iffkt of the mind is opened, 
 now one color or form or gesture, and now another, has a pun 
 gency, as if a more interior ray had been emitted, disclosing its 
 deep holdings in the frame of things. 
 
 The laws of this translation we do not know, or why one 
 feature or gesture enchants, why one word or syllable intoxi 
 cates, but the fact is familiar that the fine touch of the eye, 
 or a grace of manners, or a phrase of poetry, plants wings at 
 our shoulders ; as if the Divinity, in his approaches, lifts away 
 mountains of obstruction, and deigns to draw a truer line, 
 which the mind knows and owns. This is that haughty force 
 of beauty, " y/x *iijnrlxi fnn/iit-," which the poets praise, 
 under calm and precise outline, the immeasurable and divine 
 Beauty hiding all wisdom and power in its calm sky. 
 
 All high beauty has a moral element in it, and I find the 
 antique sculpture as ethical as Marcus Antoninus : and the 
 beauty ever in proportion to the depth of thought. Gross and 
 obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles ; 
 but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled 
 i skin and gray hairs. An adorer of truth we cannot choose bur- 
 obey, and the woman who has shared with us the moral senti 
 ment, her locks must appear to us sublime. Thus there U 
 a climbing scale of culture, from the first aim-cable sensation 
 which a sparkling gem or a scarlet stain affords the eye, up 
 through fair outlines and details of the landscape, features of 
 the human face and form, signs and tokens of thought and 
 character in manners, np to the ineffable mysteries of the 
 intellect. Wherever we begin, thither our steps tend : an 
 ascent from the joy of a horse in his trappings, up to the per 
 ception of Newton, that the globe on which we ride is only a 
 larLT T apple falling from a larger tree ; np to the perception of 
 1 1-ito, that globe and universe are rude and early expressions 
 of an all-dissolving Unity, the first stair on the scale to tho 
 temple of the Mind. 
 
IX. 
 
 ILLUSIONS 
 
 Flow, flow the waves hated, 
 
 Accursed, admvd, 
 
 The waves of mutation: 
 
 No anchorage is. 
 
 Sleep is not, death is not; 
 
 Who seem to die live. 
 
 House you were born in, 
 
 Friends of your spring-time, 
 
 Old man arid young maid, 
 
 pay s toil and its guerdon, 
 
 They are all vanishing, 
 
 Fleeing to fables, 
 
 Cannot be moored. 
 
 See the stars through them, 
 
 Through treacherous marbles. 
 
 Know," the stars yonder, 
 
 The stars everlasting, 
 
 Are fugitive also, 
 
 And emulate, vaulted. 
 
 The lambent heat-lightning, 
 
 And fire-fly s flight. 
 
 When thou dost return 
 On the wave s circulation, 
 Beholding the shimmer, 
 The wild dissipation, 
 And, out of endeavor 
 To change and to flow, 
 The gas becomes solid, 
 And phantoms and nothings 
 Return to be things 
 And endless imbroglio 
 I< law and the world, 
 Then first shalt thou know, 
 That in the wild turmoil, 
 Hor-r-d on the Protein, 
 Thou ridest to power, 
 And to endurance. 
 
 VOL. II. 21 
 
ILLUSIONS. 
 
 SOME years ago, in company with an agreeable party, I 
 spent a long summer day in exploring the Mammoth Cave 
 in Kentucky. We traversed, through spacious galleries af 
 fording a solid masonry foundation for the town and county 
 overhead, the six or eight black miles from the mouth of the 
 cavern to the innermost recess which tourists visit, a niche 
 or grotto made of one seamless stalactite, and called, I believe, 
 Serena s Bower. I lost the light of one day. I saw high 
 domes, and bottomless pits ; heard the voice of unseen water- 
 Mis ; paddled three quarters of a mile hi the deep Echo 
 River, whose waters are peopled with the blind fish ; crossed 
 the streams " Lethe " and " Styx " ; plied with music and guns 
 the echoes in these alarming galleries ; saw every form of 
 stalagmite and stalactite in the sculptured and fretted cham 
 bers, icicle, orange-flower, acanthus, grapes, and snowball. 
 We shot Bengal lights into the vaults and groins of the sparry 
 cathedrals, and examined all the masterpieces which the four 
 combined engineers, water, limestone, gravitation, and time, 
 could make in the dark. 
 
 The mysteries and scenery of the cave had the same dignity 
 that belongs to all natural objects, and which shames the fine 
 things to which we foppishly compare them. I remarked, es 
 pecially, the mimetic habit, with which Nature, on new in 
 struments, hums her old tunes, making night to mimic day, 
 and chemistry to ape vegetation. But I then took notice, and 
 still chiefly remember, that the best thing which the cave bad 
 to offer was an illusion. On arriving at what is called the 
 " Star-Chamber," our lamps were taken from us by the guide, 
 and extinguished or put aside, and, on looking upwards, I 
 saw or seemed to see the night heaven thick with stars glim 
 mering more or less brightly over our heads, and even what 
 
484 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 seemed a comet flaming among them. All the party were 
 touched with astonishment and pleasure. Our musical friends 
 sung with much feeling a pretty song, " The stars are in the 
 quiet sky," &c., and I sat down on the rocky floor to enjoy 
 the serene picture. Some crystal specks in the black ceiling 
 high overhead, reflecting the light of a half-hid lamp, yielded 
 this magnificent effect. 
 
 I own, I did not like the cave so well for eking out its sub 
 limities with this theatrical trick. But I have had many ex 
 periences like it, before and since ; and we must be content to 
 be pleased without too curiously analyzing the occasions. Our 
 conversation with Nature is not just what it seems. The 
 cloud-rack, the sunrise and sunset glories, rainbows and 
 northern lights, are not quite so spheral as our childhood 
 thought them ; and the part our organization plays in them is 
 too large. The senses interfere everywhere, and mix their 
 own structure with all they report of. Once, we fancied the 
 earth a plane, and stationary. In admiring the sunset, we 
 do not yet deduct the rounding, co-ordinating, pictorial powers 
 of .the eye. 
 
 ,/ The same interference from our organization creates the most 
 of our pleasure and pain. Our first mistake is the belief that 
 the circumstance gives the joy which we give to the circum 
 stance. Life is an ecstasy. Life is sweet as nitrous oxide ; 
 and the fisherman dripping all day over a cold pond, the 
 switchman at the railway intersection, the farmer in the field, 
 the negro in the rice-swamp, the fop in the street, the hunter 
 in the woods, the barrister with the jury, the belle at the ball, 
 all ascribe a certain pleasure to their employment, which they 
 themselves give it. Health and appetite impart the sweetness 
 to sugar, bread, and meat. We fancy that our civilization has 
 got on far, but we still come back to our primers. 
 
 We live by our imaginations, by our admirations, by our 
 sentiments. The child walks amid heaps of illusions, which 
 he does not like to have disturbed. The boy, how sweet to 
 him is his fancy ! how dear the story of barons and battles ! 
 What a hero he is, whilst he feeds on his heroes ! What a 
 debt is his to imaginative books ! He has no better friend 
 or influence, than Scott, Shakespeare, Plutarch, and Homer. 
 The man lives to other objects, but who dare affirm that they 
 are more real ? Even the prose of the streets is full of refrac 
 tions. In the life of the dreariest alderman, fancy enters into 
 all details, and colors them with rosy hue. He imitates tha 
 
ILLUSIONS. 485 
 
 air and actions of people whom he admires, and is raised in, 
 his own eyes. IK- pays a debt quicker to a rich man than to 
 a poor man. He wishes tin- bow and compliment of some 
 leader in the state, or in .society ; weighs what In- says; per 
 haps he never OOmee nearer to him for that, but dies at last 
 hetter contented lor this amusement of his eyes and his 
 fancy. 
 
 The world rolls, the din of life is never hushed. In Lon 
 don, in Paris, in Boston, in San Francisco, the carnival, the 
 masquerade, is at its height. Nobody drops his domino. The 
 unities, the fictions of the piece, it would be an impertinence 
 to break. The chapter of fascinations is very long. Crcat is 
 paint ; nay, God is the painter ; and we rightly accuse the 
 critic who destroys too many illusions. Society does not love 
 its unrnaskcrs. It was wittily, if somewhat bitterly, said by 
 IXAlembert, "qifun (t<it <l, vapeur iCaA un ctat trfa fdcheufr, 
 ///*// mma j -iifnit voir l& chose* commt dies font" I find 
 men victims of illusion in all parts of life. Children, youths, 
 adults, and old men. all are led by one hawblc or another. 
 Toganidra, the goddess of illusion, Proteus, or Momus, or 
 (Jylii s Mocking,- tor the Power has many names, is 
 stronger than the Titans, stronger than Apollo. Few have 
 overheard the gods, or surprised their secret. Life is a suc 
 cession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All 
 is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle. There 
 are as nianv pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. AVe 
 wake from one dream into another dream. The toys, to be 
 sure, are various, and are graduated in refinement to the 
 quality of the dupe. The intellectual man requires a fine 
 bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is dr 
 with his own fn-n/y. and the pageant marches at all hours, 
 with music and banner and badge. 
 
 Amid the joyous troop who give in to the charivari comes 
 lio\v and then a sad-eyed boy, \vho>e eyes lack the requisite 
 refractions to clothe the show in due glory, and who is afflicted 
 with a tendency to trace home the glittering miso llany of 
 fruits and flowers to one root. Science is a search after iden 
 tity, and the scientific whim is lurking in all corners. At the 
 State Fair, a friend of mine complained that all the varieties 
 of fancy pears in our orchards Beem t> have been selected by 
 Somebody who had a whim for a particular kind of pear, and 
 only cultivated such as had that perfume. ; they were all alike. 
 And I remember the quarrel of another youth with the con- 
 
486 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 fectioners, that, when he racked his wit to choose the best 
 comfits in the shops, in all the endless varieties of sweetmeat 
 he could only find three flavors, or two. What then 1 Pears 
 and cakes are good for something ; and because you, unluckily, 
 have an eye or nose too keen, why need you spoil the comfort 
 which the rest of us find in them 1 I knew a humorist, who, 
 in a good deal of rattle, had a grain or two of sense. He 
 shocked the company by maintaining that the attributes of 
 God were two, power and risibility ; and that it was the duty 
 of every pious man to keep up the comedy. And I have known 
 gentlemen of great stake in the community, but whose sympa 
 thies were cold, presidents of colleges, and governors, and 
 senators, who held themselves bound to sign every temper 
 ance pledge, and act with Bible societies, and missions, and 
 peacemakers, and cry Ilist-a-boy ! to every good dog. We 
 must not carry comity too far, but we all have kind impulses 
 in this direction. When the boys come into my yard for leave 
 to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I enter into Nature s game, 
 and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing that any 
 moment they will find out the imposture of that showy chuff. 
 But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments 
 are laid on very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. 
 Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel 
 I saw yesterday ; yet not the less they hung it round with 
 frippery romance, like the children of the happiest fortune, and 
 talked of " the dear cottage where so many joyful hours had 
 flown." Well, this thatching of hovels is the custom of the 
 country. Women, more than all, are the element and king 
 dom of illusion. Being fascinated, they fascinate. They see 
 through Claude-Lorraines. And how dare any one, if he could, 
 pluck away the coulisses, stage effects, and ceremonies, by which 
 they live 1 Too pathetic, too pitiable, is the region of affection, 
 and its atmosphere always liable to mirage. 
 
 We are not very much to blame for our bad marriages. We 
 live amid hallucinations ; and this especial trap is laid to trip 
 x-"u[) our ft^t with, and all are tripped up first or last. But the 
 mighty Mother who had been so sly with us, as if she felt that 
 she owed us some indemnity, insinuates into the Pandora-box 
 of marriage some deep and serious benefits, and some great 
 joys. We find a delight in the beauty and happiness of chil 
 dren, that makes the heart too big for the body. In the worst- 
 assorted connections there is ever some mixture of true mar 
 riage. Teague and his jade get some just relations of mutual 
 
ILLUSIONS. 437 
 
 respect, kindly observation, and fostering of each other, learn 
 something, and would carry themselves wiselier, if they were 
 now to begin. 
 
 T is fine for us to point at one or another fine madman, as 
 if there were any exempts. The scholar in his library is none. 
 I, who have all my life heard any number of orations and de 
 bates, read poems and miscellaneous books, conversed with 
 many geniuses, am still the victim of any new page ; and, if 
 Marmaduke, or Hugh, or Moosehead, or any other, invent a 
 new style or mythology, I fancy that the world will be all brave 
 and right, if dressed in these colors, which I had not thought of. 
 Then at once I will daub with this new paint; but it will not 
 stick. T is like the cement which the pedler sells at the door ; 
 he makes broken crockery hold with it, but you can never buy 
 of him a bit of the cement which will make it hold when he 
 is gone. 
 
 Men who make themselves felt in the world avail themselves 
 of a certain fate in their constitution, which they know how to 
 use. But they never deeply interest us, unless they lift a 
 corner of the curtain, or betray never so slightly their penetra 
 tion of what is behind it. Tis the charm of practical men, 
 that outside of their practicality are a certain poetry and play, 
 as if they led the good horse Power by the bridle, and preferred 
 to walk, though they can ride so fiercely. Bonaparte is intel 
 lectual, as well as Ceesar ; and the best soldiers, sea-captains, 
 and railway men, have a gentleness, when off duty ; a good- 
 natured admission that there are illusions, and who shall say 
 that he is not their sport 1 We stigmatize the cast-iron fel- 
 li>\vs who cannot so detach themselves, as "dragon-ridden," 
 " thunder-stricken," and fools of fate, with whatever powers 
 endowed. 
 
 Since our tuition is through emblems and indirections, t is 
 well to know that there is method in it, a fixed scale, and rank 
 above rank in the phantasms. We beirin low with coarse 
 masks, and rise to the most subtle and beautiful. The red 
 men told Columbus, " they had an herb which took away 
 fatigue " ; but he found the allusion of " arriving from th 
 at the Indies" more composing to his lofty spirit than any 
 tobacco. Is not our faith in the impenetrability of matter more 
 sedative than narcotics ] You play with jack-straws, halls, 
 bowls, horse and iruu. estates and politics ; but there are finer 
 games before you. Is not time a pretty toy 1 Life will show 
 you masks that are worth all your carnivals. Yonder moun- 
 
488 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 tain must migrate into your mind. The fine star-dust and 
 nebulous blur in Orion, "the portentous year of Mizar and Al- 
 cor," must come down and be dealt with in your household 
 thought. What if you shall come to discern that the play and 
 playground of all this pompous history are radiations from 
 yourself, and that the sun borrows his beams 1 What terrible 
 questions we are learning to ask ! The former men believed 
 in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed 
 up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret 
 of a magic which sweeps out of men s minds all vestige of 
 theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were 
 framed upon. 
 
 There are deceptions of the senses, deceptions of the passions, 
 and the structural, beneficent illusions of sentiment and of the 
 intellect. There is the illusion of love, which attributes to the 
 beloved person all which that person shares with his or her 
 family, sex, age, or condition, nay with the human mind itself. 
 T is these which the lover loves, and Anna Matilda gets the 
 credit of them. As if one shut up always in a tower, with one 
 window, through which the face of heaven and earth could be 
 seen, should fancy that all the marvels he beheld belonged to 
 that window. There is the illusion of time, which is very deep ; 
 who has disposed of it ? or come to the conviction that what 
 seems the succession of thought is only the distribution of 
 wholes into causal series 1 The intellect sees that every atom 
 carries the whole of Nature ; that the mind opens to omnipo 
 tence ; that, in the endless striving and ascents, the metamor 
 phosis is entire, so that the soul doth not know itself in its 
 own act, when that act is perfected. There is illusion that 
 shall deceive even the elect. There is illusion that shall deceive 
 even the performer of the miracle. Though he make his body, 
 he denies that he makes it. Though the world exist from 
 thought, thought is daunted in presence of the world. One 
 after the other we accept the mental laws, still resisting those 
 which follow, which however must be accepted. But all our 
 concessions only compel us to new profusion. And what avails 
 it that science has come to treat space and time as simply 
 forms of thought, and the material world as hypothetical, and 
 withal our pretension of property and even of selfhood are 
 fading with the rest, if, at last, even our thoughts are not 
 finalities ; but the incessant flowing and ascension reach these 
 also, and each thought which yesterday was a finality, to-day 
 is yielding to a larger generalization ? 
 
ILLUSIONS. 489 
 
 With such volatile elements to work in, t is no wonder if 
 
 our estimates are loose ami floating. Wo must work and atlirm, 
 but we have no guess of the value of what we say or do. The 
 cloud is now as big as your hand, and now it covers a county. 
 That story of Thor, who was set to drain the drinking-horn in 
 I d, and to wrestle with the old woman, and to run with 
 tin- runner Lok, and presently found that he had been drink 
 ing up the sea, and wrestling with Time, and racing with 
 Thought, describes us who are contending, amid these seeming 
 trifles, with the supreme energies of Nature. ^VVe fancy we 
 have fallen into bad company and squalid conditionTlow debts, 
 shoe-bills, broken glass to pay for, pots to buy, butcher s meat, 
 ; r, milk, and coal. Set me some great task, ye gods ! and 
 1 will show my spirit. Not so, says the good Heaven; 
 1 plod and plough, vamp your old coats and hats, weave a shoe 
 string ; great affairs and the best wine by and by. Well, t is 
 all phantasm ; and if we weave a yard of tape in all humility, 
 and as well as we can, long hereafter we shall see it was no cot 
 ton tape at all, but some galaxy which we braided, and that 
 the threads were -Time and Nature. 
 
 We cannot write the order of the variable winds. How can 
 w penetrate the law of our shifting moods and susceptibility ] 
 Yet they differ as all and nothing. Instead of the lirmament 
 of yesterday, which our eyes require, it is to-day an eggshell 
 which coops us in ; we cannot even see what or where our 
 stars of destiny are. From day to day, the capital facts of 
 human life are hidden from our eyes. Suddenly the mist rolls 
 up, and reveals them, and we think how much good time is 
 guile, that might have been saved, had any hint of these things 
 been shown. A sudden rise in the road shows us the system 
 of mountains, and all the summits, which have been just as 
 near us all the year, but quite out of mind. But these alter 
 nations are not without their order, and we are parties to our 
 various fortune. If life seem a succession of dreams, yet 
 poetic justice is done in dreams also. The visions of good men 
 are good; it is the undisciplined will that is whipped with bad 
 thoughts and bad fortunes. When we break tin- laws, we lose 
 our hold on the central reality. Like sick men in hospitals, 
 we change only from bed to i>cd. from one folly to another ; 
 md it cannot signify much what becomes of such castaw.-i 
 wailing, stupid, comatose ft lifted from bed to 
 
 \u?d, from the nothing of life to the nothing of death. 
 
 In this kingdom of illusions we grope e ;- rlv for stavs and 
 ^ 
 
490 CONDUCT OF LIFE. 
 
 foundations. There is none but a strict and faithful dealing 
 at home, and a severe barring out of all duplicity or illusion 
 there. Whatever games are played with us, we must play no 
 games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last 
 honesty and truth. I look upon the simple and childish vir 
 tues of veracity and honesty as the root of all that is sublime 
 in character.!! Speak as you think, be what you are, pay your 
 debts of all kinds. I prefer to be owned as sound and sol 
 vent, and my word as good as my bond, and to be what can 
 not be skipped, or dissipated, or undermined, to all the eclat 
 in the universe. This reality is the foundation of friendship, 
 religion, poetry, and art. At the top or at the bottom of all 
 illusions, I set the cheat which still leads us to work and live 
 for appearances, in spite of our conviction, in all sane hours, 
 that it is what we really are that avails with friends, with 
 strangers, and with fate or fortune. 
 
 One would think from the talk of men, that riches and pov 
 erty were a great matter ; and our civilization mainly respects 
 it. But the Indians say, that they do not think the white 
 man with his brow of care, always toiling, *afraid of heat and 
 cold, and keeping within doors, has any advantage of them. 
 //The permanent interest of every man is, never to be in a false 
 I position, but to have the weight of Nature to back him in all 
 1 that he does. Riches and poverty are a thick or thin cos 
 tume ; and our life the life of all of us identical. For 
 we transcend the circumstance continually, and taste the real 
 quality of existence ; as in our employments, which only differ 
 in the manipulations, but express the same laws ; or in our 
 thoughts, which wear no silks, and taste no ice-creams. We 
 see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature. 
 
 The early Greek philosophers Heraclitus and Xenophanes 
 measured their force on this problem of identity. Diogenes 
 of Apollonia said, that unless the atoms were made of one 
 stuff, they could never blend and act with one another. But 
 the Hindoos, in their sacred writings, express the liveliest feel 
 ing, both of the essential identity, and of that illusion which 
 they conceive variety to be. " The notions, / am, and This 
 is mine? which influence mankind, are but delusions of the 
 mother of the world. Dispel, Lord of all creatures ! 
 the conceit of knowledge which proceeds from ignorance." 
 And the beatitude of man they hold to lie in being freed from 
 fascination. 
 
 The intellect is stimulated by the statement .of truth in a 
 
ILLI SIONS. 491 
 
 trope, and the will by clothing the laws of life in illusions. 
 J .ut the unities of Truth and of Ulght an- not broken by the 
 disguise, There need never IK- any confusion in these. In a 
 crowded life of many parts and performers, on a stage of na 
 tions, or in the obscurest hamlet in Maine or California, the 
 same elements offer the same choices to each new-comer, and, 
 according to his election, he fixes his fortune in absolute Na 
 ture. It would be hard to put more mental and moral philos 
 ophy than the Persians have thrown into a sentence : 
 
 " Fooled thou must !><-. though wix -t of the wise: 
 Then be the tool of virtue, not of vice." 
 
 There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All 
 is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his 
 sphere. The young mortal enters the hall of the firmament ; 
 there is he alone with them alone, they pouring on him bene 
 dictions and gifts, and beckoning him up to their thrones. On 
 the instant, and incessantly, fall snow-storms of illusions. He 
 fancies himself in avast crowd which sways this way and that, 
 and whose movement and doings he must obey : he fancies 
 himself poor, orphaned, insignificant. The mad crowd drives 
 hither and thither, now furiously commanding this thing to be 
 done, now that. What is he that he should resist their will, 
 and think or act for himself? Every moment, new changes, 
 and new showers of deceptions, to baffle and distract him. 
 And when, by and by, for an instant, the air clears, and the 
 cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still sitting around him 
 on their thrones, they alone with him alone. 
 
 THE END. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 26 1947 
 
 11 67-fflW 
 
 DEPT 
 
 ^ - UOAN 
 
 DEC13136599 
 
 REC D l|D ^ 5 
 
 MfEB 5 68-4fl 
 
 DEC 
 
 LD 2 l-100m-9, 47(A5702sl6)476 
 
 " - 1929 
 

 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY