MR- RUSKIN'S -REMINISCENCES. Mr. Ruskin has just published Chapter XII. of " Praeterita," under the title of "Roslyn Chapel." The drawings he made in 1835, he says, " were really interesting to artists," and on the strength of such promise he was promoted to take lessons in water-colours. The six lessons in Newman-street ran on into perhaps eight or nine, during which Copley Fielding taught me to wash colour smoothly in successive tints, to shade cobalt through pink madder into yellow ochre for skies, to use a broken scraggy touch for the tops of mountains, to represent calm lakes by broad strips of shade with lines of "light between them to produce dark clouds and rain with twelve or twenty successive washes, and to crumble burnt umber with a dry brush for foliage and foreground. With these instructions, I succeeded in copying a drawing which Fielding'made before me, some twelve inches by nine, of Ben Venue and the Trosachs, with brown cows standing in Loch Achray, so much to my own satisfaction that I put my work up over my bed-room chimney-piece the last thing at night, and woke to its contemplation in the morning with a rapture, mixed of self- complacency and the sense of new faculty in which I floated all that day, as in a newly discovered and strongly buoyant species of air. In a very little while, however, I found that this great first step did not mean consistent progress at the same pace. I saw that my washes, however careful or multitudinous, did not in the end look as smooth as Fielding's, and that my crumblings of burnt umber became uninteresting after a certain uumber of repetitions. With still greater discouragement, I perceived the Fielding processes to be inapplicable to the Alps. My scraggy touches did not to my satisfaction represent aiguilles, nor my ruled lines of shade, the Lake of Geneva. The water- colour drawing was abandoned, with a dim under-current of feeling that I had no gift for it,— and in truth I had none for colour arrangement, — and the pencil outline returned to with resolute energy. Up to this time Mr. Ruskin had never seen a Turner drawing, and he scarcely knows whether to lay to the score of dulness or prudence the tranquillity in which he copied the engravings of the Rogers vignettes, without so much as once asking where the originals were. The facts being that they lay at the bottom of an old drawer in Queen Anne-street, inaccessible to me as the bottom of the sea, and that, if I had seen them, they would only have destroyed my pleasure in the engravings, my rest in these was at least fortunate ; and the more I consider of this and other such forms of failure in what most people would call laudable curiosity, the more I am disposed to regard with thank fulness, and even respect, the habits which have remained with me during life, of always working resignedly at the thing under my hand till I could do it, and looking exclusively at the thing before my eyes till I could see it. On a tour to Yorkshire and the Lakes in 1837, at eighteen, he "felt for the last time the pure childish love of nature which Wordsworth so idly takes for an intimation of immortality." It is a feeling only possible to youth, for all care, regret, or knowledge of evil destroys it ; and it requires also the full sensibility of nerve and blood, the conscious strength of heart, and hope. In myself, it has always been quite exclusively confined to wild — that is to say, wholly natural places, and especially to scenery animated by streams, or by the sea. The sense of the freedom, spontaneous, unpolluted power of nature was essential in it. The feeling cannot be described by any of us that have it. Wordsworth's "haunted me like a passion " is no description of it, for it is not like, but is, a passion j the point is to define how it differs from other passions — what sort of human, pre-eminently human, feeling it is that loves a stone for a stone's sake and a cloud for a cloud's. I was different, be it once more said, from other children even of my own type, not so much in the actual nature of the feeling, but in the mixture of it. I had, in my little clay pitcher, vialfuls, as it were, of Wordsworth's reverence, Shelley's sensi- tiveness, Turner's accuracy, all in one. A snowdrop was to me, as to Words- worth, part of the Sermon on the Mount ; but I never should have written sonnets to the celandine, because it is of a coarse yellow, and imperfect form. With Shelley, I loved blue sky and blue eyes, but never in the least confused the heavens with my own poor little Psychidion. And the reverence and passion were alike kept in ilicir places by the constructive Turnerian element ; and I did not weary myself in wishing that a daisy could see the beauty of its shadow, but in trying to draw the shadow rightly, myself. But so stubborn and chemically inalterable the laws of the prescription were, that now, looking back from 1886 to that brook-shore of 1837, whence I could see the whole of my youth, I find myself in nothing whatsoever changed. Some of me is dead, more of me stronger. I have learned a few things, forgotten many ; in the total of me, I am but the same youth, disappointed and rheumatic. [For liist of Works published see the back of the Wrapper.] miiW$ Btm$&& Mhmt§. ESSAYS, LETTERS FROM ABROAD, TRANSLATIONS and FRAGMENTS. LONDON: WILLIAM SMITH, 113, FLEET STREET. BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. EDITED BY MRS. SHELLEY. Bradbury fa Evans,] MDCCC'XLV. [Printers, Whitefrinrs. [PRICE FIVE SHILLINGS.] 46 A LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY EDWARD MOXON. ROGERS'S POEMS. A New Edition. In one volume, illustrated by 72 Vignettee, from Designs by Turner and Stothard, price 16*. boards. ROGERS'S ITALY. A New Edition. In one volume, illustrated by 56 Vignettes, from Designs by Turner and Stothard, price 16*. boards. ROGERS'S POEMS; AND ITALY. In two pocket volumes, illustrated by numerous Woodcuts, price 10*. cloth. CAMPBELL'S POETICAL WORKS. A New Edition. In one volume, illustrated by 20 Vignettes from Designs by Turner, and 37 Woodcuts from Designs by Harvey. 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TRAVELS IN SOUTH AMERICA. Price 5*. CAMPBELL'S POETICAL WORKS. 2s. 6rf. LAMB'S POETICAL WORKS. Price Is. 6d. BAILLIES (JOANNA) FUGITIVE VERSES. Price 1*. SHAKSPE ARE'S POEMS. Price Is. [BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.] Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/essayslettersfroOOshelrich ESSAYS, LETTERS FROM ABROAD, ETC. ETC. " That thou, O my Brother, impart to me truly how it stands with thee in that inner man of thine ; what lively images of things past thy memory has painted there ; what hopes, what thoughts, affections, knowledge, do now dwell there. For this, and no other object that I can see, was the gift of hearing and speech bestowed on U9 two." — Thomas Carlyle. ESSAYS, LETTERS FROM ABROAD, TRANSLATIONS AND FRAGMENTS. BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. EDITED BY MRS. SHELLEY. " The Poet, it is true, is the son of his time ; hut pity for him if he is its pupil, or even its favourite ! Let some beneficent deity snatch him when a suckling from the breast of his mother, and nurse him with the milk of a better time ; that he may ripen to his full stature beneath a distant Grecian sky. And having grown to manhood, let him return, a foreign shape, into his century ; not however to delight it by his presence, but dreadful like the son of Agamemnon, to purify it." — Schiller. A NEW EDITION. LONDON : EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET 1845. LONDON : BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITE FRIARS. PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. This volume has long been due to the public ; it forms an important portion of all that was left by Shelley, whence those who did not know him may form a juster estimate of his virtues and his genius than has hitherto been done. We find, in the verse of a poet, " the record of the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest minds."* But this is not enough — we desire to know the man. We desire to learn how much of the sensibility and imagination that animates his poetry was founded on heartfelt passion, and purity, and elevation of character ; whether the pathos and the fire emanated from transitory inspiration and a power of weaving words touchingly ; or whether the poet acknowledged the might of his art in his inmost soul ; and whether his nerves thrilled to the touch of generous emotion. Led by such curiosity, how many volumes have been filled with the life of the Scottish plough-boy and the English peer ; we welcome with delight every fact which proves that the patriotism and tenderness expressed in the songs of Burns, sprung from a noble and gentle heart ; and we pore over each letter that we expect will testify that the melancholy and the unbridled passion that darkens Byron's verse, flowed from a soul devoured by a keen susceptibility to intensest love, and indignant broodings over the injuries done and suffered by man. Let the lovers of Shelley's poetry — of his aspirations for a brotherhood of love, his tender bewailings springing from a too sensitive spirit — his sympathy with woe, his adoration of beauty, as expressed in his poetry ; turn to these pages to gather proof of sincerity, and to become acquainted with the form that such gentle sympathies and lofty aspirations wore in private life. The first piece in this volume, " A Defence of Poetry," is the only entirely finished prose work Shelley left. In this we find the reverence with which he regarded his art. We discern his power of close reasoning, and the unity of his views of human nature. The language is imaginative but not flowery ; the periods have an intonation full of majesty and grace ; and the harmony of the style being united to melodious thought, a music results, that swells upon the ear, and fills the mind with delight. It is a work whence a young poet, and one suffering from wrong or neglect, may learn to regard his pursuit and himself with that respect, without which his genius will get clogged in the mire of the earth : it will elevate him into those pure regions, where there is neither pain from the stings of insects, nor pleasure in the fruition of a gross appetite for praise. He will learn to rest his dearest boast on the dignity of the art he cultivates, * " A Defence of Poetry." PREFACE. and become aware that his best claim on the applause of mankind, results from his being one more in the holy brotherhood, whose vocation it is to divest life of its material grossness and stooping tendencies, and to animate it with that power of turning all things to the beautiful and good, which is the spirit of poetry. The fragments* that follow form an introduction to "The Banquet" or "Symposium" of Plato — and that noble piece of writing follows ; which for the first time introduces the Athenian to the English reader in a style worthy of him. No prose author in the history of mankind has exerted so much influence over the world as Plato. From him the Fathers and commentators of early Christianity derived many of their most abstruse notions and spiritual ideas. His name is familiar to our lips, and he is regarded even by the unlearned as the possessor of the highest imaginative faculty ever displayed by man — the creator of much of the purity of sentiment which in another guise was adopted by the founders of chivalry — the man who endowed Socrates with a large portion of that reputation for wisdom and virtue, which surrounds him evermore with an imperishable halo of glory. With all this, how little is really known of Plato ! The translation we have is so harsh and un-English in its style, as universally to repel. There are excellent abstracts of some of his dialogues in a periodical publication called the "Monthly Repository;" and the mere English reader must feel deeply obliged to the learned translator. But these abstracts are defective from their very form of abridgment ; and, though I am averse to speak disparagingly of pages from which I have derived so much pleasure and knowledge, they want the radiance and delicacy of language with which the ideas are invested in the original, and are dry and stiff compared with the soaring poetry, the grace, subtlety, and infinite variety of Plato. They want, also, the dramatic vivacity, and the touch of nature, that vivifies the pages of the Athenian. These are all found here. Shelley commands language splendid and melodious as Plato, and renders faithfully the elegance and the gaiety which make the Symposium as amusing as it is sublime. The whole mechanism of the drama, for such in some sort it is, — the enthusiasm of Apollodorus, the sententiousness of Eryximachus, the wit of Aristophanes, the rapt and golden eloquence of Agathon, the subtle dialectics and grandeur of aim of Socrates, the drunken outbreak of Alcibiades, — are given with grace and animation. The picture presented reminds us of that talent which, in a less degree, we may suppose to have dignified the orgies of the last generation of free-spirited wits, — Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and Curran. It has something of license, — too much indeed, and perforce omitted ; but of coarseness, that worst sin against our nature, it has nothing. Shelley's own definition of Love follows ; and reveals the secrets of the most impassioned, and yet the purest and softest heart that ever yearned for sympathy, and was ready to give its own, in lavish measure, in return. " The Coliseum" is a continuation to a great degree of the same subject. Shelley had something of the idea of a story in this. The stranger was a Greek, — nurtured from infancy exclusively in the literature of his progenitors, — and brought up as a child of Pericles might have been; and to heighten the resemblance, Shelley conceived the idea of a woman, whom he named Diotima, who was his instructress and guide. In speaking of his , plan, this was the sort of development he sketched ; but no word more was written than appears in these pages. "The Assassins" was composed many years before. The style is less chaste; but it is * Small portions of these and other essays were published by Captain Medvvin in a newspaper. Generally speaking, his extracts are incorrect and incomplete. I must except the Essay on Love, and Remarks on some of the Statues in the Gallery of Florence, however, as they appeared there, from the blame of these defects. PREFACE. warmed by the fire of youth. I do not know what story he had in view. The Assassins were known in the eleventh century as a horde of Mahometans living among the recesses of Lebanon, — ruled over by the Old Man of the Mountain ; under whose direction various murders were committed on the Crusaders, which caused the name of the people who perpetrated them to be adopted in all European languages, to designate the crime which gave them notoriety. Shelley's old favourite, the Wandering Jew, appears in the latter chapters, and, with his wild and fearful introduction into the domestic circle of a peaceful family of the Assassins, the fragment concludes. It was never touched afterwards. There is great beauty in the sketch as is stands; it breathes that spirit of domestic peace and general brotherhood founded on love, which was developed afterwards in the " Prometheus Unbound." The fragment of his "Essay on the Punishment of Death" bears the value which the voice of a philosopher and a poet, reasoning in favour of humanity and refinement, must possess. It alleges all the arguments that an imaginative man, who can vividly figure the feelings of his fellow-creatures, can alone conceive ; * and it brings them home to the calm reasoner with the logic of truth. In the milder season that since Shelley's time has dawned upon England, our legislators each day approximate nearer to his views of justice ; this piece, fragment as it is, may suggest to some among them motives for carrying his beneficent views into practice. How powerful— how almost appalling, in its vivid reality of representation, is the essay on " Life ! " Shelley was a disciple of the Immaterial Philosophy of Berkeley. This theory gave unity and grandeur to his ideas, while it opened a wide field for his imagination. The creation, such as it was perceived by his mind — a unit in immensity, was slight and narrow compared with the interminable forms of thought that might exist beyond, to be perceived perhaps hereafter by his own mind; or which are perceptible to other minds that fill the universe, not of space in the material sense, but of infinity in the immaterial one. Such ideas are, in some degree, developed in his poem entitled "Heaven:" and when he makes one of the interlocutors exclaim, " Peace ! the abyss is wreathed in scorn Of thy presumption, atom-born," he expresses his despair of being able to conceive, far less express, all of variety, majesty, and beauty, which is veiled from our imperfect senses in the unknown realm, the mystery of which his poetic vision sought in vain to penetrate. The " Essay on a Future State" is also unhappily a fragment. Shelley observes, on one occasion, " a man is not a being of reason only, but of imaginations and affections." In this portion of his Essay he gives us only that view of a future state which is to be derived from reasoning and analogy. It is not to be supposed that a mind so full of vast ideas concerning the universe, endowed with such subtle discrimination with regard to the various modes in which this does or may appear to our eyes, with a lively fancy and ardent and expansive feelings, should be content with a mere logical view of that which even in religion is a mystery and a wonder. I cannot pretend to supply the deficiency, nor say what Shelley's views were — they were vague, certainly ; yet as certainly regarded the country beyond the grave as one by no means foreign to our interests and hopes. Considering his individual mind as a unit divided from a mighty whole, to which it was united by restless sympathies and an eager desire for knowledge, he assuredly believed that hereafter, as now, he would form a portion of that * " A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively ; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others ; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own."— A Defence of Poetry. PREFACE. whole — and a portion less imperfect, less suffering, than the shackles inseparable from humanity- impose on all who live beneath the moon. To me, death appears to be the gate of life ; but my hopes of a hereafter would be pale and drooping, did I not expect to find that most perfect and beloved specimen of humanity on the other shore ; and my belief is, that spiritual improvement in this life prepares the way to a higher existence. Traces of such a 'faith are found in several passages of Shelley's works. In one of the letters he says, " The destiny of man can scarcely be so degraded, that he was born only to die." And again, in a journal, I find these feelings recorded, with regard to a danger we incurred together at sea : — " I had time in that moment to reflect and even to reason on death ; it was rather a thing of discomfort and disappointment than terror to me. We should never be separated ; but in death we might not know and feel our union as now. I hope — but my hopes are not unmixed with fear for what will befal this inestimable spirit when we appear to die." A mystic ideality tinged these speculations in Shelley's mind; certain stanzas in the poem of " The Sensitive Plant " express, in some degree, the almost inexpressible idea, not that we die into another state, when this state is no longer, from some reason, unapparent as well as apparent, accordant with our being — but that those who rise above the ordinary nature of man, fade from before our imperfect organs ; they remain, in their " love, beauty, and delight," in a world congenial to them — we, clogged by "error, ignorance, and strife," see them not, till we are fitted by purification and improvement for their higher state.* For myself, no religious doctrine, nor philosophical precept, can shake the faith that a mind so original, so delicately and beautifully moulded, as Shelley's, so endowed with wondrous powers and eagle- eyed genius — so good, so pure — would never be shattered and dispersed by the Creator ; but that the qualities and consciousness that formed him, are not only indestructible in themselves, but in the form under which they were united here, and that to become worthy of him is to assure the bliss of a reunion. The fragments of metaphysics will be highly prized by a metaphysician. Such a one is aware how difficult it is to strip bare the internal nature of man, to divest it of prejudice, of the mistakes engendered by familiarity, and by language, which has become one with certain ideas, and those very ideas erroneous. Had not Shelley deserted metaphysics for poetry in his youth, and had he not been lost to us early, so that all his vaster projects were wrecked with him in the waves, he would have presented the world with a complete theory of mind ; a theory to which Berkeley, Coleridge, and Kant, would have contributed ; but more simple, unimpugnable, and entire, than the systems of these writers. His nerves, indeed, were so susceptible, that these intense meditations on his own nature, thrilled him with pain. Thought kindled imagination and awoke sensation, and rendered him dizzy from too great keenness of emotion ; * " But in this life Of terror, ignorance, and strife, Where nothing is, but all things seem, And we the shadows of the dream : It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant, if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery. That garden sweet, that lady fair, And all sweet shapes, and odours there, In truth, have never passed away ; *Tis we, 'tis ours are changed— not they. For love, and beauty, and delight, There is no death, nor change ; their might Exceeds our organs, which endure No light, being themselves obscure." PREFACE. ix till awe and tremor possessed him, and he fled to the voice and presence of one he loved to relieve the mysterious agitation that shook him.* He at one time meditated a popular essay on morals ; to show how virtue resulted from the nature of man, and that to fulfil its laws was to abide by that principle from the fulfilment of which happiness is to spring. The few pages here given are all that he left on this subject. The fragment marked as second in these " Speculations on Morals " is remarkable for its subtlety and truth. I found it on a single leaf, disjoined from any other subject. — It gives the true key to the history of man ; and above all, to those rules of conduct whence mutual happiness has its source and security. This concludes the essays and fragments of Shelley. I do not give them as the whole that he left, but as the most interesting portion. A Treatise on Political Reform and other fragments remain, to be published when his works assume a complete shape. I do not know why Shelley selected the "Ion" of Plato to translate. Probably because he thought it characteristic ; that it unfolded peculiar ideas, and those Platonic, with regard to poetry ; and gave insight into portions of Athenian manners, pursuits, and views, which would have been otherwise lost to us. We find manifestation here of the exceeding partiality felt by the Greeks, for every exhibition of eloquence. It testifies that love of interchanging and enlarging ideas by conversation, which in modern society, through our domestic system of life, is too often narrowed to petty objects, and which, from their fashion of conversing in streets and under porticoes, and in public places, became a passion far more intense than with us. Among those who ministered exclusively to this taste, were the rhapsodists ; and among rhapsodists, Ion himself tells us, he was the most eminent of his day ; that he was a man of enthusiastic and poetic temperament, and abundantly gifted with the power of arranging his thoughts in glowing and fascinating language, his success proves. But he was singularly deficient in reason. When Socrates presses on him the question of, whether he as a rhapsodist is as well versed in nautical, hippodromic, and other arts, as sailors, charioteers, and various artisans 1 he gives up the point with the most foolish inanity. One would fancy that practice in his pursuit would have caused him to reply, that though he was neither mariner nor horseman, nor practically skilled in any other of the pursuits in question, yet that he had consulted men versed in them ; and enriching his mind with the knowledge afforded by adepts in all arts, he was better qualified by study and by his gift of language and enthusiasm to explain these, as they form a portion of Homer's poetry, than any individual whose knowledge was limited to one subject only. But Ion had no such scientific view of his profession. He gives up point after point, till, as Socrates observes, he most absurdly strives at victory, under the form of an expert leader of armies. In this, as in all the other of Plato's writings, we are perpetually referred, with regard to the enthusiastic and ideal portion of our intellect, to something above and beyond our sphere, the inspiration of the God — the influence exercised over the human mind, either through the direct agency of the deities, or our own half-blind memory of divine knowledge acquired by the soul in its antenatal state. Shelley left Ion imperfect — I thought it better that it should appear as a whole — but at the same time have marked with brackets the passages that have been added ; the rest appears exactly as Shelley left it. Respect for the name of Plato as well as that of Shelley, and reliance on the curiosity * See p. 62. x PREFACE. that the English reader must feel with regard to the sealed book of the Ancient Wonder, caused me to include in this volume the fragment of " Menexenus," and passages from " The Republic." In the first we have another admirable specimen of Socratic irony. In the latter the opinions and views of Plato enounced in " The Republic," which appeared remarkable to Shelley, are preserved, with the addition, in some instances, of his own brief observations on them. The rest of the volume is chiefly composed of letters. " The Journal of a Six Weeks' Tour," and " Letters from Geneva," were published many years ago by Shelley himself. The Journal is singular, from the circumstance that it was not written for publication, and was deemed too trivial for such by its author. Shelley caused it to be printed, and added to it his own letters, which contain some of the most beautiful descriptions ever written. The Letters from Italy, which are addressed to the same gentleman as the recipient of the Letters from Geneva, are in a similar spirit of observation and remark. The reader can only regret that they are so few, and that one or two are missing. The eminent German writer, Jean Paul Richter, says, that " to describe any scene well, the poet must make the bosom of a man his camera obscura, and look at it through this." Shelley pursues this method in all his descriptions ; he always, as he says himself, looks beyond the actual object, for an internal meaning, typified, illustrated, or caused by the external appearance. Adoring beauty, he endeavoured to define it ; he was convinced that the canons of taste, if known, are irre- fragable ; and that these are to be sought in the most admirable works of art ; he therefore studied intently, and with anxious scrutiny, the parts in detail, and their harmony as a whole, to discover what tends to form a beautiful or sublime work. The loss of our beloved child at Rome, which drove us northward in trembling fear for the one soon after born, and the climate of Florence disagreeing so exceedingly with Shelley, he ceased at Pisa to be conversant with paintings and sculpture ; a circumstance he deplores in one of his letters, and in many points of view to be greatly regretted. His letters to Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne, and to Mr. Reveley, the son of the latter by a former marriage, display that helpful and generous benevolence and friendship which was Shelley's characteristic. He set on foot the project of a steam-boat to ply between Marseilles and Leghorn, for their benefit, as far as pecuniary profit might accrue ; at the same time that he took a fervent interest in the undertaking, for its own sake. It was not puerile vanity, but a nobler feeling of | honest pride, that made him enjoy the idea of being the first to introduce steam navigation into the Gulf of Lyons, and to glory in the consciousness of being in this manner useful to his fellow- creatures. Unfortunately, he was condemned to experience a failure. The prospects and views of our friends drew them to England, and the boat and the engine were abandoned. Shelley was deeply disappointed ; yet it will be seen how generously he exculpates our friends to themselves, and relieves them from the remorse they might naturally feel for having thus wasted his money and disappointed his desires. It will be remembered that Shelley addressed a poetical letter to Mrs. Gisborne, when that lady was absent in England ; and I have mentioned, and in some measure described her, in my notes to the poems. " Mrs. Gisborne had been a friend of my father in her younger days. She was a lady of great accomplishments, and charming from her frank affectionate nature. She had a most intense love of knowledge, a delicate and trembling sensibility, and preserved freshness of mind after a life of considerable adversity. As a favourite friend of my father, we had sought her with eagerness, and the most open and cordial friendship subsisted between us." PREFACE. xi The letters to Leigh Hunt have already been published. They are monuments of the friendship which he felt for the man to whom he dedicated his tragedy of " The Cenci," in terms of warm and just eulogium. I have obtained but few to other friends. He had, indeed, not more than one or two other correspondents. I have added such letters as, during our brief separations in Italy, were addressed to myself ; precious relics of love, kindness, gentleness, and wisdom. I have but one fault to find with them, or with Shelley, in my union with him. His inexpressible tenderness of disposition made him delight in giving pleasure, and, urged by this feeling, he praised too much. Nor were his endeavours to exalt his correspondent in her own eyes founded on this feeling only. He had never read " Wilhelm Meister," but I have heard him say that he regulated his conduct towards his friends by a maxim which I found afterwards in the pages of Goethe — " When we take people merely as they are, we make them worse ; when we treat them as if they were what they should be, we improve them as far as they can be improved." This rule may perhaps admit of dispute, and it may be argued that truth and frankness produce better fruits than the most generous deceit. But when we consider the difficulty of keeping our best virtues free from self-blindness and self-love, and recollect the intolerance and fault-finding that usually blots social intercourse ; and compare such with the degree of forbearance and imaginative sympathy, so to speak, which such a system necessitates, we must think highly of the generosity and self-abnegation of the man who regulated his conduct undeviatingly by it. Can anything be more beautiful than these letters ? They are adorned by simplicity, tenderness, and generosity, combined with manly views, and acute observation. His practical opinions may be found here. His indignant detestation of political oppression did not prevent him from deprecating the smallest approach to similar crimes on the part of his own party ; and he abjured revenge and retaliation, while he strenuously advocated reform. He felt assured that there would be a change for the better in our institutions ; he feared bloodshed, he feared the ruin of many. Wedded as he was to the cause of public good, he would have hailed the changes that since his time have so signally ameliorated our institutions and opinions, each acting on the other, and which still, we may hope, are proceeding towards the establishment of that liberty and toleration which he worshipped. " The thing to fear," he observes, " will be, that the change should proceed too fast — it must be gradual to be secure." I do not conceal that I am far from satisfied with the tone in which the criticisms on Shelley are written. Some among these writers praise the poetry with enthusiasm, and even discrimi- nation ; but none understand the man. I hope this volume will set him in a juster point of view. If it be alleged in praise of Goethe that he was an artist as well as a poet ; that his principles of composition, his theories of wisdom and virtue, and the ends of existence, rested on a noble and secure basis ; not less does that praise belong to Shelley. His Defence of Poetry is alone sufficient to prove that his views were, in every respect, defined and complete ; his faith in good continued firm, and his respect for his fellow-creatures was unimpaired by the wrongs he suffered. Every word of his letters displays that modesty, that forbearance, and mingled meekness and resolution that, in my mind, form the perfection of man. " Gentle, brave, and generous," he describes the Poet in Alastor : such he was himself, beyond any man I have ever known. To these admirable qualities were added, his genius. He had but one defect — which was his leaving his life incomplete by an early death. that the serener hopes of maturity, the happier contentment of mid-life, had descended on his dear head, to calm the turbulence of youthful impetuosity — that he had lived to see his country advance towards freedom, and to enrich the world with his own virtues and genius in their completion of experience and power ! When PREFACE. I think that such things might have been, and of my own share in such good and happiness ; the pang occasioned by his loss can never pass away — and I gain resignation only by believing that he was spared much suffering, and that he has passed into a sphere of being, better adapted to his inexpressible tenderness, his generous sympathies, and his richly gifted mind. That, free from the physical pain to which he was a martyr, and unshackled by the fleshly bars and imperfect senses which hedged him in on earth, he enjoys beauty, and good, and love there, where those to whom he was united on earth by various ties of affection, sympathy, and admiration, may hope to join him. Putney, December. 1839. CONTENTS. «. PAGE A DEFENCE OF POETRY 1 ESSAY ON THE LITERATURE, ARTS, AND MANNERS OF THE ATHENIANS— A FRAGMENT 15 PREFACE TO THE BANQUET OF PLATO . . . 18 THE BANQUET— TRANSLATED FROM PLATO 19 ON LOVE 41 THE COLISEUM— A FRAGMENT . 42 THE ASSASSINS— FRAGMENT OF A ROMANCE . 45 ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH . . . . . . . . . .52 ON LIFE . . 55 ON A FUTURE STATE 57 SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. I. The Mind 59 II. What Metaphysics are — Errors in the usual Methods of considering them 60 III. Difficulty of Analysing the Human Mind 60 IV. How the Analysis should be carried on 61 V. Catalogue of the Phenomena of Dreams 61 SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. I. Plan of a Treatise on Morals .62 II. Moral Science consists in considering the Difference, not the Resemblance, of Persons . 66 ION ; OR, OF THE ILIAD— TRANSLATED FROM PLATO . . . . 67 MENEXENUS; OR, THE FUNERAL ORATION— A FRAGMENT . . . . 73 FRAGMENTS FROM THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO . 75 ON A PASSAGE IN CRITO # * . . 78 xiv CONTENTS. PAGB JOURNAL OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR 79 LETTERS FROM GENEVA 90 JOURNAL AT GENEVA.— GHOST STORIES 101 LETTERS FROM ITALY :— LYONS. I. To Leigh Hunt, Esq. 104 MILAN. II. To T. L. P., Esq .104 III. To T. L. P., Esq 105 IV. To T. L. P., Esq . 107 LEGHORN. V. To T. L. P., Esq. • 107 BAGNI DI LUCCA. VI. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne 107 VII. To William Godwin, Esq 108 FLORENCE. VIII. To Mrs. Shelley 109 VENICE. IX. To Mrs. Shelley 110 PADUA. X. To Mrs. Shelley . . Ill ESTE. XI. To T. L. P., Esq . . Ill FERRARA. XII. To T. L. P., Esq 113 BOLOGNA. XIII. To T. L. P., Esq. . . 114 ROME. XIV. To T. L. P., Esq 117 NAPLES. XV. To T. L. P., Esq 118 XVI. To T.. L. P., Esq 121 XVII. To T. L. P., Esq . . 124 XVIII. To T. L. P., Esq. . 128 XIX. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne . 129 CONTENTS. LETTERS FROM ITALY, continued :— LEGHORN. XX. To T. L. P., Esq Tso XXI. To Leigh Hunt, Esq. ... 131 XXII. To Leigh Hunt, Esq 13] XXIII. To Leigh Hunt, Esq 1 32 FLORENCE. XXIV. To Mrs. Gisborne 133 XXV. To Henry Reveley, Esq 134 XXVI. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne 135 XXVII. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne 135 XXVIII. To Leigh Hunt, Esq. 136 XXIX. To Mrs. Gisborne I37 XXX. To John Gisborne, Esq ... 137 XXXI. To Henry Reveley, Esq 138 XXXII. To Leigh HuxNT, Esq 139 XXXIII. To Leigh Hunt, Esq 139 XXXIV. To Henry Reveley, Esq. 140 XXXV. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne 140 XXXVI. To John Gisborne, Esq 141 Remarks on some of the Statues in the Gallery of Florence . . . .141 PISA. XXXVII. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne 144 XXXVIII. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne 144 XXXIX. To John Gisborne, Esq 144 XL. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne 145 XLI. To Mrs. Shelley 146 LEGHORN. XLII. To Mrs. Shelley 146 PISA. XLIII. To the Editor of the "Quarterly Review" 147 XLIV. To John Gisborne, Esq 147 XLV. To Henry Reveley, Esq 148 XLVI. To Henry Reveley, Esq. 148 BAGNI DI PISA. XLVII. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne 148 XLVIII. To John Gisborne, Esq . . 148 XLIX. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne . 149 L. To Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne 149 CONTENTS. LETTERS FROM ITALY, continued .— FLORENCE. PAGE LI. To Mrs. Shelley 150 BOLOGNA. LII. To Mrs. Shelley . 150 RAVENNA. LIII. To Mrs. Shelley . . 150 LIV. To Mrs. Shelled . . ' . . 151 LV. To Mrs. Shelley 153 LVI. To Mrs. Shelley . 154 LVII. To Mrs. Shelley . .154 PISA. LVIII. To Leigh Hunt, Esq. 154 LIX. To Horatio Smith, Esq 156 LX. To John Gisborne, Esq , . • . . 157 LXI. To J. Severn, Esq. . . . . 158 LXII. To John Gisborne, Esq. 159 LXIII. To * *, esq 160 LERICI. LXIV. To Mrs. Shelley 161 LXV. To Horatio Smith, Esq 161 LXVI. To * *, Esq 163 PISA. LXVII. To Mrs. Williams 163 LXVIII. To Mrs. Shelley . ... . .164 ESSAYS, LETTERS FROM ABROAD, ETC. ETC. A DEFENCE OF POETRY. PART I. According to one mode of regarding those two classes of mental action, which are called reason and imagination, the former may be considered as mind contemplating the relations borne by one thought to another, however produced ; and the latter, as mind acting upon those thoughts so as to colour them with its own light, and composing from them, as from elements, other thoughts, each containing within itself the principle of its own integrity. The one is the rb iroieiv, or the principle of synthesis, and has for its objects those forms which are common to universal nature and exist- ence itself ; the other is the rb \oyt&iv, or principle of analysis, and its action regards the relations of tilings, simply as relations ; considering thoughts, not in their integral unity, but as the algebraical representations which conduct to certain general results. Reason is the enumeration of quantities already known ; imagination is the perception of the value of those quantities, both separately and as a whole. Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things. Reason is to imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the sub- stance. Poetry, in a, general sense, may be defined to be " the expression of the imagination : " and poetry is connate with the origin of man. Man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impressions are driven, like the alterna- tions of an ever-changing wind over an iEolian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-chang- ing melody. But there is a principle within the human being, and perhaps within all sentient beings, which acts otherwise than in the lyre, and produces not melody, alone, but harmony, by an internal adjustment of the sounds or motions thus excited to the impressions which excite them. It is as if the lyre could accommodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them, in a determined proportion of sound ; even as the musician can accommodate his voice to the sound of the lyre. A child at play by itself will express its delight by its voice and motions ; and every inflexion of tone and every gesture will bear exact relation to a corresponding antitype in the pleasurable impressions which awakened it ; it will be the reflected image of that impression ; and as the lyre trembles and sounds after the wind has died away, so the child seeks, by prolonging in its voice and motions the duration of the effect, to prolong also a consciousness of the cause. In relation to the objects which delight a child, these expressions are, what poetry is to higher objects. The savage (for the savage is to ages what the child is to years) expresses the emotions produced in him by surrounding objects in a similar man- ner ; and language and gesture, together with plastic or pictorial imitation, become the image of the combined effect of those objects, and of his apprehension of them. Man in society, with all his passions and his pleasures, next becomes the object of the passions and pleasures of man ; an additional class of emotions produces an augmented treasure of expressions ; and language, gesture, and the imitative arts, become at once the repre- sentation and the medium, the pencil and the picture, the chisel and the statue, the chord and the harmony. The social sympathies, or those laws from which, as from its elements, society results, begin to develop themselves from the moment that two human beings coexist ; the A DEFENCE OF POETRY. future is contained within the present, as the plant within the seed ; and equality, diversity, unity, contrast, mutual dependance, become the princi- ples alone capable of affording the motives accord- ing to which* the will of a social being is deter- mined to action, inasmuch as he is social ; and constitute pleasure in sensation, virtue in senti- ment, beauty in art, truth in reasoning, and love in the intercourse of kind. Hence men, even in the infancy of society, observe a certain order in their words and actions, distinct from that of the objects and the impressions represented by them, all expression being subject to the laws of that from which it proceeds. But let us dismiss those more general considerations which might involve an inquiry into the principles of society itself, and restrict our view to the manner in which the imagination is expressed upon its forms. In the youth of the world, men dance and sing and imitate natural objects, observing in these actions, as in all others, a certain rhythm or order. And, although all men observe a similar, they observe not the same order, in the motions of the dance, in the melody of the song, in the combinations of language, in the series of their imitations of natural objects. For there is a certain order or rhythm belonging to each of these classes of mimetic representation, from which the hearer and the spectator receive an mtenser and purer pleasure than from any other : the sense of an approximation to this order has been called taste by modern writers. Every man in the infancy of art, observes an order which approximates more or less closely to that from which this highest delight results : but the diver- sity is not sufficiently marked, as that its grada- tions should be sensible, except in those instances where the predominance of this faculty of ap- proximation to the beautiful (for so we may be permitted to name the relation between this highest pleasure and its cause) is very great. Those in whom it exists in excess are poets, in the most universal sense of the word ; and the pleasure resulting from the manner in which they express the influence of society or nature upon their own minds, communicates itself to others, and gathers a sort of reduplication from that com- munity. Their language is vitally metaphorical ; that is, it marks the before unapprehended rela- tions of things and perpetuates their apprehension, until the words which represent them, become, through time, signs for portions or classes of thoughts instead of pictures of integral thoughts ; and then if no new poets should arise to create afresh the associations which have been thus dis- organised, language will be dead to all the nobler purposes of human intercourse. These similitudes or relations are finely said by Lord Bacon to be " the same footsteps of nature impressed upon the various subjects of the world * " — and he considers the faculty which perceives them as the storehouse of axioms common to all knowledge. In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry ; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, in a word, the good which exists in the relation, subsisting, first between existence and perception, and secondly between perception and expression. Every original language near to its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem : the copiousness of lexicography and the distinctions of grammar are the works of a later age, and are merely the catalogue and the form of the creations of poetry. But poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible order, are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting ; they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain pro- pinquity with the beautiful and the true, that partial apprehension of the agencies of the in- visible world which is called religion. Hence all original religions are allegorical, or susceptible of allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and true. Poets, according to the circum- stances of the age and nation in which they appeared, were called, in the earlier epochs of the world, legislators, or prophets : a poet essentially comprises and unites both these characters. For he not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which pre- sent things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time. Not that I assert poets to be prophets in the gross sense of the word, or that they can foretell the form as surely as they foreknow the spirit of events : such is the pretence of super- stition, which would make poetry an attribute of prophecy, rather than prophecy an attribute of poetry. A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one ; as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and number are not. The grammatical forms which express the moods of time, and the difference of persons, and the distinction of place, are convertible with respect to the highest poetry without injuring it as poetry ; and the choruses of iEschylus, and the book of Job, . and Dante's Paradise, would afford, more * De Augment. Scient., cap. 1, lib. iii. A DEFENCE OF POETRY. than any other writings, examples of this fact, if the limits of this essay did not forbid citation. The creations of sculpture, painting, and music, are illustrations still more decisive. Language, colour, form, and religious and civil habits of action, are all the instruments and materials of poetry ; they may be called poetry by that figure of speech which considers the effect as a synonyme of the cause. But poetry in a more restricted sense expresses those arrangements of language, and especially metrical language, which are created by that imperial faculty, whose throne is curtained within the in visible nature of man. And this springs from the nature itself of language, which is a more direct representation of the actions and passions of our internal being, and is suscepti- ble of more various and delicate combinations, than colour, form, or motion, and is more plastic and obedient to the control of that faculty of which it is the creation. For language is arbitrarily pro- duced by the imagination, and has relation to thoughts alone ; but all other materials, instru- ments, and conditions of art, have relations among each other, which limit and interpose between conception and expression. The former is as a mirror which reflects, the latter as a cloud which enfeebles, the light of which both are mediums of communication. Hence the fame of sculptors, painters, and musicians, although the intrinsic powers of the great masters of these arts may yield in no degree to that of those who have employed language as the hieroglyphic of their thoughts, has never equalled that of poets in the restricted sense of the term ; as two performers of equal skill will produce unequal effects from a guitar and a harp. The fame of legislators and fomiders of religions, so long as their institutions last, alone seems to exceed that of poets in the restricted sense ; but it can scarcely be a question, whether, if we deduct the celebrity which then* flattery of the gross opinions of the vulgar usually conciliates, together with that which belonged to them in their higher character of poets, any excess will remain. We have thus circumscribed the word poetry within the limits of that art which is the most familiar and the most perfect expression of the faculty itself. It is necessary, however, to make the circle still narrower, and to determine the distinction between measured and unmeasured language ; for the popular division into prose and verse is inadmissible in accurate philosophy. Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each other and towards that which they represent, and a perception of the order of those relations has always been found connected with a perception of the order of the relations of thoughts. Hence the language of poets lias ever affected a certain uniform and harmonious recurrence of sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less indispensable to the communication of its influence, than the words themselves, without reference to that peculiar order. Hence the vanity of translation ; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal prin- ciple of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower — and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel. An observation of the regular mode of the recur- rence of harmony in the language of poetical minds, together with its relation to music, produced metre, or a certain system of traditional forms of harmony and language. Yet it is by no means essential that a poet should accommodate his language to this traditional form, so that the harmony, which is its spirit, be observed. The practice is indeed conve- nient and popular, and to be preferred, especially in such composition as includes much action : but every great poet must inevitably innovate upon the example of his predecessors in the exact structure of his peculiar versification. The distinc- tion between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error. The distinction between philosophers and poets has been anticipated. Plato was essentially a poet — the truth and splendour of his imagery, and the melody of his language, are the most in- tense that it is possible to conceive. He rejected the measure of the epic, dramatic, and lyrical forms, because he sought to kindle a harmony in thoughts divested of shape and action, and he forbore to invent any regular plan of rhythm which would include, under determinate forms, the varied pauses of his style. Cicero sought to imitate the cadence of his periods, but with little success. Lord Bacon was a poet.* His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philo- sophy satisfies the intellect ; it is a strain which distends, and then bursts the circumference of the reader's mind, and pours itself forth together with it into the universal element with which it has perpetual sympathy. All the authors of revolutions in opinion are not only necessarily poets as they are inventors, nor even as their words unveil the permanent analogy of things by images which participate in the life of truth ; but as their periods are harmonious and rhythmical, and contain in themselves the elements of verse ; being the echo * See the Filum Labyrinthi, and the Essay on Death particularly. b 2 A DEFENCE OF POETRY. of the eternal music. Nor are those supreme poets, who have employed traditional forms of rhythm on account of the form and action of their subjects, less capable of perceiving and teaching the truth of tilings, than those who have omitted that form. Shakspeare, Dante, and Milton (to confine ourselves to modern writers) are philosophers of the very loftiest power. A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. There is this difference between a story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which have no other connexion than time, place, circumstance, cause and effect ; the other is the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds. The one is partial, and applies only to a definite period of time, and a certain com- bination of events which can never agam recur ; the other is universal, and contains within itself the germ of a relation to whatever motives or actions have place in the possible varieties of human nature. Time, which destroys the beauty and the use of the story of particular facts, stripped of the poetry which should invest them, augments that of poetry, and for ever develops new and wonderful applica- tions of the eternal truth which it contains. Hence epitomes have been called the moths of just history ; they eat out the poetry of it. A story of particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful : poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted. The parts of a composition may be poetical, without the composition as a whole being a poem. A single sentence may be considered as a whole, though it may be found in the midst of a series of unassimilated portions ; a single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought. And thus all the great historians, Herodotus, Plutarch, Livy, were poets ; and although the plan of these writers, especially that of Livy, restrained them from de- veloping this faculty in its highest degree, they made copious and ample amends for their subjec- tion, by filling all the interstices of their subjects with living images. Having determined what is poetry, and who are poets, let us proceed to estimate its effects upon society. Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure : all spirits on which it falls open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight. In the infancy of the world, neither poets them- selves nor their auditors are fully aware of the excellence of poetry : for it acts in a divine and unapprehended manner, beyond and above con- sciousness ; and it is reserved for future genera- tions to contemplate and measure the mighty cause and effect in all the strength and splendour of their union. Even in modern times, no living poet ever arrived at the fulness of his fame ; the jury which sits in judgment upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of his peers : it must be impanneled by Time from the selectest of the wise of many generations. A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds ; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and soft- ened, yet know not whence or why. The poems of Homer and his contemporaries were the delight of infant Greece ; they were the elements of that social system which is the column upon which all succeeding civilization has reposed. Homer em- bodied the ideal perfection of his age in human character ; nor can we doubt that those who read his verses were awakened to an ambition of becom- ing like to Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses : the truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, and persevering devotion to an object, were un veiled to the depths in these immortal creations : the sentiments of the auditors must have been refined and enlarged by a sympathy with such great and lovely impersonations, until from admiring they imitated, and from imitation they identified them- selves with the objects of their admiration. Nor let it be objected, that these characters are remote from moral perfection, and that they can by no means be considered as edifying patterns for gene- ral imitation. Every epoch, under names more or less specious, has deified its peculiar errors ; Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age ; and Self-deceit is the veiled image of unknown evil, before which luxury and satiety lie prostrate. But a poet considers the vices of his contemporaries as the temporary dress in which his creations must be arrayed, and which cover without concealing the eternal proportions of their beauty. An epic or dramatic personage is understood to wear them around his soul, as he may the ancient armour or the modern uniform around his body ; whilst it is easy to conceive a dress more graceful than either. The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise, and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic form and graceful motions will express themselves through the most barbarous and tasteless costume. Few poets of the highest class have chosen to exhibit the beauty of their conceptions in its naked truth and splen- dour ; and it is doubtful whether the alloy of A DEFENCE OF POETRY. costume, habit, &c, be not necessary to temper this planetary music for mortal ears. The whole objection, however, of the immorality of poetry rests upon a misconception of the man- ner in which poetry acts to produce the moral im- provement of man. Ethical science arranges the elements which poetry has created, and propounds schemes and proposes examples of civil and do- mestic life : nor is it for want of admirable doc- trines that men hate, and despise, and censure, and deceive, and subjugate one another. But poetry acts in another and diviner manner. It awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes fami- liar objects be as if they were not familiar ; it reproduces all that it represents, and the imper- sonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thence- forward hi the minds of those who have once con- templated them, as memorials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which it coexists. The great secret of morals is love ; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively ; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others ; the pains and pleasures of his spe- cies must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination ; and poetry ad- ministers to the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagina- tion by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for ever craves fresh food. Poetry strength- ens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb. A poet therefore would do ill to embody his own conceptions of right and wrong, which are usually those of his place and time, in his poetical creations, which participate in neither. By this assumption of the inferior office of interpreting the effect, in which perhaps after all he might acquit himself but imperfectly, he would resign a glory in a participation in the cause. There was little danger that Homer, or any of the eternal poets, should have so far mis- understood themselves as to have abdicated this throne of their widest dominion. Those in whom the poetical faculty, though great, is less intense, as Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser, have fre- quently affected a moral aim, and the effect of their poetry is diminished in exact proportion to the degree in which they compel us to advert to this purpose. Homer and the cyclic poets were followed at a certain interval by the dramatic and lyrical poets of Athens, who flourished contemporaneously with all that is most perfect in the kindred expressions of the poetical faculty ; architecture, painting, music, the dance, sculpture, philosophy, and we may add, the forms of civil life. For although the scheme of Athenian society was deformed by many imperfections which the poetry existing in chivalry and Christianity has erased from the habits and institutions of modern Europe ; yet never at any other period has so much energy, beauty, and virtue, been developed ; never was blind strength and stubborn form so disciplined and rendered subject to the will of man, or that will less repugnant to the dictates of the beautiful and the true, as during the century which preceded the death of Socrates. Of no other epoch in the history of our species have we records and fragments stamped so visibly with the image of the divinity in man. But it is poetry alone, in form, in action, or in language, which has rendered this epoch memorable above all others, and the storehouse of examples to everlasting time. For written poetry existed at that epoch simultaneously with the other arts, and it is an idle inquiry to demand which gave and which received the light, which all, as from a com- mon focus, have scattered over the darkest periods of succeeding time. We know no more of cause and effect than a constant conjunction of events : poetry is ever found to co-exist with whatever other arts contribute to the happiness and perfection of man. I appeal to what has already been esta- blished to distinguish between the cause and the effect. It was at the period here adverted to, that the drama had its birth ; and however a succeeding writer may have equalled or surpassed those few great specimens of the Athenian drama which have been preserved to us, it is indisputable that the art itself never was understood or practised accord- ing to the true philosophy of it, as at Athens. For the Athenians employed language, action, music, painting, the dance, and religious institutions, to produce a common effect in the representation of the highest idealisms of passion and of power ; each division in the art was made perfect in its kind by artists of the most consummate skill, and was disciplined into a beautiful proportion and unity one towards the other. On the modern stage a few only of the elements capable of express- ing the image of the poet's conception are em- ployed at once. We have tragedy without music A DEFENCE OF POETRY. and dancing ; and music and dancing without the highest impersonations of which they are the fit accompaniment, and both without religion and solemnity. Religious institution has indeed been usually banished from the stage. Our system of divesting the actor's face of a mask, on which the many expressions appropriated to his dramatic character might be moulded into one permanent and unchanging expression, is favourable only to a partial and inharmonious effect ; it is fit for nothing but a monologue, where all the attention may be directed to some great master of ideal mimicry. The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy, though liable to great abuse in point of practice, is undoubtedly an extension of the dra- matic circle ; but the comedy should be as in King Lear, universal, ideal, and sublime. It is perhaps the intervention of this principle which determines the balance in favour of King Lear against the ffidipus Tyrannus or the Agamemnon, or, if you will, the trilogies with which they are connected ; unless the intense power of the choral poetry, es- pecially that of the latter, should be considered as restoring the equilibrium. King Lear, if it can sustain this comparison, may be judged to be the most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world ; in spite of the narrow conditions to which the poet was subjected by the ignorance of the philosophy of the drama which has prevailed in modern Europe. Calderon, in his religious Autos, has attempted to fulfil some of the high conditions of dramatic representation neglected by Shakspeare ; such as the establishing a relation between the drama and religion, and the accom- modating them to music and dancing ; but he omits the observation of conditions still more im- portant, and more is lost than gained by the sub- stitution of the rigidly-defined and ever-repeated idealisms of a distorted superstition for the living impersonations of the truth of human passion. But I digress. — The connexion of scenic exhibi- tions with the improvement or corruption of the manners of men, has been universally recognised : in other words, the presence or absence of poetry in its most perfect and universal form, has been found to be connected with good and evil in con- duct or habit. The corruption which has been imputed to the drama as an effect, begins, when the poetry employed in its constitution ends : I appeal to the history of manners whether the pe- riods of the growth of the one and the decline of the other have not corresponded with an exactness equal to any example of moral cause and effect. The drama at Athens, or wheresoever else it may have approached to its perfection, ever co- existed with the moral and intellectual greatness of the age. The tragedies of the Athenian poets are as mirrors in which the spectator beholds him- self, under a thin disguise of circumstance, stript of all but that ideal perfection and energy which every one feels to be the internal type of all that he loves, admires, and would become. The ima- gination is enlarged by a sympathy with pains and passions so mighty, that they distend in their con- ception the capacity of that by which they are con- ceived ; the good affections are strengthened by pity, indignation, terror and sorrow ; and an exalted calm is prolonged from the satiety of this high exercise of them into the tumult of familiar life : even crime is disarmed of half its horror and all its contagion by being represented as. the fatal con- sequence of the unfathomable agencies of nature ; error is thus divested of its wilfulness ; men can no longer cherish it as the creation of their choice. In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred ; it teaches rather self- knowledge and self-respect. Neither the eye nor the mind can see itself, unless reflected upon that which it resembles. The drama, so long as it con- tinues to express poetry, is as a prismatic and many- sided mirror, which collects the brightest rays of human nature and divides and reproduces them from the simplicity of these elementary forms, and touches them with majesty and beauty, and mul- tiplies all that it reflects, and endows it with the power of propagating its like wherever it may fall. But in periods of the decay of social life, the drama sympathises with that decay. Tragedy becomes a cold imitation of the form of the great masterpieces of antiquity, divested of all harmo- nious accompaniment of the kindred arts ; and often the very form misunderstood, or a weak attempt to teach certain doctrines, which the writer considers as moral truths ; and which are usually no more than specious flatteries of some gross vice or weakness, with which the author, in common with his auditors, are infected. Hence what has been called the classical and domestic drama. Addi- son's " Cato " is a specimen of the one ; and would it were not superfluous to cite examples of the other ! To such purposes poetry cannot be made subservient. Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it. And thus we -observe that all dramatic writings of this nature are unimaginative in a singular degree ; they affect sentiment and passion, which, divested of imagination, are other names for caprice and appetite. The period in our own history of the grossest degradation of the drama is the reign of Charles II., when all forms in which poetry had been accustomed to be ex- pressed became hymns to the triumph of kingly A DEFENCE OF POETRY. power over liberty and virtue. Milton stood alone illuminating an age unworthy of him. At such periods the calculating principle pervades all the forms of dramatic exhibition, and poetry ceases to be expressed upon them. Comedy loses its ideal universality : wit succeeds to humour ; we laugh from self-complacency and triumph, instead of plea- sure ; malignity, sarcasm, and contempt, succeed to sympathetic merriment ; we hardly laugh, but we smile. Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, becomes, from the very veil which it assumes, more active if less dis- gusting : it is a monster for which the conniption of society for ever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret. The^drama being that form under which a greater number of modes of expression of poetry are sus- ceptible of being combined than any other, the connexion of poetry and social good is more ob- servable in the drama than in whatever other form. And it is indisputable that the highest perfection of human society has ever corresponded with the highest dramatic excellence ; and that the corrup- tion or the extinction of the drama in a nation where it has once flourished, is a mark of a corrup- tion of manners, and an extinction of the energies which sustain the soul of social life. But, as Machiavelli says of political institutions, that life may be preserved and renewed, if men should arise capable of bringing back the drama to its princi- ples. And this is true with respect to poetry in its most extended sense : all language, institution and form, require not only to be produced but to be sustained : the office and character of a poet participates in the divine nature as regards provi- dence, no less than as regards creation. Civil war, the spoils of Asia, and the fatal pre- dominance first of the Macedonian, and then of the Roman arms, were so many symbols of the extinction or suspension of the creative faculty in Greece. The bucolic writers, who found patronage under the lettered tyrants of Sicily and Egypt, were the latest representatives of its most glorious reign. Their poetry is intensely melodious ; like the odour of the tuberose, it overcomes and sickens the spirit with excess of sweetness ; whilst the poetry of the preceding age was as a meadow-gale of June, which mingles the fragrance of all the flowers of the field, and adds a quickening and harmonising spirit of its own which endows the sense with a power of sustaining its extreme de- light. The bucolic and erotic delicacy in written poetry is correlative with that softness in statuary, music, and the kindred arts, and even in manners and institutions, which distinguished the epoch to which I now refer. Nor is it the poetical faculty itself, or any misapplication of it, to which this want of harmony is to be imputed. An equal sen- sibility to the influence of the senses and the affec- tions is to be found in the writings of Homer and Sophocles : the former, especially, has clothed sen- sual and pathetic images with irresistible attrac- tions. Their superiority over these succeeding writers consists in the presence of those thoughts which belong to the inner faculties of our nature, not in the absence of those which are connected with the external : their incomparable perfection consists in a harmony of the union of all. It is not what the erotic poets have, but what they have not, in which their imperfection consists. It is not inas- much as they were poets, but inasmuch as they were not poets, {hat they can be considered with any plausibility as connected with the corruption of their age. Had that corruption availed so as to extinguish in them the sensibility to pleasure, pas- sion, and natural scenery, which is imputed to them as an imperfection, the last triumph of evil would have been achieved. For the end of social corrup- tion is to destroy all sensibility to pleasure ; and, therefore, it is corruption. It begins at the ima- gination and the intellect as at the core, and distri- butes itself thence as a paralysing venom, through the affections mto the very appetites, until all be- come a torpid mass in which hardly sense survives. At the approach of such a period, poetry ever ad- dresses itself to those faculties which are the last to be destroyed, and its voice is heard, like the footsteps of AstrEea, departing from the world. Poetry ever communicates all the pleasure which men are capable of receiving : it is ever still the light of life ; the source of whatever of beautiful Or generous or true can have place in an evil time. It will readily be confessed that those among the luxurious citizens of Syracuse and Alexandria, who were delighted with the poems of Theocritus, were less cold, cruel, and sensual than the remnant of their tribe. But corruption must utterly have destroyed the fabric of human society before poetry can ever cease. The sacred links of that chain have never been entirely disjoined, which descend- ing through the minds of many men is attached to those great minds, whence as from a magnet the invisible effluence is sent forth, which at once con- nects, animates, and sustains the life of all. It is the faculty which contains within itself the seeds at once of its own and of social renovation. And let us not circumscribe the effects of the bucolic and erotic poetry within the limits of the sensi- bility of those to whom it was "addressed. They may have perceived the beauty of those immortal compositions, simply as fragments and isolated portions : those who are more finely organised, or B A DEFENCE OF POETRY. born in a happier age, may recognise them as epi- sodes to that great poem, which all poets, like the co-operating thoughts of one great mind, have built up since the beginning of the world. The same revolutions within a narrower sphere had place in ancient Rome ; but the actions and forms of its social life never seem to have been perfectly saturated with the poetical element. The Romans appear to have considered the Greeks as the selectest treasuries of the selectest forms of manners and of nature, and to have abstained from creating in measured language, sculpture, music, or architecture, any thing which might bear a par- ticular relation to their own condition, whilst it should bear a general one to the universal consti- tution of the world. But we judge from partial evidence, and we judge perhaps partially. Ennius, Varro, Pacuvius, and Accius, all great poets, have been lost. Lucretius is in the highest, and Virgil in a very high sense, a creator. The chosen deli- cacy of expressions of the latter, are as a mist of light which conceal from us the intense and exceed- ing truth of his conceptions of nature. Livy is instinct with poetry. Yet Horace, Catullus, Ovid, and generally the other great writers of the Vir- gilian age, saw man and nature in the mirror of Greece. The institutions also, and the religion of Rome, were less poetical than those of Greece, as the shadow is less vivid than the substance. Hence poetry in Rome, seemed to follow, rather than ac- company, the perfection of political and domestic society. The true poetry of Rome lived in its institutions ; for whatever of beautiful, true, and majestic, they contained, could have sprung only from the faculty which creates the order in which they consist. The life of Camillus, the death of Regulus ; the expectation of the senators, in their godlike state, of the victorious Gauls ; the refusal of the republic to make peace with Hannibal, after the battle of Cannae, were not the consequences of a refined calculation of the probable personal advan- tage to result from such a rhythm and order in the shows of life, to those who were at once the poets and the actors of these immortal dramas. The imagination beholding the beauty of this order, created it out of itself according to its own idea ; the consequence was empire, and the reward ever- living fame. These things are not the less poetry, , quia carent vate sacro. They are the episodes of that cyclic poem written by Time upon the memo- ries of men. The Past, like an inspired rhapsodist, fills the theatre of everlasting generations with their harmony. At length the ancient system of religion and manners had fulfilled the circle of its revolutions. And the world would have fallen into utter anarchy and darkness, but that there were found poets among the authors of the Christian and chivalric systems of manners and religion, who created forms of opinion and action never before conceived ; which, copied into the imaginations of men, became as generals to the bewildered armies of their thoughts. It is foreign to the present purpose to touch upon the evil produced by these systems : except that we protest, on the ground of the prin- ciples already established, that no portion of it can be attributed to the poetry they contain. It is probable that the poetry of Moses, Job, David, Solomon, and Isaiah, had produced a great effect upon the mind of Jesus and his disciples. The scattered fragments preserved to us by the biographers of this extraordinary person, are all instinct with the most vivid poetry. But his doc- trines seem to have been quickly distorted. At a certain period after the prevalence of a system of opinions founded upon those promulgated by him, the three forms into which Plato had distributed the faculties of mind underwent a sort of apothe- osis, and became the object of the worship of the civilised world. Here it is to be confessed that " Light seems to thicken," and « The crow makes wing to the rooky wood, Good things of day hegin to droop and drowse, And night's black agents to their preys do rouze." But mark how beautiful an order has sprung from the dust and blood of this fierce chaos ! how the world, as from a resurrection, balancing itself on the golden wings of knowledge and of hope, has reassumed its yet unwearied flight into the heaven of time. Listen to the music, unheard by outward ears, which is as a ceaseless and invisible wind, nourishing its everlasting course with strength and swiftness. The poetry in the doctrines of Jesus Christ, and the mythology and institutions of the Celtic con- querors of the Roman empire, outlived the dark- ness and the convulsions connected with their growth and victory, and blended themselves in a new fabric of manners and opinion. It is an error to impute the ignorance of the dark ages to the Christian doctrines or the predominance of the Celtic nations. Whatever of evil their agencies may have contained sprang from the extinction of the poetical principle, connected with the progress of despotism and superstition. Men, from causes too intricate to be here discussed, had become insensible and selfish : their own will had become feeble, and yet they were its slaves, and thence the slaves of the will of others : lust; fear, avarice, cruelty, and fraud, characterised a race amongst whom no one was to be found capable of creating in form, language, or institution. The moral A DEFENCE OF POETRY. anomalies of such a state of society are not justly to be charged upon any class of events immediately connected with them, and those events are most entitled to our approbation which could dissolve it most expeditiously. It is unfortunate for those who cannot distinguish words from thoughts, that many of these anomalies have been incorporated into our popular religion. It was not until the eleventh century that the effects of the poetry of the Christian and chivalric systems began to manifest themselves. The prin- ciple of equality had been discovered and applied by Plato in his Republic, as the theoretical rule of the mode in which the materials of pleasure and of power produced by the common skill and labour of human beings ought to be distributed among them. The limitations of this rule were asserted by him to be determined only by the sensibility of each, or the utility to result to all. Plato, following the doc- trines of Timseus and Pythagoras, taught also a moral and intellectual system of doctrme, compre- hending at once the past, the present, and the future condition of man. Jesus Christ divulged the sacred and eternal truths contained in these views to mankind, and Christianity, in its abstract purity, became the exoteric expression of the eso- teric doctrines of the poetry and wisdom of anti- quity. The incorporation of the Celtic nations with the exhausted population of the south, im- pressed upon it the figure of the poetry existing in their mythology and institutions. The result was a sum of the action and reaction of all the causes included in it ; for it may be assumed as a maxim that no nation or religion can supersede' any other without incorporating into itself a portion of that which it supersedes. The abolition of personal and domestic slavery, and the emancipation of women from a great part of the degrading restraints of antiquity, were among the consequences of these events. The abolition of personal slavery is the basis of the highest political hope that it can enter into the mind of man to conceive. The freedom of women produced the poetry of sexual love. Love became a religion, the idols of whose worship were ever present. It was as if the statues of Apollo and the Muses had been endowed with life and motion, and had walked forth among their worshippers ; so that earth became peopled by the inhabitants of a diviner world. The familiar appearance and pro- ceedings of life became wonderful and heavenly, and a paradise was created as out of the wrecks of Eden. And as this creation itself is poetry, so its creators were poets ; and language was the instru- ment of their art : " Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse." The Provencal Trouveurs, or inventors, preceded Petrarch, whose verses are as spells, which unseal the mmost enchanted fountains of the delight which is in the grief of love. It is impos- sible to feel them without becoming a portion of that beauty which we contemplate : it were super- fluous to explain how the gentleness and the eleva- tion of mind connected with these sacred emotions can render men more amiable, more generous and wise, and lift them out of the dull vapours of the little world of self. Dante understood the secret things of love even more than Petrarch. His Vita Nuova is an inexhaustible fountain of purity of sen- timent and language : it is the idealised history of that period, and those intervals of his life which were dedicated to love. His apotheosis of Beatrice in Paradise, and the gradations of his own love and her loveliness, by which as by steps he feigns him- self to have ascended to the throne of the Supreme Cause, is the most glorious imagination of modern poetry. The acutest critics have justly reversed the judgment of the vulgar, and the order of the great acts of the "Divine Drama," hi the mea- sure of the admiration which they accord to the Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The latter is a perpetual hymn of everlasting love. Love, which found a worthy poet in Plato alone of all the ancients, has been celebrated by a chorus of the greatest writers of the renovated world ; and the music has penetrated the caverns of society, and its echoes still drown the dissonance of arms and superstition. At successive intervals, Ariosto, Tasso, Shakspeare, Spenser, Calderon, Rousseau, and the great writers of our own age, have cele- brated the dominion of love, planting as it were trophies in the human mind of that sublimest victory over sensuality and force. The true rela- tion borne to each other by the sexes into which human kind is distributed, has become less mis- understood ; and if the error which^onfounded diversity with inequality of the powers of the two sexes has been partially recognised in the opinions and institutions of modern Europe, we owe this great benefit to the worship of which chivalry was the law, and poets the prophets. The poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge thrown over the stream of time, which unites the modern and ancient world. The distorted notions of invisible things which Dante and his rival Milton have idealised, are merely the mask and the mantle in which these great poets walk through eternity enveloped and disguised. It is a difficult question to determine how far they were conscious of the distinction which must have sub- sisted in their minds between their own creeds and that of the people. Dante at least appeal's to wish to mark the full extent of it by placing to A DEFENCE OF POETRY. Riphseus, whom Virgil calls justissimus unus, in Paradise, and observing a most heretical caprice in his distribution of rewards and punishments. And Milton's poem contains within itself a philosophical refutation of that system, of which, by a strange and natural antithesis, it has been a chief popular support. Nothing can exceed the energy and magnificence of the character of Satan as expressed in "Paradise Lost." It is a mistake to suppose that he could ever have been intended for the popular personification of evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a sleepless refinement of de- vice to inflict the extremest anguish on an enemy, these things are evil ; and, although venial in a slave, are not to be forgiven in a tyrant ; although redeemed by much that ennobles his defeat in one subdued, are marked by all that dishonours his conquest in the victor. Milton's Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God, as one who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, is to one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the alleged design of exasperating him to deserve new torments. Milton has so far violated the popular creed (if this shall be judged to be a violation) as to have alleged no superiority of moral virtue to his God over his Devil. And this bold neglect of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive proof of the supremacy of Milton's genius. He mingled as it were the elements of human nature as colours upon a single pallet, and arranged them in the composition of his great picture according to the laws of epic truth ; that is, according to the laws of that principle by which a series of actions of the external universe and of intelligent and ethical bem^s is calculated to excite the sympa- thy of succeeding generations of mankind. The Divina Commedia and Paradise Lost have con- ferred upon modern mythology a systematic form ; and when change and time shall have added one more superstition to the mass of those which have arisen and decayed upon the earth, commentators will be learnedly employed in elucidating the religion of ancestral Europe, only not utterly for- gotten because it will have been stamped with the eternity of genius. Homer was the first and Dante the second epic poet : that is, the second poet, the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in which he lived, and of the ages which fol- lowed it : developing itself in correspondence with their development. For Lucretius had limed the wings of his swift spirit in the dregs of the sensible world ; and Virgil, with a modesty that ill became his genius, had affected the fame of an imitator, even whilst he created anew all that he copied ; and none among the flock of mock-birds, though their notes were sweet, Apollonius Rhodius, Quin- tus Calaber, Nonnus, Lucan, Statius, or Claudian, have sought even to fulfil a single condition of epic truth. Milton was the third epic poet. For if the title of epic in its highest sense be refused to the iEneid, still less can it be conceded to the Orlando Furioso, the Gerusalemme Liberata, the Lusiad, or the Fairy Queen. Dante and Milton were both deeply penetrated with the ancient religion of the civilized world ; and its spirit exists in their poetry probably in the same proportion as its forms survived in the un- reformed worship of modern Europe. The one preceded and the other followed the Reformation at almost equal intervals. Dante was the first religious reformer, and Luther surpassed him rather in the rudeness and acrimony, than in the boldness of his censures of papal usurpation. Dante was the first awakener of entranced Europe ; he created a language, in itself music and persua- sion, out of a chaos of inharmonious barbarisms. He was the congregator of those great spirits who presided over the resurrection of learning ; the Lucifer of that starry flock which in the thirteenth century shone forth from republican Italy, as from a heaven, into the darkness of the benighted world. His very words are instinct with spirit ; each is as a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable thought ; and many yet He covered in the ashes of their birth, and pregnant with a lightning which has yet found no conductor. All high poetry is infinite ; it is as the first acorn, which contained all oaks potentially. Veil after veil may be undrawn, and the inmost naked beauty of the meaning never exposed. A great poem is a fountain for ever over- flowing with the waters of wisdom and delight ; and after one person and one age has exhausted all its divine effluence which their peculiar relations enable them to share, another and yet another succeeds, and new relations are ever developed, the source of an unforeseen and an unconceived delight. The age immediately succeeding to that of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, was characterized by a revival of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Chaucer caught the sacred inspiration, and the superstructure of English literature is based upon the materials of Italian invention. But let us not be betrayed from a defence into a critical history of poetry and its influence on society. Be it enough to have pointed out the A DEFENCE OF POETRY. U effects of poets, in the large and true sense of the word, upon their own and all succeeding times. But poets have been challenged to resign the civic crown to reasoners and mechanists, on another plea. It is admitted that the exercise of the imagination is most delightful, but it is alleged, that that of reason is more useful. Let us examine as the grounds of this distinction, what is here meant by utility. Pleasure or good, in a general sense, is that which the consciousness of a sensitive and intelligent being seeks, and in which, when found, it acquiesces. There are two kinds of pleasure, one durable, universal and permanent ; the other transitory and particular. Utility may either express the means of producing the former or the latter. In the former sense, whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful. But a narrower meaning may be assigned to the word utility, confining it to express that which banishes the importunity of the wants of our animal nature, the surrounding men with security of life, the dispersing the grosser delusions of superstition, and the conciliating such a degree of mutual for- bearance among men as may consist with the motives of personal advantage. Undoubtedly the promoters of utility, in this limited sense, have their appointed office in society. They follow the footsteps of poets, and copy the sketches of their creations into the book of common fife. They make space, and give time. Their exertions are of the highest value, so long as they confine their administration of the concerns of the inferior powers of our nature within the limits due to the superior ones. But whilst the sceptic destroys gross superstitions, let him spare to deface, as some of the French writers have defaced, the eternal truths charactered upon the imaginations of men. Whilst the mechanist abridges, and the political economist combines labour, let them be- ware that their speculations, for want of corre- spondence with those first principles which belong to the imagination, do not tend, as they have in modern England, to exasperate at once the ex- tremes of luxury and want. They have exemplified the saying, " To him that hath, more shall be given ; and from him that hath not, the little that he hath shall be taken away." The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer ; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism. Such are the effects which must ever flow from an unmitigated exercise of the calculating faculty. It is "difficult to define pleasure in its highest sense ; the definition involving a number of apparent paradoxes. For, from an inexplicable defect of harmony in the constitution of human nature, the pain of the inferior is frequently connected with the pleasures of the superior portions of our being. Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself, are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle ; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself. And hence the saying, " It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to the house of mirth." Not that this highest species of pleasure is necessarily linked with pain. The delight of love and friendship, the ecstacy of the admiration of nature, the joy of the perception and still more of the creation of poetry, is often wholly unalloyed. The production and assurance of pleasure in this highest sense is true utility. Those who produce and preserve this pleasure are poets or poetical philosophers. The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau,* and their disciples, in favour of oppressed and deluded humanity, are entitled to the gratitude of mankind. Yet it is easy to calculate the degree of moral and intellectual improvement which the world would have exhibited, had they never lived. A little more nonsense would have been talked for a century or two ; and perhaps a few more men, women, and children, burnt as heretics. We might not at this moment have been congratulating each other on the abolition of the Inquisition in Spam. But it exceeds all imagination to conceive what would have been the moral condition of the world if neither Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakspeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon, nor Milton, had ever existed ; if Raphael and Michael Angelo had never been born ; if the Hebrew poetry had never been translated ; if a revival of the study of Greek literature had never taken place ; if no monuments of ancient sculpture had been handed down to us ; and if the poetry of the religion of the ancient world had been extinguished together with its belief. The human mind could never, except by the intervention of these excitements, have been awakened to the invention of the grosser sciences, and that application of analytical reason- ing to the aberrations of society, which it is now attempted to exalt over the direct expression of the mventive and creative faculty itself. We have more moral, political and historical * Although Rousseau has heen thus classed, he was essentially a poet. The others, even Voltaire, were mere reasoners. 12 A DEFENCE OF POETRY. wisdom, than we know how to reduce into prac- tice ; we have more scientific and economical knowledge than can be accommodated to the just distribution of the produce which it multiplies. The poetry in these systems of thought, is con- cealed by the accumulation of facts and calcu- lating processes. There is no want of knowledge respecting what is wisest and best in morals, government, and political economy, or at least, what is wiser and better than what men now practise and endure. But we let "/ dare not wait upon i" would, like the poor cat in the adage." We want the creative faculty to imagine that which we know ; we want the generous impulse to act that which we imagine ; we want the poetry of life : our calculations have outrun conception ; we have eaten more than we can digest. The cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of the internal world ; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave. To what but a cultivation of the mechanical arts in a degree disproportioned to the presence of the creative faculty, which is the basis of all know- ledge, is to be attributed the abuse of all invention for abridging and combining labour, to the exas- peration of the inequality of mankind ? From what other cause has it arisen that the discoveries which should have lightened, have added a weight to the curse imposed on Adam ? Poetry, and the principle of Self, of which money is the visible incarnation, are the God and Mammon of the world. The functions of the poetical faculty are two- fold ; by one it creates new materials of know- ledge, and power and pleasure ; by the other it engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them according to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and the good. The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, the accu- mulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. The body has then become too unwieldy for that which animates it. Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge ; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought ; it is that from which all spring, and that which adorns all ; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourish- ment and the succession of the scions of the tree of life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things ; it is as the odour and the colour of the rose to the texture of the elements which compose it, as the form and splen- dour of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and corruption. What were virtue, love, patriot- ism, friendship — what were the scenery of this beautiful universe which we inhabit ; what were our consolations on this side of the grave — and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl- winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar ? Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, " I will compose poetry." The greatest poet even cannot say it ; for the mind in creation is as. a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness ; this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its depar- ture. Could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to pre- dict the greatness of the results ; but when com- position begins, inspiration is already on the de- cline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the greatest poets of the present day, whether it is not an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry are produced by labour and study. The toil and the delay recommended by critics, can be justly interpreted to mean no more than a careful observation of the inspired moments, and an artificial connexion of the spaces between their suggestions by the intertexture of conventional expressions ; a necessity only im- posed by the limitedness of the poetical faculty itself ; for Milton conceived the Paradise Lost as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have his own authority also for the muse having "dictated" to him the " unpremeditated song." And let this be an answer to those who would allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the Orlando Furioso. Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty is still more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts ; a great statue or picture grows under the power of the artist as a child in the mother's womb ; and the very mind which directs the A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 1 3 hands in formation is incapable of accounting to itself for the origin, the gradations, or the media of the process. Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arismg unforeseen and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is as it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own ; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which paves it. These and corre- sponding conditions of being are experienced prin- cipally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination ; and the state of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship, is essentially linked with such emotions ; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organisation, but they can colour all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world ; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world ; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interluna- tions of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide — abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man. Poetry turns all things to loveliness ; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed ; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change ; it subdues to union under its light yoke, all irreconcilable things. It trans- mutes all that it touches, and every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes : its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life ; it strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms. All things exist as .they are perceived ; at least in relation to the percipient. " The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain, or withdraws life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common uni- verse of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of fami- liarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. It compels us to feel that which we per- ceive, and to imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe, after it has been annihi- lated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration. It justifies the bold and true words of Tasso : Non merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed it Poeta. A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest, and the most illustrious of men. As to his glory, let time be challenged to declare whether the fame of any other institutor.of human life be comparable to that of a poet. That he is the wisest, the happiest, and the best, inasmuch as he is a poet, is equally incontrovertible : the greatest poets have been men of the most spotless virtue, of the most consummate prudence, and, if we would look into the interior of their lives, the most for- tunate of men : and the exceptions, as they regard those who possessed the poetic faculty in a high yet inferior degree, will be found on consideration to confine rather than destroy the rule. Let us for a moment stoop to the arbitration of popular breath, and usurping and uniting in our own per- sons the incompatible characters of accuser, wit- ness, judge and executioner, let us decide without trial, testimony, or form, that certain motives of those who are " there sitting where we dare not soar," are reprehensible. Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was a flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was a madman, that Lord Bacon was a peculator, that Raphael was a libertine, that Spenser was a poet laureate. It is inconsistent with this division of our subject to cite living poets, but posterity has done ample justice to the great names now referred to. Their errors have been weighed and found to 14 A DEFENCE OF POETRY. have been dust in the balance ; if their sins " were as scarlet, they are now white as snow :" they have been washed in the blood of the mediator and redeemer, Time. Observe in what a ludicrous chaos the imputations of real or fictitious crime have been confused in the contemporary calum- nies against poetry and poets ; consider how little is, as it appears — or appears, as it is ; look to your own motives, and judge not, lest ye be judged. Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect from logic, that it is not subject to the control of the active powers of the mind, and that its birth and recurrence have no necessary connexion with the consciousness or will. It is presumptuous to determine that these are the necessary conditions of all mental causation, when mental effects are experienced unsusceptible of being referred to them. The frequent recurrence of the poetical power, it is obvious to suppose, may produce in the mind a habit of order and harmony correlative with its own nature and with its effects upon other minds. But in the intervals of inspiration/and they may be frequent without being durable, a poet be- comes a man, and is abandoned to the sudden re- flux of the influences under which others habitually live. But as he is more delicately organised than other men, and sensible to pain and pleasure, both his own and that of others, in a degree unknown to them, he will avoid the one and pursue the other with an ardour proportioned to this difference. And he renders himself obnoxious to calumny, when he neglects to observe the circumstances under which these objects of universal pursuit and flight have disguised themselves in one another's gar- ments. But there is nothing necessarily evil in this error, and thus cruelty, envy, revenge, avarice, and the passions purely evil, have never formed any por- tion of the popular imputations on the lives of poets. I have thought it most favourable to the cause of truth to set down these remarks according to the order in which they were suggested to my mind, by a consideration of the subject itself, instead of observing the formality of a polemical reply ; but if the view which they contain be just, they will be found to involve a refutation of the arguers against poetry, so far at least as regards the first division of the subject. I can readily conjecture what should have moved the gall of some learned and intelligent writers who quarrel with certain versi- fiers ; I confess myself, like them, unwilling to be stunned by the Theseids of the hoarse Codri of the day. Bavius and Meevius undoubtedly are, as they ever were, insufferable persons. But it be- longs to a philosophical critic to distinguish rather than confound. The first part of these remarks has related to poetry in its elements and principles ; and it has been shown, as well as the narrow limits assigned them would permit, that what is called poetry, in a restricted sense, has a common source with all other forms of order and of beauty, according to which the materials of human life are susceptible of being arranged, and which is poetry in an uni- versal sense. The second part will have for its object an appli- cation of these principles to the present state of the cultivation of poetry, and a defence of the attempt to idealize the modern forms of manners and opinions, and compel them into a subordina- tion to the imaginative and creative faculty. For the literature of England, an energetic development of which has ever preceded or accompanied a great and free development of the national will, has arisen as it were from a new birth. In spite of the low- thoughted envy which would undervalue contem- porary merit, our own will be a memorable age in intellectual achievements, and we live among such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond compa- rison any who have appeared since the last national struggle for civil and religious liberty. The most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is poetry. At such periods there is an accumulation of the power of communicating and receiving intense and im- passioned conceptions respecting man and nature. The persons in whom this power resides, may often, as far as regards many portions of their nature, have little apparent correspondence with that spirit of good of which they are the ministers. But even whilst they deny and abjure, they are yet compelled to serve, the power which is seated on the throne of their own soul. It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of the present day without being startled with the electric life which burns within their words. They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its mani- festations ; for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age. Poets are the hierophants of an un- apprehended inspiration ; the mirrors of the gigan- tic shadows which futurity casts upon the present ; the words which express what they understand not ; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire ; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. ESSAY ON THE LITERATURE, THE ARTS, AND THE MANNERS OF THE ATHENIANS. The period which intervened between the birth of Pericles and the death of Aristotle, is undoubt- edly, whether considered in itself,- or with refer- ence to the effects which it has produced upon the subsequent destinies of civilised man, the most memorable in the history of the world. What was the combination of moral and political circum- stances which produced so unparalleled a progress during that period in literature and the arts ; — why that progress, so rapid and so sustained, so soon received a check, and became retrograde, — are problems left to the wonder' and conjecture of posterity. The wrecks and fragments of those subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection of the whole. Their very language — a type of the understandings of which it was the creation and the image — in variety, in simplicity, in flexibility, and in copiousness, excels every other language of the western world. Their sculptures are such as we, in our presumption, assume to be the models of ideal truth and beauty, and to which no artist of modern times can produce forms in any degree comparable. Their paintings, according to Pliny and Pausanias, were full of delicacy and harmony ; and some even were powerfully pathe- tic, so as to awaken, like tender music or tragic poetry, the most overwhelming emotions. We are accustomed to conceive the painters of the sixteenth century, as those who have brought their art to the highest perfection, probably because none of the ancient paintings have been preserved. For all the inventive arts maintain, as it were, a sympathetic connexion between each other, being no more than various expressions of one internal power, modified by different circumstances, either of an individual, or of society ; and the paintings of that period would probably bear the same rela- tion as is confessedly borne by the sculptures to all succeeding ones. Of their music we know little ; but the effects which it is said to have produced, * Shelley named this Essay, " A Discourse on the Man- ners of the Ancients, relative to the subject of Love." It was intended to be a commentary on the Symposium, or Banquet of Plato, but it breaks off at the moment when the main subject is about to be discussed. whether they be attributed to the skill of the composer, or the sensibility of his audience, are far more powerful than any which we experience from the music of our own times ; and if, indeed, the melody of their compositions were more tender and delicate, and inspiring, than the melodies of some modern European nations, their superiority in this art must have been some- thing wonderful, and wholly beyond conception. Their poetry seems to maintain a very high, though not so disproportionate a rank, in the com- parison. Perhaps Shakspeare, from the variety and comprehension of his genius, is to be considered, on the whole, as the greatest individual mind, of which we have specimens remaining. Perhaps Dante created imaginations of greater loveliness and energy than any that are to be found in the ancient literature of Greece. Perhaps nothing has been discovered in the fragments of the Greek lyric poets equivalent to the sublime and chivalric sensibility of Petrarch. — But, as a poet, Homer must be acknowledged to excel Shakspeare in the truth, the harmony, the sustained grandeur, the satisfying completeness of his images, their exact fitness to the illustration, and to that to which they belong. Nor could Dante, deficient in con- duct, plan, nature, variety, and temperance, have been brought into comparison with these men, but for those fortunate isles, laden with golden fruit, which alone could tempt any one to embark in the misty ocean of his dark and extravagant fiction. But, omitting the comparison of individual minds, which can afford no general inference, how superior was the spirit and system of their poetry to that of any other period. So that, had any other genius equal in other respects to the greatest that ever enlightened the world, arisen in that age, he would have been superior to all, from this cir- cumstance alone — that his conceptions would have assumed a more harmonious and perfect form. For it is worthy of observation, that whatever the poets of that age produced is as harmonious and perfect as possible. If a drama, for instance, were the composition of a person of inferior talent, it was still homogeneous and free from inequali- ties ; it was a whole, consistent with itself. The 16 ON THE LITERATURE, ETC., OF THE ATHENIANS. compositions of great minds bore throughout the sustained stamp of their greatness. In the poetry'of succeeding ages the expectations are often exalted on Icarean wings, and fall, too much disappointed to give a memory and a name to the oblivious pool in which they fell. In physical knowledge Aristotle and Theophras- tus had already — no doubt assisted by the labours of those of their predecessors whom they criticise — made advances worthy of the maturity of science. The astonishing hivention of geometry, that series of discoveries which have enabled man to command the elements and foresee future events, before the subjects of his ignorant wonder, and which have opened as it were the doors of the mysteries of nature, had already been brought to great perfec- tion. Metaphysics, the science of man's intimate nature, and logic, or the grammar and elementary principles of that science, received from the latter philosophers of the Periclean age a firm basis. All our more exact philosophy is built upon the labours of these great men, and many of the words which we employ in metaphysical distinc- tions were invented by them to give accuracy and system to their reasonings. The science of morals, or the voluntary conduct of men in relation to themselves or others, dates from this epoch. How inexpressibly bolder and more pure were the doc- trines of those great men, in comparison with the timid maxims which prevail in the writings of the most esteemed modern moralists. They were such as Phocion, and Epammondas, and Timoleon, who formed themselves on their influence, were to the wretched heroes of our own age. Their political and religious institutions are more difficult to bring into comparison with those of other times. A summary idea may be formed of the worth of any political and religious system, by observing the comparative degree of happiness and of intellect produced under its influence. And whilst many institutions and opinions, which in ancient Greece were obstacles to the improvement of the human race, have been abolished among modern nations, how many pernicious superstitions and new contrivances of misrule, and unheard-of complications of public mischief, have not been invented among them by the ever- watchful spirit of avarice and tyranny. The modern nations of the civilised world owe the progress which they have made — as well in those physical sciences in which they have already excelled their masters, as in the moral and intel- lectual inquiries, in which, with all the advantage of the experience of the latter, it can scarcely be said that they have yet equalled them, — to what is called the revival of learning ; that is, the study of the writers of the age which preceded and immediately followed the government of Pericles, or of subsequent writers, who were, so to speak, the rivers flowing from those immortal fountains. And though there seems to be a principle in the modern world, which, should circumstances analogous to those which modelled the intellectual resources of the age to which we refer, into so harmonious a proportion, again arise, would arrest and perpetuate them, and consign their results to a more equal, extensive, and lasting improvement of the condition of man — though justice and the true meaning of human society are, if not more accurately, more generally understood ; though perhaps men know more, and therefore are more, as a mass, yet this principle has never been called into action, and requires indeed a universal and almost appalling change in the system of existing things. The study of modern history is the study of kings, financiers, statesmen, and priests. The history of ancient Greece is the study of legislators, philoso- phers, and poets ; it is the history of men, compared with the history of titles. What the Greeks were, was a reality, not a promise. And what we are and hope to be, is derived, as it were, from the influence and inspiration of these glorious genera- tions. Whatever tends to afford a further illustration of the manners and opinions of those to whom we owe so much, and who were perhaps, on the whole, the most perfect specimens of humanity of whom we have authentic record, were infinitely valuable. Let us see their errors, their weaknesses, their daily actions, their familiar conversation, and catch the tone of their society. When we discover how far the most admirable community ever framed, was removed from that perfection to which human society is impelled by some active power within each bosom, to aspire, how great ought to be our hopes, how resolute our struggles. For the Greeks of the Periclean age were widely different from us. It is to be lamented that no modern writer has hitherto dared to show them precisely as they were. Barthelemi cannot be denied the praise of industry and system ; but he never forgets that he is a Christian and a Frenchman. Wieland, in his delightful novels, makes indeed a very tolerable Pagan, but cherishes too many political prejudices, and refrains from diminishing the interest of his romances by painting sentiments in which no European of modern times can possibly sympa- thise. There is no book which shows the Greeks precisely as they were ; they seem all written for children, with the caution that no practice or sentiment, highly inconsistent with our present manners, should be mentioned, lest those manners ON THE LITERATURE, ETC., OF THE ATHENIANS. 17 should receive outrage and violation. But there are many to whom the Greek language is inacces- sible, who ought not to be excluded by this prudery from possessing an exact and comprehensive con- ception of the history of man ; for there is no knowledge concerning what man has been and may be, from partaking of which a person can depart, without becoming in some degree more philoso- phical, tolerant, and just. One of the chief distinctions between the manners of ancient Greece and modern Europe, consisted in the regulations and the sentiments respecting sexual intercourse. Whether this difference arises from some imperfect influence of the doctrines of Jesus Christ, who alleges the absolute and uncon- ditional equality of all human beings, or from the institutions of chivalry, or from a certain funda- mental difference of physical nature existing in the Celts, or from a combination of all or any of these causes, acting on each other, is a question worthy of voluminous investigation. The fact is, that the modern Europeans have in this circumstance, and in the abolition of slavery, made an improvement the most decisive in the regulation of human society ; and all the virtue and the wisdom of the Periclean age arose under other institutions, in spite of the diminution which personal slavery and the inferiority of women, recognised by law and opinion, must have produced in the delicacy, the strength, the comprehensiveness, and the accuracy of their conceptions, in moral, political, and meta- physical science, and perhaps in every other art and science. The women, thus degraded, became such as it was expected they would become. They possessed, except with extraordinary exceptions, the habits and the qualities of slaves. They were probably not extremely beautiful ; at least there was no such dis- proportion in the attractions of the external form between the female and male sex among the Greeks, as exists among the modern Europeans. They were certainly devoid of that moral and intellectual loveliness with which the acquisition of knowledge and the cultivation of sentiment animates, as with another life of overpowering grace, the lineaments and the gestures of every form which they inhabit. Their eyes could not have been deep and intricate from the workings of the mind, and could have entangled no heart in soul-enwoven labyrinths. Let it not be imagined that because the Greeks were deprived of its legitimate object, they were incapable of sentimental love ; and that this passion is the mere child of chivalry and the literature of modern times. This object, or its archetype, for- ever exists in the mind, which selects among those who resemble it, that which most resembles it ; and instinctively fills up the interstices of the imperfect image, in the same manner as the imagination moulds and completes the shapes in clouds, or in the fire, into the resemblances of whatever form, animal, building, &c, happens to be present to it. Man is in his wildest state a social being : a certain degree of civilisation and refinement ever produces the want of sympathies still more intimate and complete ; and the gratification of the senses is no longer all that is sought in sexual connexion. It soon becomes a very small part of that profound and complicated sentiment, which we call love, which is rather the universal thirst for a communion not merely of the senses, but of our whole nature, intellectual, imaginative and sensitive ; and which, when individualised, becomes an imperious neces- sity, only to be satisfied by the complete or partial, actual or supposed, fulfilment of its claims. This want grows more powerful in proportion to the development which our nature receives from civilisation ; for man never ceases to be a social being. The sexual impulse, which is only one, and often a small part of those claims, serves, from its obvious and external nature, as a kind of type or expres- sion of the rest, a common basis, an acknowledged and visible link. Still it is a claim which even derives a strength not its own from the accessory circumstances which surround it, and one which our nature thirsts to satisfy. To estimate this, observe the degree of intensity and durability of the love of the male towards the female in animals and savages ; ajld acknowledge all the duration and intensity observable in the love of civilised beings beyond that of savages to be produced from other causes. In the susceptibility of the external senses there is probably no important difference. Among the ancient Greeks the male sex, one half of the human race, received the highest 'culti- vation and refinement ; whilst the other, so far as intellect is concerned, were educated as slaves, and were raised but few degrees in all that related to moral or intellectual excellence above the condi- tion of savages. The gradations in the society of man present us with a slow improvement in this respect. The Roman women held a higher consi- deration in society, and were esteemed almost as the equal partners with their husbands in the regu- lation of domestic economy and the education of their children. The practices and customs of mo- dern Europe are essentially different from and in- comparably less pernicious than either, however remote from what an enlightened mind cannot fail to desire as the future destiny of human beings. ON THE SYMPOSIUM, OR PREFACE TO THE BANQUET OF PLATO. a fragment. The dialogue entitled " The Banquet," was selected by the translator as the most beautiful and perfect among all the works of Plato*. He despairs of having communicated to the English* language any portion of the surpassing graces of the composition, or having done more than present an imperfect shadow of the language and the sen- timent of this astonishing production. Plato is eminently the greatest among the Greek philosophers, and from, or, rather, perhaps through him, his master Socrates, have proceeded those emanations of moral and metaphysical know- ledge, on which a long series and an incalculable variety of popular superstitions have sheltered their absurdities from the slow contempt of man- kind. Plato exhibits the rare union of close and subtle logic, with the Pythian enthusiasm of poetry, melted by the splendour and harmony of his periods into one irresistible stream of musical impres- sions, which hurry the persuasions onward, as in a breathless career. His language is that of an immortal spirit, rather than a man. Lord Bacon is, perhaps, the only writer, who, in these parti- culars, can be compared with him : his imitator, Cicero, sinks in the comparison into an ape mocking the gestures of a man. His views into the nature * The Republic, though replete with considerable errors of speculation, is, indeed, the greatest repository of impor- tant truths of all the- works of Plato. This, perhaps, is because it is the longest. He first, and perhaps last, main- tained that a state ought to be governed, not by the weal- thiest, or the most ambitious, or the most cunning, but by the wisest; the method of selecting such rulers, and the laws by which such a selection is made, must correspond with and arise out of the moral freedom and refinement of the people. of mind and existence are often obscure, only be- cause they are profound ; and though his theories respecting the government of the world, and the elementary laws of moral action, are not always correct, yet there is scarcely any of his treatises which do not, however stained by puerile sophisms, contain the most remarkable intuitions into all that can be the subject of the human mind. His excellence consists especially in intuition, and it is this faculty which raises him far above Aristotle, whose genius, though vivid and various, is obscure in comparison with that of Plato. The dialogue entitled the " Banquet," is called EpcoTiKos, or a Discussion upon Love, and is sup- posed to have taken place at the house of Agathon, at one of a series of festivals given by that poet, on the occasion of his gaining the prize of tragedy at the Dionysiaca. The account of the debate on this occasion is supposed to have been given by Apollodorus, a pupil of Socrates, many years after it had taken place, to a companion who was curious to hear it. This Apollodorus appears, both from the style in which he is represented in this piece, as well as from a passage in the Phsedon, to have been a person of an impassioned and enthusiastic disposition ; to borrow an image from the Italian painters, he seems to have been the St. John of the Socratic group. The drama (for so the lively distinction of character and the various and well-wrought circumstances of the story almost entitle it to be called) begins by Socrates persuad- ing Aristodemus to sup at Agathon's, uninvited. The whole of this introduction affords the most lively conception of refined Athenian manners. [unfinished.] THE BANQUET. SEtanslatetr from $lato. THE PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE. APOLLODORUS, A FRIEND OP APOLLODORUS, GLAUCO, ARISTODEMUS, SOCRATES, AGATHON, PH^DRUS, PAUSANIAS, ERYXIMACHUS, ARISTOPHANES. DIOTIMA, ALCIBIADKS. Apollodorus. I think that the subject of your inquiries is still fresh in my memory ; for yester- day, as I chanced to be returning home from Pha- leros, one of my acquaintance, seeing me before him, called out to me from a distance, jokingly, " Apollodorus, you Phalerian, will you not wait a minute ? " — I waited for him, and as soon as he overtook me, " I have just been looking for you, Apollodorus," he said, " for I wish to hear what those discussions were on Love, which took place at the party, when Agathon, Socrates, Alcibiades, and some others, met at supper. Some one who heard it from Phoenix, the son of Philip, told me that you could give a full account, but he could relate nothing distinctly himself. Relate to me, then, I entreat you, all the circumstances. I know you are a faithful reporter of the discussions of your friends ; but, first tell me, were you present at the party or not ? " " Your informant," I replied, " seems to have given you no very clear idea of what you wish to hear, if he thinks that these discussions took place so lately as that I could have been of the party." — " Indeed I thought so," replied he. — " For how," said I, " Glauco ! could I have been present ? Do you not know that Agathon has been absent from the city many years ? But, since I began to converse with Socrates, and to observe each day all his words and actions, three years are scarcely past. Before this time I wandered about wherever it might chance, thinking that I did something, but being, in truth, a most miserable wretch, not less than you are now, who believe that you ought to do anything rather than practise the love of wisdom." — "Do not cavil," interrupted Glauco, " but tell me, when did this party take place J " " Whilst we were yet children," I replied, " when Agathon first gained the prize of Tragedy, and the day after that on which he and the chorus made sacrifices in celebration of their success." — " A long time ago, it seems. But who told you all the circumstances of the discussion 1 Did you hear them from Socrates himself \ " « No, by Jupiter ! But from the same person from whom Phoenix had his information, one Aristodemus, a Cydathenean, — a little man who always went about without san- dals. He was present at this feast, being, I believe, more than any of his contemporaries, a lover and admirer of Socrates. I have questioned Socrates concerning some of the circumstances of this nar- ration, who confirms all that I have heard from Aristodemus." — " Why, then," said Glauco, " why not relate them, as we walk, to me ? The road to the city is every way convenient, both for those who listen and those who speak." Thus as we walked, I gave him some account of those discussions concerning Love ; since, as I said before, I remember them with sufficient accuracy. If I am required to relate them also to you, that shall willingly be done ; for, whensoever either I myself talk of philosophy, or listen to others talking of it, in addition to the improvement which I conceive there arises from such conversation, I am delighted beyond measure ; but whenever I hear your discussions about monied men and great proprietors, I am weighed down with grief, and pity you, who, doing nothing, believe that you are doing something. Perhaps you think that I am a miserable wretch ; and, indeed, I believe that you think truly. I do not think, but well know, that you are miserable. . Companion. You are always the same, Apollo- dorus — always saying some ill of yourself and others. Indeed, you seem to me to think every one miserable except Socrates, beginning with your- self. I do not know what could have entitled you to the surname of the " Madman," for, I am sure, you are consistent enough, for ever inveighing with bitterness against yourself and all others, - except Socrates. Apollodorus. My dear friend, it is manifest that I am out of my wits from this alone — that I have such opinions as you describe concerning myself and you. Companion. It is not worth while, Apollodorus, to dispute now about these tilings ; but do what I c 2 20 THE BANQUET OF PLATO. entreat you, and relate to us what were these discussions. Apollodorus. They were such as I will proceed to tell you. But let me attempt to relate them in the order which Aristodemus observed in relating them to me. He said that he met Socrates washed, and, contrary to his usual custom, sandalled, and having inquired whither he went so gaily dressed, Socrates replied, " I am going to sup at Agathon's ; yesterday 1 avoided it, disliking the crowd, which would attend at the prize sacrifices then celebrated ; to-day I promised to be there, and I made myself so gay, because one ought to be beautiful to approach one who is beautiful. But you, Aristodemus, what think you of coming uninvited to supper ? " "I will do," he replied, u as you command." " Follow then, that we may, by changing its application, disarm that proverb, which says, To the feasts of the good, the good come wtiinvited. Homer, indeed, seems not only to destroy, but to outrage the pro- verb ; for, describing Agamemnon as excellent in battle, and Menelaus but a faint-hearted warrior, he represents Menelaus as coming uninvited to the feast of one better and braver than himself." — Aristodemus hearing this, said, " I also am in some danger, Socrates, not as you say, but according to Homer, of approaching like an unworthy inferior the banquet of one more wise and excellent than myself. Will you not, then, make some excuse for me ? for, I shall not confess that I came unin- vited, but shall say that I was invited by you." — " As we walk together," said Socrates, " we will consider together what excuse to make — but let us go." Thus discoursing, they proceeded. But as they walked, Socrates, engaged in some deep contem- plation, slackened his pace, and, observing Aris- todemus waiting for him, he desired him to go on before. When Aristodemus arrived at Agathon's house he found the door open,, and it occurred, somewhat comically, that a slave met him at the vestibule, and conducted him where he found the guests already reclined. As soon as Agathon saw him, " You arrive just in time to sup with us, Aristodemus," he said ; " if you have any other purpose in your visit, defer it to a better opportunity. I was looking for you yesterday, to invite you to be of our party ; I could not find you anywhere. But how is it that you do not bring Socrates with you ? " But he turning round, and not seeing Socrates behind him, said to Agathon, " I just came hither in his company, being invited by him to sup with you." — "You did well," replied Agathon, "to come ; but where is Socrates % " — " He just now came hither behind me ; I myself wonder where he can be." — " Go and look, boy," said Agathon, u and bring Socrates in ; meanwhile, you, Aristo- demus, recline there near Eryximachus." And he bade a slave wash his feet that he might recline. Another slave, meanwhile, brought word that Socrates had retired into a neighbouring vestibule, where he stood, and, in spite of his message, re- fused to come in. — " What absurdity you talk ! " cried Agathon ; "call him, and do not leave him till he comes." — " Let him alone, by all means," said Aristodemus ; " it is customary with him some- times to retire in this way and stand wherever it may chance. He will come presently, I do not doubt ; do not disturb him."—" Well, be it as you will," said Agathon ; " as it is, you boys, bring supper for the rest ; put before us what you will, for I resolved that there should be no master of the feast. Consider me and these my friends, as guests, whom you have invited to supper, and serve them so that we may commend you." After this they began supper, but Socrates did not come in. Agathon ordered him to be called, but Aristodemus perpetually forbade it. At last he came in, much about the middle of supper, not having delayed so long as was his custom. Agathon (who happened to be reclining at the end of the table, and alone,) said as he entered, " Come hither, Socrates, and sit down by me ; so that by the mere touch of one so wise as you are, I may enjoy the fruit of your meditations in the vestibule ; for, I well know, you would not have departed till you had discovered and secured it." Socrates, having sate down as he was desired, replied, " It would be well, Agathon, if wisdom were of such a nature, as that when we touched each other, it would overflow of its own accord, from him who possesses much to him who pos- sesses little ; like the water in the two chalices, which will flow through a flock of wool from the fuller into the emptier, until both are equal. If wisdom had this property, I should esteem myself most fortunate in reclining near to you. I should thus soon be filled, I think, with the most beautiful and various wisdom. Mine, indeed, is something obscure, and doubtful, and dreamlike. But yours is radiant, and has been crowned with amplest reward ; for though you are yet so young, it shone forth from you, and became so manifest yesterday, that more than thirty thousand Greeks can bear testimony to its excellence and loveliness." — " You are laughing at me, Socrates," said Aga- thon ; " but you and I will decide this controversy about wisdom by and by, taking Bacchus for our judge. At present turn to your supper." After Socrates and the rest had finished supper, I and had reclined back on their couches, and the THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 21 libations had been poured forth, and they had sung hymns to the god, and all other rites which are customary had been performed, they turned to drinking. Then Pausanias made this kind of proposal. " Come, my friends," said he, " in what manner will it be pleasantest for us to drink ? I must confess to you that, in reality, I am not very well from the wine we drank last night and I have need of some intermission. I suspect that most of you are in the same condition, for you were here yesterday. Now, consider how we shall drink most easily and comfortably." " 'Tis a good proposal, Pausanias," said Aristo- phanes, " to contrive, in some way or other, to place moderation in our cups. I was one of those who were drenched last night." — Eryximachus, the son of Acumenius, hearing this, said : " I am of your opinion ; I only wish to know one thing — whether Agathon is in the humour for hard drink- ing?" — "Not at all," replied Agathon ; "I confess that I am not able to drink much this evening." — " It is an excellent thing for us," replied Eryxima- chus — " I mean myself, Aristodemus, Phsedrus, and these others — if you, who are such invincible drinkers, now refuse to drink. I ought to except Socrates, for he is capable of drinking everything or nothing ; and whatever we shall determine will equally suit him. Since, then, no one present has any desire to drink much wine, I shall perhaps give less offence if I declare the nature of drunken- ness. The science of medicine teaches us that drunkenness is very pernicious : nor would I choose to drink immoderately myself, or counsel another to do so, especially if he had been drunk the night before."— " Yes," said Phsedrus, the Myrinusian, interrupting him, " I have been ac- customed to confide in you, especially- in your directions concerning medicine ; and I would now willingly do so, if the rest will do the same." All then agreed that they would drink at this pre- sent banquet not for drunkenness but for pleasure. "Since, then," said Eryximachus, "it is decided that no one shall be compelled to drink more than he pleases, I think that we may as well send away the flute-player to play to herself ; or, if she likes, to the women within. Let us devote the present occasion to conversation between ourselves, and if you wish, I will propose to you what shall be the subject of our discussion." All present desired and entreated that he would explain. — " The exordium of my speech," said Eryximachus, " will be in the style of the Menalippe of Euripides, for the story which I am about to tell belongs not to me, but to Phsedrus. Phsedrus has often indig- nantly complained to me, saying — 'Is it not strange, Eryximachus, that there are innumerable hymns and pseans composed for the other gods, but that not one of the many poets who spring up in the world has ever composed a verse in honour of Love, who is such and so great a god ? Nor any one of those accomplished sophists, who, like the famous Prodicus, have celebrated the praise of Hercules and others, have ever celebrated that of Love ; but what is more astonishing, I have lately met with the book of some philoso- pher, in which salt is extolled on account of its utility, and many other things of the same nature are in like manner extolled with elaborate praise. That so much serious thought is expended on such trifles, and that no man has dared to this day to frame a hymn in honour of Love, who being so great a deity, is thus neglected, may well be sufficient to excite my indignation. , " There seemed to me some justice in these complaints of Phsedrus ; I propose, therefore, at the same time, for the sake of giving pleasure to Phsedrus, and that we may on the present occa- sion do something well and befitting us, that this God should receive from those who are now pre- sent the honour which is most due to him. If you agree to my proposal, an excellent discussion might arise on the subject. Every one ought, according to my plan, to praise Love with as much eloquence as he can. Let Phsedrus begin first, both because he reclines the first in order, and because he is the father of the discussion." " No one will vote against you, Eryximachus," said Socrates, " for how can I oppose your propo- sal, who am ready to confess that I know nothing on any subject but love 1 Or how can Agathon, or Pausanias, or even Aristophanes, whose life is one perpetual ministration to Venus and Bacchus ? Or how can any other whom I see here ? Though we who sit last are scarcely on an equality with you ; for if those who speak before us shall have exhausted the subject with their eloquence and reasonings, our discourses will be superfluous. But in the name of Good Fortune, let Phsedrus begin and praise Love." The whole party agreed to what Socrates said, and entreated Phsedrus to begin. What each then said on this subject, Aristode- mus did not entirely recollect, nor do I recollect all that he related to me ; but only the speeches of those who said what was most worthy of re- membrance. First, then, Phsedrus began thus : "Love is a mighty deity, and the object of admiration, both to Gods and men, for many and for various claims ; but especially on account of his origin. For that he is to be honoured as one of the most ancient of the gods, this may serve as a testimony, that Love has no parents, nor is there 22 THE BANQUET OF PLATO. any poet or other person who has ever affirmed that there are such. Hesiod says, that first ' Chaos was produced ; then the broad-bosomed Earth, to be a secure foundation for all things ; then Love.' He says, that after Chaos these two were produced, the Earth and Love. Parmenides, speaking of generation, says : — * But he created Love before any of the gods.' Acusileus agrees with Hesiod. Love, therefore, is universally ac- knowledged to be among the oldest of things. And in addition to this, Love is the author of our greatest advantages ; for I cannot imagine a greater happiness and advantage to one who is in the flower of youth than an amiable lover, or to a lover than an amiable object of his love. For neither birth, nor wealth, nor honours, can awaken in the minds of men the principles which should guide those who from their youth aspire to an honourable and excellent life, as Love awakens them. I speak of the fear of shame, which deters them from that which is disgraceful ; and the love of glory which incites to honourable deeds. For it is not possible that a state or private person should accomplish, without these incitements, anything beautiful or great. I assert, then, that should one who loves be discovered in any dishonourable action, or tamely -enduring insult through cowardice, he would feel more anguish and shame if observed by the object of his passion, than if he were observed by his father or his companions, or any other person. In like manner, among warmly attached friends, a man is especially grieved to be discovered by his friend in any dishonourable act. If then, by any con- trivance, a state or army could be composed of friends bound by strong attachment, it is beyond calculation how excellently they would administer their affairs, refraining from any thing base, con- tending with each other for the acquirement of fame, and exhibiting such valour in battle as that, though few in numbers, they might subdue all mankind. For should one friend desert the ranks or cast away his arms in the presence of the other, he would suffer far acuter shame from that one person's regard, than from the regard of all other men. A thousand times would he prefer to die, rather than desert the object of his attachment, and not succour him in danger. " There is none so worthless whom Love cannot impel, as it were, by a divine inspiration, towards virtue, even so that he may through this inspir- ation become equal to one who might naturally be more excellent ; and, in truth, as Homer says : The God breathes vigour into certain heroes — so Love breathes into those who love, the spirit which is produced from himself. Not only men, but even women who love, are those alone who wil- lingly expose themselves to die for others. Alces- tis, the daughter of Pelias, affords to the Greeks a remarkable example of this opinion ; she alone being willing to die for her husband, and so sur- passing his parents in the affection with which love inspired her towards him, as to make them appear, in the comparison with her, strangers to their own child, and related to him merely in name ; and so lovely and admirable did this action appear, not only to men, but even to the Gods, that, although they conceded the prerogative of bringing back the spirit from death to few among the many who then performed excellent and honourable deeds, yet, delighted with this action, they redeemed her soul from the infernal regions : so highly do the Gods honour zeal and devotion in love. They sent back indeed Orpheus, the son of CEagrus, from Hell, with his purpose unfulfilled, and, showing him only the spectre of her for whom he came, refused to render up herself. For Orpheus seemed to them, not as Alcestis, to have dared die for the sake of her whom he loved, and thus to secure to himself a perpetual intercourse with her in the regions to which she had preceded him, but like a cowardly musician, to have con- trived to descend alive into Hell ; and, indeed, they appointed as a punishment for his cowardice, that he should be put to death by women. "Far otherwise did they regard Achilles, the son of Thetis, whom they sent to inhabit the islands of the blessed. For Achilles, though informed by his mother that his own death would ensue upon his killing Hector, but that if he refrained from it he might return home and die in old age, yet preferred revenging and honouring his beloved Patroclus ; not to die for him merely, but to disdain and reject that life which he had ceased to share. Therefore the Greeks honoured Achilles beyond all other men, because he thus preferred his friend to all things else. * * * * * " On this account have the Gods rewarded Achil- les more amply than Alcestis ; permitting his spirit to inhabit the islands of the blessed. Hence do I assert that Love is the most ancient and venera- ble of deities, and most powerful to endow mortals with the possession of happiness and virtue, both whilst they live and after they die." Thus Aristodemus reported the discourse of Phsedrus ; and after Phaedrus, he said that some others spoke, whose discourses he did not well remember. When they had ceased, Pausanias began thus : — " Simply to praise Love, O Phaedrus, seems to me too bounded a scope for our discourse. If THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 23 Love were one, it would be well. But since Love is not one, I will endeavour to distinguish which is the Love whom it becomes us to praise, and having thus discriminated one from the other, will attempt to render him who is the subject of our discourse the honour due to his divinity. We all know that Venus is never without Love ; and if Venus were one, Love would be one ; but since there are two Venuses, of necessity also must there be two • Loves. For assuredly are there two Venuses ; one, the eldest, the daughter of Uranus, born without a mother, whom we call the Uranian ; the other younger, the daughter of Jupiter and Dione, whom we call the Pandemian ; — of neces- sity must there also be two Loves, the Uranian and Pandemian companions of these goddesses. It is becoming to praise all the Gods, but the attributes which fall to the lot of each may be distinguished and selected. For any particular action whatever, in itself is neither good nor evil ; what we are now doing — drinking, singing, talking, none of these things are good in themselves, but the mode in which they are done stamps them with its own nature ; and that which is done well, is good, and that which is done ill, is evil. Thus, not all love, nor every mode of love is beautiful, or worthy of commendation, but that alone which excites us to love worthily. The Love, therefore, which attends upon Venus Pandemos is, in truth, common to the vulgar, and presides over transient and fortuitous connexions, and is worshipped by the least excellent of mankind. The votaries of this deity seek the body rather than the soul, and the ignorant rather than the wise, disdaining all that is honourable and lovely, and considering how they shall best satisfy their sensual necessities. This Love is derived from the younger goddess, who partakes in her nature both of male and female. But the attendant on the other, the Uranian, whose nature is entirely masculine, is the Love who inspires us with affection, and exempts us from all wantonness and libertinism. Those who are inspired by this divinity seek the affections of those who are endowed by nature with greater excellence and vigour both of body and mind. And it is easy to distinguish those who especially exist under the influence of this power, by their choosing in early youth as the objects of their love those in whom the intellectual faculties have begun to develop. For those who begin to love in this manner, seem to me to be preparing to pass their whole life together in a community of good and evil, and not ever lightly deceiving those who love them, to be faithless to their vows. There ought to be a law that none should love the very young ; so much serious affection as this deity enkindles, should not be doubtfully bestowed ; for the body and mind of those so young are yet unformed, and it is difficult to foretell what will be their future tendencies and power. The good voluntarily im- pose this law upon themselves, and those vulgar lovers ought to be compelled to the same observ- ance, as we deter them with all the power of the laws from the love of free matrons. For these are the persons whose shameful actions embolden those who observe their importunity and intemperance, to assert, that it is dishonourable to serve and gratify the objects of our love. But no one who does this gracefully and according to law, can justly be liable to the imputation of blame. ***** " Not only friendship, but philosophy and the practice of the gymnastic exercises, are represented as dishonourable by the tyrannical governments under which the barbarians live. For I imagine it would little conduce to the benefit of the gover- nors, that the governed should be disciplined to lofty thoughts and to the unity and communion of stedfast friendship, of which admirable effects the tyrants of our own country have also learned that Love is the author. For the love of Harmodius and Aristogiton, strengthened into a firm friend- ship, dissolved the tyranny. Wherever, therefore, it is declared dishonourable in any case to serve and benefit friends, that law is a mark of the depravity of the legislator, the avarice and tyranny of the rulers, and the cowardice of those who are ruled. Wherever it is simply declared to be honourable without distinction of cases, such a declaration denotes dulness and want of subtlety of mind in the authors of the regulation. Here the degrees of praise or blame to be attributed by law are far better regulated ; but it is yet difficult to determine the cases to which they should refer. " It is evident, however, for one in whom passion is enkindled, it is more honourable to love openly than secretly ; and most honourable to love the most excellent and virtuous, even if they should be less beautiful than others. It is honourable for the lover to exhort and sustain the object of his love in virtuous conduct. It is considered honour- able to attain the love of those whom we seek, and the contrary shameful ; and to facilitate this attain- ment, opinion has given to the lover the permission of acquiring favour by the most extraordinary devices, which if a person should practise for any purpose besides this, he would incur the severest reproof of philosophy. For if any one desirous of accumulating money, or ambitious of procuring power, or seeking any other advantage, should, like a lover, seeking to acquire the favour of his beloved, employ prayers and entreaties in his •2-1 THE BANQUET OF PLATO. necessity, and swear such oaths as lovers swear, and sleep before the threshold, and offer to subject himself to such slavery as no slave even would endure ; he would be frustrated of the attainment of what he sought, both by his enemies and friends ; these reviling him for his flattery, those sharply admonishing him, and taking to themselves the shame of his servility. But there is a certain grace in a lover who does all these things, so that he alone may do them without dishonour. It is commonly said that the Gods accord pardon to the lover alone if he should break his oath, and that there is no oath by Venus. Thus, as our law declares, both Gods and men have given to lovers all possible indulgence. ***** " The affair, however, I imagine, stands thus : As I have before said, love cannot be considered in itself as either honourable or dishonourable : if it is honourably pursued, it is honourable ; if dishonourably, dishonourable : it is dishonourable basely to serve and gratify a worthless person ; it is honourable honourably to serve a person of virtue. That Pandemic lover who loves rather the body than the soul, is worthless, nor can be constant and consistent, since he has placed his affections on that which has no stability. For as soon as the flower of the form, which was the sole object of his desire, has faded, then he departs and is seen no more ; bound by no faith nor shame of his many promises and persuasions. But he who is the lover of virtuous mariners is constant during life, since he has placed himself in harmony and desire with that which is consistent with itself. "These two classes of persons we ought to distinguish with careful examination, so that we may serve and converse with the one and avoid the other ; determining, by that inquiry, by what a man is attracted, and for what the object of his love is dear to him. On the same account it is considered as dishonourable to be inspired with love at once, lest time should be wanting to know and approve the character of the obj ect. It is considered as dishonourable to be captivated by the allurements of wealth and power, or terrified through injuries to yield up the affections, or not to despise in the comparison with an unconstrained choice all politi- cal influence and personal advantage. For no circumstance is there in wealth or power so invaria- ble and consistent, as that no generous friendship can ever spring up from amongst them. We have an opinion with respect to lovers which declares that it shall not be considered servile or disgraceful, though the lover should submit himself to any species of slavery for the sake of his beloved. The same opinion holds with respect to those who undergo any degradation for the sake of virtue. And also it is esteemed among us, that if any one chooses to serve and obey another for the purpose of becoming more wise or more virtuous through the intercourse that might thence arise, such willing slavery is not the slavery of a dishonest flatterer. Through this we should consider in the same light a servitude undertaken for the sake of love as one undertaken for the acquirement of wisdom or any other excel- lence, if indeed the devotion of a lover to his beloved is to be considered a beautiful thing. For when the lover and the beloved have once arrived at the same point, the province of each being distinguished ; the one able to assist in the cultivation of the mind and in the acquirement of every other excellence ; the other yet requiring education, and seeking the possession of wisdom ; then alone, by the union of these conditions, and in no other case, is it honourable for the beloved to yield up the affections to the lover. In this ser- vitude alone there is no disgrace in being deceived and defeated of the object for which it was under- taken ; whereas every other is disgraceful, whether we are deceived or no. ***** " On the same principle, if any one seeks the friend- ship of another, believing him to be virtuous, for the sake of becoming better through such inter- course and affection, and is deceived, his friend turning out to be worthless, and far from the possession of virtue ; yet it is honourable to have been so deceived. For such a one seems to have submitted to a kind of servitude, because he would endure anything for the sake of becoming more virtuous and wise ; a disposition of mind eminently beautiful. " This is that Love who attends on the Uranian deity, and is Uranian ; the author of innumerable benefits both to the state and to individuals, and by the necessity of whose influence those who love are disciplined into the zeal of virtue. All other loves are the attendants on Venus Pandemos. So much, although unpremeditated, is what I have to deliver on the subject of love, Phsedrus." Pausanias having ceased (for so the learned teach me to denote the changes of the discourse), Aristo- demus said that it came to the turn of Aristophanes to speak ; but it happened that, from repletion or some other cause, he had an hiccough which pre- vented him ; so he turned to Eryximachus, the physician, who was reclining close beside him, and said — " Eryximachus, it is but fair that you should cure my hiccough, or speak instead of me until it is over." — "I will do both," said Eryximachus; "I will speak in your turn, and you, when your hiccough has ceased, shall speak in mine. Mean- THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 25 while, if you hold your breath some time, it will subside. If not, gargle your throat with water ; and if it still continue, take something to stimulate your nostrils, and sneeze ; do this once or twice, and even though it should be very violent it will cease." — "Whilst you speak," said Aristophanes, "I will follow your directions." — Eryximachus then began : — " Since JPausanias, beginning his discourse excel- lently, placed no fit completion and development to it, I think it necessary to attempt to fill up what he has left unfinished. He has reasoned well in defining love as of a double nature. The science of medicine, to which I have addicted myself, seems to teach me that the love which impels towards those who are beautiful, does not subsist only in the souls of men, but in the bodies also of those of all other living beings which are produced upon earth, and, in a word, in all things which are. So wonderful and mighty is this divinity, and so widely is his influence extended over all divine and human things ! For the honour of my profession, I will begin by adducing a proof from medicine. The nature of the body contains within itself this double love. For that which is healthy and that which is diseased in a body differ and are unlike : that which is unlike, loves and desires that which is unlike. Love, therefore, is different in a sane and in a diseased body. Pausanias has asserted rightly that it is honourable to gratify those things in the body which arje good and healthy, and in this consists the skill of the physician ; whilst those which are bad and diseased, ought to be treated with no indulgence. The science of medicine, in a word, is a knowledge of the love affairs of the body, as they bear relation to repletion and evacuation ; and he is the most skilful physician who can trace those operations of the good and evil love, can make the one change places with the other, and attract love into those parts from which he is absent, or expel him from those which he ought not to occupy. He ought to make those things which are most mimical, friendly, and excite them to mutual love. But those things are most inimical, which are most opposite to each other ; cold to heat, bitter- ness to sweetness, dryness to moisture. Our pro- genitor, iEsculapius, as the poets inform us, (and indeed I believe them,) through the skill which he possessed to inspire love and concord in these contending principles, established the science of medicine. " The gymnastic arts and agriculture, no less than medicine, are exercised under the dominion of this God. Music, as any one may perceive, who yields a very slight attention to the subject, originates from the same source ; which Hera- clitus probably meant, though he could not express his meaning very clearly in words, when he says, 1 One though apparently differing, yet so agrees with itself, as the harmony of a lyre and a bow.' It is great absurdity to say that a harmony differs, and can exist between things whilst they are dis- similar ; but probably he meant that from sounds which first differed, like the grave and the acute, and which afterwards agreed, harmony was pro- duced according to musical art. For no harmony can arise from the grave and the acute whilst yet they differ. But harmony is symphony : sym- phony is, as it were, concord. But it is impossible that concord should subsist between things that differ, so long as they differ. Between things which are discordant and dissimilar there is then no harmony. A rhythm is produced from that which is quick, and that which is slow, first being distinguished and opposed to each other, and then made accordant ; so does medicine, no less than music, establish a concord between the objects of its art, producing love and agreement between adverse things. "Music is then the knowledge of that which relates to love in harmony and system. In the very system of harmony and rhythm, it is easy to distinguish love. The double love is not distin- guishable in music itself ; but it is required to apply it to the service of mankind by system and harmony, which is called poetry, or the composi- tion of melody ; or by the correct use of songs and measures already composed, which is called disci- pline ; then one can be distinguished from the other, by the aid of an extremely skilful artist. And the better love ought to be honoured and pre- served for the sake of those who are virtuous, and that the nature of the vicious may be changed through the inspiration of its spirit. This is that beautiful Uranian love, the attendant on the Ura- nian muse : the Pandemian is the attendant of Polyhymnia ; to whose influence we should only so far subject ourselves, as to derive pleasure from it without indulging to excess ; in the same manner as, according to our art,^e are instructed to seek the pleasures of the table, only so far as we can enjoy them without the consequences of disease. In music, therefore, and in medicine, and in all other things, human and divine, this double love ought to be traced and discriminated ; for it is in all things. " Even the constitution of the seasons of the year is penetrated with these contending princi- ples. For so often as heat and cold, dryness and moisture, of which I spoke before, are influenced by the more benignant love, and are harmoniously and temperately intermingled with the seasons, 1 1 26 THE BANQUET OF PLATO. they bring maturity and health to men, and to all the other animals and plants. But when the evil and injurious love assumes the dominion of the seasons of the year, destruction is spread widely abroad. Then pestilence is accustomed to arise, and many other blights and diseases fall upon ani- mals and plants : and hoar frosts, and hails, and mildew on the corn, are produced from that exces- sive and disorderly love, with which each season of the year is impelled towards the other ; the motions of which and the knowledge of the stars, is called astronomy. All sacrifices, and all those things in which divination is concerned, (for these things are the links by which is maintained an in- tercourse and communion between the Gods and men,) are nothing else than the science of preser- vation and right government of Love. For im- piety is accustomed to spring up, so soon as any one ceases to serve the more honourable Love, and worship him by the sacrifice of good actions ; but submits himself to the influences of the other, in relation to his duties towards his parents, and the Gods, and the living, and the dead. It is the object of divination to distinguish and remedy the effects of these opposite loves ; and divination is therefore the author of the friendship of Gods and men, because it affords the knowledge of what in matters of love is lawful or unlawful to men. " Thus every species of love possesses collec- tively a various and vast, or rather universal power. But love which incites to the acquirement of its objects according to virtue and wisdom, possesses the most exclusive dominion, and prepares for his wor- shippers the highest happiness through the mutual intercourse of social kindness which it promotes among them, and through the benevolence which he attracts to them from the Gods, our superiors. " Probably in thus praising Love, I have unwil- lingly omitted many things ; but it is your business, O Aristophanes, to fill up all that I have left in- complete ; or, if you have imagined any other mode of honouring the divinity ; for I observe your hiccough is over." " Yes," said Aristoplfanes, " but not before I applied the sneezing. I wonder why the harmo- nious construction of our body should require such noisy operations as sneezing ; for it ceased the moment I sneezed." — " Do you not observe what you do, my good Aristophanes 1" said Eryxima- chus ; " you are going to speak, and you predispose us to laughter, and compel me to watch for the first ridiculous idea which you may start in your discourse, when you might have spoken in peace." — " Let me unsay what I have said, then," replied Aristophanes, laughing. * Do not watch me, I en- treat you ; though I am not afraid of saying what is laughable, (since that would be all gam, and quite in the accustomed spirit of my muse,) but lest I should say what is ridiculous." — " Do you think to throw your dart, and escape with impunity, Aris- tophanes 1 Attend, and what you say be careful you maintain ; then, perhaps, if it pleases me, I may dismiss you without question." "Indeed, Eryximachus," proceeded Aristo- phanes, " I have designed that my discourse should be very different from yours and that of Pausanias. It seems to me that mankind are by no means penetrated with a conception of the power of Love, or they would have built sumptuous temples and altars, and have established magnificent rites of sacrifice in his honour ; he deserves worship and homage more than all the other Gods, and he has yet received none. For Love is of all the Gods the most friendly to mortals ; and the physician of those wounds, whose cure would be the greatest happiness which could be conferred upon the human race. I will endeavour to unfold to you his true power, and you can relate what I declare to others. * You ought first to know the nature of man, and the adventures he has gone through ; for his nature was anciently far different from that which it is at present. First, then, human beings were formerly not divided into two sexes, male and female ; there was also a third, common to both the others, the name of which remains, though the sex itself has disappeared. The androgynous sex, both in appearance and in name, was common both to male and female ; its name alone remains, which labours under a reproach. " At the period to which I refer, the form of every human being was round, the back and the sides being circularly joined, and each had four arms and as many legs ; two faces fixed upon a round neck, exactly like each other ; one head between the two faces ; four ears, and every thing else as from such proportions it is easy to conjec- ture. Man walked upright as now, in whatever direction he pleased ; but when he wished to go fast he made use of all his eight limbs, and pro- ceeded in a rapid motion by rolling circularly round, — like tumblers, who, with their legs in the air, tumble round and round. We account for the production of three sexes by supposing that, at the beginning, the male was produced from the sun, the female from the earth ; and that sex which participated in both sexes, from the moon, by reason of the androgynous nature of the moon. They were round, and their mode of proceeding was round, from the similarity which must needs subsist between them and their parent. " They were strong also, and had aspiring THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 27 thoughts. They it was who levied war against the Gods ; and what Homer writes concerning Ephi- altus and Otus, that they sought to ascend heaven and dethrone the Gods, in reality relates to this primitive people. Jupiter and the other Gods debated what was to be done in this emergency. For neither could they prevail on themselves to destroy them, as they had the giants, with thunder, so that the race should be abolished ; for in that case they would be deprived of the honours of the sacrifices which they were in the custom of receiv- ing from them ; nor could they permit a conti-. nuance of their insolence and impiety. Jupiter, with some difficulty having desired silence, at length spoke. 'I think,' said he, 'I have con- trived a method by which we may, by rendering the human race more feeble, quell the insolence which they exercise, without proceeding to their utter destruction. I will cut each of them in half ; and so they will at once be weaker and more useful on account of their numbers. They shall walk upright on two legs. If they show any more inso- lence, and will not keep quiet, I will cut them up in half again, so they shall go about hopping on one leg.' "So saying, he cut human beings in half, as people cut eggs before they salt them, or as I have seen eggs cut with hairs. He ordered Apollo to take each one as he cut him, and turn his face and half his neck towards the operation, so that by contemplating it he might become more cautious and humble ; and then, to cure him, Apollo turned the face round, and drawing the skin upon what we now call the belly, like a contracted pouch, and leaving one opening, that which is called the navel, tied it in the middle. He then smoothed many other wrinkles, and moulded the breast with much such an instrument as the leather-cutters use to smooth the skins upon the block. He left only a few wrinkles in the belly, near the navel, to serve as a record of its former adventure. Immediately after this division, as each desired to possess the other half of himself, these divided people threw their arms around and embraced each other, seek- ing to grow together ; and from this resolution to do nothing without the other half, they died of hunger and weakness : when one half died and the other was left alive, that which was thus left sought the other and folded it to its bosom ; whether that half were an entire woman (for we now call it a woman) or a man ; and thus they perished. But Jupiter, pitying them, thought of another contri- vance. * * * In this manner is generation now produced, by the union of male and female ; so that from the embrace of a man and woman the race is propagated. "From this period, mutual love has naturally existed between human beings ; that reconciler and bond of union of their original nature, which seeks to make two, one, and to heal the divided nature of man. Every one of us is thus the half of what may be properly termed a man, and like a pselta cut in two, is the imperfect portion of an entire whole, perpetually necessitated to seek the half belonging to him. ***** * Such as I have described is ever an affectionate lover and a faithful friend, delighting in that which is in conformity with his own nature. Whenever, therefore, any such as I have described are impetu- ously struck, through the sentiment of their former union, with love and desire and the want of com- munity, they are unwilling to be divided even for a moment. These are they who devote their whole lives to each other, with a vain and inexpressible longing to obtain from each other something they know not what ; for it is not merely the sensual delights of their intercourse for the sake of which they dedicate themselves to each other with such serious affection ; but the soul of each manifestly thirsts for, from the other, something which there are no words to describe, and divines that which it seeks, and traces obscurely the footsteps of its obscure desire. If Vulcan should say to persons thus affected, ' My good people, what is it that you want with one another 1 ' And if, while they were hesitating what to answer, he should proceed to ask, 'Do you not desire the closest union and singleness to exist between you, so that you may never be divided night or day ? If so, I will melt you together, and make you grow into one, so that both in life and death ye may be undivided. Con- sider, is this what you desire I Will it content you if you become that which I propose V We all know that no one would refuse such an offer, but would at once feel that this was what he had ever sought ; and intimately to mix and melt and to be melted together with his beloved, so that one should be made out of two. " The cause of this desire is, that according to our original nature, we were once entire. The desire and the pursuit of integrity and union is that which we all love. First, as I said, we were entire, but now we have been dwindled through our own weakness, as the Arcadians by the Lacedemonians. There is reason to fear, if we are guilty of any additional impiety towards the Gods, that we may be cut in two again, and may go about like those figures painted on the columns, divided through the middle of our nostrils, as thin as lispse. On which account every man ought to be exhorted to pay due reverence to the Gods, that we may escape so severe a punishment, and obtain those ■_>;: THE BANQUET OF PLATO. things which Love, our general and commander, incites us to desire ; against whom let none rebel by exciting the hatred of the Gods. For if we continue on good terms with them, we may discover and possess those lost and concealed objects of our love ; a good-fortune which now befalls to few. ***** " I assert, then, that the happiness of all, both men and women, consists singly in the fulfilment of their love, and in that possession of its objects by which we are in some degree restored to our ancient nature. If this be the completion of feli- city, that must necessarily approach nearest to it, in which we obtain the possession and society of those whose natures most ultimately accord with our own. And if we would celebrate any God as the author of this benefit, we should justly cele- brate Love with hymns of joy ; who, in our present condition, brings good assistance in our necessity, and affords great hopes, if we persevere in piety towards the Gods, that he will restore us to our original state, and confer on us the complete hap- piness alone suited to our nature. " Such, Eryximachus, is my discourse on the subject of Love ; different indeed from yours, which I nevertheless entreat you not to turn into ridicule, that we may not interrupt what each has separately to deliver on the subject." " I will refrain at present," said Eryximachus, " for your discourse delighted me. And if I did not know that Socrates and Agathon were pro- foundly versed in the science of love affairs, I should fear that they had nothing new to say, after so many and such various imaginations. As it is, I confide in the fertility of their geniuses." — " Your part of the contest, at least, was strenuously fought, Eryximachus," said Socrates, "but if you had been in the situation in which I am, or rather shall be, after the discourse of Agathon, like me, you would then have reason to fear, and be reduced to your wits' end." — " Socrates," said Agathon, " wishes to confuse me with the enchantments of his wit, sufficiently confused already with the ex- pectation I see in the assembly in favour of my discourse." — " I must have lost my memory, Aga- thon," replied Socrates, " if I imagined that you could be disturbed by a few private persons, after having witnessed your firmness and courage in ascending the rostrum with the actors, and in calmly reciting your compositions in the presence of so great an assembly as that which decreed you the prize of tragedy." — " What then, Socrates," retorted Agathon, "do you think me so full of the theatre as to be ignorant that the judgment of a few wise is more awful than that of a multi- tude of others, to one who rightly balances the value of their suffrages % " — " I should judge ill indeed, Agathon," answered Socrates, " in thinking you capable of any rude and unrefined conception, for I well know that if you meet with any whom you consider wise, you esteem such alone of more value than all others. But we are far from being entitled to this distinction, for we were also of that assembly, and to be numbered among the rest. But should you meet with any who are really wise, you would be careful to say nothing in their pre- sence which you thought they would not approve — is it not so?" — "Certainly," replied Agathon. — " You would not then exercise the same caution in the presence of the multitude in which they were included ? " — " My dear Agathon," said Phse- drus, interrupting him, "if you answer all the questions of Socrates, they will never have an end ; he will urge them without conscience so long as he can get any person, especially one who is so beau- tiful, to dispute with him. I own it delights me to hear Socrates discuss ; but at present, I must see that Love is not defrauded of the praise, which it is my province to exact from each of you. Pay the God his due, and then reason between yourselves if you will." "Your admonition is .just, Phsedrus," replied Agathon, " nor need any reasoning I hold with Socrates impede me : we shall find many future op- portunities for discussion. I will begin my discourse then ; first having defined what ought to be the subject of it. All who have already spoken seem to me not so much to have praised Love, as to have feli- citated mankind on the many advantages of which that deity is the cause ; what he is, the author of these great benefits, none have yet declared. There is one mode alone of celebration which would com- prehend the whole topic, namely, first to declare what are those benefits, and then what he is who is the author of those benefits, which are the subject of our discourse. Love ought first to be praised, and then his gifts declared. I assert, then, that although all the Gods are immortally happy, Love, if I dare trust my voice to express so awful a truth, is the happiest, and most excellent, and the most beau- tiful. That he is the most beautiful is evident ; first, Phsedrus, from this circumstance, that he is the youngest of the Gods ; and, secondly, from his fleetness, and from his repugnance to all that is old ; for he escapes with the swiftness of wings from old age ; a thing in itself sufficiently swift, since it overtakes us sooner than there is need ; and which Love, who delights in the intercourse of the young, hates, and in no manner can be induced to enter into community with. The ancient proverb, which says that like is attracted by like, applies to the attributes of Love. I con- THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 2fl cede many things to you, Phcedrus, but this I do not concede, that Love is more ancient than Saturn and Jupiter. I assert that he is not only the youngest of the Gods, but invested with ever- lasting youth. Those ancient deeds among the Gods recorded by Hesiod and Parmenides, if their relations are to be considered as true, were pro- duced not by Love, but by Necessity. For if Love had been then in Heaven, those violent and san- guinary crimes never would have taken place ; but there would ever have subsisted that affection and peace, in which the Gods now live, under the influence of Love. " He is young, therefore, and being young is tender and soft. There were need of some poet like Homer to celebrate the delicacy and tender- ness of Love. For Homer says, that the goddess Calamity is delicate, and that her feet are tender. ' Her feet are soft,' he says, * for she treads not upon the ground, but makes her path upon the heads of men.' He gives as an evidence of her tenderness, that she walks not upon that which is hard, but that which is soft. The same evidence is sufficient to make manifest the tenderness of Love. For Love walks not upon the earth, nor over the heads of men, which are not indeed very soft ; but he dwells within, and treads on the softest of existmg thhigs, having established his habitation within the souls and inmost nature of Gods and men ; not indeed in all souls — for wherever he chances to find a hard and rugged disposition,- there he will not inhabit, but only where it is most soft and tender. Of needs must he be the most delicate of all things, who touches lightly with his feet, only the softest parts of those things which are the softest of all. " He is then the youngest and the most delicate of all divinities ; and in addition to this, he is, as it were, the most moist and liquid. For if he were otherwise, he' could not, as he does, fold himself around everything, and secretly flow out and into every soul. His loveliness, that which Love pos- sesses far beyond all other things, is a manifestation of the liquid and flowing symmetry of his form ; for between deformity and Love there is eternal contrast and repugnance. His life is spent among flowers, and this accounts for the immortal fairness of his skin ; for. the winged Love rests not in his flight on any form, or within any soul the flower of whose loveliness is faded, but there remains most willingly where is the odour and radiance of blossoms, yet unwithered. Concerning the beauty of the God, let this be sufficient, though many things must remain unsaid. Let us next consider the virtue and power of Love. * What is most admirable in Love is, that he neither inflicts nor endures injury hi his relations either with Gods or men. Nor if he suffers any thing does he suffer it through violence, nor doing anything does he act it with violence, for Love is never even touched with violence. Every one willingly administers everything to Love ; and that which every one voluntarily concedes to another, the laws, which are the kings of the republic, decree that it is just for him to possess. In addition to justice, Love participates in the highest temper- ance ; for if temperance is defined to be the being superior to and holding under dominion pleasures and desires ; then Love, than whom no pleasure is more powerful, and who is thus more powerful than all persuasions and delights, must be excellently temperate. In power and valour Mars cannot contend with Love : the love of Venus possesses Mars ; the possessor is always superior to the possessed, and he who subdues the most powerful must of necessity be the most powerful of all. " The justice and temperance and valour of the God have been thus declared ; — there remains to exhibit his wisdom. And first, that, like Eryxi- machus, I may honour my own profession, the God is a wise poet ; so wise that he can even make a poet one who was not before : for every one, even if before he were ever so undisciplined, becomes a poet as soon as he is touched by Love ; a suffi- cient proof that Love is a great poet, and well skilled in that science according" to the discipline of music. For what any one possesses not, or knows not, that can he neither give nor teach another. And who will deny that the divine poetry, by which all living things are produced upon the earth,.is not harmonized by the wisdom of Love 1 Is it not evident that Love was the author of all the arts of life with which we are acquainted, and that he whose teacher has been Love, becomes eminent and illustrious, whilst he who knows not Love, remains for ever unregarded and obscure ? Apollo invented medicine, and divination, and archery, under the guidance of desire and Love ; so that Apollo was the disciple of Love. Through him the Muses discovered the arts of literature, and Vulcan that of moulding brass, and Minerva the loom, and Jupiter the mystery of the dominion which he now exercises over Gods and men. So were the Gods taught and disciplined by the love of that which is beautiful ; for there is no love towards deformity. " At the origin of things, as I have before said, many fearful deeds are reported to have been done among the Gods, on account of the dominion of Necessity. But so soon as this deity sprang forth from the desire which forever tends in the universe towards that which is lovely, then all blessings descended upon all living things, human and divine. 90 THE BANQUET OF PLATO. Love seems to me, O Phsedrus, a divinity the most beautiful and the best of all, and the author to all others of the excellences with which his own nature is endowed. Nor can I restrain the poetic enthusiasm which takes possession of my discourse, and bids me declare that Love is the divinity who creates peace among men, and calm upon the sea, the windless silence of storms, repose and sleep in sadness. Love divests us of all alienation from each other, and fills our vacant hearts with over- flowing sympathy ; he gathers us together in such social meetings as we now delight to celebrate, our guardian and our guide in dances, and sacrifices, and feasts. Yes, Love who showers benignity upon the world, and before whose presence all harsh passions flee and perish ; the author of all soft affections ; the destroyer of all ungentle thoughts ; merciful, mild ; the object of the ad- miration of the wise, and the delight of gods ; possessed by the fortunate, and desired by the unhappy, therefore unhappy because they possess him not ; the father of grace, and delicacy, and gentleness, and delight, and persuasion, and desire ; the cherisher of all that is good, the abolisher of all evil ; our most excellent pilot, defence, saviour and guardian in labour and in fear, in desire and in reason ; the ornament and governor of all things human and divine ; the best, the loveliest ; in whose footsteps everyone ought to follow, celebrating him excellently in song, and bearing each his part in that divinest harmony which Love sings to all things which live and are, soothing the troubled minds of Gods and men. This, Phsedrus, is what I have to offer in praise of the divinity ; partly composed, indeed, of thoughtless and playful fan- cies, and partly of such serious ones, as I could well command." No sooner had Agathon ceased, than a loud murmur of applause arose from all present ; so becomingly had the fair youth spoken, both in praise of the God, and in extenuation of himself. Then Socrates, addressing Eryximachus, said, " Was not my fear reasonable, son of Acumenus ? Did I not divine what has, in fact, happened, — that Agathon's discourse would be so wonderfully beautiful, as to pre-occupy all interest in what I should say ? " — " You, indeed, divined well so far, Socrates," said Eryximachus, "that Agathon would speak eloquently, but not that, therefore, you would be reduced to any difficulty." — a How, my good friend, can I or any one else be otherwise than reduced to difficulty, who speak after a discourse so various and so eloquent, and which otherwise had been sufficiently wonderful, if, at the conclu- sion, the splendour of the sentences, and the choice selection of the expressions, had not struck all the hearers with astonishment ; so that I, who well know that I can never say anything nearly so beautiful as this, would, if there had been any escape, have run away for shame. The story of Gorgias came into my mind, and I was afraid lest in reality I should suffer what Homer describes ; and lest Agathon, scanning my discourse with the head of the eloquent Gorgias, should turn me to stone for speechlessness. I immediately perceived how ridiculously I had engaged myself with you to assume a part in rendering praise to Love, and had boasted that I was well skilled in amatory mat- ters, being so ignorant of the manner in which it is becoming to render him honour, as I now perceive myself to be. I, hi my simplicity, imagined that the truth ought to be spoken concerning each of the topics of our praise, and that it would be suffi- cient, choosing those which are the most honourable to the God, to place them in as luminous an arrangement as we could. I had, therefore, great hopes that I should speak satisfactorily, being well aware that I was acquainted with the true found- ations of the praise which we have engaged to render. But since, as it appears, our purpose has been, not to render Love his due honour, but to accumulate the most beautiful and the greatest attributes of his divinity, whether they in truth belong to it or not, and that the proposed question is not how Love ought to be praised, but how we should praise him most eloquently, my attempt must of necessity fail. It is on this account, I imagine, that in your discourses you have attri- buted everything to Love, and have described him to be the author of such and so great effects as, to those who are ignorant of his true nature, may exhibit him as the most beautiful and the best of all things. Not, indeed, to those who know the truth. Such praise has a splendid and imposing effect, but as I am unacquainted with the art of rendering it, my mind, which could not foresee what would be required of me, absolves me from that which my tongue promised. Farewell then, for such praise I can never render. " But if you desire, I will speak what I feel to be true ; and that I may not expose myself to ridicule, I entreat you to consider that I speak without entering into competition with those who have preceded me. Consider, .then, Phsedrus, whether you will exact from me such a discourse, containing the mere truth with respect to Love, and composed of such unpremeditated expressions as may chance to offer themselves to my mind»" — Phsedrus and the rest bade him speak in the manner which he judged most befitting. — " Permit me, then, Phsedrus, to ask Agathon a few . questions, so that, confirmed by his agreement THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 31 with me, I may proceed." — " Willingly," replied Phsedrus, " ask." — Then Socrates thus began : — ¥ I applaud, dear Agathon, the beginning of your discourse, where you say, we ought first to define and declare what Love is, and then his works. This rule I particularly approve. But, come, since you have given us a discourse of such beauty and majesty concerning Love, you are able, I doubt not, to explain this -question, whether Love is the love of something or nothing % I do not ask you of what parents Love is ; for the inquiry, of whether Love is the love of any father or mother, would be sufficiently ridiculous. But if I were asking you to describe that which a father is, I should ask, not whether a father was the love of any one, but whether a father was the father of any one or not ; you would undoubtedly reply, that a father was the father of a son or daughter ; would you not ? " — " Assuredly." — " You would define a mother in the same manner ?" — " Without doubt." " Yet bear with me, and answer a few more ques-- tions, for I would learn from you that which I wish to know. If I should inquire, in addition, is not a brother, through the very nature of his relation, the brother of some one ?" — " Certainly." — " Of a brother or sister is he not ?" — " Without question." — " Try to explain to me then the nature of Love ; Love is the love of something or nothing | " — " Of something, certainly." " Observe and remember this concession. Tell me yet farther, whether Love desires that of which it is the Love or not I " — " It desires it, assuredly." — " Whether possessing that which it desires and loves, or not possessing it, does it desire and love ? " — " Not possessing it, I should imagine." — " Observe now, whether it does not appear, that, of necessity, desire desires that which it wants and does not possess, and no longer desires that which it no longer wants : this appears to me, Agathon, of necessity to be ; how does it appear to you \ " — " It appears so to me also." — " Would any one who was already illustrious, desire to be illustrious ; would any one already strong, desire to be strong ? From what has already been conceded, it follows that he would not. If any one already strong, should desire to be strong ; or any one already swift, should desire to be swift ; or any one already healthy, should desire to be healthy, it must be concluded that they still desired the advantages of which they already seemed possessed. To destroy the foundation of this error, observe, Agathon, that each of these persons must possess the several advantages in question, at the moment present to our thoughts, whether he will or no. And, now, is it possible that those advantages should be at that time the objects of his desire ? For, if any one should say, being in health, 1 1 desire to be in health ; ' being rich, * I desire to be rich, and thus still desire those things which I already possess,' we might say to him, 'You, my friend, possess health, and strength, and riches ; you do not desire to possess now, but to continue to possess them in future ; for, whether you will or no, they now belong to you. Consider then, whether, when you say that you desire things present to you, and in your own possession, you say any- thing else than that you desire the advantages to be for the future also in your possession.' What else could he reply ? " — " Nothing, indeed." — " Is not Love, then, the love of that which is not within its reach, and which cannot hold in security, for the future, those things of which it obtains a pre- sent and transitory possession ? " — " Evidently." — " Love, therefore, and every thing else that desires anything, desires that which is absent and beyond his reach, that which it has not, that which is not itself, that which it wants ; such are the things of which there are desire and love." — " Assuredly." " Come," said Socrates, " let us review your concessions. Is Love anything else than the love first of something ; and, secondly, of those things of which it has need \ " — " Nothing." — " Now, re- member of those tilings you said in your discourse, that Love was the love — if you wish I will remind you. I think you said something of this kind, that all the affairs of the gods were admirably disposed through the love of the things which are beautiful ; for there was no love of things deformed ; did you not say so \ " — " I confess that I did." — " You said what was most likely to be true, my friend ; and if the matter be so, the love of beauty must be one thing, and the love of deformity another." — " Cer- tainly." — "It is conceded, then, that Love loves that which he wants but possesses not \ " — " Yes, certainly." — " But Love wants and does not pos- sess beauty \ " — " Indeed it must necessarily follow." — " What, then ! call you that beautiful which has need of beauty and possesses not ? " — " Assuredly no." — "Do you still assert, then, that Love is beautiful, if all that we have said be true ? " — "Indeed, Socrates," said Agathon, " I am in danger of being convicted of ignorance, with respect to all that I then spoke." — " You spoke most eloquently, my dear Agathon ; but bear with my questions yet a moment. You admit that things which are good are also beautiful ? "— " No doubt."—" If Love, then, be in want of beautiful things, and things which are good are beautiful, he must be in want of things which are good?" — "I cannot refute your arguments, Socrates." — " You cannot refute truth, my dear Agathon : to refute Socrates is nothing difficult. 82 THE BANQUET OF PLATO. "But I will dismiss these questionings. At present let me endeavour, to the best of my power, to repeat to you, on the basis of the points which have been agreed upon between me and Agathon, a discourse concerning Love, which I formerly heard from the prophetess Diotima, who was profoundly skilled in this and many other doctrines, and who, ten years before the pestilence, procured to the Athenians, through their sacrifices, a delay of the disease ; for it was she who taught me the science of things relating to Love. " As you well remarked, Agathon, we ought to declare who and what is Love, and then his works. It is easiest to relate them in the same order, as the foreign prophetess observed when, questioning me, she related them. For I said to her much the same things that Agathon has just said to me — that Love was a great deity, and that he was beautiful ; and she refuted me with the same reasons as I have employed to refute Agathon, compelling me to infer that he was neither beautiful nor good, as I said. — 'What then,' I objected, '0 Diotima, is Love ugly and evil 1 ' — ' Good words, I entreat you,' said Diotima ; ' do you think that every thing which is not beautiful, must of necessity be ugly ? ' — ' Certainly.' — ' And every thing that is not wise, ignorant ? Do you not perceive that there is some- thing between ignorance and wisdom ? ' — ' What is that % ' — * To have a right opinion or conjecture. Observe, that this kind of opinion, for which no reason can be rendered, cannot be called knowledge ; for how can that be called knowledge, which is without evidence or reason ? Nor ignorance, on the other hand ; for how can that be called igno- rance which arrives at the persuasion of that which it really is % A right opinion is something between understanding and ignorance.' — I confessed that what she alleged was true. — ' Do not then say,' she continued, ' that what is not beautiful is of necessity deformed, nor what is not good is of necessity evil ; nor, since you have confessed that Love is neither beautiful nor good, infer, therefore, that he is deformed or evil, but rather something intermediate.' " ' But,' I said, * love is confessed by all to be a great God.' — ' Do you mean, when you say all, all those who know, or those who know not, what they say ? ' — ' All collectively.' — ' And how can that be, Socrates I ' said she laughing ; * how can he be acknowledged to be a great God, by those who assert that he is not even a God at all ? ' — ' And who are they % ' I said. — ' You for one, and I for another.' — ' How can you say that, Diotima % ' — ' Easily,' she replied, * and with truth ; for tell me, do you not own that all the Gods are beautiful and happy \ or will you presume to maintain that any God is otherwise % ' — * By Jupiter, not I ! ' — ' Do you not call those alone happy who possess all things that are beautiful and good \ ' — * Certainly.' — 'You have confessed that Love, through his desire for things beautiful and good, possesses not those materials of happiness.' — ' Indeed such was my concession.' — ' But how can we conceive a God to be without the possession of what is beautiful and good?' — 'In no maimer I confess.' — 'Observe, then, that you do not consider Love to be a God.' — ' What, then,' I said, ' is Love a mortal I ' — ' By no means.' — ' But what, then ? ' — ' Like those things which I have before instanced, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but something intermediate.' — ' What is that, Diotima % ' — * A great daemon, Socrates ; and every thing dsemoniacal holds an intermediate place between what is divine and what is mortal.' " ' What is his power and nature ? ' I inquired. — 'He interprets and makes a communication be- tween divine and human things, conveying the •prayers and sacrifices of men to the Gods, and communicating the commands and directions con- cerning the mode of worship most pleasing to them, from Gods to men. He fills up that inter- mediate space between these two classes of beings, so as to bhid together, by his own power, the whole universe of things. Through him subsist all divi- nation, and the science of sacred things as it re- lates to sacrifices, and expiations, and disenchant- nents, and prophecy, and magic. The divine nature cannot immediately communicate with what is human, but all that intercourse and converse which is conceded by the Gods to men, both whilst they sleep and when they wake, subsists through the intervention of Love ; and he who is wise in the science of this intercourse is supremely happy, and participates in the dsemoniacal nature ; whilst he who is wise in any other science or art, remains a mere ordinary slave. These daemons are, indeed, many and various, and one of them is Love. "'Who are the parents of Love V I inquired. — ' The history of what you ask,' replied Diotima, ' is somewhat long ; nevertheless I will explain it to you. On the birth of Venus the Gods celebrated a great feast, and among them came Plenty, the son of Metis. After supper, Poverty, observing the profusion, came to beg, and stood beside the door. Plenty being drunk with nectar, for wine was not yet invented, went out into Jupiter's garden, and fell into a deep sleep. Poverty wishing to have a child by Plenty, on account of her low estate, lay down by him, and from his embraces conceived Love. Love is, therefore, the follower and servant of Venus, because he was conceived at her birth, and because by nature he is a lover of all that is beautiful, and Venus was beautiful. And since THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 33 Love is the child of Poverty and Plenty, his nature and fortune participate in that of his parents. He is for ever poor, and so far from being delicate and beautiful, as mankind imagine, he is squalid and withered ; he flies low along the ground, and is homeless and unsandalled ; he sleeps without cover- ing before the doors, and in the unsheltered streets ; possessing thus far his mother's nature, that he is ever the companion of Want. But, inasmuch as he participates in that of his father, he is for ever scheming to obtain things which are good and beautiful ; he is fearless, vehement, and strong ; a dreadful hunter, for ever weaving some new con- trivance ; exceedingly cautious and prudent, and full of resources ; he is also, during his whole existence, a philosopher, a powerful enchanter, a wizard, and a subtle sophist. And, as his nature is neither mortal nor immortal, on the same day when he is fortunate and successful, he will at one time flourish, and then die away, and then, accord- ing to his father's nature, again revive. All that he acquires perpetually flows away from him, so that Love is never either rich or poor, and holding for ever an intermediate state between ignorance and wisdom. The case stands thus : — no God phi- losophizes or desires to become wise, for he is wise ; nor, if there exist any other being who is wise, does he philosophize. Nor do the ignorant philo- sophize, for they desire not to become wise ; for this is the evil of ignorance," that he who has neither intelligence, nor virtue, nor delicacy of sentiment, imagines that he possesses all those things sufficiently. He seeks not, therefore, that possession, of whose want he is not aware.' — 1 Who, then, Diotima,' I enquired, ' are philo- sophers, if they are neither the ignorant nor the wise % ' — < It is evident, even to a child, that they are those intermediate persons, among whom is Love. For Wisdom is one of the most beautiful of all things ; Love is that which thirsts for the beautiful, so that Love is of necessity a philosopher, philosophy being an intermediate state between ignorance and wisdom. His parentage accounts for his condition, being the child of a wise and well- pro- vided father, and of a mother both ignorant and poor. " * Such is the dsemoniacal nature, my dear Socrates ; nor do I wonder at your error concern- ing Love, for you thought, as I conjecture from what you say, that Love was not the lover but the beloved, and thence, well concluded that he must be supremely beautiful ; for that which is the object of Love must indeed be fair, and delicate, and perfect, and most happy ; but Love inherits, as I have declared, a totally opposite nature.' — ' Your words have persuasion in them, stranger,' I said ; < be it as you say. But this Love, what advantages does he afford to men ?' — ' I will pro- ceed to explain it to you, Socrates. Love being such and so produced as I have described, is, indeed, as you say, the love of things which are beautiful. But if any one should ask us, saying ; Socrates and Diotima, why is Love the love of beautiful things ? Or, in plainer words, what does the lover of that which is beautiful, love in the object of his love, and seek from it V — ( He seeks,' 1 said, interrupting her, t the property and posses- sion of it.' — ' But that,' she replied, * might still be met with another question, What has he, who possesses that which is beautiful I ' — ' Indeed, I cannot immediately reply.' — * But if, changing the beautiful for good, any one should enquire, — I ask, O Socrates, what is that which he who loves that which is good, loves in the object of his love V — * To be in his possession,' I replied: — * And what has he, who has the possession of good V — * This question is of easier solution : he is happy.' — l Those who are happy, then, are happy through the pos- session ; and it is useless to enquire what he desires, who desires to be happy ; the question seems to have a complete reply. But do you think that this wish and this love are common to all men, and that all desire, that that which is good should be for ever present to them V — ' Certainly, common to all.' — * Why do we not say then, Socrates, that every one loves ? if, indeed, all love perpetually the same thing ? But we say that some love, and some do not.' — * Indeed I wonder why it is so.' — c Wonder not,' said Diotima, 'for we select a particular species of love, and apply to it distinctively the appellation of that which is universal.' " ' Give mean example of such a select applica- tion.' — e Poetry ; which is a general name signifying every cause whereby anything proceeds from that which is not, into that which is ; so that the exercise of every inventive art is poetry, and all such artists poets. Yet they are not called poets, but distin- guished by other names ; and one portion or species of poetry, that which has relation to music and rhythm, is divided from all others, and known by the name belonging to all. For this is alone properly called poetry, and those who exercise the art of this species of poetry, poets. So, with respect to Love. Love is indeed universally all that earnest desire for the possession of happiness and that which is good ; the greatest and the subtlest love, and which inhabits the heart of every living being ; hut those who seek this object through the acquire- ment of wealth, or the exercise of the gymnastic arts, or philosophy, are not said to love, nor are called lovers ; one species alone is called love, and those alone are said to be lovers, and to love, who seek the attainment of the universal desire through 54 THE BANQUET OF PLATO. one species of love, which is peculiarly distinguished by the name belonging to the whole. It is asserted by some, that they love, who are seeking the lost half of their divided being. But I assert, that Love is neither the love of the half nor of the whole, unless, my friend, it meets with that which is good ; since men willingly cut off their own hands and feet, if they think that they are the cause of evil to them. Nor do they cherish and embrace that which may belong to themselves, merely because it is their own ; unless, indeed, any one should choose to say, that that which is good is attached to his own nature and is his own, whilst that which is evil is foreign and accidental ; but love nothing but that which is good. Does it not appear so to you V — ' Assuredly.' — * Can we then simply affirm that men love that which is good V — * Without doubt.' — f What, then, must we not add, that, in addition to loving that which is good, they love that it should be present to themselves V — ' Indeed that must be added.' — ' And not merely that it should be present, but that it should ever be pre- sent ?' — * This also must be added.' " ' Love, then, is collectively the desire in men that good should be for ever present to them.' — * Most true.' — f Since this is the general definition of Love, can you explain in what mode of attaining its object, and in what species of actions, does Love peculiarly consist V — * If I knew what you ask, O Diotima, I should not have so much wondered at your wisdom, nor have sought you out for the pur- pose of deriving improvement from your instruc- tions.' — 1 1 will tell you,' she replied : * Love is the desire of generation in the beautiful, both with relation to the body and the soul.' — ' I must be a diviner to comprehend what you say, for, being such as I am, I confess that I do not understand it.' — * But I will explain it more clearly. The bodies and the souls of all human beings are alike pregnant with their future progeny, and when we arrive at a certain age, our nature impels us to bring forth and propagate. This nature is unable to produce in that which is deformed, but it can produce in that which is beautiful. The intercourse of the male and female in generation, a divine work, through pregnancy and production, is, as it were, something immortal in mortality. These things cannot take place in that which is incongruous ; for that which is deformed is incongruous, but that which is beautiful is congruous with what is immortal and divine. Beauty is, therefore, the fate, and the Juno Lucina to generation. Wherefore, whenever that which is pregnant with the generative princi- ple, approaches that which is beautiful, it becomes transported with delight, and is poured forth in overflowing pleasure, and propagates. But when it approaches that which is deformed, it is contracted by sadness, and being repelled and checked, it does not produce, but retains unwillingly that with which it is pregnant. Wherefore, to one pregnant, and, as it were, already bursting with the load of his desire, the impulse towards that which is beau- tiful is intense, on account of the great pain of retaining that which he has conceived. Love, then, O Socrates, is not as you imagine the love of the beautiful.' — * What, then \ ' — ' Of generation and production in the beautiful.' — * Why then of gene- ration V — * Generation is something eternal and immortal in mortality. It necessarily, from what has been confessed, follows, that we must desire immortality together with what is good, since Love is the desire that good be for ever present to us. Of necessity Love must also be the desire of immortality.' "Diotima taught me all this doctrine in the discourse we had together concerning Love ; and in addition, she enquired, 'What do you think, Socrates, is the cause of this love and desire ? Do you not perceive how all animals, both those of the earth and of the air, are affected when they desire the propagation of their species, affected even to weakness and disease by the impulse of their love ; first, longing to be mixed with each other, and then seeking nourishment for their offspring, so that the feeblest are ready to contend with the strongest in obedience to this law, and to die for the sake of their young, or to waste away with hunger, and do or suffer anything so that they may not want nourishment. It might be said that human beings do these things through reason, but can you explain why other animals are thus affected through love V — I confessed that I did not know. — 'Do you imagine yourself,' said she, 'to be skilful in the science of Love, if you are ignorant of these things V — ' As I said before, O Diotima, I come to you, well knowing how much I am in need of a teacher. But explain to me, I entreat you, the cause of these things, and of the other things relating to Love.' — 'If,' said Diotima, 'you believe that Love is of the same nature as we have mutually agreed upon, wonder not that such are its effects. For the mortal nature seeks, so far as it is able, to become deathless and eternal. But it can only accomplish this desire by generation, which for ever leaves another new in place of the old. For, although each human being be severally said to five, and be the same from youth to old age, yet, that which is called the same, never contains within itself the same things, but always is becoming new by the loss and change of that which it possessed before ; both the hair, and the flesh, and the bones, and the entire body. THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 35 « « And not only does this change take place in the body, but also with respect to the soul. Man- ners, morals, opinions, desires, pleasures, sorrows, fears ; none of these ever remain unchanged in the same persons ; but some die away, and others are produced. And, what is yet more strange is, that not only does some knowledge spring up, and another decay, and that we are never the same with respect to our knowledge, but that each several object of our thoughts suffers the same revolution. That which is called meditation, "or the exercise of memory, is the science of the escape or departure of memory ; for, forgetfulness is the going out of knowledge ; and meditation, calling up a new memory in the place of that which has departed, preserves knowledge ; so that, though for ever dis- placed and restored, it seems to be the same. In this manner every thing mortal is preserved : not that it is constant and eternal, like that which is divine ; but that in the place of what has grown old and is departed, it leaves another new like that which it was itself. By this contrivance, O Socrates, does what is mortal, the body and all other things, partake of immortality ; that which is immortal, is immortal in another manner. Wonder not, then, if every thing by nature cherishes that which was produced from kself, for this earnest Love is a tendency towards eternity.' " Having heard this discourse, I was astonished, and asked, 'Can these things be true, O wisest Diotima V And she, like an accomplished sophist, said, f Know well, O Socrates, that if you only regard that love of glory which inspires men, you will wonder at your own unskilfulness in not having discovered all that I now declare. Observe with how vehement a desire they are affected to become illustrious and to prolong their glory into immortal time, to attain which object, far more ardently than for the sake of their children, all men are ready to engage in many dangers, and expend their fortunes, and submit to any labours and incur any death. Do you believe that Alcestis would have died in the place of Admetus, or Achilles for the revenge of Patroclus, or Codrus for the kingdom of his posterity, if they had not believed that the immor- tal memory of their actions, which we now cherish, would have remained after their death ? Far other- wise ; all such deeds are done for the sake of ever- living virtue, and this immortal glory which they have obtained ; and inasmuch as any one is of an excellent nature, so much the more is he impelled to attain this reward. For they love what is immortal. " < Those whose bodies alone are pregnant with this principle of immortality are attracted by women, seeking through the production of children what they imagine to be happiness and immortality and an enduring remembrance ; but they whose souls are far more pregnant than their bodies, conceive and produce that which is more suitable to the soul. What is suitable to the soul ? Intelligence, and every other power and excellence of the mind ; of which all poets, and all other artists who are creative and inventive, are the authors. The greatest and most admirable wisdom is that which regulates the government of families and states, and which is called moderation and justice. Whosoever, there- fore, from his youth feels his soul pregnant with the conception of these excellences, is divine ; and when due time arrives, desires to bring forth ; and wandering about, he seeks the beautiful in which he may propagate what he has conceived ; for there is no generation in that which is deformed ; he embraces those bodies which are beautiful rather than those which are deformed, in obedience to the principle which is within him, which is ever seeking to perpetuate itself. And if he meets, in conjunc- tion with loveliness of form, a beautiful, generous and gentle soul, he embraces both at once, and immediately undertakes to educate this object of his love, and is inspired with an overflowing persua- sion to declare what is virtue, and what he ought to be who would attain to its possession, and what are the duties which it exacts. For, by the inter- course with, and as it were, the very touch of that which is beautiful, he brings forth and produces what he had formerly conceived ; and nourishes and educates that which is thus produced together with the object of his love, whose image, whether absent or present, is never divided from his mind. So that those who are thus united are linked by a nobler community and a firmer love, as being the common parents of a lovelier and more endearing progeny than the parents of other children. And every one who considers what posterity Homer and Hesiod, and the other great poets, have left behind them, the sources of their own immortal memory and renown, or what children of his soul Lycurgus has appointed to be the guardians, not only of Lacedsemon, but of all Greece ; or what an illus- trious progeny of laws Solon has produced, and how many admirable achievements, both among the Greeks and Barbarians, men have left as the pledges of that love which subsisted between them and the beautiful, would choose rather to be the parent of such children than those in a human shape. For divine honours have often been rendered to them on account of such children, but on account of those in human shape, never. " * Your own meditation, O Socrates, might perhaps have initiated you in all these things which I have already taught you on the subject of 36 THE BANQUET OF PLATO. Love. But those perfect and sublime ends, to which these are only the means, I know not that you would have been competent to discover. I will declare them, therefore, and will render them as intelligible as possible : do you meanwhile strain all your attention to trace the obscure depth of the subject. He who aspires to love rightly, ought from his earliest youth to seek an intercourse with beautiful forms, and first to make a single form the object of his love, and therein to generate intellectual excellences. He ought, then, to consider that beauty in whatever form it resides is the brother of that beauty which subsists in another form ; and if he ought to pursue that which is beautiful in form, it would be absurd to imagine that beauty is not one and the same thing in all forms, and would therefore remit much of his ardent preference towards one, through his perception of the multitude of claims upon his love. In addition, he would consider the beauty which is in souls more excellent than that which is in form. So that one endowed with an admi- rable soul, even though the flower of the form were withered, would suffice him as the object of his love and care, and the companion with whom he might seek and produce such conclusions as tend to the improvement of youth ; so that it might be led to observe the beauty and the con- formity which there is in the observation of its duties and the laws, and to esteem little the mere beauty of the outward form. He would then conduct his pupil to science, so that he might look upon the loveliness of wisdom ; and that contem- plating thus the universal beauty, no longer would he unworthily and meanly enslave himself to the attractions of one form in love, nor one subject of discipline or science, but would turn towards the wide ocean of intellectual beauty, and from the sight of the lovely and majestic forms which it contains, would abundantly bring forth his concep- tions in philosophy ; until, strengthened and con- firmed, he should at length steadily contemplate one science, which is the science of this universal beauty. " ' Attempt, I entreat you, to mark what I say with as keen an observation as you can. He who has been disciplined to this point in Love, by con- templating beautiful objects gradually, and in their order, now arriving at the end of all that concerns Love, on a sudden beholds a beauty wonderful in its nature. This is it, Socrates, for the sake of which all the former labours were endured. It is eternal, unproduced, indestructible ; neither sub- ject to increase nor decay : not, like other things, partly beautiful and partly deformed ; not at one time beautiful and at another time not ; not beau- tiful in relation to one thing and deformed in re- lation to another ; not here beautiful and there deformed ; not beautiful in the estimation of one person and deformed in that of another ; nor can this supreme beauty be figured to the imagination j like a beautiful face, or beautiful hands, or any portion of the body, nor like any discourse, nor any science. Nor does it subsist in any other that lives or is, either in earth, or in heaven, or in any other place ; but it is eternally uniform and consistent, and monoeidic with itself. All other things are beautiful through a participation of it, with this condition, that although they are subject to production and decay, it never becomes more or less, or endures any change. When any one, ascending from a correct system of Love, begins to contemplate this supreme beauty, he already touches the consummation of his labour. For such as discipline themselves upon this sys- tem, or are conducted by another beginning- to ascend through these transitory objects which are beautiful, towards that which is beauty itself, pro- ceeding as on steps from the love of one form to that of two, and from that of two, to that of all forms which are beautiful ; and from beautiful forms to beautiful habits and institutions, and from institutions to beautiful doctrines ; until, from the meditation of many doctrines, they arrive at that which is nothing else than the doctrine of the supreme beauty itself, in the knowledge and con- templation of which at length they repose. " * Such a fife as this, my dear Socrates,' ex- claimed the stranger Prophetess, * spent in the contemplation of the beautiful, is the life for men to five ; which if you chance ever to experience, you will esteem far beyond gold and rich gar- ments, and even those lovely persons whom you and many others now gaze on with astonishment, ■ and are prepared neither to eat nor drink so that you may behold and hive for ever with these objects of your love ! What then shall we imagine to be the aspect of the supreme beauty itself, simple, pure, uncontaminated with the intermix- ture of human flesh and colours, and all other idle and unreal shapes attendant on mortality ; the divine, the original, the supreme, the monoeidic beautiful itself? What must be the fife of him who dwells with and gazes on that which it becomes us all to seek ? Think you not that to him alone is accorded the prerogative of bringing forth, not images and shadows of virtue, for he is in contact not with a shadow but with reality ; with virtue itself, in the production and nourish- ment of which he becomes dear to the Gods, and if such a privilege is conceded to any human being, himself immortal.' THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 37 " Such, O Phsedrus, and my other friends, was what Diotima said. And being persuaded by her words, I have since occupied myself in attempting to persuade others, that it is not easy to find a better assistant than Love in seeking to communi- cate immortality to our human natures. Where- fore I exhort every one to honour Love ; I hold him in honour, and chiefly exercise myself in amatory matters, and exhort others to do so ; and now and ever do I praise the power and excellence of Love, in the best manner that I can. Let this discourse, if it pleases you, Phsedrus, be considered as an encomium of Love ; or call it by what other name you will." The whole assembly praised his discourse, and Aristophanes was on the point of making some remarks on the allusion made by Socrates to him in a part of his discourse, when suddenly they heard a loud knocking at the door of the vestibule, and a clamour as of revellers, attended by a flute-player. — " Go, boys," said Agathon, " and see who is there : if they are any of our friends, call them in ; if not, say that we have already done drinking." — A minute afterwards, they heard the voice of Alcibiades in the vestibule excessively drunk and roaring out : — " Where is Agathon ? Lead me to Agathon !" — The flute- player, and some of his companions, then led him in, and placed him against the door-post, crowned with a thick crown of ivy and violets, and having a quantity of fillets on his head. — " My friends," he cried out, "hail ! I am excessively drunk already, but I '11 drink with you, if you will. If not, we will go away after having crowned Agathon, for which purpose I came. I assure you that I could not come yesterday, but I am now here with these fillets round my temples, that from my own head I may crown his who, with your leave, is the most beautiful and wisest of men. Are you laughing at me because I am drunk ? Ay, I know what I say is true, whether you laugh or not. But tell me at once, whether I shall come in, or no. Will you drink with me ? " Agathon and the whole party desired him to come in, and recline among them ; so he came in, led by his companions. He then unbound his fillets that he might crown Agathon, and though Socrates was just before his eyes, he did not see him, but sat down by Agathon, between Socrates and him, for Socrates moved out of the way to make room for him. When he sat down, he embraced Agathon and crowned him ; and Agathon desired the slaves to untie his sandals, that he might make a third, and recline on the same couch. " By all means," said Alcibiades, "but what third com- panion have we here 1" And at the same time turning round and seeing Socrates, he leaped up and cried out : — " Hercules ! what have we here \ You, Socrates, lying in ambush for me wherever I go ! and meeting me just as you always do, when I least expected to see you ! And, now, what are you come here for ? Why have you chosen to recline exactly in this place, and not near Aristophanes, or any one else who is, or wishes to be ridiculous, but have contrived to take your place beside the most delightful person of the whole party?" — "Agathon," said Socrates, f see if you cannot defend me. I declare my friendship for this man is a bad business : from the moment that I first began to know him I have never been permitted to converse with, or so much as to look upon any one else. If I do, he is so jealous and suspicious that he does the most extra- vagant things, and hardly refrains from beating me. I entreat you to prevent him from doing any- thing of that kind at present. Procure a recon- ciliation : or, if he perseveres in attempting any violence, I entreat you to defend me." — "Indeed," said Alcibiades, " I will not be reconciled to you ; I shall find another opportunity to punish you for this. But now," said he, addressing Agathon, " lend me some of those fillets, that I may crown the wonderful head of this fellow, lest I incur the blame, that having crowned you, I neglected to crown him who conquers all men with his discourses, not yesterday alone as you did, but ever." Saying this he took the fillets, and having bound the head of Socrates, and again having reclined, said : " Come, my friends, you seem to be sober enough. You must not flinch, but drink, for that was your agreement with me before I came in. I choose as president, until you have drunk enough — myself. Come, Agathon, if you have got a great goblet, fetch it out. But no matter, that wine- cooler will do ; bring it, boy !" And observing that it held more than eight cups, he first drank it off, and then ordered it to be filled for Socrates, and said : — " Observe, my friends, I cannot invent any scheme against Socrates, for he will drink as much as any one desires him, and not be in the least drunk." Socrates, after the boy had filled up, drank it off ; and Eryximachus said : — " Shall we then have no conversation or singing over our cups, but drink down stupidly, just as if we were thirsty 1" And Alcibiades said : — " Ah, Eryxima- chus, I did not see you before ; hail, you excellent son of a wise and excellent father !" — " Hail to you also,' ' replied Eryximachus, " but what shall we do ?" — " Whatever you command, for we ought to submit to your directions ; a physician is worth a hundred common men. Command us as you please." — " Listen then, " said Eryximachus : ;jb THE BANQUET OF PLATO. " before you came in, each of us had agreed to de- liver as eloquent a discourse as he could in praise of Love, beginning at the right hand ; all the rest of us have fulfilled our engagement ; you have not spoken, and yet have drunk with us : you ought to bear your part in the discussion ; and having done so, command what you please to Socrates, who shall have the privilege of doing so to his right-hand neighbour, and so on to the others." — " Indeed, there appears some justice in your pro- posal, Eryximachus, though it is rather unfair to induce a drunken man to set his discourse in com- petition with that of those who are sober. And, besides, did Socrates really persuade you that what he just said about me was true, or do you not know that matters are in fact exactly the reverse of his representation I For I seriously believe that, should I praise in his presence, be he god or man, any other beside himself, he would not keep his hands off me. But I assure you, Socrates, I will praise no one beside yourself, in your presence." " Do so, then," said Eryximachus ; "praise Socrates if you please." — " What !" said Alcibiades, " shall I attack him, and punish him before you all ?" — " What have you got into your head now," said Socrates ; " are you going to expose me to ridicule, and to misrepresent me! Or what are you going to do ?" — " I will only speak the truth ; will you per- mit me on this condition V — " I not only permit, but exhort you to say all the truth you know," replied Socrates. " I obey you willingly," said Alcibiades ; " and if I advance anything untrue, do you, if you please, interrupt me, and convict me of misrepre- sentation, for I would never willingly speak falsely. And bear with me if I do not relate things in their order, but just as I remember them, for it is not easy for a man in my present condition to enume- rate systematically all your singularities. " I will begin the praise of Socrates by comparing him to a certain statue. Perhaps he will think that this statue is introduced for the sake of ridi- cule, but I assure you that it is necessary for the illustration of truth. I assert, then, that Socrates is exactly like those Silenuses that sit in the sculp- tors' shops, and which are carved holding flutes or pipes, but which, when divided into two, are found to contain withinside the images of the gods. I assert that Socrates is like the satyr Marsyas. That your form and appearance are like these satyrs, I think that even you will not venture to deny ; and how like you are to them in all other things, now hear. Are you not scornful and petulant ? If you deny this, I will bring witnesses. Are you not a piper, and far more wonderful a one than he ? For Marsyas, and whoever now pipes the music that he taught ; for that music which is of heaven, and described as being taught by Marsyas, enchants men through the power of the mouth. For if any musician, be he skilful or not, awakens this music, it alone enables him to retain the minds of men, and from the divinity of its nature makes evident those who are in want of the gods and initiation. You differ only from Marsyas in this circumstance, that you effect without instruments, by mere words, all that he can do. For when we hear Pericles, or any other accomplished orator, deliver a discourse, no one, as it were, cares any thing about it. But when any one hears you, or even your words related by another, though ever so rude and unskilful a speaker, be that person a woman, man or child, we are struck and retained, as it were, by the discourse clinging to our mind. u If I was not afraid that I am a great deal too drunk, I would confirm to you by an oath the strange effects which I assure you I have suffered from his words, and suffer still ; for when I hear him speak, my heart leaps up far more than the hearts of those who celebrate the Corybantic myste- ries ; my tears are poured out as he talks, a thing I have seen happen to many others beside myself. I have heard Pericles and other excellent orators, and have been pleased with their discourses, but I suffered nothing of this kind ; nor was my soul ever on those occasions disturbed and filled with self-reproach, as if it were slavishly laid prostrate. But this Marsyas here has often affected me in the way I describe, until the life which I lead seemed hardly worth living. Do not deny it, Socrates ; for I well know that if even now I chose to listen to you, I could not resist, but should again suffer the same effects. For, my friends, he forces me to confess that while I myself am still in want of many things, I neglect my own necessities, and attend to those of the Athenians. I stop my ears, therefore, as from the Syrens, and flee away as fast as possible, that I may not sit down beside hun and grow old in listening to his talk. For this man has reduced me to feel the sentiment of shame, which I imagine no one would readily believe was in me ; he alone inspires me with remorse and awe. For I feel in his presence my incapacity of refuting what he says, or of refusing to do that which he directs ; but when I depart from him, the glory which the multitude confers overwhelms me. I escape, therefore, and hide myself from him, and when I see him I am overwhelmed with humi- liation, because I have neglected to do what I have confessed to him ought to be done ; and often and often have I wished that he were no longer to be seen among men. But if that were to happen, I well know that I should suffer far greater pain ; so THE BANQUET OF PLATO. SI that where I can turn, or what I can do with this man, I know not. All this have I and many others suffered from the pipings of this satyr. a And observe, how like he is to what I said, and what a wonderful power he possesses. Know that there is not one of you who is aware of the real nature of Socrates ; but since I have begun, I will make him plain to you. You observe how passionately Socrates affects the intimacy of those who are beautiful, and how ignorant he professes himself to be ; appearances in themselves exces- sively Silenie. This, my friends, is the external form with which, like one of the sculptured Sileni, he has clothed himself ; for if you open him, you will find within admirable temperance and wisdom. For he cares not for mere beauty, but despises more than any one can imagine all external pos- sessions, whether it be beauty or wealth, or glory, or any other thing for which the multitude felici- tates the possessor. He esteems these things and us who honour them, as nothing, and lives among men, making all the objects of their admiration the playthings of his irony. But I know not if any one of you have ever seen the divine images which are within, when he has been opened and is serious. I have seen them, and they are so supremely beautiful, so golden, so divine, and wonderful, that every thing which Socrates com- mands surely ought to be obeyed, even like the voice of a God. ***** * At one time we were fellow-soldiers, and had our mess together in the camp before Potidsea. Socrates there overcame not only me, but every one beside, in endurance of toils : when, as often happens in a campaign, we were reduced to few provisions, there were none who could sustain hunger like Socrates ; and when we had plenty, he alone seemed to enjoy our military fare. He never drank much willingly, but when he was compelled, he conquered all even in that to which he was least accustomed ; and what is most astonishing, no person ever saw Socrates drunk either then or at any other time. In the depth of winter (and the winters there are excessively rigid), he sus- tained calmly incredible hardships : and amongst other things, whilst the frost was intolerably severe, and no one went out of their tents, or if they went out, wrapt themselves up carefully, and put fleeces under their feet, and bound their legs with hairy skins, Socrates went out only with the same cloak on that he usually wore, and walked barefoot upon the ice ; more easily, indeed, than those who had sandalled themselves so delicately : so that the soldiers thought that he did it to mock their want of fortitude. It would indeed be worth while to commemorate all that this brave man did and endured in that expedition. In one instance he was seen early in the morning, standing in one place wrapt in meditation ; and as he seemed not to be able to unravel the subject of his thoughts, he still continued to stand as enquiring and dis- cussing within himself, and when noon came, the soldiers observed him, and said to one another — { Socrates has been standing there thinking, ever since the morning.' At last some Ionians came to the spot, and having supped, as it was summer, bringing their blankets, they lay down to sleep in the cool ; they observed that Socrates continued to stand there the whole night until morning, and that, when the sun rose, he saluted it with a prayer and departed. " I ought not to omit what Socrates is in battle. For in that battle after which the generals decreed to me the prize of courage, Socrates alone of all men was the saviour of my life, .standing by me when I had fallen and was wounded, and preserving both myself and my arms from the hands of the enemy. On that occasion I entreated the generals to decree the prize, as it was most due, to him. And this, O Socrates, you cannot deny, that while the generals, wishing to conciliate a person of my rank, desired to give me the prize, you were far more earnestly desirous than the generals that this glory should be attributed not to yourself, but me. " But to see Socrates when our army was de- feated and scattered in flight at Delius, was a spectacle worthy to behold. On that occasion I was among the cavalry, and he on foot, heavily armed. After the total rout of our troops, he and Laches retreated together ; I came up by chance, and seeing them, bade them be of good cheer, for that I would not leave them. As I was on horse- back, and therefore less occupied by a regard of my own situation, I could better observe than at Potidsea the beautiful spectacle exhibited by Socrates on this emergency. How superior was he to Laches in presence of mind and courage ! Your representation of him on the stage, Aris- tophanes, was not wholly unlike his real self on this occasion, for he walked and darted his regards around with a majestic composure, looking tran- quilly both on his friends and enemies ; so that it was evident to every one, even from afar, that whoever should venture to attack him would en- counter a desperate resistance. He and his com- panion thus departed in safety ; for those who are scattered in flight are pursued and killed, whilst men hesitate to touch those who exhibit such a countenance as that of Socrates even in defeat. " Many other and most wonderful qualities could 40 THE BANQUET OF PLATO. well be praised in Socrates ; but such as these might singly be attributed to others. But that which is unparalleled in Socrates, is, that he is unlike, and above comparison, with all other men, whether those who have lived in ancient times, or those who exist now. For it may be conjectured, that Brasidas and many others are such as was Achilles. Pericles deserves comparison with Nestor and Antenor ; and other excellent persons of various times may, with probability, be drawn into com- parison with each other. But to such a singular man as this, both himself and his discourses being so uncommon, no one, should he seek, would find a parallel among the present or the past generations of mankind ; unless they should say that he resem- bled those with whom I lately compared him, for, assuredly, he and his discourses are like nothing but the Sileni and the Satyrs. At first I forgot to make you observe how like his discourses are to those Satyrs when they are opened, for, if any one will listen to the talk of Socrates, it will appear to him at first extremely ridiculous ; the phrases and expressions which he employs, fold around his exterior the skin, as it were, of a rude and wanton Satyr. He is always talking about great market- asses, and brass-founders, and leather-cutters, and skin-dressers ; and this is his perpetual custom, so* that any dull and unobservant person might easily laugh at his discourse. . But if any one should see it opened, as it were, and get within the sense of his words, he would then find that they alone of all that enters into the mind of man to utter, had a profound and persuasive meaning, and that they were most divine ; and that they presented to the mind innumerable images of every excellence, and that they tended towards objects of the highest moment, or rather towards all, that he who seeks the possession of what is supremely beautiful and good, need regard as essential to the accomplish- ment of his ambition. " These are the things, my friends, for which I praise Socrates." ***** Alcibiades having said this, the whole party burst into a laugh at his frankness, and Socrates said, " You seem to be sober enough, Alcibiades, else you would not have made such a circuit of words, only to hide the main design for which you made this long speech, and which, as it were care- lessly, you just throw in at the last ; now, as if you had not said all this for the mere purpose of dividing me and Agathon ? You think that I ought to be your friend, and to care for no one else. I have found you out ; it is evident enough for what design you invented all this Satyrical and Silenic drama. But, my dear Agathon, do not let his device succeed. I entreat you to permit no one to throw discord between us." — "No doubt," said Agathon, " he sate down between us only that he might divide us ; but this shall not assist his scheme, for I will come and sit near you." — " Do so," said Socrates, " come, there is room for you by me." — "Oh, Jupiter!" exclaimed Alcibiades, "what I endure from that man ! He thinks to subdue every way ; but, at least, I pray you, let Agathon remain between us." — " Impossible," said Socrates, " you have just praised me ; I ought to praise him sitting at my right hand. If Agathon is placed beside you, will he not praise me before I praise him ? Now, my dear friend, allow the young man to receive what praise I can give him. I have a great desire to pronounce his encomium." — " Quick, quick, Alcibiades," said Agathon, " I cannot stay here, I must change my place, or Socrates will not praise me." — Agathon then arose to take his place near Socrates. He had no sooner reclined than there came in a number of revellers — for some one who had* gone out had left the door open — and took their places on the vacant couches, and everything became full of confusion ; and no order being observed, every one was obliged to drink a great quantity of wine. Eryximachus, and Phaedrus, and some others, said Aristodemus went home to bed ; that, for his part, he went to sleep on his couch, and slept long and soundly — the nights were then long — until the cock crew hi the morning. When he awoke he found that some were still fast asleep, and others had gone home, and that Aristophanes, Agathon, and Socrates had alone stood it out, and were still drinking out of a great goblet which they passed round and round. Socrates was disputing between them. The beginning of their discussion Aristo- demus said that he did not recollect, because he was asleep ; but it was terminated by Socrates forcing them to confess, that the same person is able to compose both tragedy and comedy, and that the foundations of the tragic and comic arts were essentially the same. They, rather convicted than convinced, went to sleep. Aristophanes first awoke, and then, it being broad daylight, Agathon. Socrates, having put them to sleep, went away, Aristodemus following him, and coming to the Lyceum he washed himself, as he would have done anywhere else, and after having spent the day there in his accustomed manner, went home in the evening, ON LOVE. What is love ? Ask him who lives, what is life ? ask him who adores, what is God ? I know not the internal constitution of other men, nor even thine, whom I now address. I see that in some external attributes they resemble me, but when, misled by that appearance, I have thought to appeal to something in common, and unburthen my inmost soul to them, I have found my language misunderstood, like one in a distant and savage land. The more opportunities they have afforded me for experience, the wider has appeared the interval between us, and to a greater distance have the points of sympathy been with- drawn. With a spirit ill fitted to sustain such proof, trembling and feeble through its tenderness, I have everywhere sought sympathy, and have found only repulse and disappointment. Thou demandest what is love ? It is that power- ful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a com- munity with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason, we would be understood ; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's ; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love. This is the bond and the sanction which connects not only man with man, but with every thing which exists. We are born into the world, and there is something within us which, from the instant that we live, more and more thirsts after its likeness. It is probably in corre- spondence with this law that the infant drains milk from the bosom of its mother ; this propensity develops itself with the development of our nature. We dimly see within our intellectual nature a miniature as it were of our entire self, yet de- prived of all that we condemn or despise, the ideal prototype of every thing excellent or lovely that we are capable of conceiving as belonging to the nature of man. Not only the portrait of our external being, but an assemblage of the minutest particles of which our nature is composed * ; a mirror whose surface reflects only the forms of purity and brightness ; a soul within our soul that describes a circle around its proper paradise, which pain, and sorrow, and evil dare not overleap. To this we eagerly refer all sensations, thirsting that they should resemble or correspond with it. The discovery of its antitype ; the meeting with an understanding capable of clearly estimating our own ; an imagination which should enter into and seize upon the subtle and delicate peculiarities which we have delighted to cherish and unfold in secret ; with a frame whose nerves, like the chords of two exquisite lyres, strung to the accompani- ment of one delightful voice, vibrate with the vibra- tions of our own ; and of a combination of all these in such proportion as the type within demands ; this is the invisible and unattainable point to which Love tends ; and to attain which, it urges forth the powers of man to arrest the faintest shadow of that, without the possession of which there is no rest nor respite to the heart over which it rules. Hence in solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings, and yet they sympathise not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, and the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their incon- ceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. Sterne says that, if he were in a desert, he would love some cypress. So soon as this want or power is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of him- self, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was. * These words are ineffectual and metaphorical. Most words are so — No help ! THE COLISEUM. & ^fragment. At the hour of noon, on the feast of the Passover, an old man, accompanied by a girl, apparently his daughter, entered the Coliseum at Rome. They immediately passed through the Arena, and seek- ing a solitary chasm among the arches of the southern part of the ruin, selected a fallen column for their seat, and clasping each other's hands, sate as in silent contemplation of the scene. But the eyes of the girl were fixed upon her father's lips, and his countenance, sublime and sweet, but motionless as some Praxitelean image of the greatest of poets, filled the silent air with smiles, not reflected from external forms. It was the great feast of the Resurrection, and the whole native population of Rome, together with all the foreigners who flock from all parts of the earth to contemplate its celebration, were assembled round the Vatican. The most awful religion of the world went forth surrounded by emblazonry of mortal greatness, and mankind had assembled to wonder at and worship the creations of their own power. No straggler was to be met with in the streets and grassy lanes which led to the Coliseum. The father and daughter had sought this spot immediately on their arrival. A figure, only visible at Rome in night or soli- tude, and then only to be seen amid the desolated temples of the Forum, or gliding among the weed- grown galleries of the Coliseum, crossed their path. His form, which, though emaciated, displayed the elementary outlines of exquisite grace, was enve- loped in an ancient chlamys, which half concealed his face ; his snow-white feet were fitted with ivory sandals, delicately sculptured in the likeness of two female figures, whose wings met upon the heel, and whose eager and half-divided lips seemed quiver- ing to meet. It was a face, once seen, never to be forgotten. The mouth and the moulding of the chin resembled the eager and impassioned tenderness of the statues of Antinous ; but in- stead of the effeminate sullenness of the eye, and the narrow smoothness of the forehead, shone an expression of profound and piercing thought ; the brow was clear and open, and his eyes deep, like two wells of crystalline water which reflect the all-beholding heavens. Over all was spread a timid expression of womanish tenderness and hesitation, which contrasted, yet intermingled strangely, with the abstracted and fearless character that predo- minated in his form and gestures. He avoided, in an extraordinary degree, all communication with the Italians, whose language he seemed scarcely to understand, but was occa- sionally seen to converse with some accomplished foreigner, whose gestures and appearance might attract him amid his solemn haunts. He spoke Latin, and especially Greek, with fluency, and with a peculiar but sweet accent ; he had apparently acquired a knowledge of the northern languages of Europe. There was no circumstance connected with him that gave the least intimation of his country, his origin, or his occupation. His dress was strange, but splendid and solemn. He was forever alone. The literati of Rome thought him a curiosity, but there was something in his manner unintelligible but impressive, which awed their obtrusions into distance and silence. The country- men, whose path he rarely crossed, returning by starlight from their market at Campo Vaccino, called him, with that strange mixture of religious and historical ideas so common in Italy, 11 Diavolo di Bruto. Such was the figure which interrupted the con- templations, if they were so engaged, of the strangers, by addressing them in the clear, and exact, but unidiomatic phrases of their native lan- guage : — * Strangers, you are two ; behold the third in this great city, to whom alone the spectacle of these mighty ruins is more delightful than the mockeries of a superstition which destroyed them." " I see nothing," said the old man. " What do you here, then ?" " I listen to the sweet singing of the birds, and the sound of my daughter's breathing composes me like the soft murmur of water — and I feel the sun- warm wind — and this is pleasant to me." " Wretched old man, know you not that these are the ruins of the Coliseum ?" — " Alas ! stranger," said the girl, in a voice like mournful music, " speak not so — he is blind." — The stranger's eyes were suddenly filled with tears, and the lines of his countenance became relaxed. " Blind !" he exclaimed, in a tone of suffering, which was more than an apology ; and seated himself apart on a flight of shattered and THE COLISEUM. 43 mossy stairs which wound up among the labyrinths of the ruin. " My sweet Helen," said the old man, " you did not tell me that this was the Coliseum ?" " How should I tell you, dearest father, what I knew not ? I was on the point of enquiring the way to that building, when we entered this circle of ruinp, and, until the stranger accosted us, I remained silent, subdued by the greatness of what I see." " It is your custom, sweetest child, to describe to me the objects that give you delight. You array them in the soft radiance of your words, and whilst you speak I only feel the infirmity which holds me in such dear dependence, as a blessing. Why have you been silent now V* " I know not — first the wonder and pleasure of the sight, then the words of the stranger, and then thinking on what he had said, and how he had looked — and now, beloved father, your own words." " Well, tell me now, what do you see ?" " I see a great circle of arches built upon arches, and shattered stones lie around, that once made a part of the solid wall. In the crevices, and on the vaulted roofs, grow a multitude of shrubs, the wild olive and the myrtle — -and intricate brambles, and entangled weeds and plants I never saw before. The stones are immensely massive, and they jut out one from the other. There are terrible rifts in the wall, and broad windows through which you see the blue heaven. There seems to be more than a thousand arches, some ruined, some entire, and they are all immensely high and wide. Some are shattered, and stand forth in great heaps, and the underwood is tufted on their crumbling summits. Around us lie enormous columns, shattered and shapeless — and fragments of capitals and cornice, fretted with delicate sculptures." — * It is open to the blue sky \ " said the old man. "Yes. We see the liquid depth of heaven above through the rifts and the windows ; and the flowers, and the weeds, and the grass and creeping moss, are nourished by its unforbidden rain. The blue sky is above — the wide, bright, blue sky — it flows through the great rents on high, and through the bare boughs of the marble rooted fig-tree, and through the leaves and flowers of the weeds, even to the dark arcades beneath. I see — I feel its clear and piercing beams fill the universe, and impregnate the joy-inspiring wind with life and light, and casting the veil of its splendour over all things — even me. Yes, and through the highest rift the noonday waning moon is hanging, as it were, out of the solid sky, and this shows that the atmosphere has all the clearness which it rejoices me that you feel." " What else see you \ " " Nothing." « Nothing I " " Only the bright-green mossy ground, speckled by tufts of dewy clover-grass that run into the interstices of the shattered arches, and round the isolated pinnacles of the ruin." " Like the lawny dells of soft short grass which wind among the pine forests and preci- pices in the Alps of Savoy I " " Indeed, father, your eye has a vision more serene than mine." " And the great wrecked arches, the shattered masses of precipitous ruin, overgrown with the younglings of the forest, and more like chasms rent by an earthquake among the mountains, than like the vestige of what was human workmanship — what are they % " " Tilings awe-inspiring and wonderful." "Are they not caverns such as the untamed elephant might choose, amid the Indian wilder- ness, wherein to hide her cubs ; such as, were the sea to overflow the earth, the mightiest monsters of the deep would change into their spacious chambers % " " Father, your words image forth what I would have expressed, but, alas ! could not." " I hear the rustling of leaves, and the sound of waters, — but it does not rain, — like the fast drops of a fountain among woods." "It falls from among the heaps of ruin over our heads — it is, I suppose, the water collected in the rifts by the showers." " A nursling of man's art, abandoned by his care, and transformed by the enchantment of Nature into a likeness of her own creations, and destined to partake their immortality ! Changed into a mountain cloven with woody dells, which overhang its labyrinthine glades, and shattered into toppling precipices. Even the clouds, inter- cepted by its craggy summit, feed its eternal fountains with their rain. By the column on which I sit, I should judge that it had once been crowned by a temple or a theatre, and that on sacred days the multitude wound up its craggy path to spectacle or the sacrifice It was such itself ! * Helen, what sound of wings is that % " * Nor does a recollection of the use to which it may have heen destined interfere with these emotions. Time has thrown its purple shadow athwart this scene, and no more is visible than the broad and everlasting character of human strength and genius, that pledge of all that is to be admirable and lovely in ages yet to come. Solemn tem- ples, where the senate of the world assembled, palaces, triumphal arches, and cloud-surrounded columns, loaded with the sculptured annals of conquest and domination— what actions and deliberations have they been destined to enclose and commemorate ? Superstitious rites, which in their mildest form, outrage reason, and obscure the moral sense of mankind ; schemes for wide-extended murder, 44 THE COLISEUM. " It is the wild pigeons returning to their young. Do you not hear the murrfiur of those that .are brooding in their nests ?" "Ay, it is the language of their happiness. They are as happy as we are, child, but in a different manner. They know not the sensations which this ruin excites within us. Yet it is plea- sure to them to inhabit it ; and the succession of its forms as they pass, is connected with asso- ciations in their minds, sacred to them, as these to us. The internal nature of each being is sur- rounded by a circle, not to be surmounted by his fellows ; and it is this repulsion which constitutes the misfortune of the condition of life. But there is a circle which comprehends, as well as one which mutually excludes, all things which feel. And, with respect to man, his public and his private happiness consist in diminishing the cir- cumference which includes those resembling him- self, until they become one with him, and he with them. It is because we enter into the medita- tions, designs and destinies of something beyond ourselves, that the contemplation of the ruins of human power excites an elevating sense of awfulness and beauty. It is therefore that the ocean, the glacier, the cataract, the tempest, the volcano, have each a spirit which animates the extremities of our frame with tingling joy. It is therefore that the singing of birds, and the motion of leaves, the sensation of the odorous earth beneath, and the freshness of the living wind around, is sweet. And this is Love. This is the religion of eternity, whose votaries have been exiled from among the multitude of man- kind. O Power !" cried the old man, lifting his sightless eyes towards the undazzling sun, " thou which interpenetratest all things, and with- out which this glorious world were a blind and formless chaos, Love, Author of Good, God, King, Father ! Friend of these thy worshippers ! Two solitary hearts invoke thee, may they be divided never ! If the contentions of mankind have been their misery ; if to give and seek that happiness which thou art, has been their choice and destiny ; if, in the contemplation of these majestic records of the power of their kind, they see the shadow and devastation, and misrule, and servitude; and, lastly, these schemes Drought to their tremendous consumma- tions, and a human being returning in the midst of festival and solemn joy, with thousands and thousands of his enslaved and desolated species chained behind his chariot, exhibiting, as titles to renown, the labour of ages, and the admired creations of genius, overthrown by the brutal force, which was placed as a sword within his hand, and, — contemplation fearful and abhorred ! — he himself a being capable of the gentlest and best emotions, inspired with the persuasion that he has done a virtuous deed ! We do not forget these things. * * and the prophecy of that which thou mayst have decreed that he should become ; if the justice, the liberty, the loveliness, the truth, which are thy footsteps, have been sought by them, divide them not ! It is thine to unite, to eternize ; to make outlive the limits of the grave those who have left among the living, memorials of thee. When this frame shall be senseless dust, may the hopes, and the desires, and the delights which animate it now, never be extinguished in my child ; "even as, if she were borne into the tomb, my memory would be the written monument of all her nameless excellences !" The old man's countenance and gestures, radiant with the inspiration of his words, sunk, as he ceased, into more than its accustomed calmness, for he heard his daughter's sobs, and remembered that he had spoken of death. — " My father, how can I outlive you ?" said Helen. " Do not let us talk of death," said the old man, suddenly changing his tone. " Heraclitus, indeed, died at my age, and if I had so sour a disposition, there might be some danger. But Democritus reached a hundred and twenty, by the mere dint of a joyous and unconquerable mind. He only died at last, because he had no gentle and beloved ministering spirit, like my Helen, for whom it would have been his delight to live. You remember his gay old sister requested him to put off starving himself to death until she had returned from the festival of Ceres ; alleging, that it would spoil her holiday if he refused to comply, as it was not permitted to appear in the procession immediately after the death of a relation ; and how good-tem- peredly the sage acceded to her request." The old man could not see his daughter's grateful smile, but he felt the pressure of her hand by which it Was expressed. — " In truth," he continued, " that mystery, death, is a change which neither for ourselves nor for others is the just object of hope or fear. We know not if it be good or evil, we only know, it is. The old, the young, may alike die ; no time, no place, no age, no foresight, exempts us from death, and the chance of death. We have no knowledge, if death be a state of sensation, of any precaution that can make those sensations fortunate, if the existing series of events shall not produce that effect. Think not of death, or think of it as something common to us all. It has hap- pened," said he, with a deep and suffering voice, " that men have buried their children." " Alas ! then, dearest father, how I pity you. Let us speak no more." They arose to depart from the Coliseum, but the figure which had first accosted them interposed itself : — " Lady," he said, " if grief be an expiation THE ASSASSINS. 45 of error, I have grieved deeply for the words which I spoke to your companion. The men who an- ciently inhabited this spot, and those from whom they learned their wisdom, respected infirmity and age. If I have rashly violated that venerable form, at once majestic and defenceless, may I be for- given ? " " It gives me pain to see how much your mistake afflicts you," she said ; " if you can forget, doubt not that we forgive." " You thought me one of those who are blind in spirit," said the old man, " and who deserve, if any human being can deserve, contempt and blame. Assuredly, contemplating this monument as I do, though in the mirror of my daughter's mind, I am filled with astonishment and delight ; the spirit of departed generations seems to animate my limbs, and circulate through all the fibres of my frame. Stranger, if I have expressed what you have ever felt, let us know each other more." " The sound of your voice, and the harmony of your thoughts, are delightful to me," said the youth, "and it is a pleasure to see any form which expresses so much beauty and goodness as your daughter's ; if you reward me for my rude- ness, by allowing me to know you, my error is already expiated, and you remember my ill words no more. I live a solitary life, and it is rare that I encounter any stranger with whom it is pleasant to talk ; besides, their meditations, even though they be learned, do not always agree with mine ; and, though I can pardon this difference, they cannot. Nor have I ever explained the cause of the dress I wear, and the difference which I perceive between my language and manners, and those with whom I have intercourse. Not but that it is painful to me to live without communion with intelligent and affectionate beings. You are such, I feel." THE ASSASSINS. 8 dfrajjment of a Romance. CHAPTER I. Jerusalem, goaded on to resistance by the inces- I sant usurpations and insolence of Rome, leagued ! together its discordant factions to rebel against | the common enemy and tyrant. Inferior to their ! foe in all but the unconquerable hope of liberty, ! they surrounded their city with fortifications of | uncommon strength, and placed in array before | the temple a band rendered desperate by patriotism | and religion. Even the women preferred to die, | rather than survive the ruin of their country. When the Roman army approached the walls of the sacred city, its preparations, its discipline, and its numbers, evinced the conviction of its leader, that he had no common barbarians to subdue. At the approach of the Roman army, the strangers withdrew from the city. Among the multitudes which from every nation of the East had assembled at Jerusalem, was a little congregation of Christians. They were remark- able neither for their numbers nor their importance. They contained among them neither philosophers nor poets. Acknowledging no laws but those of God, they modelled their conduct towards their fellow-men by the conclusions of their individual judgment on the practical application of these laws. And it was apparent from the simplicity and severity of their manners, that this contempt for human institutions had produced among them a character superior in singleness and sincere self- apprehension to the slavery of pagan customs and the gross delusions of antiquated superstition. Many of their opinions considerably resembled those of the sect afterwards known by the name of Gnostics. They esteemed the human understanding to be the paramount rule of human conduct ; they maintained that the obscurest religious truth re- quired for its complete elucidation no more than the strenuous application of the energies of mind. It ap- peared impossible to them that any doctrine could be subversive of social happiness which is not capa- ble of being confuted by arguments derived from the nature of existing things. With the devoutest submission to the law of Christ, they united an intrepid spirit of inquiry as to the correctest mode of acting in particular instances of conduct that occur among men. Assuming the doctrines of the Messiah concerning benevolence and justice for the regulation of their actions, they could not be persuaded to acknowledge that there was apparent in the divine code any prescribed rule whereby, for its own sake, one action rather than another, as fulfilling the will of their great Master, should be preferred. The contempt with which the magistracy and priesthood regarded this obscure community of 46 THE ASSASSINS. speculators, had hitherto protected them from persecution. But they had arrived at that precise degree of eminence and prosperity which is pecu- liarly obnoxious to the hostility of the rich and powerful. The moment of their departure from Jerusalem was the crisis of their future destiny. Had they continued to seek a precarious refuge in a city of the Roman empire, this persecution would not have delayed to impress a new character on their opinions and their conduct ; narrow views, and the illiberality of sectarian patriotism, would not have failed speedily to obliterate the magnifi- cence and beauty of their wild and wonderful con- dition. Attached from principle to peace, despising and hating the pleasures and the customs of the dege- nerate mass of mankind, this unostentatious com- munity of good and happy men fled to the solitudes of Lebanon. To Arabians and enthusiasts the solem- nity and grandeur of these desolate recesses pos- sessed peculiar attractions. It well accorded with the justice of their conceptions on the relative du- ties of man towards his fellow in society, that they should labour in unconstrained equality to dis- possess the wolf and the tiger of their empire, and establish on its ruins the dominion of intelligence and virtue. No longer would the worshippers of the God of Nature be indebted to a hundred hands for the accommodation of their simple wants. No longer would the poison of a diseased civilisation embrue their very nutriment with pestilence. They would no longer owe their very existence to the vices, the fears, and the follies of mankind. Love, friendship, and philanthropy, would now be the characteristic disposers of their industry. It is for his mistress or his friend that the labourer conse- crates his toil ; others are mindful, but he is for- getful, of himself. " God feeds the hungry ravens, and clothes the lilies of the fields, and yet Solomon in all his glory is not like to one of these." Rome was now the shadow of her former self. The light of her grandeur and loveliness had passed away. The latest and the noblest of her poets and historians had foretold in agony her approach- ing slavery and degradation. The ruins of the human mind, more awful and portentous than the desolation of the most solemn temples, threw a shade of gloom upon her golden palaces which the brutal vulgar could not see, but which the mighty felt with inward trepidation and despair. The ruins of Jerusalem lay defenceless and uninhabited upon the burning sands ; none visited, but in the depth of solemn awe, this accursed and solitary spot. Tradition says that there was seen to linger among the scorched and shattered fragments of the tem- ple, one being, whom he that saw dared not to call man, with clasped hands, immoveable eyes, and a visage horribly serene. Not on the will of the capricious multitude, nor the constant fluctuations of the many and the weak, depends the change of empires and religions. These are the mere insen- sible elements from which a subtler intelligence moulds its enduring statuary. They that direct the changes of this mortal scene breathe the decrees of their dominion from a throne of darkness and of tempest. The power of man is great. After many days of wandering, the Assassins pitched their tents in the valley of Bethzatanai. For ages had this fertile valley lain concealed from the adventurous search of man, among mountains of everlasting snow. The men of elder days had inhabited this spot. Piles of monumental marble and fragments of columns that in their integrity almost seemed the work of some intelligence more sportive and fantastic than the gross conceptions of mortality, lay in heaps beside the lake, and were visible beneath its transparent waves. The flower- ing orange-tree, the balsam, and innumerable odo- riferous shrubs, grew wild in the desolated portals. The fountain tanks had overflowed ; and, amid the luxuriant vegetation of their margin, the yellow snake held its unmolested dwelling. Hither came the tiger and the bear to contend for those once domestic animals who had forgotten the secure servitude of their ancestors. No sound, when the famished beast of prey had retreated in despair from the awful desolation of this place, at whose completion he had assisted, but the shrill cry of the stork, and the flapping of his heavy wings from the capital of the solitary column, and the scream of the hungry vulture baffled of its only victim. The lore of ancient wisdom was sculptured in mystic characters on the rocks. The human spirit and the human hand had been busy here to accomplish its profoundest miracles. It was a temple dedi- cated to the God of knowledge and of truth. The palaces of the Caliphs and the Csesars might easily surpass these ruins in magnitude and sumptuous- ness : but they were the design of tyrants and the work of slaves. Piercing genius and consummate prudence had planned and executed Bethzatanai. There was deep and important meaning in every lineament of its fantastic sculpture. The unintelli- gible legend, once so beautiful and perfect, so full of poetry and history, spoke, even in destruction, volumes of mysterious import, and obscure signifi- cance. But in the season of its utmost prosperity and magnificence, art might not aspire to vie with nature in the valley of Bethzatanai. All that was wonderful and lovely was collected in this deep seclusion. The fluctuating elements seemed to have been THE ASSASSINS. 47 rendered everlastingly permanentin forms of wonder and delight. The mountains of Lebanon had been divided to their base to form this happy valley ; on every side their icy summits darted their white pinnacles into the clear blue sky, imaging, in their grotesque outline, minarets, and ruined domes, and columns worn with time. Far below, the silver clouds rolled their bright volumes in many beautiful shapes, and fed the eternal springs that, spanning the dark chasms like a thousand radiant rainbows, leaped into the quiet vale, then, lingering in many a dark glade among the groves of cypress and of pahn, lost themselves in the lake. The immensity of these precipitous mountains, with their starry pyramids of snow, excluded the sun, which overtopped not, even in its meridian, their overhanging rocks. But a more heavenly and serener light was reflected from their icy mirrors, which, piercing through the many-tinted clouds, produced lights and colours of inexhaustible variety. The herbage was perpetually verdant, and clothed the darkest recesses of the caverns and the woods. Nature, undisturbed, had become an enchantress in these solitudes : she had collected here all that was wonderful and divine from the armoury of her omnipotence. The very winds breathed health and renovation, and the joyousness of youthful courage. Fountains of crystalline water played perpetually among the aromatic flowers, and mingled a freshness with their odour. The pine boughs became instruments of exquisite contrivance, among which every varying breeze waked music of new and more delightful melody. Meteoric shapes, more effulgent than the moonlight, hung on the wandering clouds, and mixed in discordant dance around the spiral fountains. Blue vapours assumed strange lineaments under the rocks and among the ruins, lingering like ghosts with slow and solemn step. Through a dark chasm to the east, hi the long perspective of a portal glittering with the unnumbered riches of the subterranean world, shone the broad moon, pouring in one. yellow and unbroken stream her horizontal beams. Nearer the icy region, autumn and spring held an alternate reign. The sere leaves fell and choked the sluggish brooks ; the chilling fogs hung diamonds on every spray ; and in the dark cold evening the howling winds made melancholy music in the trees. -Far above, shone the bright throne of winter, clear, cold, and dazzling. Sometimes there was seen the snow-flakes to fall before the sinking orb of the beamless sun, like a shower of fiery sulphur. The cataracts, arrested in their course, seemed, with their transparent columns, to support the dark- browed rocks. Sometimes the icy whirlwind scooped the powdery snow aloft, to mingle with the hissing meteors, and scatter spangles through the rare and rayless atmosphere. Such strange scenes of chaotic confusion and harrowing sublimity, surrounding and shutting in the vale, added to the delights of its secure and voluptuous tranquillity. No spectator could have refused to believe that some spirit of great intelli- gence and power had hallowed these wild and beau- tiful solitudes to a deep and solemn mystery. The immediate effect of such a scene, suddenly presented to the contemplation of mortal eyes, is seldom the subject of authentic record. The coldest slave of custom cannot fail to recollect some few moments in which the breath of spring or the crowding clouds of sunset, with the pale moon shining through their fleecy skirts, or the song of some lonely bird perched on the only tree of an imfrequented heath, has awakened the touch of nature. And they were Arabians who entered the valley of Bethzatanai ; men who idolized nature and the God of nature ; to whom love and lofty thoughts, and the apprehensions of an uncorrupted spirit, were sustenance and life. Thus securely excluded from an abhorred world, all thought of its judgment was cancelled by the rapidity of their fervid imaginations. They ceased to acknowledge, or deigned not to advert to, the distinctions with which the majority of base and vulgar minds con- trol the longings and struggles of the soul towards its place of rest. A new and sacred fire was kindled in their hearts and sparkled in their eyes. Every gesture, every feature, the minutest action, was modelled to beneficence and beauty by the holy inspiration that had descended on their searching spirits. The epidemic transport communicated itself through every heart with the rapidity of a blast from heaven. They were already disembodied spirits ; they were already the inhabitants of paradise. To live, to breathe, to move, was itself a sensation of immeasurable transport. Every new contemplation of the condition of his nature brought to the happy enthusiast an added measure of delight, and impelled to every organ, where mind is united with external things, a keener and more exquisite perception of all that they contain of lovely and divine. To love, to be beloved, suddenly became an insatiable famine of his nature, which the wide circle of the universe, comprehending beings of such inexhaustible variety and stupendous magni- tude of excellence, appeared too narrow and confined to satiate. Alas, that these visitings of the spirit of life should fluctuate and pass away ! That the moments when the human mind is commensurate with all j that it can conceive of excellent and powerful, ! should not endure with its existence and survive its 48 THE ASSASSINS. most momentous change ! But the beauty of a vernal sunset, with its overhanging curtains of em- purpled cloud, is rapidly dissolved, to return at some unexpected period, and spread an alleviating melancholy over the dark vigils of despair. It is true the enthusiasm of overwhelming trans- port which had inspired every breast among the Assassins is no more. The necessity of daily occu- pation and the ordinariness of that human life, the burthen of which it is the destiny of every human being to bear, had smothered, not extin- guished, that divine and eternal fire. Not the less indelible and permanent were tne impressions com- municated to all ; not the more unalterably were the features of their social character modelled and determined by its influence. CHAPTER II. Rome had fallen. Her senate-house had become a polluted den of thieves and liars ; her solemn temples, the arena of theological disputants, who made fire and sword the missionaries of their in- conceivable beliefs. The city of the monster Con- stantine, symbolizing, in the consequences of its foundation, the wickedness and weakness of his successors, feebly imaged with declining power the substantial eminence of the Roman name. Pilgrims of a new and mightier faith crowded to visit the lonely ruins of Jerusalem, and weep and pray before the sepulchre of the Eternal God. The earth was filled with discord, tumult, and ruin. The spirit of disinterested virtue had armed one- half of the civilised world against the other. Mon- strous and detestable creeds poisoned and blighted the domestic charities. There was no appeal to natural love, or ancient faith, from pride, super- stition, and revenge. Four centuries had passed thus, terribly charac- terised by the most calamitous revolutions. The Assassins, meanwhile, undisturbed by the surround- ing tumult, possessed and cultivated their fertile valley. The gradual operation of their peculiar con- dition had matured and perfected the singularity and excellence of their character. That cause, which had ceased to act as an immediate and over- powering excitement, became the unperceived law of their lives, and sustenance of their natures. Their religious tenets had also undergone a change, corresponding with the exalted condition of their moral being. The gratitude which they owed to the benignant Spirit by which their limited intelligences had not only been created but redeemed, was less frequently adverted to, became less the topic of comment or contemplation ; not, therefore, did it cease to be their presiding guardian, the guide of their inmost thoughts, the tribunal of appeal for the minutest particulars of their conduct. They learned to identify this mysterious benefactor with the delight that is bred among the solitary rocks, and has its dwelling alike in the changing colours of the clouds and the inmost recesses of the caverns. Their future also no longer existed, but in the blissful tranquillity of the present. Time was measured and created by the vices and the miseries of men, between whom and the happy nation of the Assassins, there was no analogy nor comparison. Already had their eternal peace com- menced. The darkness had passed away from the open gates of death. The practical results produced by their faith and condition upon their external conduct were singular and memorable. Excluded from the great and various community of mankind, these solitudes became to them a sacred hermitage, in which all formed, as it were, one being, divided against itself by no contending will or factious passions. Every impulse conspired to one end, and tended to a single object. Each devoted his powers to the happiness of the other. Their republic was the scene of the perpetual contentions of benevolence ; not the heartless and assumed kindness of commer- cial man, but the genuine virtue that has a legible superscription in every feature of the countenance, and every motion of the frame. The perverseness and calamities of those who dwelt beyond the mountains that encircled their undisturbed posses- sions, were unknown and unimagined. Little em- barrassed by the complexities of civilised society, they knew not to conceive any happiness that can be satiated without participation, or that thirsts not to reproduce and perpetually generate itself. The path of virtue and felicity was plain and unimpeded. They clearly acknowledged, in every case, that conduct to be entitled to pre- ference which would obviously produce the greatest pleasure. They could not conceive an instance in which it would be their duty to hesitate, in causing, at whatever expense, the greatest and most unmixed delight. Hence arose a peculiarity which only failed to germinate in uncommon and momentous conse- quences, because the Assassins had retired from the intercourse of mankind, over whom other motives and principles of conduct than justice and benevolence prevail. It would be a difficult matter for men of such a sincere and simple faith, to estimate the final results of their intentions, among the corrupt and slavish multitude. They would be perplexed also in their choice of the means, where- by their intentions might be fulfilled. To produce THE ASSASSINS. 48 immediate pain or disorder for the sake of future benefit, is consonant, indeed, with the purest religion and philosophy, but never fails to excite invincible repugnance in the feelings of the many. Against their predilections and distastes an Assas- sin, accidentally the inhabitant of a civilised com- munity, would wage unremitting hostility from principle. He would find himself compelled to adopt means which they would abhor, for the sake of an object which they could not conceive that he should propose to himself. Secure and self-enshrined in the magnificence and pre-eminence of his con- ceptions, spotless as the light of heaven, he would be the victim among men of calumny and persecu- tion. Incapable of distinguishing his motives, they would rank him among the vilest and most atrocious criminals. Great, beyond all comparison with them, they would despise him in the presumption of their ignorance. Because his spirit burned with an unquenchable passion for their welfare, they would lead him, like his illustrious master, amidst scoffs, and mockery, and insult, to the remunera- tion of an ignominious death. Who hesitates to destroy a venomous serpent that has crept near his sleeping friend, except the man who selfishly dreads lest the malignant reptile should turn his fury on himself? And if the poisoner has assumed a human shape, if the bane be distinguished only from the viper's venom by the excess and extent of its devastation, will the saviour and avenger here retract and pause entrenched behind the superstition of the indefea- sible divinity of w man ? Is the human form, then, the mere badge of a prerogative for unlicensed wickedness and mischief I Can the power derived from the weakness of the oppressed, or the igno- rance of the deceived, confer the right in security to tyrannise and defraud \ The subject of regular governments, and the disciple of established superstition, dares not to ask this question. For the sake of the eventual benefit, he endures what he esteems a transitory evil, and the moral degradation of man disquiets not his patience. But the religion of an Assassin imposes other virtues than endurance, when his fellow-men groan under tyranny, or have become so bestial and abject that they cannot feel their chains. An Assassin believes that man is emi- nently man, and only then enjoys the prerogatives of his privileged condition, when his affections and his judgment pay tribute to the God of Nature. The perverse, and vile, and vicious — what were they ? Shapes of some unholy vision, moulded by the spirit of Evil, which the sword of the merciful destroyer should sweep from this beautiful world. Dreamy nothings ; phantasms of misery and mis- chief, that hold their death-like state on glittering tin-ones, and in the loathsome dens of poverty. No Assassin would submissively temporize with vice, and in cold charity become a pander to falsehood and desolation. His path through the wilderness of civilised society would be marked with the blood of the oppressor and the ruiner. The wretch, whom nations tremblingly adore, would expiate in his throttling grasp a thousand licensed and vene- rable crimes. How many holy liars and parasites, in solemn guise, would his saviour arm drag from their luxu- rious couches, and plunge in the cold charnel, that the green and many-legged monsters of the slimy grave might eat off at their leisure the lineaments of rooted malignity and detested cunning. The respectable man — the smooth, smiling, polished villain, whom all the city honours ; whose very trade is lies and murder ; who buys his daily bread with the blood and tears of men, would feed the ravens with his limbs. The Assassin would cater nobly for the eyeless worms of earth, and the carrion fowls of heaven. Yet here, religion and human love had imbued the manners of those solitary people with inexpres- sible gentleness and benignity. Courage and active virtue, and the indignation against vice, which becomes a hurrying and irresistible passion, slept like the imprisoned earthquake, or the lightning shafts that hang in the golden clouds of evening. They were innocent, but they were capable of more than innocence ; for the great principles of their faith were perpetually acknowledged and adverted to ; nor had they forgotten, in this uninterrupted quiet, the author of their felicity. Four centuries had thus worn away without producing an event. Men had died, and natural tears had been shed upon their graves, in sorrow that improves the heart. Those who had been United by love had gone to death together, leaving to their friends the bequest of a most sacred grief, and of a sadness that is allied to pleasure. Babes that hung upon their mothers' breasts had become men ; men had died ; and many a wild luxuriant weed that overtopped the habitations of the vale, had twined its roots around their disregarded bones. Their tranquil state was like a summer sea, whose gentle undulations disturb not the reflected stars, and break not the long still line of the rain- bow hues of sunrise. CHAPTER III. Where all is thus calm, the slightest circum- stance is recorded and remembered. Before the sixth century had expired one incident occurred, :A\ THE ASSASSINS. remarkable and strange. A young man, named Albedir, wandering in the woods, was startled by the screaming of a bird of prey, and, looking up, saw blood fall, drop by drop, from among the in- tertwined boughs of a cedar. Having climbed the tree, he beheld a terrible and dismaying spectacle. A naked human body was impaled on the broken branch. It was maimed and mangled horribly ; every limb bent and bruised into frightful distor- tion, and exhibiting a breathing image of the most sickening mockery of life. A monstrous snake had scented its prey from among the mountains — and above hovered a hungry vulture. From amidst this mass of desolated humanity, two eyes, black and inexpressibly brilliant, shone with an unearthly lustre. Beneath the blood-stained eye-brows their steady rays manifested the serenity of an immortal power, the collected energy of a deathless mind, spell-secured from dissolution. A bitter smile of mingled abhorrence and scorn distorted his wounded lip — he appeared calmly to observe and measure all around — self-possession had not deserted the shat- tered mass of life. The youth approached the bough on which the breathing corpse was hung. As he approached, the serpent reluctantly unwreathed his glittering coils, and crept towards his dark and loathsome cave. The vulture, impatient of his meal, fled to the mountain , that re-echoed with his hoarse screams. The cedar branches creaked with their agitating weight, faintly, as the dismal wind arose. All else was deadly silent. At length a voice issued from the mangled man. It rattled in hoarse murmurs from his throat and lungs — his words were the conclusion of some strange mysterious soliloquy. They were broken, and without apparent connection, completing wide intervals of inexpressible conceptions. " The great tyrant is baffled, even in success. J°y • joy ! to his tortured foe ! Triumph to the worm whom he tramples under his feet ! Ha ! His suicidal hand might dare as well abolish the mighty frame of things ! Delight and exultation sit before the closed gates of death ! — I fear not to dwell beneath their black and ghastly shadow. Here thy power may not avail ! Thou createst — 'tis mine to ruin and destroy. — I was thy slave — I am thy equal, and thy foe. — Thousands tremble before thy throne, who, at my voice, shall dare to pluck the golden crown from thine unholy head ! " He ceased. The silence of noon swallowed up his words. Albedir clung tighter to the tree — he dared not for dismay remove his eyes. He remained mute in the perturbation of deep and creeping horror. " Albedir ! " said the same voice, " Albedir ! in the name of God, approach. He that suffered me to fall, watches thee ; — the gentle and merciful spirits of sweet human love, delight not in agony and horror. For pity's sake approach, in the name of thy good God, approach, Albedir ! " The tones were mild and clear as the responses .of iEolian music. They floated to Albedir's ear like the warm breath of June that lingers in the lawny groves, subduing all to softness. * Tears of tender affection started into his eyes. It was as the voice of a beloved friend. The partner of his childhood, the brother of his soul, seemed to call for aid, and pathetically to remonstrate with delay. He resisted not the magic impulse, but advanced towards the spot, and tenderly attempted to remove the wounded man. He cautiously descended the tree with his wretched burthen, and deposited it on the ground. A period of strange silence intervened. Awe and cold horror were slowly succeeding to the softer sensations of tumultuous pity, when again he heard the silver modulations of the same en- chanting voice. " Weep not for me, Albedir ! What wretch so utterly lost, but might inhale peace and renovation from this paradise ! I am wounded, and in pain ; but having found a refuge in this seclusion, and a friend in you, I am worthier of envy than compassion. Bear me to your cottage secretly : I would not disturb your gentle partner by my appearance. She must love me more dearly than a brother. I must be the playmate of your children ; already I regard them with a father's love. My arrival must not be regarded as a thing of mystery and wonder. What, indeed, but that men are prone to error and exaggeration, is less inexplicable, than that a stranger, wandering on Lebanon, fell from the rocks into the vale ? Albe- dir," he continued, and his deepening voice assumed awful solemnity, " in return for the affection with which I cherish thee and thine, thou owest this submission." Albedir implicitly submitted ; not even a thought had power to refuse its deference. He reassumed his burthen, and proceeded towards the cottage. He watched until Khaled should be absent, and conveyed the stranger into an apartment appro- priated for the reception of those who occasionally visited their habitation. He desired that the door should be securely fastened, and that he might not be visited until the morning of the following day. Albedir waited with impatience for the return of Khaled. The unaccustomed weight of even so transitory a secret, hung on his ingenuous and unpractised nature, like a blighting, clinging curse. The stranger's accents had lulled him to a trance of wild and delightful imagination. Hopes, so visionary and aerial, that they had assumed no THE ASSASSINS. 51 denomination, had spread themselves over his in- tellectual frame, and, phantoms as they were, had modelled his being to their shape. Still his mind was not exempt from the visitings of disquietude and perturbation. It was a troubled stream of thought, over whose fluctuating waves unsearchable fate seemed to preside, guiding its unforeseen alter- nations with an inexorable hand. Albedir paced earnestly the garden of his cottage, revolving every circumstance attendant on the incident of the day. He re-imaged with intense thought the minutest recollections of the scene. In vain — he was the slave of suggestions not to be controlled. As- tonishment, horror, and awe — tumultuous sym- pathy, and a mysterious elevation of soul, hurried away all activity of judgment, and overwhelmed, with stunning force, every attempt at deliberation or inquiry. His reveries were interrupted at length by the return of Khaled. She entered the cottage, that scene of undisturbed repose, in the confidence that change might as soon overwhelm the eternal world, as disturb this inviolable sanctuary. She started to behold Albedir. Without preface or remark, he recounted with eager haste the occurrences of the day. Khaled's tranquil spirit could hardly keep pace with the breathless rapidity of his narration. She was bewildered with staggering wonder even to hear his confused tones, and behold his agitated countenance. CHAPTER IV. On the following morning Albedir arose at sun- rise, and visited the stranger. He found him already risen, and employed in adorning the lattice of his chamber with flowers from the garden. There was something in his attitude and occupation singularly expressive of his entire familiarity with the scene. Albedir's habitation seemed to have been his ac- customed home. He addressed his host in a tone of gay and affectionate welcome, such as never fails to communicate by sympathy the feelings from which it flows. " My friend," said he, " the balm of the dew of our vale is sweet ; or is this garden the favoured spot where the winds conspire to scatter the best odours they can find 1 Come, lend me your arm awhile, I feel very weak." He motioned to walk forth, but, as if unable to proceed, rested on the seat beside the door. For a few moments they were silent, if the interchange of cheerful and happy looks is to be called silence. At last he observed a spade that rested against the wall. " You have only one spade, brother," said he ; "you have only one, I suppose, of any of the instruments of tillage. Your garden ground, too, occupies a certain space which it will be necessary to enlarge. This must be quickly remedied. I cannot earn my supper of to-night, nor of to- morrow ; but thenceforward, I do not mean to eat the bread of idleness. I know that you would willingly perform the additional labour which my nourishment would require ; I know, also, that you would feel a degree of pleasure in the fatigue arising from this employment, but I shall contest with you such pleasures as these, and such pleasures as these alone." His eyes were somewhat wan, and the tone of his voice languid as he spoke. As they were thus engaged, Khaled came to- wards them. The stranger beckoned to her to sit beside him, and taking her hands within his own, looked attentively on her mild countenance. Khaled inquired if he had been refreshed by sleep. He replied by a laugh of careless and inoffensive glee ; and placing one of her hands within Albedir's, said, " If this be sleep, here in this odorous vale, where these sweet smiles encompass us, and the voices of those who love are heard — if these be the visions of sleep, sister, those who lie down m misery shall arise lighter than the butterflies. I came from amid the tumult of a world, how dif- ferent from this ! I am unexpectedly among you, in the midst of a scene such as my imagination never dared to promise. I must remain here — I must not depart." Khaled, recovering from the ad- miration and astonishment caused by the stranger's words and manner, assured him of the happiness which she should feel in such an addition to her society. Albedir, too, who had been more deeply impressed than Khaled by the event of his arrival, earnestly re-assured him of the ardour of the affection with which he had inspired them. The stranger smiled gently to hear the unaccustomed fervour of sincerity which animated their address, and was rising to retire, when Khaled said, " You have not yet seen our children, Maimuna and Abdallah. They are by the water-side, playing with their favourite snake. We have only to cross yonder little wood, and wind down a path cut in the rock that overhangs the lake, and we shall find them beside a recess which the shore makes there, and which a chasm, as it were, among the rocks and woods, encloses. Do you think you could walk there 1" — " To see your children, Khaled ? I think I could, with the assistance of Albedir's arm, and yours." — So they went through the wood of ancient cypress, intermingled with the brightness of many-tinted blooms, which gleamed like stars through its romantic glens. They crossed the green meadow, and entered among the broken chasms, beautiful as they were in their investiture e2 52 ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. of odoriferous shrubs. They came at last, after pursuing a path which wound through the intri- cacies of a little wilderness, to the borders of the lake. They stood on the rock which overhung it, from which there was a prospect of all the miracles of nature and of art which encircled and adorned its shores. The stranger gazed upon it with a countenance unchanged by any emotion, but, as it were, thoughtfully and contemplatingly. As he gazed, Khaled ardently pressed his hand, and said, in a low yet eager voice, " Look, look, lo there !" He turned towards her, but her eyes were not on him. She looked below — her lips were parted by the feelings which possessed her soul — her breath came and went regularly but inaudibly. She leaned over the precipice, and her dark hair hanging beside her face, gave relief to its fine lineaments, animated by such love as exceeds ut- terance. The stranger followed her eyes, and saw that her children were in the glen below ; then raising his eyes, exchanged with her affectionate looks of congratulation and delight. The boy was apparently eight years old, the girl about two years younger. The beauty of their form and counte- nance was something so divine and strange, as overwhelmed the senses of the beholder like a delightful dream, with insupportable ravishment. They were arrayed in a loose robe of linen, through which the exquisite proportions of their form appeared. Unconscious that they were observed, they did not relinquish the occupation in which they were engaged. They had constructed a little boat of the bark of trees, and had given it sails of interwoven feathers, and launched it on the water. They sate beside a white flat stone, on which a small snake lay coiled, and when their work was finished, they arose and called to the snake in melodious tones, so that it understood their lan- guage. For it unwreathed its shining circles and crept to the boat, into which no sooner had it entered, than the girl loosened the band which held it to the shore, and it sailed away. Then they ran round and round the little creek, clapping their hands, and melodiously pouring out wild sounds, which the snake seemed to answer by the restless glancing of his neck. At last a breath of wind came from the shore, and the boat changed its course, and was about to leave the creek, which the snake perceived and leaped into the water, and came to the little children's feet. The girl sang to it, and it leaped into her bosom, and she crossed her fair hands over it, as if to cherish it there. Then the boy answered with a song, and it glided from beneath her hands and crept towards him. While they were thus employed, Maimuna looked up, and seeing her parents on the cliff, ran to meet them up the steep path that wound around it ; and Abdallah, leaving his snake, followed joyfully. ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. & ^Fragment The first law which it becomes a Reformer to propose and support, at the approach of a period of great political change, is the abolition of the punishment of death. It is sufficiently clear that revenge, retaliation, atonement, expiation, are rules and motives, so far from deserving a place in any enlightened system of political life, that they are the chief sources of a prodigious class of miseries in the domestic circles of society. It is clear that however the spirit of legislation may appear to frame institutions upon more philosophical maxims, it has hitherto, in those cases which are termed criminal, done little more than palliate the spirit, by gratifying a por- tion of it ; and afforded a compromise between that which is best ; — the inflicting of no" evil upon a sensitive being, without a decisively beneficial result in which he should at least participate ; — and that which is worst ; that he should be put to torture for the amusement of those whom he may have injured, or may seem to have injured. Omitting these remoter considerations, let us inquire what Death is ; that punishment which is applied as a measure of transgressions of indefinite shades of distinction, so soon as they shall have passed that degree and colour of enormity, with which it is supposed no inferior infliction is com- mensurate. And first, whether death is good or evil, a punishment or a reward, or whether it be wholly indifferent, no man can take upon himself to assert. That that within us which thinks and feels, con- tinues to think and feel after the dissolution of the body, has been the almost universal opinion of mankind, and the accurate philosophy of what I may be permitted to term the modern Academy, ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. ,:■) by showing the prodigious depth and extent of our ignorance respecting the causes and nature of sen- sation, renders probable the affirmative of a pro- position, the negative of which it is so difficult to conceive, and the popular arguments against which, derived from what is called the atomic system, are proved to be applicable only to the relation which one object bears to another, as apprehended by the mind, and not to existence itself, or the nature of that essence which is the medium and receptacle of objects. The popular system of religion suggests the idea that the mind, after death, will be painfully or pleasurably affected according to its determinations during life. However ridiculous and pernicious we must admit the vulgar accessories of this creed to be, there is a certain analogy, not wholly absurd, between the consequences resulting to an indi- vidual during life from the virtuous or vicious, prudent or imprudent, conduct of his external actions, to those consequences which are con- jectured to ensue from the discipline and order of his internal thoughts, as affecting his condition in a future state. They omit, indeed, to calculate upon the accidents of disease, and temperament, and organisation, and circumstance, together with the multitude of independent agencies which affect the opinions, the conduct, and the happiness of indi- viduals, and produce determinations of the will, and modify the judgment, so as to produce effects the most opposite in natures considerably similar. These are those operations in the order of the whole of nature, tending, we are prone to believe, to some definite mighty end, to which the agencies of our peculiar nature are subordinate ; nor is there any reason to suppose, that in a future state they should become suddenly exempt from that subor- dination. The philosopher is unable to determine whether our existence in a previous state has affected our present condition, and abstains from deciding whether our present condition will affect us in that which may be future. That, if we continue to exist, the manner of our existence will be such as no inferences nor conjectures, afforded by a consideration of our earthly experience, can elucidate, is sufficiently obvious. The opinion that the vital principle within us, in whatever mode it may continue to exist, must lose that conscious- ness of definite and individual being which now characterises it, and become a unit in the vast sum of action and of thought which disposes and ani- mates the universe, and is called God, seems to belong to that class of opinion which has been designated as indifferent. To compel a person to know all that can be known by the dead, concerning that which the living fear, hope, or forget ; to plunge him into the pleasure or pain which there awaits him ; to punish or reward him in a maimer and in a degree incalculable and incomprehensible by us ; to dis- robe him at once from all that intertexture of good and evil with which Nature seems to have clothed every form of individual existence, is to inflict on him the doom of death. A certain degree of pain and terror usually accompany the infliction of death. This degree is infinitely varied by the infinite variety in the tem- perament and opinions of the sufferers. As a mea- sure of punishment, strictly so considered, and as an exhibition, which, by its known effects on the sensibility of the sufferer, is intended to intimidate the spectators from incurring a similar liability, it is singularly inadequate. Firstly, — Persons of energetic character, in whom, as in men who suffer for political crimes, there is a large mixture of enterprise, and forti- tude, and disinterestedness, and the elements, though misguided and disarranged, by which the strength and happiness of a nation might have been cemented, die hi such a manner, as to make death appear not evil, but good. The death of what is called a traitor, that is, a person who, from whatever motive, would abolish the government of the day, is as often a triumphant exhibition of suffering virtue, as the warning of a culprit. The multitude, instead of departing with a panic-stricken approbation of the laws which exhibited such a spectacle, are inspired with pity, admiration and sympathy ; and the most generous among them feel an emulation to be the authors of such flat- tering emotions, as they experience stirring in their bosoms.. Impressed by what they see and feel, they make no distinction between the motives which incited the criminals to the actions for which they suffer, or the heroic courage with which they turned into good that which their judges awarded to them as evil, or the purpose itself of those actions, though that purpose may happen to be eminently pernicious. The laws in this case lose that sympathy, which it ought to be their chief object to secure, and in a participation of which consists their chief strength in maintaining those sanctions by which the parts of the social union are bound together, so as to produce, as nearly as possible, the ends for which it is instituted. Secondly, — Persons of energetic character, in communities not modelled with philosophical skill to turn all the energies which they contain to the purposes of common good, are prone also to fall into the temptation of undertaking, and are pecu- liarly fitted for despising the perils attendant upon ; consummating, the most enormous crimes. Murder, : 54 ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. rapes, extensive schemes of plunder, are the actions of persons belonging to this class ; and death is the penalty of conviction. But the coarse- ness of organisation, peculiar to men capable of committing acts wholly selfish, is usually found to be associated with a proportionate insensibihty to fear or pain. Their sufferings communicate to those of the spectators, who may be liable to the commission of similar crimes, a sense of the light- ness of that event, when closely examined, which, at a distance, as uneducated persons are accus- tomed to do, probably they regarded with horror. But a great majority of the spectators are so bound up in the interests and the habits of social union that no temptation would be sufficiently strong to induce them to a commission of the enormities to which this penalty is assigned. The more powerful, and the richer among them, — and a numerous class of little tradesmen are richer and more powerful than those .who are employed by them, and the employer, in general, bears this relation to the employed, — regard their own wrongs as, in some degree, avenged, and their own rights secured by this punishment, inflicted as the penalty of whatever crime. In cases of murder or mutilation, this feeling is almost universal. In those, therefore, whom this exhibition does not awaken to the sympathy which extenuates crime and discredits the law which restrains it, it pro- duces feelings more directly at war with the genuine purposes of political society. It excites those emotions which it is the chief object of civili- sation to extinguish for ever, and in the extinction of which alone there can be any hope of better institutions than those under which men now mis- govern one another. Men feel that their revenge is gratified, and that their security is established by the extinction and the sufferings of beings, in most respects resembling themselves ; and their daily occupations constraining them to a precise form in all their thoughts, they come to connect inseparably the idea of their own" advantage with that of the death and torture of others. It is manifest that the object of sane polity is directly the reverse ; and that laws founded upon reason, should accustom the gross vulgar to asso- ciate their ideas of security and of interest with the reformation, and the strict restraint, for that purpose alone, of those who might invade it. The passion of revenge is originally nothing more than an habitual perception of the ideas of the sufferings of the person who inflicts an injury, as connected, as they are in a savage state, or in such portions of society as are yet undisciplined to civilisation, with security that that injury will not be repeated in future. This feeling, engrafted upon superstition and confirmed by habit, at last loses sight of the only object for which it may be supposed to have been implanted, and becomes a passion and a duty to be pursued and fulfilled, even to the destruction of those ends to which it originally tended. The other passions, both good and evil, Avarice, Remorse, Love, Patriotism, present a similar appearance ; and to this principle of the mind over-shooting the mark at which it aims, we owe all that is eminently base or excel- lent in human nature ; in providing for the nutri- ment or the extinction of which, consists the true art of the legislator.* Nothing is more clear than that the infliction of punishment in general, in a degree which the refor- mation and the restraint of those who transgress the laws does not render indispensable, and none more than death, confirms all the inhuman and unsocial impulses of men. It is almost a prover- bial remark, that those nations in which the penal code has been particularly mild, have been dis- tinguished from all others by the rarity of crime. But the example is to be admitted to be equivocal. A more decisive argument is afforded by a consi- deration of the universal connection of ferocity of manners, and a contempt of social ties, with the contempt of human life. Governments which derive their institutions from the existence of cir- cumstances of barbarism and violence, with some rare exceptions perhaps, are bloody in proportion as they are despotic, and form the manners of their subjects to a sympathy with their own spirit. The spectators who feel no abhorrence at a public execution, but rather a self-applauding superiority, and a sense of gratified indignation, are surely excited to the most inauspicious emotions. The first reflection of such a one is the sense of his own internal and actual worth, as preferable to that of the victim, whom circumstances have led to destruction. The meanest wretch is impressed with a sense of his own comparative merit. , He is * The savage and the illiterate are but faintly aware of the distinction between the future and the past ; they make actions belonging to periods so distinct, the subjects of similar feelings ; they live only in the present, or in the pastj as it is present. It is in this that the philosopher excels one of the many ; it is this which distinguishes the doctrine of philosophic necessity from fatalism ; and that determination of the will, by which it is the active source of future events, from that liberty or indifference, to which the abstract liability of irremediable actions is attached, according to the notions of the vulgar. This is the source of the erroneous excesses of Remorse and Revenge ; the one extending itself over the future, and the other over the past ; provinces in which their sug- gestions can only be the sources of evil. The purpose of a resolution to act more wisely and virtuously in future, and the sense of a necessity of caution in repressing an enemy, are the sources from which the enormous super- stitions implied in the words cited have arisen. ON LIFE. one of those on whom the tower of Siloam fell not — he is such a one as Jesus Christ found not in all Samaria, who, hi his own soul, throws the first stone at the woman taken in adultery. The popular religion of the country takes its designa- tion from that illustrious person whose beautiful sentiment I have quoted. Any one who has stript from the doctrines of this person the veil of fami- liarity, will perceive how adverse their spirit is to feelings of this nature. ON LIFE Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admi- ration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opi- nions which supported them ; what is the birth and the extinction of religious and of political systems to life I What are the revolutions of the globe which we inhabit, and the operations of the ele- ments of which it is composed, compared with life ? What is the universe of stars, and suns, of which this inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and their destiny, compared with life ? Life, the great miracle; we admire not, because it is so mira- culous. It is well that we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the functions of that which is its object. If any artist, I do not say had executed, but had merely conceived in his mind the system of the sun, and the stars, and planets, they not existing, and had painted to us in words, or upon canvas, the spectacle now afforded by the nightly cope of heaven, and illustrated it by the wisdom of astronomy, great would be our admiration. Or had he imagined the scenery of this earth, the mountains, the seas, and the rivers ; the grass, and the flowers, and the variety of the forms and masses of the leaves of the woods, and the colours which attend the setting and the rising sun, and the hues of the atmosphere, turbid or serene, these things not before existing, truly we should have been astonished, and it would not have been a vain boast to have said of such a man, " Non merita nome di creatore, sennon Iddio ed il Poeta." But now these things are looked on with little wonder, and to be conscious of them with intense delight is esteemed to be the distinguishing mark of a refined and extraordinary person. The multitude of men care not for them. It is thus with Life— that Avhich includes all. What is life ? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered, and our infancy remembered but in fragments ; we live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being ! Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance to ourselves, and this is much. For what are we ? Whence do we come ? and whither do we go ? Is birth the commencement, is death the conclusion of our being ? What is birth and death ? The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of fife, which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which the habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, the painted -curtain from this scene of things. I confess that I am one of those who am unable to refuse my assent to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived. It is a decision against which all our persuasions struggle, and we must be long convicted before we can be convinced that the solid universe of external things is " such stuff as dreams are made of." The shocking absurdities of the popular philosophy of mind and matter, its fatal consequences in morals, and their violent dogmatism concerning the source of all things, had early conducted me to mate- rialism. This materialism is a seducing system to young and superficial minds. It allows its dis- ciples to talk, and dispenses them from thinking. But I was discontented with such a view of things as it afforded ; man is a being of high aspirations, " looking both before and after," whose * thoughts wander through eternity," disclaiming alliance with transience and decay ; incapable of imagining to himself annihilation ; existing but in the future and the past ; being, not what he is, but what he has been and shall be. Whatever may be his true and -final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This is the character of all life and being. Each is at once the centre and the circumference ; the point 56 ON LIFE. to which all things are referred, and the line in which all things are contained. Such contem- plations as these, materialism and the popular phi- losophy of mind and matter alike forbid ; they are only consistent with the intellectual system. It is absurd to enter into a long recapitulation of arguments sufficiently familiar to those in- quiring minds, whom alone a writer on abstruse subjects can be conceived to address. Perhaps the most clear and vigorous statement of the intel- lectual system is to be found in Sir William Drummond's Academical Questions. After such an exposition, it would be idle to translate into other words what could only lose its energy and fitness by the change. Examined point by point, and word by word, the most discriminating in- tellects have been able to discern no train of thoughts in the process of reasoning, which does [ not conduct inevitably to the conclusion which has been stated. What follows from the admission 1 It esta- blishes no new truth, it gives us no additional in- sight into our hidden nature, neither its action nor itself. Philosophy, impatient as it may be to build, has much work yet remaining, as pioneer for the overgrowth of ages. It makes one step to- wards this object j it destroys error, and the roots of error. It leaves, what it is too often the duty of the reformer in political and ethical questions to leave, a vacancy. It reduces the mind to that freedom in which it would have acted, but for the misuse of words and signs, the instruments of its own creation. By signs, I would be understood in a wide sense, including what is properly meant by that term, and what I peculiarly mean. In this latter sense, almost all familiar objects are signs^ standing, not for themselves, but for others, in their capacity of suggesting one thought which shall lead to a train of thoughts. Our whole life is thus an education of error. «* Let us recollect our sensations as children. What a distinct and intense apprehension had we of the world and of ourselves ! Many of the cir- cumstances of social life were then important to us which are now no longer so. But that is not the point of comparison on which I mean to insist. We less habitually distinguished all that we saw and felt, from ourselves. They seemed as it were to constitute one mass. There are some persons who, in this respect, are always children. Those who are subject to the state called reverie, feel as if their nature were dissolved into the surrounding universe, or as if the surrounding universe were absorbed into their being. They are conscious of no distinction. And these are states which pre- cede, or accompany, or follow an unusually intense and vivid apprehension of life. As men grow up this power commonly decays, and they become mechanical and habitual agents. * Thus feelings and then reasonings are the combined result of a multitude of entangled thoughts, and of a series of what are called impressions, planted by reiteration. The view of life presented by the most refined deductions of the intellectual philosophy, is that of unity. Nothing exists but as it is perceived. The difference is merely nominal between those two classes of thought, which are vulgarly distin- guished by the names of ideas and of external objects. Pursuing the same thread of reasoning, the existence of distinct individual minds, similar to that which is employed in now questioning its own nature, is likewise found to be a delusion. The words 7, you, they, are not signs of any actual difference subsisting between the assemblage of thoughts thus indicated, but are merely marks employed to denote the different modifications of the one mind. Let it not be supposed that this doctrine con- ducts to the monstrous presumption that I, the person who now write and think, am that one mind. I am but a portion of it. The words / and you, and they are grammatical devices invented simply for arrangement, and totally devoid of the intense and exclusive sense usually attached to them. It is difficult to find terms adequate to express so subtle a conception as that to which the Intellectual Philosophy has conducted us. We are on that verge where words abandon us, and what wonder if we grow dizzy to look down the dark abyss of how little we know. The relations of things remain unchanged, by whatever system. By the word things is to be un- derstood any object of thought, that is any thought upon which any other thought is employed, with an apprehension of distinction. The relations of these remain unchanged ; and such is the material of our knowledge. What is the cause of life % that is, how was it produced, or what agencies distinct from life have acted or act upon life \ All recorded generations of mankind have wearily busied themselves in inventing answers to this question ; and the result has been, — Religion. Yet, that the basis of all things cannot be, as the popular philosophy alleges, mind, is sufficiently evident. Mind, as far as we have any experience of its properties, and beyond that experience how vain is argument ! cannot create, it can only perceive. It is said also to be the cause. But cause is only a word expressing a certain state of the human mind with regard to the manner in which two thoughts are apprehended to be related to each other. If any one desires to ON A FUTURE STATE. 57 know how unsatisfactorily the popular philosophy employs itself upon this great question, they need only impartially reflect upon the manner in which thoughts develop themselves in their minds. It is infinitely improbable that the cause of mind, that is, of existence, is similar to mind. ON A FUTURE STATE. It has been the persuasion of an immense majority of human beings in all ages and nations that we continue to live after death, — that apparent termination of all the functions of sensitive and intellectual existence. Nor has mankind been contented with supposing that species of existence which some philosophers have asserted ; namely, the resolution of the component parts of the mechanism of a living being into its elements, and the impossibility of the minutest particle of these sustaining the smallest diminution. They have clung to the idea that sensibility and thought, which they have distinguished from the objects of it, under the several names of spirit and matter, is, in its own nature, less susceptible of division and decay, and that, when the body is resolved into its elements, the principle which animated it will remain perpetual and unchanged. Some philo- sophers — and those to whom we are indebted for the most stupendous discoveries in physical science, suppose, on the other hand, that intelligence is the mere result of certain combinations among the particles of its objects ; and those among them who believe that we live after death, recur to the interposition of a supernatural power, which shall overcome the tendency inherent in all material combinations, to dissipate and be absorbed into other forms. Let us trace the reasonings which in one and the other have conducted to these two opinions, and endeavour to discover what we ought to think on a question of such momentous interest. Let us analyse the ideas and feelings which constitute the contending beliefs, and watchfully establish a discrimination between words and thoughts. Let us bring the question to the test of experience and fact ; and ask ourselves, considering our nature in its entire extent, what light we derive from a sustained and comprehensive view of its compo- nent parts, which may enable us to ass'ert, with certainty, that we do or do not live after death. The examination of this subject requires that it should be stript of all those accessory topics which adhere to it in the common opinion of men. The existence of a God, and a future state of re- wards and punishments, are totally foreign to the subject. If it be proved that the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily can be drawn from that circumstance in favour of a future state. It has been asserted, indeed, that as goodness and justice are to be numbered among the attributes of the Deity, he will undoubtedly compensate the virtuous who suffer during life, and that he will make every sensitive being, who does not deserve punishment, happy for ever. But this view of the subject, which it would be tedious as well as superfluous to develop and expose, satisfies no person, and cuts the knot which we now seek to untie. Moreover, should it be proved, on the other hand, that the mysterious principle which regulates the proceedings of the universe, is neither intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to suppose at the same time, that the animating power survives the body which it has animated, by laws as independent of any super- natural agent as those through which it first be- came united with it. Nor, if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it will be a state of punishment or reward. By the word death, we express that condition in which natures resembling ourselves apparently cease to be that which they were. We no longer hear them speak, nor see them move. If they have sensations and apprehensions, we no longer participate in them. We know no more than that those external organs, and all that fine texture of material frame, without which we have no expe- rience that life or thought can subsist, are dissolved and scattered abroad. The body is placed under the earth, and after a certain period there remains no vestige even of its form. This is that contem- plation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow eclipses the brightness of the world. The common observer is struck with dejection at the spectacle. He contends in vain against the persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed cease to be. The corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. Those who have preceded him, and whose voice was delightful to his ear ; whose touch met his like sweet and subtle fire ; whose aspect spread a visionary light upon his path — these he cannot meet again. The organs of sense are destroyed, 58 ON A FUTURE STATE. and the intellectual operations dependent on them have perished with their sources. How can a corpse see or feel ? its eye» are eaten out, and its heart is black and without motion. What inter- course can two heaps of putrid clay and crumbling bones hold together ? When you can discover where the fresh colours of the faded flower abide, or the music of the broken lyre, seek life among the dead. Such are the anxious and fearful con- templations of the common observer, though the popular religion often prevents him from confessing them even to himself. The natural philosopher, in addition to the sensations common to all men inspired by the event of death, believes that he sees with more certainty that it is attended with the annihilation of sentiment and thought. He observes the mental powers increase and fade with those of the body, and even accommodate themselves to the most transitory changes of our physical nature. Sleep suspends many of the faculties of the vital and intellectual principle ; drunkenness and disease will either temporarily or permanently derange them. Madness or idiotcy may utterly extinguish the most excellent and delicate of those powers. In old age the mind gradually withers ; and as it grew and was strengthened with the body, so does it together with the body sink into decrepitude. Assuredly these are convincing evidences that so soon as the organs of the body are subjected to the laws of inanimate matter, sensation, and perception, and apprehension, are at an end. It is probable that what we call thought is not an actual being, but no more than the relation between certain parts of that infinitely varied mass, of which the rest of the universe is composed, and which ceases to exist so soon as those parts change their position with regard to each other. Thus colour, and sound, and taste, and odour exist only relatively. But let thought be considered as some peculiar sub- stance, which permeates, and is the cause of, the animation of living beings. Why should that sub- stance be assumed to be something essentially dis- tinct from all others, and exempt from subjection to those laws from which no other substance is exempt % It differs, indeed, from all other sub- stances, as electricity, and light, and magnetism, and the constituent parts of air and earth, severally differ from all others. Each of these is subject to change and to decay, and to conversion into other forms. Yet the difference between light and earth is scarcely greater than that which exists between life, or thought, and fire. The difference between the two former was never alleged as an argument for the eternal permanence of either, in that form under which they first might offer themselves to our notice. Why should the difference between the two latter substances be an argument for the prolongation of the existence of one and not the other, when the existence of both has arrived at their apparent termination \ To say that fire exists without manifesting any of the properties of fire, such as light, heat, &c, or that the principle of life exists without consciousness, or memory, or desire, or motive, is to resign, by an awkward dis- tortion of language, the affirmative of the dispute. To say that the principle of life may exist in dis- tribution among various forms, is to assert what cannot be proved to be either true or false, but which, were it true, annihilates all hope of exist- ence after death, in any sense in which that event can belong to the hopes and fears of men. Sup- pose, however, that the intellectual and vital principle differs in the most marked and essential manner from all other known substances ; that they have all some resemblance between them- selves which it in no degree participates. In what manner can this concession be made an argument for its imperishability ? All that we see or, know perishes and is changed. Life and thought differ indeed from everything else. But that it survives that period, beyond which we have no experience of its existence, such distinction and dissimilarity affords no shadow of proof, and nothing but our own desires could have led us to conjecture or imagine. Have we existed before birth ? It is difficult to conceive the possibility of this. There is, in the generative principle of each animal and plant, a power which converts the substances by which it is surrounded into a substance homogeneous with itself. That is, the relations between certain elementary particles of matter undergo a change, and submit to new combinations. For when we use the words principle, power, cause, &c, we mean to express no real being, but only to class under those terms a certain series of co-existing pheno- mena ; but let it be supposed that this principle is a certain substance which escapes the observation of the chemist and anatomist. It certainly may be; though it is sufficiently unphilosophical to allege the possibility of an opmion as a proof of its truth. Does it see, hear, feel, before its combina- tion with those organs on which sensation depends ? Does it reason, imagine, apprehend, without those ideas which sensation alone can communicate ? If we have not existed before birth ; if, at the period when the parts of our nature on which thought and life depend, seem to be woven together, they are woven together ; if there are no reasons to suppose that we have existed before that period at which our existence apparently commences, SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. 59 then there are no grounds for supposition that we shall continue to exist after our existence has apparently ceased. So far as thought and life is concerned, the same will take plaee with regard to us, individually considered, after death, as had place before our birth. It is said that it is possible that we should con- tinue to exist in some mode totally inconceivable to us at present. This is a most unreasonable pre- sumption. It casts on the adherents of annihila- tion the burthen of proving the negative of a ques- tion, the affirmative of which is nonsupported by a single argument, and which, by its very nature, lies beyond the experience of the human understand- ing. It is sufficiently easy, indeed, to form any proposition, concerning which we are ignorant, just not so absurd as not to be contradictory in itself, and defy refutation. The possibility of whatever enters into the wildest imagination to conceive is thus triumphantly vindicated. But it is enough that such assertions should be either contradictory to the known laws of nature, or exceed the limits of our experience, that their fallacy or irrelevancy to our consideration should be demonstrated. They persuade, indeed, only those who desire to be persuaded. This desire to be for ever as we are ; the reluct- ance to a violent and unexperienced change, which is common to all tfie animated and inanimate com- binations of the universe, is, indeed, the secret persuasion which has given birth to the opinions of a future state. SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. I. — THE MIND. I. It is an axiom in mental philosophy, that we can think of nothing which we have not perceived. When I say that we can think of nothing, I mean, we can imagine nothing, we can reason of nothing, we can remember nothing, we can foresee nothing. The most astonishing combinations of poetry, the subtlest deductions of logic and mathematics, are no other than combinations which the intellect makes of sensations according to its own laws. A catalogue of all the thoughts of the mind, and of all their possible modifications, is a cyclopedic history of the universe. But, it will be objected, the inhabitants of the various planets of this and other solar systems ; and the existence of a Power bearing the same relation to all that we perceive and are, as what we call a cause does to what we call effect, were never subjects of sensation, and yet the laws of mind ; almost universally suggest, according to the various disposition of each, a conjecture, a persuasion, or a conviction of their existence. The reply is simple ; these thoughts are also to be included in the cata- logue of existence ; they are modes in which thoughts are combined ; the objection only adds force to the conclusion, that beyond the limits of perception and thought nothing can exist. Thoughts, or ideas, or notions, call them what you will, differ from each other, not in kind, but in force. It has commonly been supposed that those distinct thoughts which affect a number of persons, at regular intervals, during the passage of a multitude of other thoughts, which are called real, or external objects, are totally different in kind from those which affect only a few persons, and which recur at irregular intervals, and are usually more obscure and indistinct, such as hallucinations, dreams, and the ideas of madness. No essential distinction between any one of these ideas, or any class of them, is founded on a correct observation of the nature of things, but merely on a considera- tion of what thoughts are most invariably sub- servient to the security and happiness of life ; and if nothing more were expressed by the distinction, the philosopher might safely accommodate his language to that of the vulgar. But they pretend to assert an essential difference, which has no foundation in truth, and which suggests a narrow and false conception of universal nature, the parent of the most fatal errors in speculation. A specific difference between every thought of the mind, is, indeed, a necessary consequence of that law by which it perceives diversity and number ; but a generic and essential difference is wholly arbitrary. The principle of the agreement and similarity of all thoughts, is, that they are all thoughts ; the principle of their disagreement consists in the variety and irregularity of the occasions on which they arise in the mind. That in which they agree, to that in which they differ, is as everything to nothing. Important distinctions, of various degrees of force, indeed, are to be established between them, if they were, as they may be, sub- jects of ethical and oeconomical discussion ; but that is a question altogether distinct. By considering all knowledge as bounded by 60 SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. perception, whose operations may be indefinitely combined, we arrive at a conception of Nature in- expressibly more magnificent, simple and true, than accords with -the ordinary systems of complicated and partial consideration. Nor does a contem- plation of the universe, in this comprehensive and synthetical view, exclude the subtlest analysis of its modifications and parts. A scale might be formed, graduated according to the degrees of a combined ratio of intensity, duration, connection, periods of recurrence, and utility, which would be the standard, according to which all ideas might be measured, and an uninterrupted chain of nicely shadowed distinctions would be observed, from the faintest impression on the senses, to the most distinct combination of those impressions ; from the simplest of those combinations, to that mass of knowledge which, including our own nature, constitutes what we call the universe. We are intuitively conscious of our own ex- istence, and of that connection in the train of our successive ideas, which we term our identity. We are conscious also of the existence of other minds ; but not intuitively. Our evidence, with respect to the existence of other minds, is founded upon a very complicated relation of ideas, which it is foreign to the purpose of this treatise to anatomise. The basis of this relation is, undoubtedly, a peri- odical recurrence of masses of ideas, which our voluntary determinations have, in one peculiar direction, no power to circumscribe or to arrest, and against the recurrence of which they can only imperfectly provide. The irresistible laws of thought constrain us to believe that the precise limits of our actual ideas are not the actual limits of possible ideas ; the law, according to which these deductions are drawn, is called analogy ; and this is the foundation of all our inferences, from one idea to another, inasmuch as they resemble each other. We see trees, houses, fields, living beings in our own shape, and in shapes more or less analogous to our own. These are perpetually changing the mode of their existence relatively to us. To ex- press the varieties of these modes, we say, we move, they move ; and as this motion is continual, though not uniform, we express our conception of the diversities of its course by — it has been, it is, it shall be. These diversities are events or objects, and are essential, considered relatively to human identity, for the existence of the human mind. For if the inequalities, produced by what has been termed the operations of the external universe were levelled by the perception of our being, uniting, and filling up their interstices, motion and mensuration, and time, and space ; the elements of the human mind being thus abstracted, sensation and imagination cease. Mind cannot be considered pure. II. — WHAT METAPHYSICS ARE. ERRORS IN THE USUAL METHODS OF CONSIDERING THEM. We do not attend sufficiently to what passes within ourselves. We combine words, combined a thousand times before. In our minds we assume entire opinions ; and in the expression of those opinions, entire phrases, when we would philoso- I phise. Our whole style of expression and senti- ment is infected with the tritest plagiarisms. Our words are dead, our thoughts are cold and bor- rowed. Let us contemplate facts ; let us, in the great study of ourselves, resolutely compel the mind to a rigid consideration of itself. We are not content with conjecture, and inductions, and syllogisms, in sciences regarding external objects. As in these, let us also, in considering the phenomena of mind, severely collect those facts which cannot be dis- puted. Metaphysics will thus possess this conspi- cuous advantage over every other science, that each student, by attentively referring to his own mind, may ascertain the authorities upon which any assertions regarding it are supported. There \ can thus be no deception, we ourselves being the depositaries of the evidence of the subject which we consider. Metaphysics may be defined as an inquiry con- cerning those things belonging to, or connected with, the internal nature of man. It is said that mind produces motion ; and it might as well have been said, that motion pro- duces mind. III. — DIFFICULTY OF ANALYZING THE HUMAN MIND. If it were possible that a person should give a faithful history of his being, from the earliest epochs of his recollection, a picture would be pre- sented such as the world has never contemplated before. A mirror would be held up to all men in which they might behold their own recollections, and, in dim perspective, their shadowy hopes and fears, — all that they dare not, or that daring and desiring, they could not expose to the open eyes of day. But thought can with difficulty visit the intricate and winding chambers which it inhabits. It is like a river whose rapid and perpetual stream flows outwards ; — like one in dread who speeds through the recesses of some haunted pile, and SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. 61 dares not look behind. The caverns of the mind are obscure, and shadowy ; or pervaded with a lustre, beautifully bright indeed, but shining not beyond their portals. If it were possible to be where we have been, vitally and indeed — if, at the moment of our presence there, we could define the results of our experience, — if the passage from sen- sation to reflection — from a state of passive per- ception to voluntary contemplation, were not so dizzying and so tumultuous, this attempt would be less difficult. IV. — HOW THE ANALYSIS SHOULD BE CARRIED ON. Most of the errors of philosophers have arisen from considering the human being in a point of view too detailed and circumscribed. He is not a moral, and an intellectual, — but also, and pre-emi- nently, an imaginative being. His own mind is his law ; his own mind is all things to him. If we would arrive at any knowledge which should be serviceable from the practical conclusions to which it leads, we ought to consider the mind of man and the universe as the great whole on which to exercise our speculations. Here, above all, verbal disputes ought to be laid aside, though this has long been their chosen field of battle. It imports little to inquire whether thought be distinct from the objects of thought. The use of the words external and internal, as applied to the establish- ment of this distinction, has been the symbol and the source of much dispute. This is merely an affair of words, and as the dispute deserves, to say, that when speaking of the objects of thought, we indeed only describe one of the forms of thought — or that, speaking of thought, we only apprehend one of the operations of the universal system of V. — CATALOGUE OP THE PHENOMENA OF DREAMS, AS CONNECTING SLEEPING AND WAKING. 1. Let us reflect on our infancy, and give as faithfully as possible a relation of the events of And first I am bound to present a faithful pic- ture of my own peculiar nature relatively to sleep. I do not doubt that were every individual to imitate me, it would be found that among many circumstances peculiar to their individual nature, a sufficiently general resemblance would be found to prove the connection existing between those pecu- liarities and the most universal phenomena. I shall employ caution, indeed, as to the facts which I state, that they contain nothing false or ex- aggerated. But they contain no more than certain elucidations of my own nature ; concerning the degree in which it resembles, or differs from, that of others, I am by no means accurately aware. It is sufficient, however, to caution the reader against drawing general inferences from particular instances. I omit the general instances of delusion in fever or delirium, as well as mere dreams considered in themselves. A delineation of this subject, however inexhaustible and interesting, is to be passed over. What is the connection of sleeping and of waiving % 2. I distinctly remember dreaming three several times, between intervals of two or more years, the same precise dream. It was not so much what is ordinarily called a dream ; the single image, unconnected with all other images, of a youth who was educated at the same school with myself, pre- sented itself in sleep. Even now, after the lapse of many years, I can never hear the name of this youth, without the three places where I dreamed of him presenting themselves distinctly to my mind. 3. In dreams, images acquire associations pe- culiar to dreaming ; so that the idea of a particular house, when it recurs a second time in dreams, will have relation with the idea of the same house, in the first time, of a nature entirely different from that which the house excites, when seen or thought of in relation to waking ideas. 4. I have beheld scenes, with the intimate and unaccountable connection of which with the ob- scure parts of my own nature, I have been irre- sistibly impressed. I have beheld a scene which has produced no unusual effect on my thoughts. After the lapse of many years I have dreamed of this scene. It has hung on my memory, it has haunted my thoughts, at intervals, with the per- tinacity of an object connected with human affec- tions. I have visited this scene again. Neither the dream could be dissociated from the landscape, nor the landscape from the dream, nor feelings, such as neither singly could have awakened, fi*om both. But the most remarkable event of this nature, which ever occurred to me, happened five years ago at Oxford. I was walking with a friend, in the neighbourhood of that city, engaged in earnest and interesting conversation. We suddenly turned the corner of a lane, and the view, which its high banks and hedges had concealed, presented itself. The view consisted of a windmill, standing in one among many plashy meadows, inclosed with stone walls ; the irregular and broken ground, between the wall and the road on which we stood ; a long low hill behind the windmill, and a grey covering <;-2 SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. of uniform cloud spread over the evening sky. It was that season when the last leaf had just fallen from the scant and stunted ash. The scene surely was a common scene ; the season and the hour little calculated to kindle lawless thought ; it was a tame uninteresting assemblage of objects, such as would drive the imagination for refuge in serious and sober talk, to the evening fireside, and the dessert of whiter fruits and wine. The effect which it produced on me was not such as could have been expected. I suddenly remembered to have seen that exact scene in some dream of long * FRAGMENTS SPECULATIONS ON MORALS I. PLAN OF A TREATISE ON MORALS. That great science which regards nature and the operations of the human mind, is popularly divided into Morals and Metaphysics. The latter relates to a just classification, and the assignment of distinct names to its ideas ; the former regards simply the determination of that arrangement of them which produces the greatest and most solid happiness. It is admitted that a virtuous or moral action, is that action which, when considered in all its accessories and consequences, is fitted to pro- duce the highest pleasure to the greatest number of sensitive beings. The laws according to which all pleasure, since it cannot be equally felt by all sensitive beings, ought to be distributed by a volun- tary agent, are reserved for a separate chapter. The design of this little treatise is restricted to the development of the elementary principles of morals. As far as regards that purpose, meta- physical science will be treated merely so far as a source of negative truth ; whilst morality will be considered as a science, respecting which we can arrive at positive conclusions. The misguided imaginations of men have ren- dered the ascertaining of what is not true, the principal direct service which metaphysical science can bestow upon moral science. Moral science itself is the doctrine of the voluntary actions of man, as a sentient and social being. These actions depend on the thoughts in his mind. But there is a mass of popular opinion, from which the most enlightened persons are seldom wholly free, into the truth or falsehood of which it is incumbent on us to inquire, before we can arrive at any firm conclusions as to the conduct which we ought to pursue in the regulation of our own minds, or towards our fellow-beings ; or before we can ascertain the elementary laws, according to which these thoughts, from which these actions flow, are originally combined. The object of the forms according to which human society is administered, is the happiness of the individuals composing the communities which they regard, and these forms are perfect or imper- fect in proportion to the degree in which they promote this end. * This object is not merely the quantity of happi- ness enjoyed by individuals as sensitive beings, but the mode in which it should be distributed among them as social beings. It is not enough, if such a coincidence can be conceived as possible, that one person or class of persons should enjoy the highest happiness, whilst another is suffering a disproportionate degree of misery. It is necessary that the happhiess produced by the common efforts, and preserved by the common care, should be distributed according to the just claims of each individual ; if not, although the quantity produced should be the same, the end of society would remain unfulfilled. The object is in a compound proportion to the quantity of happiness produced, and the correspondence of the mode in which it is distributed, to the elementary feelings of man as a social being. The disposition in an individual to promote this object is called virtue ; and the two constituent parts of virtue, benevolence and justice, are cor- relative with these two great portions of the only true object of all voluntary actions of a human being. Benevolence is the desire to be the author * Here I was obliged to leave off, overcome by thrilling horror. This remark closes this fragment, which was written in 1815. I remember well his coming to me from writing it, pale and agitated, to seek refuge in conver- sation from the fearful emotions it excited. No man, as these fragments prove, had such keen sensations as Shelley. His nervous temperament was wound up by the delicacy of his health to an intense degree of sensibility, and while his active mind pondered for ever upon, and drew con- clusions from his sensations, his reveries increased their vivacity, till they mingled with, and made one with thought, and both became absorbing and tumultuous, even to physical pain. — M. S. SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 63 of good, and justice the apprehension of the manner in which good ought to be done. Justice and benevolence result from the ele- mentary laws of the human mind. CHAPTER I. ON THE NATURE OF VIRTUE. Sect. 1. General View of the Nature and Objects of Vir- tue. — 2. The Origin and Basis of Virtue, as founded on the Elementary Principles of Mind.— 3. The Laws which flow from the nature oT Mind regulating the application of those principles to human actions. — 4. Virtue, a possible attribute of man. We exist in the midst of a multitude of beings like ourselves, upon whose happiness most of our actions exert some obvious and decisive influence. The regulation of this influence is the object of moral science. We know that we are susceptible of receiving painful or pleasurable impressions of greater or less intensity and duration. That is called good which produces pleasure ; that is called evil winch pro- duces pain. These are general names, applicable to every class of causes, from which an overbalance of pain or pleasure may result. But when a human being is the active instrument of generating or diffusing happiness, the principle through which it is most effectually instrumental to that purpose, is called virtue. And benevolence, or the desire to be the author of good, united with justice, or an apprehension of the manner in which that good is to be done, constitutes virtue. But, wherefore should a man be benevolent and just ? The immediate emotions of his nature, especially in its most inartificial state, prompt him to inflict pain, and to arrogate dominion. He desires to heap superfluities to his own store, although others perish with famine. He is pro- pelled to guard against the smallest invasion of his own liberty, though he reduces others to a condi- tion of the most pitiless servitude. He is revenge- ful, proud and selfish. Wherefore should he curb these propensities ? It is inquired, for what reason a human being should engage in procuring the happiness, or re- frain from producing the pain of another ? When a reason is required to prove the necessity of adopting any system of conduct, what is it that the objector demands ? He requires proof of that system of conduct being such as will most effectu- ally promote the happiness of mankind. To demonstrate this, is to render a moral reason. Such is the object of Virtue. A common sophism, which, like many others, depends on the abuse of a metaphorical expression to a literal purpose, has produced much of the confusion which has involved the theory of morals. It is said that no person is bound to be just or kind, if, on his neglect, he should fail to incur some penalty. Duty is obligation. There can be no obligation without an obliger. Virtue is a law, to which it is the will of the lawgiver that we should conform ; which will we should in no manner be bound to obey, unless some dreadful punishment were attached to disobedience. This is the philosophy of slavery and superstition. In fact, no person can be hound or obliged, without some power preceding to bind and oblige. If I observe a man bound hand and foot, I know that some one bound him. But if I observe him returning self-satisfied from the performance of some action, by which he has been the willing author of extensive benefit, I do not infer that the anticipation of hellish agonies, or the hope of heavenly reward, has constrained him to such an act.* ***** It remains to be stated in what manner the sensations which constitute the basis of virtue originate in the human mind ; what are the laws which it receives there ; how far the principles of mind allow it to be an attribute of a human being ; and, lastly, what is the probability of persuading mankind to adopt it as a universal and systematic motive of conduct. BENEVOLENCE. . There is a class of emotions which we instinct- ively avoid. A human being, such as is man con- sidered in his origin, a child a month old, has a very imperfect consciousness of the existence of other natures resembling itself. All the energies of its being are directed to the extinction of the pains with which it is perpetually assailed. At length it discovers that it is surrounded by natures susceptible of sensations similar to its own. It is very late before children attain to this knowledge. If a child observes, without emotion, its nurse or its mother suffering acute pain, it is attributable rather to ignorance than insensibility. So soon as the accents and gestures, significant of pain, are referred to the feelings which they express, they awaken in the mind of the beholder a desire that they should cease. Pain is thus apprehended to be evil for its own sake, without any other necessary reference to the mind by which its existence is perceived, than such as is indispensable to its per- ception. The tendencies of our original sensations, indeed, all have for their object the preservation of our. individual being. But these are passive * A leaf of manuscript is wanting here, manifestly treat- ing of self-love and disinterestedness — M. S. 64 SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. and unconscious. In proportion as the mind acquires an active power, the empire of these ten- dencies becomes limited. Thus an infant, a savage, and a solitary beast, is selfish, because its mind is incapable of receiving an accurate intimation of the nature of pain as existing in beings resembling itself. The inhabitant of a highly civilised com- munity will more acutely sympathise with the sufferings and enjoyments of others, than the inha- bitant of a society of a less degree of civilisation. He who shall have cultivated his intellectual powers by familiarity with the highest specimens of poetry and philosophy, will usually sympathise more than one engaged in the less refined functions of manual labour. Every one has experience of the fact, that to sympathise with the sufferings of another, is to enjoy a transitory oblivion of his own. The mind thus acquires, by exercise, a habit, as it were, of perceiving and abhorring evil, however remote from the immediate sphere of sensations with which that individual mind is conversant. Imagination or mind employed in prophetically imaging forth its objects, is that faculty of human nature on which every gradation of its progress, nay, every, the minutest, change, depends. Pain or pleasure, if subtly analysed, will be found to consist entirely in prospect. The only distinction between the selfish man and the virtuous man is, that the imagination of the former is confined within a narrow limit, whilst that of the latter embraces a comprehensive circumference. In this sense, wisdom and virtue may be said to be inseparable, and criteria of each other. Selfishness is the offspring of ignorance and mistake ; it is the portion of unreflecting infancy, and savage soli- tude, or of those whom toil or evil occupations have blunted or rendered torpid ; disinterested benevolence is the product of a cultivated imagina- tion, and has an intimate connexion with all the arts which add ornament, or dignity, or power, or stability to the social state of man. Virtue is thus entirely a refinement of civilised life ; a creation of the human mind ; or, rather, a combination which it has made, according to elementary rules contained within itself, of the feelings suggested by the relations established between man and man. All the theories which have refined and exalted humanity, or those which have been devised as alleviations of its mistakes and evils, have been based upon the elementary emotions of disinterest- edness, which we feel to constitute the majesty of our nature. Patriotism, as it existed in the ancient republics, was never, as has been supposed, a cal- culation of personal advantages. When Mutius Scsevola thrust his hand into the burning coals, and Regulus returned to Carthage, and Epicharis sustained the rack silently, in the torments of which she knew that she would speedily perish, rather than betray the conspirators to the tyrant ;* these illustrious persons certainly made a small estimate of their private interest. If it be said that they sought posthumous fame ; instances are not want- ing in history which prove that men have even defied infamy for the sake of good. But there is a great error in the world with respect to the selfishness of fame. It is certainly possible that a person should seek distinction as a medium of personal gratification. But the love of fame is frequently no more than a desire that the feelings of others should confirm, illustrate, and sympathise with, our own. In this respect it is allied with all that draws us out of ourselves. It is the "last infirmity of noble minds." Chivalry was likewise founded 'on the theory of self-sacrifice. Love possesses so extraordinary a power over the human heart, only because disinterestedness is united with the natural propensities. These propensities them- selves are comparatively impotent in cases where the imagination of pleasure to be given, as well as to be received, does not enter into the account. Let it not be objected that patriotism, and chi- valry, and sentimental love, have been the fountains of enormous mischief. They are cited only to establish the proposition that, according to the elementary principles of mind, man is capable of desiring and pursuing good for its own sake. JUSTICE. The benevolent propensities are thus inherent in the human mind. We are impelled to seek the happiness of others. We experience a satis- faction in being the authors of that happiness. Everything that fives is open to impressions of pleasure and pain. We are led by our benevolent propensities to regard every human being indif- ferently with whom we come in contact. They have preference only with respect to those who offer themselves most obviously to our notice. Human beings are indiscriminating and blind ; they will avoid inflicting pain, though that pain should be attended with eventual benefit ; they will seek to confer pleasure without calculating the mischief that may result. They benefit one at the expense of many. There is a sentiment in the human mind that re- gulates benevolence in its application as a principle of action. This is the sense of justice. Justice, as well as benevolence, is an elementary law of human nature. It is through this principle that men are impelled to distribute any means of pleasure which * Tacitus. SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 65 benevolence may suggest the communication of to others, in equal portions among an equal number of applicants. If ten men are shipwrecked on a desert island, they distribute whatever subsistence may remain to them, into equal portions among themselves. If six of them conspire to deprive the remaining four of their share, their conduct is termed unjust. The existence of pain has been shown to be a circumstance which the human mmd regards with dissatisfaction, and of which it desires the cessa- tion. It is equally according to its nature to desire that the advantages to be enjoyed by a limited number of persons should be enjoyed equally by all. This proposition is supported by the evidence of indisputable facts. Tell some ungarbled tale of a number of persons being made the victims of the enjoyments of one, and he who would appeal in favour of any system which might produce such an evil to the primary emotions of our nature, would have nothing to reply. Let two persons, equally strangers, make application for some benefit in the possession of a third to bestow, and to which he feels that they have an equal claim. They are both sensitive beings ; pleasure and pain affect them alike. CHAPTER II. It is foreign to the general scope of this little Treatise to encumber a simple argument by con- troverting any of the trite objections of habit or fanaticism. But there are two ; the first, the basis of all political mistake, and the second, the prolific cause and effect of religious error, which it seems useful to refute. First, it is inquired, " Wherefore should a man be benevolent and just 1" The answer has been given in the preceding chapter. If a man persists to inquire why he ought to promote the happiness of mankind, he demands a mathematical or metaphysical reason for a moral action. The absurdity of this scepticism is more apparent, but not less real than the exacting a moral reason for a mathematical or metaphysical fact. If any person should refuse to admit that all the radii of a circle are of equal length, or that human actions are necessarily determined by motives, until it could be proved that these radii and these actions uniformly tended to the produc- tion of the greatest general good, who would not wonder at the unreasonable and capricious asso- ciation of his ideas ? The writer of a philosophical treatise may, I imagine, at this advanced era of human intellect, be held excused from entering into a controversy with those reasoners, if such there are, who would claim an exemption from its decrees in favour of any one among those diversified systems of obscure opinion respecting morals, which, under the name of religions, have in various ages and countries pre- vailed among mankind. Besides that if, as these reasoners have pretended, eternal torture or happi- ness will ensue as the consequence of certain actions, we should be no nearer the possession of a standard to determine what actions were right and wrong, even if this pretended revelation, which is by no means the case, had furnished us with a complete catalogue of them. The character of actions as virtuous or vicious would by no means be determined alone by the personal advantage or disadvantage of each moral agent individually con- sidered. Indeed, an action is often virtuous in proportion to the greatness of the personal calamity which the author willingly draws upon himself by daring to perform it. It is because an action pro- duces an overbalance of pleasure or pain to the greatest number of sentient beings, and not merely because its consequences are beneficial or injurious to the author of that action, that it is good or evil. Nay, this latter consideration has a tendency to pollute the purity of virtue, inasmuch as it consists in the motive rather than in the consequences of an action. A person who should labour for the hap- piness of mankind lest he should be tormented eternally in Hell, would, with reference to that motive, possess as little claim to the epithet of vir- tuous, as he who should torture, imprison, and burn them alive, a more usual and natural con- sequence of such principles, for the sake of the enjoyments of Heaven. My neighbour, presuming on his strength, may direct me to perform or to refrain from a par- ticular action ; indicating a certain arbitrary pe- nalty in the event of disobedience within his power to inflict. My action, if modified by his menaces, can in no degree participate in virtue. He has afforded me no criterion as to what is right or wrong. A king, or an assembly of men, may publish a proclamation affixing any penalty to any par- ticular action, but that is not immoral because such penalty is affixed. Nothing is more evident than that the epithet of virtue is inapplicable to the re- fraining from that action on accoimt of the evil arbitrarily attached to it. If the action is in itself beneficial, virtue would rather consist in not re- fraining from it, but in firmly defying the personal consequences attached to its performance. Some usurper of supernatural energy might 66 SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. subdue the whole globe to his power ; he might possess new and unheard-of resources for enduing his punishments with the most terrible attributes of pain. The torments of his victims might be in- tense in their degree, and protracted to an infinite duration. Still the « will of the lawgiver " would afford no surer criterion as to what actions were right or wrong. It would only increase the pos- sible virtue of those who refuse to become the instruments of his tyranny- II. — MORAL SCIENCE CONSISTS IN CONSIDERING THE DIFFERENCE, NOT THE RESEMBLANCE, OF PERSONS. The internal influence, derived from the consti- tution of the mind from which they flow, produces that peculiar modification of actions, which makes them intrinsically good or evil. To attain an apprehension of the importance of this distinction, let us visit, in imagination, the pro- ceedings of some metropolis. Consider the multi- tude of human beings who inhabit it, and survey, in thought, the actions of the several classes into which they are divided. Their obvious actions are apparently uniform : the stability of human society seems to be maintained sufficiently by the uniformity of the conduct of its members, both with regard to themselves, and with regard to others. The labourer arises at a certain hour, and applies himself to the task enjoined him. The functionaries of government and law are regularly employed in their offices and courts. The trader holds a train of conduct from which he never deviates. The ministers of religion employ an accustomed language, and maintain a decent and equable regard; The army is drawn forth, the motions of every soldier are such as they were expected to be ; the general commands, and his words are echoed from troop to troop. The do- mestic actions of men are, for the most part, un- distinguishable one from the other, at a superficial glance. The actions which are classed under the general appellation of marriage, education, friend- ship, &c, are perpetually going on, and to a super- ficial glance, are similar one to the other. But, if we would see the truth of things, they must be stripped of this fallacious appearance of uniformity. In truth, no one action has, when considered in its whole extent, any essential re- semblance with any other. Each individual, who composes the vast multitude which we have been contemplating, has a* peculiar frame of mind, which, whilst the features of the great mass of his actions remain uniform, impresses the minuter lineaments with its peculiar hues. Thus, whilst his fife, as a whole, is like the lives of other men, in detail, it is most unlike ; and the more sub- divided the actions become ; that is, the more they enter into that class which have a vital influence on the happiness of others and his own, so much the more are they distinct from those of other men. ." Those little, nameless unremembered acts Of kindness and of love," as well as those deadly outrages which are in- flicted by a look, a word — or less — the! very refraining from some faint and most evanescent expression of countenance ; these flow from a profounder source than the series of our habitual conduct, which, it has been already said, derives its origin from without. These are the actions, and such as these, which make human fife what it is, and are the fountains of all the good and evil with which its entire surface is so widely and impar- tially overspread ; and though they are called minute, they are called so in compliance with the blindness of those who cannot estimate their im- portance. It is in the due appreciating the general effects of their peculiarities, and in cultivating the habit of acquiring decisive knowledge respecting the tendencies arising out of them in particular cases, that the most important part of moral science consists. The deepest abyss of these vast and multitudinous caverns, it is necessary that we should visit. This is the difference between social and indi- vidual man. Not that this distinction is to be con- sidered definite, or characteristic of one human being as compared with another, it denotes rather two classes of agency, common in a degree to every human being. None is exempt, indeed, from that species of influence which affects, as it were, the surface of his being, and gives the specific outline to his conduct. Almost all that is ostensible sub- mits to that legislature created by the general re- presentation of the past feelings of mankind — im- perfect as it is from a variety of causes, as it exists in the government, the religion, and domestic habits. Those who do not nominally, yet actually, submit to the same power. The external features of their conduct, indeed, can no more escape it, than the clouds can escape from the stream of the wind ; and his opinion, which he often hopes he has dispassionately secured from all contagion of prejudice and vulgarity, would be found, on ex- amination, to be the inevitable excrescence of the very usages from which he vehemently dissents. Internally all is conducted otherwise ; the effi- ciency, the essence, the vitality of actions, derives its colour from what is no ways contributed to from any external source. Like the plant, which while it derives the accident of its size and shape from the soil in which it springs, and is cankered, ION ; OR, THE ILIAD. c>7 or distorted, or inflated, yet retains those qualities which essentially divide it from all others ; so that hemlock continues to be poison, and the violet does not cease to emit its odour in whatever soil it may grow. We consider our own nature too superficially. We look on all that in ourselves with which we can discover a resemblance in others ; and con- sider those resemblances as the materials of moral knowledge. It is in the differences that it actually consists. ION; OR, OF CranslateO THE ILIAD; from $lato. Socrates and Ion. Socrates. — Hail to thee, Ion ! from whence returnest thou amongst us now ? — from thine own native Ephesus ? Ion. — No, Socrates ; I come from Epidaurus and the feasts in honour, of ^Esculapius. Socrates. — Had the Epidaurians instituted a contest of rhapsody in honour of the God ? Ion. — And not in rhapsodies alone ; there were contests in every species of music. Socrates. — And in which did you contend ? And what was the success of your efforts ? Ion. — I bore away the first prize at the games, O Socrates. Socrates. — Well done ! You have now only to consider how you shall win the Panathensea. Ion. — That may also happen, God willing. Socrates. — Your profession, Ion, has often appeared to me an enviable one. For, together with the nicest care of your person, and the most studied elegance of dress, it imposes upon you the necessity of a familiar acquaintance with many and excellent poets, and especially with Homer, the most admirable of them all. Nor is it merely because you can repeat the verses of this great poet, that I envy you, but because you fathom his inmost thoughts. For he is no rhapsodist who does not understand the whole scope and intention of the poet, and is not capable of interpreting it to his audience. This he cannot do without a full comprehension of the meaning of the author he undertakes to illustrate ; and worthy, indeed, of envy are those who can fulfil these conditions. Ion. — Thou speakest truth, Socrates. And, indeed, I have expended my study particularly on this part of my profession. I flatter myself that no man living excels me in the interpretation of Homer ; neither Metrodorus of Lampsacus, nor Stesimbrotus the Thasian, nor Glauco, nor any other rhapsodist of the present times can express so many various and beautiful thoughts upon Homer as I can. Socrates.— I am persuaded of your eminent skill, Ion. You will not, I hope, refuse me a specimen of it ? • Ion. — And, indeed, it would be worth your while to hear me declaim upon Homer. I deserve a golden crown from his admirers. Socrates. — And I will find leisure some day or other to request you to favour me so far. At present, I will only trouble you with one question. Do you excel in explaining Homer alone, or are you conscious of a similar power with regard to Hesiod and Archilochus ? Ion. — I possess this high degree of skill with regard to Homer alone, and I consider that suffi- cient. Socrates. — Are there any subjects upon which Homer and Hesiod gay the same things ? Ion. — Many, as it seems to me. Socrates. — Whether do you demonstrate these things better in Homer or Hesiod ? Ion. — In the same manner, doubtless ; inasmuch as they say the same words with regard to the same things. Socrates. — But with regard to those things in which they differ ; — Homer and Hesiod both treat of divination, do they not ? Ion. — Certainly. Socrates. — Do you think that you or a diviner would make the best exposition, respecting all that these poets say of divination, both as they agree and as they differ ? Ion. — A diviner probably. Socrates. — Suppose you were a diviner, do you not think that you could explain the discrepancies of those poets on the subject of your profession, if you understand their argument \ Ion. — Clearly so. Socrates. — How does it happen then that you are possessed of skill to illustrate Homer, and not Hesiod, or any other poet in an equal degree 1 Is the subject-matter of the poetry of Homer different from all other poets'? Does he not principally f 2 ea ION ; OR, THE ILIAD. treat of war and social intercourse, and of the distinct functions and characters of the brave man and the coward, the professional and private per- son, the mutual relations which subsist between the Gods and men ; together with the modes of their intercourse, the phsenomena of Heaven, the secrets of Hades, and the origin of Gods and heroes ? Are not these the materials from which Homer wrought his poem ? Ion. — Assuredly, Socrates. Socrates. — And the other poets, do they not treat of the same matter ? Ion. — Certainly : but not like Homer. Socrates. — How ! Worse 1 ; Ion. — Oh ! far worse. Socrates. — Then Homer treats of them better than they ? Ion. — Oh ! Jupiter ! — how much better ! Socrates. — Amongst a number of persons em- ployed in solving a problem of arithmetic, might not a person know, my dear Ion, which had given the right answer ? Ion. — Certainly. Socrates. — The same person who had been aware of the false one, or some other ? Ion. — The same, clearly. Socrates. — That is, some one who understood arithmetic 1 Ion. — Certainly. Socrates. — Among a number of persons giving their opinions on the wholesomeness of different foods, whether would one jperson be capable to pronounce upon the rectitude of the opinions of those who judged rightly, and another on the erroneousness of those which were incorrect, or would the same person be competent to decide respecting them both ? Ion. — The same, evidently. Socrates. — What would you call that person ? Ion. — A physician. Socrates. — We may assert then, universally, that the same person who is competent to deter- mine the truth, is competent also to determine the falsehood of whatever assertion is advanced on the same subject; and, it is manifest, that he who cannot judge respecting the falsehood, or unfitness of what is said upon a given subject, is equally incompetent to determine upon its truth or beauty % Ion. — Assuredly. Socrates. — The same person would then be competent or incompetent for both ? Ion.— Yes. Socrates.— Do you not say that Homer and the other poets, and among them Hesiod and Archi- lochus, speak of the same things, but unequally ; one better and the other worse ? Ion. — And I speak truth. Socrates. — But if you can judge of what is weD said by the one, you must also be able to judge of what is ill said by another, inasmuch as it expresses less correctly. Ion. — It should seem so. Socrates. — Then, my dear friend, we should not err if we asserted that Ion possessed a like power of illustration respecting Homer and all other poets ; especially since he confesses that the same person must be esteemed a competent judge of all those who speak on the same subjects ; inasmuch as those subjects are understood by him when spoken of by one, and the subject-matter of almost all the poets is the same. Ion. — What can be the reason then, Socrates, that when any other poet is the subject of conver- sation I cannot compel my attention, and I feel utterly unable to declaim anything worth talking of, and positively go to sleep % But when any one makes mention of Homer, my mind applies itself without effort ^to the subject ; I awaken as if it were from a trance, and a profusion of eloquent expressions suggest themselves involuntarily ? Socrates. — It is not difficult to suggest the cause of this, my dear friend. You are evidently unable to declaim on Homer according to art and know- ledge ; for did your art endow you with this faculty, you would be equally capable of exerting it with regard to any other of the poets. Is not poetry, as an art or a faculty, a thing entire and one ? Ion. — Assuredly. Socrates. — The same mode of consideration must be admitted with respect to all arts which are severally one and entire. Do you desire to hear what I understand by this, Ion ? Ion. — Yes, by Jupiter, Socrates, I am delighted with listening to you wise men. Socrates. — It is you who are wise, my dear Ion ; you rhapsodists, actors, and the authors of the poems you recite. I, like an unprofessional and private man, can only speak the truth. Ob- serve how common, vulgar, and level to the com- prehension of any one, is the question which I now ask relative to the same consideration belonging to one entire art. Is not painting an art whole and entire \ Ion. — Certainly. Socrates. — Did you ever know a person compe- tent to judge of the paintings of Polygnotus, the son of Aglaophon, and incompetent to judge of the production of any other painter ; who, on the sup- position of the works of other painters being exhi- bited to him, was wholly at a loss, and very much inclined to go to sleep, and lost all faculty of ION; OR, THE ILIAD. 69 reasoning on the subject ; but when his opinion was required of Polygnotus, or any one single painter you please, awoke, paid attention to the subject, and discoursed on it with great eloquence and sagacity ? Ion. — Never, by Jupiter ! Socrates. — Did you ever know any one very skilful in determining the merits of Daedalus, the son of Metion, Epius, the son of Panopus, Theo- dorus the Samian, or any other great sculptor, who was immediately at a loss, and felt sleepy the moment any other sculptor was mentioned ? Ion. — I never met with such a person certainly. Socrates. — Nor, do I think, that you ever met with a man professing himself a judge of poetry and rhapsody, and competent to criticise either Olympus, Thamyris, Orpheus, or Phemius of Ithaca, the rhapsodist, who, the moment he came to Ion the Ephesian, felt himself quite at a loss, utterly incompetent to judge whether he rhapso- dised well or ill. Ion.— I cannot refute you, Socrates, but of this I am conscious to myself : that I excel all men in the copiousness and beauty of my illustrations of Homer, as all who have heard me will confess, and with respect to other poets, I am deserted of this power. It is for you to consider what may be the cause of this distinction. Socrates. — I will tell you, O Ion, what appeal's to me to be the cause of this inequality of power. It is that you are not master of any art for the illustration of Homer, but it is a divine influence which moves you, like that which resides in the stone called Magnet by Euripides, and Heraclea by the people. For not only does this stone possess the power of attracting iron rings, but it can com- municate to them the power of attracting other rings ; so that you may see sometimes a long chain of rings, and other iron substances, attached and suspended one to the other by this influence. And as the power of the stone circulates through all the links of this series, and attaches each to each, so the Muse, communicating through those whom she has first inspired, to all others capable of sharing in the inspiration, the influence of that first enthu- siasm, creates a chain and a succession. For the authors of those great poems which we admire, do not attain to excellence through the rules of any art, but they utter their beautiful melodies of verse in a state of inspiration, and, as it were, possessed by a* spirit not their own. Thus the composers of lyrical poetry create those admired songs of theirs in a state of divine insanity, like the Corybantes, who lose all control over their reason in the enthu- siasm of the sacred dance ; and, during this super- natural possession, are excited to the rhythm and harmony which they communicate to men. Like the Bacchantes, who, when possessed by the God draw honey and milk from the rivers, hi which, when they come to their senses, they find nothing but simple water. For the souls of the poets, as poets tell us, have this peculiar ministration in the world. They tell us that these souls, flying like bees from flower to flower, and wandering over the gardens and the meadows and the honey-flowing fountains of the Muses, return to us laden with thi sweetness of melody ; and arrayed as they are in the plumes of rapid imagination, they speak truth. For a poet is indeed a thing ethereally light, winged, and sacred, nor can he compose anything worth calling poetry until he becomes inspired, and, as it were, mad, or whilst any reason remains in him. For whilst a man retains any portion of the thing called reason, he is utterly incompetent to produce poetry or to vaticinate. Thus, those who declaim various and beautiful poetry upon any subject, as for instance upon Homer, are not enabled to do so by art or study ; but every rhapsodist or poet, whether dithyrambic, encomiastic, choral, epic, or iambic, is excellent in proportion to the extent of his participation in the divine influence, and the degree in which the Muse itself has descended on him. In other respects, poets may be sufficiently ignorant and incapable. For they do not compose according to any art which they have acquired, but from the impulse of the divinity within them ; for did they know any rules of criticism according to which they could compose beautiful verses upon one subject, they would be able to exert the same faculty with respect to all or any other. The God seems pur- posely to have deprived all poets, prophets, and soothsayers of every particle of reason and under- standing, the better to adapt them to their employ- ment as his ministers and interpreters ; and that we, their auditors, may acknowledge that those who write so beautifully, are possessed, and address us, inspired by the God. [Tynnicus the Chalcidean, is a manifest proof of this, for he never before composed any poem worthy to be remembered ; and yet, was the author of that Psean which every- body sings, and which excels almost every other hymn, and which he, himself, acknowledges to have been inspired by the Muse. And, thus, it appears to me, that the God proves beyond a doubt, that these transcendant poems are not human as the work of men, but divine as coming from the God. Poets then are the interpreters of the divinities — each being possessed by some one deity ; and to make this apparent, the God designedly inspires the worst poets with the sublimest verse. Does it seem to you that I am in the right, Ion ? Ion. — Yes, by Jupiter ! My mind is enlightened 70 ION; OR, THE ILIAD. by your words, O Socrates, and it appears to me that great poets interpret to us through some divine election of the God. Socrates. — And do not you rhapsodists inter- pret poets ? Ion. — We do. Socrates. — Thus you interpret the interpreters ? Ion. — Evidently. Socrates. — Remember this, and tell me j and do not conceal that which I ask. When you !fe- claim well, and strike your audience with admi- ration ; whether you sing of Ulysses rushing upon the threshold of his palace, discovering himself to the suitors, and pouring his shafts out at his feet ; or of Achilles assailing Hector ; or those affecting passages concerning Andromache, or Hecuba, or Priam, are you then self-possessed ? or, rather, are you not rapt and filled with such enthusiasm by the deeds you recite, that you fancy yourself in Ithaca or Troy, or wherever else the poem trans- ports you ? Ion. — You speak most truly, Socrates, nor will I deny it ; for, when I recite of sorrow, my eyes fill with tears ; and when of fearful or terrible deeds, my hair stands on end, and my heart beats fast. Socrates. — Tell me, Ion, can we call him in his senses, who weeps while dressed in splendid gar- ments, and crowned with a golden coronal, not losing any of these things ? and is filled with fear when surrounded by ten thousand friendly persons, not one among whom desires to despoil or injure him ? Ion. — To say the truth, we could not. Socrates. — Do you often perceive your audience moved also 1 Ion. — Many among them, and frequently. I, standing on the rostrum, see them weeping, with eyes fixed earnestly on me, and overcome by my declamation. I have need so to agitate them ; for if they weep, I laugh, taking their money ; if they should laugh, I must weep, going without it. Socrates. — Do you not perceive that your au- ditor is the last link of that chain which I have described as held together through the power of the magnet ? You rhapsodists and actors are the middle links, of which the poet is the first — and through all these the God influences whichever mind he selects, as they conduct this power one to the other ; and thus, as rings from the stone, so hangs a long series of chorus-dancers, teachers, and disciple's from the Muse. Some poets are in- fluenced by one Muse, some by another ; we call them possessed, and this word really expresses the truth, for they are held. Others, who are inter- preters, are inspired by the first links, the poets, and are filled with enthusiasm, some by one, some by another ; some by Orpheus, some by Musseus, but the greater number are possessed and inspired by Homer. You, Ion, are influenced by Homer. If you recite the works of any other poet, you get drowsy, and are at a loss what to say ; but when you hear any of the compositions of that poet you are roused, your thoughts are excited, and you grow eloquent ; — for what you say of Homer is not derived from any art or knowledge, but from divine inspiration and possession. As the Corybantes feel acutely the melodies of him by whom they are inspired, and abound with verse and gesture for his songs alone, and care for no other ; thus, you, Ion, are eloquent when you expound Homer, and are barren of words with regard to every other poet. And this explains the question you asked, wherefore Homer, and no other poet, inspires you with eloquence. It is that you are thus excellent in your praise, not through science, but from divine inspiration. Ion. — You say the truth, Socrates. Yet, I am surprised that you should be able to persuade me that I am possessed and insane when I praise Homer. I think I shall not appear such to you when you hear me. Socrates. — I desire to hear you, but not before you have answered me this one question. What subject does Homer treat best \ for, surely, he does not treat all equally. Ion. — You are aware that he treats of every- thing. Socrates. — Does Homer mention subjects on which you are ignorant ? Ion. — What can those be % Socrates.— Does not Homer frequently dilate on various arts — on chariot driving, for instance \ if I remember the verses, I will repeat them. Ion. — I will repeat them, for I remember them. Socrates. — Repeat what Nestor says to his son Antilochus, counselling him to be cautious in turning, during the chariot race at the funeral games of Patroclus. Autos 5e K\iv6i}i>cu iv-rrAeKTq) iv\ 8i<£p 'fls Hu roi irXJifAVT) ye Sodcrfferai &Kpov Ik4 wktL /xev v/xeow Ei\{iarai KecpaKai re irpoffwird re vepQe re yvia, OlfMcay^j be bkbrje, bebdicpwrai be irapeiai. Eld(6\(ii)i> re irpeov irp69vpov, irXeif] be ical auA^ 'le/aevcov epefS6o~be virb £6(pov' yeAtos 8e Ovpavov e£a7r(fAcoA.e, /ca/c^? 5' eirSeSpofiev a%Aus.J Odyss. £ 351. Often too in the Iliad, as at the battle at the walls ; for he there says — "Opvis yap atyiv eirrjhde Treprjo-efievcu fie/xaaxriVf Alerbs v^iirer^s, eir apiarepa Xabp eepywv, ^oivrjevra Spdicovra (pepuv ovvyeGGi- ireAwpoy, Zuibv, eraffiralpovra' Kalovirca \4)dero xdpurjS' K6ipe yap abrbv exovra Kara crrrjOos irapa, Seipfyv, * Tempered in this, the nymph of form divine, Pours a large portion of the Pramnian wine ; With goats'-milk cheese, a fiavorous taste bestows, And last with flour the smiling surface strews. Pope, Book 11. f She plunged, and instant shot the dark profound : As, bearing death in the fallacious bait, From the bent angle sinks the leaden weight. Pope, Book 24. | O race to death devote ! with Stygian shade Each destined peer impending Fates invade ; With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drowned. With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round ; Thick swarms the spacious hall with howling ghosts, To people Orcus, and the burning coasts. Nor gives the sun his goldep orb to roll, But universal night usurps the pole. Pope, Book 20. ION; OR, THE ILIAD. 'I5va6s\s 07rtVa>. 6 5' airb e^ev'^/ce x a H-^C € *A\yfi 5' iytcdfifiaK' bjjd\(f Autos 8e K\dy^as '4irero irvoifjs avefioio.* II. //. I assert, it belongs to a soothsayer both to observe and to judge respecting such appearances as these. Ion. — And you assert the truth, Socrates. Socrates. — And you also, my dear Ion. For we have in our turn recited from the Odyssey and the Iliad, passages relating to vaticination, to me- dicine and the piscatorial art ; and as you are more skilled in Homer than I can be, do you now make mention of whatever relates to the rhapsodist and his art j for a rhapsodist is competent above all other men to consider and pronounce on whatever has relation to his art. Ion. — Or with respect to everything else men- tioned by Homer. Socrates. — Do not be so forgetful as to say everything. A good memory is particularly neces- sary for a rhapsodist. Ion. — And what do I forget % Socrates. — Do you not remember that you ad- mitted the art of reciting verses was different from that of driving chariots \ Ion. — I remember. Socrates. — And did you not admit that being different, the subjects of its knowledge must also be different 1 Ion. — Certainly. Socrates. — You will not assert that the art of rhapsody is that of universal knowledge ; a rhap- sodist may be ignorant of some things. Ion. — Except, perhaps, such things as we now discuss, Socrates. Socrates. — What do you mean by such subjects, besides those which relate to other arts I And with which among them do you profess a competent acquaintance, since not with all ? Ion. — I imagine that the rhapsodist has a perfect knowledge of what it is becoming for a man to speak — what for a woman ; what for a slave, what for a free man ; what for the ruler, what for him who is governed. Socrates. — How ! do you think that a rhapso- dist knows better than a pilot what the captain of a ship in a tempest ought to say ? * A signal omen Btopped the passing host, Their martial fury in their wonder lost. Jove's bird on sounding pinions beats the skies ; A bleeding serpent of enormous size His talons trussed, alive and curling round, He stung the bird, whose throat received the wound ; Mad with the smart, he drops the fatal prey, In airy circles wings his painful way, Floats on the winds and rends the heaven with cries : Amidst the host the fallen serpent lies. Pope f Book 12. Ion. — In such a circumstance I allow that the pilot would know best. Socrates. — Has the rhapsodist or the physician the clearest knowledge of what ought to be said to a sick man ? Ion. — In that case the physician. Socrates.— -But you assert that he knows what a slave ought to say 1 Ion. — Certainly. Socrates. — To take for example, in the driving of cattle ; a rhapsodist would know much better than the herdsman what ought to be said to a slave engaged in bringing back a herd of oxen run wild ? Ion. — No, indeed. [Socrates. — But what a woman should say con- cerning spinning wool ? Ion. — Of course not. Socrates. — He would know, however, what a man, who is a general, should say when exhorting his troops 1 Ion. — Yes ; a rhapsodist would know that. Socrates. — How ! is rhapsody and strategy the same art? Ion. — I know what it is fitting for a general to say. Socrates. — Probably because you are learned in war, Ion. For if you are equally expert in horsemanship and playing on the harp, you would know whether a man rode well or ill. But if I should ask you which understands riding best, a horseman or a harper, what would you answer ? Ion. — A horseman, of course. Socrates. — And if you knew a good player on the harp, you would in the same way say that he understood harp-playing and not riding ? Ion. — Certainly. Socrates. — Since you understand strategy, you can tell me which is the most excellent, the art of war or rhapsody ? Ion. — One does not appear to me to excel the other. Socrates. — One is not better than the other, say you ? Do you say that tactics and rhapsody are two arts or one ? Ion.— They appear to me to be the same. Socrates. — Then a good rhapsodist is also a good general. Ion. — Of course. Socrates. — And a good general is a good rhap- sodist ? Ion. — I do net say that. Socrates. — You said that a good rhapsodist was also a good general. Ion. — I did. Socrates. — Are you not the best rhapsodist in Greece ? MENEXENUS; OR, THE FUNERAL ORATION. 79 Ion. — By far, Socrates. Socrates. — And you are also the most excellent general among the Greeks ? Ion. — I am. I learned the art from Homer. Socrates. — How is it then, by Jupiter, that being both the best general and the best rhapso- dist among us, that you continually go about Greece rhapsodising, and never lead our armies ? Does it seem to you that the Greeks greatly need golden-crowned rhapsodists, and have no want of generals ? Ion. — My native town, Socrates, is ruled by yours, and requires no general for her wars ; — and neither will your city nor the Lacedemonians elect me to lead their armies — you think your own generals sufficient. Socrates. — My good Ion, are you acquainted with Apollodorus the Cyzicenian ? Ion. — What do you mean ? Socrates. — He whom, though a stranger, the Athenians often elected general ; and Phanosthenes the Andrian, and Heraclides the Clazomenian, all foreigners, but whom this city has chosen, as being great men, to lead its armies, and to fill other high offices. Would not, therefore, Ion the Ephesian be elected and honoured if he were esteemed capable ? Were not the Ephesians originally from Athens, and is Ephesus the least of cities ? But if you spoke true, Ion, and praise Homer accord- ing to art and knowledge, you have deceived me, — since you declared that you were learned on the subject of Homer, and would communicate your knowledge to me — but you have disappointed me, and are far from keeping your word. For you will not explain in what you are so excessively clever, though I greatly desire to learn ; but, as various as Proteus, .you change from one thing to another, and to escape at last, you disappear in the form of a general, without disclosing your Homeric wisdom. If, therefore, you possess the learning which you promised to expound on the subject of Homer, you deceive me and are false. But if you are eloquent on the subject of this Poet, not through knowledge, but by inspiration, being possessed by him, ignorant the while of the wisdom and beauty you display, then I allow that you are no deceiver. Choose then whether you will be considered false or in- spired ? ' Ion. — It is far better, Socrates, to be thought inspired. Socrates. — It is better both for you and for us, O Ion, to say that you are the inspired, and not the learned, eulogist of Homer. MENEXENUS; OR, THE FUNERAL ORATION. Socrates and Menexenus. Socrates. — Whence comest thou, Menexenus ? from the forum ? Menexenus. — Even so ; and from the senate- house. Socrates. — What was thy business with the senate I Art thou persuaded that thou hast attained to that perfection of discipline and philosophy, from which thou mayest aspire to undertake greater matters \ Wouldst thou, at thine age, my wonderful friend, assume to thyself the govern- ment of us who are thine elders, lest thy family should at any time fail in affording us a protector ? Menexenus. — If thou, Socrates, shouldst per- mit and counsel me to enter into public life, I would earnestly endeavour to fit myself for the attempt. If otherwise, I would abstain. On the present occasion, I went to the senate-house, merely from having heard that the senate was about to elect one to speak concerning those who are dead. Thou knowest that the celebration of their funeral approaches % Socrates. — Assuredly. But whom have they chosen ? Menexenus. — The election is deferred until to- morrow ; I imagine that either Dion or Archinus will be chosen. Socrates. — In truth, Menexenus, the condition of him who dies in battle is, in every respect, for- tunate and glorious. If he is poor, he is conducted to his tomb with a magnificent and honourable funeral, amidst the praises of all ; if even he were a coward, his name is included in a panegyric pro- nounced by the most learned men ; from which all the vulgar expressions, which unpremeditated com- position might admit, have been excluded by the careful labour of leisure ; who praise so admirably, enlarging upon every topic remotely, or imme- diately connected with the subject, and blending so eloquent a variety of expressions, that, praising in 74 MENEXENUS ; OR, THE FUNERAL ORATION. every manner the state of which we are citizens, and those who have perished in battle, and the ancestors who preceded our generation, and our- selves who yet live, they steal away our spirits as with enchantment. Whilst I listen to their praises, O Menexenus, I am penetrated with a very lofty conception of myself, and overcome by their flatteries. I appear to myself immeasurably more honourable and generous than before, and many of the strangers who are accustomed to accompany me, regard me with additional venera- tion, after having heard these relations ; they seem to consider the whole state, including me, much more worthy of admiration, after they have been soothed into persuasion by the orator. The opinion thus inspired of my own majesty will last me more than three days sometimes, and the penetrating melody of the words descends through the ears into the mind, and clings to it ; so that it is often three or four days before I come to my senses sufficiently to perceive hi what part of the world I" am, or succeed in persuading myself that I do not inhabit one of the islands of the blessed. So skil- ful are these orators of ours. Menexenus. — Thou always laughest at the ora- tors, Socrates. On the present occasion, how- ever, the unforeseen election will preclude the person chosen from the advantages of a preconcerted speech ; the speaker will probably be reduced to the necessity of extemporising. Socrates. — How so-, my good friend ? Every one of the candidates has, without doubt, his oration prepared ; and if not, there were little difficulty, on this occasion, of inventing an unpre- meditated speech. If, indeed, the question were of Athenians, who should speak in the Peloponne- sus ; or of Peloponnesians, who should speak at Athens, an orator who would persuade and be applauded, must employ all the resources of his skill. But to the orator who contends for the approbation of those whom he praises, success will be little difficult. Menexenus. — Is that thy opinion, Socrates ? Socrates. — In truth it is. Menexenus. — Shouldst thou consider thyself competent to pronounce this oration, if thou shouldst be chosen by the senate 1 Socrates. — There would be nothing astonishing if I should consider my self equal to such an under- taking. My mistress in oratory was perfect in the science which she taught, and had formed many other excellent orators, and one of the most eminent among the Greeks, Pericles, the son of Xantippus. Menexenus. — Who is she ? Assuredly thou meanest Aspasia. Socrates. — Aspasia, and Connus the son of Metrobius, the two instructors. From the former of these I learned rhetoric, and from the latter music. There would be nothing wonderful if a man so educated should be capable of great energy of speech. A person who should have been instructed in a manner totally different from me ; who should have learned rhetoric from Antiphon the son of Rhamnusius, and music from Lampses, would be competent to succeed in such an attempt as praising the Athenians to the Athenians. Menexenus. — And what shouldst thou have to say, if thou wert chosen to pronounce the oration % Socrates. — Of my own, probably nothing. But yesterday I heard Aspasia declaim a funeral ora- tion over these same persons. She had heard, as thou sayest, that the Athenians were about to choose an orator, and she took the occasion of suggesting a series of topics proper for such an orator to select ; in part extemporaneously, and in part such as she had already prepared. I think it probable that she composed the oration by inter- weaving such fragments of oratory as Pericles might have left. Menexenus. — Rememberest thou what Aspasia said? Socrates. — Unless I am greatly mistaken. I learned it from her ; and she is so good a school- mistress, that I should have been beaten if I had not been perfect in my lesson. Menexenus. — Why not repeat it to me ? Socrates. — I fear lest my mistress be angry, should I publish her discourse. Menexenus. — O, fear not. At least deliver a discourse ; you will do what is exceedingly de- lightful to me, whether it be of Aspasia or any other. I entreat you to do me this pleasure. Socrates. — But you will laugh at me, who, being old, attempt to repeat a pleasant discourse. Menexenus. — no, Socrates ; I entreat you to speak, however it may be. Socrates. — I see that I must do what you re- quire. In a little while, if you should ask me to strip naked and dance, I shall be unable to refuse yoii, at least, if we are alone. Now, listen. She spoke thus, if I recollect, beginning with the dead, in whose honour the oration is supposed to have been delivered. FRAGMENTS FROM THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. i. But it would be almost impossible to build your city in such a situation that it would need no imposts. — Impossible. — Other persons would then be required, who might undertake to conduct from another city those things of which they stood in need. — Certainly. — But the merchant who should return to his own city, without any of those articles which it needed, would return empty- handed. It will be necessary, therefore, not only to produce a sufficient supply, but such articles, both in quantity and in kind, as may be required to remunerate those who conduct the imports. There will be needed then more husbandmen, and other artificers, in our city. There will be needed also other persons who will undertake the conveyance of the imports and the exports, and these persons are called merchants. If the commerce which these necessities produce is carried on by sea, other persons will be required who are accustomed to nautical affairs. And, in the city itself, how shall the products of each man's labour be transported from one to another ; those products, for the sake of the enjoyment and the ready distribution of which, they were first induced to institute a civil society ? — By selling and buying, surely. — A market and money, as a symbol of exchange, arises out of this necessity. — Evidently. — When the husbandman,, or any other artificer, brings the produce of his labours to the public place, and those who desire to barter their produce for it do not happen to arrive exactly at the same tune, would he not lose his time, and the profit of it, if he were to sit in the market waiting for them I Assuredly. But, there are persons who, per- ceiving this, will take upon themselves the arrange- ment between the buyer and the seller. In con- stituted civil societies, those who are employed on this service, ought to be the infirm, and unable to perform any other ; but, exchanging on one hand for money, what any person comes to sell, and giving the articles thus bought for a similar equi- valent to those who might wish to buy. ii. — Description of a frugal enjoyment of the goods of the world. in. — But with this system of life some are not contented. They must have beds and tables, and other furniture. They must have scarce oint- ments and perfumes, women, and a thousand superfluities of the same character. The things which we mentioned as sufficient, houses, and clothes, and food, are not enough. Painting and mosaic-work must be cultivated, and works in gold and ivory. The society must be enlarged in con- sequence. This city, which is of a healthy pro- portion, will not suffice, but it must be replenished with a multitude of persons, whose occupations are by no means indispensable. Huntsmen and mimics, persons whose occupation it is to arrange forms and colours, persons whose trade is the cul- tivation of the more delicate arts, poets and their ministers, rhapsodists, actors, dancers, manufac- turers of all kinds of instruments and schemes of female dress, and an immense crowd of other ministers to pleasure and necessity. Do you not think we should want schoolmasters, tutors, nurses, hair-dressers, barbers, manufacturers and cooks ? Should we not want pig-drivers, which were not wanted in our more modest city, in this one, and a multitude of others to administer to other animals, which would then become necessary articles of food, — or should we not ? — Certainly we should. — Should we not want physicians much more, living in this manner than before ? The same tract of country would no longer provide sustenance for the state. Must we then not usurp from the territory of our neighbours, and then we should make ag- gressions, and so we have discovered the origin of war ; which is the principal cause of the greatest public and private calamities. — C. xi. iv. — And first, we must improve upon the com- posers of fabulous histories in verse, to compose them according to the rules of moral beauty ; and those not composed according to the rules must be rejected ; and we must persuade mothers and nurses to teach those which we approve to their children, and to form their minds by moral fables, far more than their bodies by their hands. — Lib. ii. V. — ON THE DANGER OF THE STUDY OF ALLEGORICAL COMPOSITION (IN A LARGE SENSE) FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. For a young person is not competent to judge what portions of a fabulous composition are alle- gorical and what literal ; but the opinions produced 76 FRAGMENTS FROM THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. by a literal acceptation of that which has no meaning, or a bad one, except in an allegorical sense, are often irradicable. — Lib. ii. vi. — God then, since he is good, cannot be, as is vulgarly supposed, the cause of all things ; he is the cause, indeed, of very few things. Among the great variety of events which happen in the course of human affairs, evil prodigiously overbalances good in everything which regards men. Of all that is good there can be no other cause than God ; but some other cause ought to be discovered for evil, which should never be imputed as an effect to God.— L. ii. vii. — Plato's doctrine of punishment as laid down, p. 146, is refuted by his previous reasonings. —P. 26. . VIII. THE UNCHANGEABLE NATURE OF GOD. Do you think that God is like a vulgar conjuror, and that he is capable for the sake of effect, of assuming, at one time, one form, and at another time, another \ Now, in his own character, con- verting his proper form into a multitude of shapes, now deceiving us, and offering vain images of him- self to our imagination I Or do you think that God is single and one, and least of all things capable of departing from his permanent nature and appear- ance ? IX. — THE PERMANENCY OF WHAT IS EXCELLENT. But everything, in proportion as it is excellent, either in art or nature, or in both, is least suscep- tible of receiving change from any external influ- X. AGAINST SUPERSTITIOUS TALES. Nor should mothers terrify their children by these fables, that Gods go about in the night-time, resembling strangers, in all sorts of forms : at once blaspheming the Gods, and rendering their children cowardly. XI. — THE TRUE ESSENCE OF FALSEHOOD AND ITS ORIGIN. Know you not, that that which is truly false, if it may be permitted me so to speak, all, both Gods ' and men, detest 1 — How do you mean 1— Thus : No person is willing to falsify in matters of the highest concern to himself concerning those matters, but fears, above all things, lest he should accept falsehood. — Yet, I understand you not. — You think that I mean something profound. I say that no person is willing in his own mind to receive or to assert a falsehood, to be ignorant, to be in error, to possess that which is not true. This is truly to be called falsehood, this ignorance and error in the mind itself. What is usually called falsehood, or deceit in words, is but a voluntary imitation of what the mind itself suffers in the in- voluntary possession of that falsehood, an image of later birth, and scarcely, in a strict and complete sense, deserving the name of falsehood. — Lib. ii. XII. — AGAINST A BELIEF TN HELL. If they are to possess courage, are not those doctrines alone to be taught, which render death least terrible ? Or do you conceive that any man can be brave who is subjected to a fear of death ? that he who believes the things that are related of hell, and thinks that they are truth, will prefer in battle, death to slavery, or defeat ? — Lib. in. — Then follows a criticism on the poetical accounts of hell. XIII. — ON GRIEF. We must then abolish the custom of lamenting and commiserating the deaths of illustrious men. Do we assert that an excellent man will consider it anything dreadful that his intimate friend, who is also an excellent man, should die ? — By no means, {an excessive refinement). He will abstain then from lamenting over his loss, as if he had suffered some great evil ? — Surely. — May we not assert in addition, that such a person as we have described suffices to himself for all purposes of living well and happily, and in no manner needs the assistance or society of another ? that he would endure with re- signation the destitution of a son, or a brother, or possessions, or whatever external adjuncts of life might have been attached to him ? and that, on the occurrence of such contingencies, he would support them with moderation and mildness, by no means bursting into lamentations, or resigning himself to despondence ? — Lib. iii. Then he proceeds to allege passages of the poets in which opposite examples were held up to approbation and imitation. XIV. — THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY CONSTANT IMITATION. Do you not apprehend that imitations, if they shall have been practised and persevered in from early youth, become established in the habits and nature, in the gestures of the body, and the tones of the voice, and lastly, in the intellect itself? — C. iii. XV. — ON THE EFFECT OF BAD TASTE IN ART. Nor must we restrict the poets alone to an exhibition of the example of virtuous manners in their compositions, but all other artists must be FRAGMENTS FROM THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. 77 forbidden, either in sculpture, or painting, or archi- tecture, to employ their skill upon 'forms of an immoral, unchastened, monstrous, or illiberal type, either in the forms of living beings, or in archi- tectural arrangements. And the artist capable of this employment of his art, must not be suffered in our community, lest those destined to be guardians of the society, nourished upon images of deformity and vice, like cattle upon bad grass, gradually gathering and depasturing every day a little, may ignorantly establish one great evil, com- posed of these many evil things, in their minds. — — C. iii. The monstrous figures called Arabesques, however in some of them is to be found a mixture of a truer and simpler taste, which are found in the ruined palaces of the Roman Emperors, bear, nevertheless, the same relation to the brutal profligacy and hilling luxury which required them, as the majestic figures of Castor and Pollux, and the simple beauty of the sculpture of the frieze of the Parthenon, bear to the more beautiful and simple manners of the Greeks of that period. With a liberal interpretation, a similar analogy might be extended into literary composition. XVI. AGAINST THE LEARNED PROFESSIONS. What better evidence can you require of a cor- rupt and pernicious system of discipline in a state, than that not merely persons of base habits and plebeian employments, but men who pretend to have received a liberal education, require the assistance of lawyers and physicians, and those too who have attained to a singular degree (so desperate are these diseases of body and mind) of skill. Bo you not consider it an abject ne- cessity, a proof of the deepest degradation, to need to be instructed in what is just or what is needful, as by a master and a judge, with regard to your personal knowledge and suffering \ What would Plato have said to a priest, such as his office is, in modem times ? — C. iii. XVII. — ON MEDICINE. Do you not think it an abject thing to require the assistance of the medicinal art, not for the cure of wounds, or such external diseases as result from the accidents of the seasons (eirnreinv), but on account of sloth and the superfluous indul- gences which we have already condemned ; thus being filled with wind and water, like holes in earth, and compelling the elegant successors of ^Esculapius to invent new names, flatulences, and catarrhs, &c, for the new diseases which are the progeny of your luxury and sloth ? — L. iii. XVIII. THE EFFECT OF THE DIETETIC SYSTEM. Herodicus being psedotribe (TrcuSoTpi&ns, Ma- gister palozstros), and his health becoming weak, united the gymnastic with the medical art, and having condemned himself to a life of weariness, afterwards extended the same pernicious system to others. He made his life a long death. For humouring the disease, mortal in its own nature, to which he was subject, without being able to cure it, he postponed all other purposes to the care of medicating himself, and through his whole life was subject to an access of his malady, if he departed in any degree from his accustomed diet, and by the employment of this skill, dying by degrees, he arrived at an old age. — L. iii. iEsculapius never pursued these systems, nor Machaon or Podalirius. They never undertook the treatment of those whose frames were in- wardly and thoroughly diseased, so to prolong a worthless existence, and bestow on a man a long and wretched being, during which they might generate children in every respect the inheritors of their^nfirmity. — L. iii. XIX. — AGAINST WHAT IS FALSELY CALLED "KNOW- LEDGE OF THE WORLD." A man ought not to be a good judge until he be old ; because he ought not to have acquired a knowledge of what injustice is, until his under- standing has arrived at maturity : not apprehend- ing its nature from a consideration of its existence in himself; but having contemplated it distinct from his own nature in that of others, for a long time, until he shall perceive what an evil it is, not from his own experience and its effects within himself, but from his observations of them as resulting in others. Such a one were indeed an honourable judge, and a good ; for he who has a good mind, is good. But that judge who is con- sidered so wise, who having himself committed great injustices, is supposed to be qualified for the detection of it in others, and who is quick to sus- pect, appears keen, indeed, as long as he associates with those who resemble him ; because, deriving experience from the example afforded by a consi- deration of his own conduct and character, he acts with caution ; but when he associates with men of universal experience and real virtue, he exposes the defects resulting from such experience as he possesses, by distrusting men unreasonably and mistaking true virtue, having no example of it within himself with which to compare the appear- ances manifested in others ; yet, such a one finding more associates who are virtuous than such as are wise, necessarily appears, both to himself and others, 78 ON A PASSAGE IN CRITO. rather to be wise than foolish. — But we ought rather to search for a wise and good judge ; one who has examples within himself of that upon which he is to pronounce. — C. iii. xx. — Those who use gymnastics unmingled with music become too savage, whilst those who use music unmingled with gymnastics, become more delicate than is befitting. ON A PASSAGE IN CRITO. [It is well known that when Socrates was condemned to death, his friends made arrangements for his escape from prison and his after security ; of which he refused to avail himself, from the reason, that a good citizen ought to obey the laws of his country. On this Shelley makes the following remarks—] The reply is simple. Indeed, your city cannot subsist, because the laws are no longer of avail. For how can the laws be said to exist, when those who deserve to be nourished in the Prytanea at the public expense, are condemned to suffer the penalties only due to the most atrocious criminals ; whilst those against, and to protect from whose injustice, the laws were framed, live in honour and security ? I neither overthrow your state, nor infringe your laws. Although you have inflicted an injustice on me, which is sufficient, according to the opinions of the multitude, to authorise me to consider you and me as in a state of warfare ; yet, had I the power, so far from inflicting any revenge, I would endea- vour to overcome you by benefits. All that I do at present is, that which the peaceful traveller would do, who, caught by robbers in a forest, escapes from them whilst they are engaged in the division of the spoil. And this I do, when it would not only be indifferent, but delightful to me to die, surrounded by my friends, secure of the inheritance of glory, and escaping, after such a life as mine, from the decay of mind and body which must soon begin to be my portion should I live. But, I prefer the good, which I have it in my power yet to perform. Such are the arguments, which overturn the sophism placed in the mouth of Socrates by Plato. But there are others which prove that he did well to die. HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR THROUGH A PART OF FRANCE, SWITZERLAND, GERMANY, AND HOLLAND; WITH LETTERS, DESCRIPTIVE OF A SAIL ROUND THE LAKE OF GENEVA, AND OF THE GLACIERS OF CHAMOUNI. PREFACE. Nothing can be more unpresuming than this little volume. It contains the account of some desultory visits by a party of young people to scenes which are now so familiar to our country- men, that few facts relating to them can be expected to have escaped the many more experi- enced and exact observers, who have sent their journals to the press. In fact, they have done little else than arrange the few materials which an imperfect journal, and two or three letters to their friends in England afforded. They regret, since their little History is to be offered to the public, that these materials were not more copious and complete. This is a just topic of censure to those who are less inclined to be amused than to con- demn. Those whose youth has been past as theirs (with what success it imports not) in pursuing, like the swallow, the inconstant summer of delight and beauty which invests this visible world, will perhaps find some entertainment in following the author, with her husband and friend, on foot, through part of France and Switzerland, and in sailing with her down the castled Rhine, through scenes beautiful in themselves, but which, since she visited them, a great poet has clothed with the freshness of a diviner nature. They will be inter- ested to hear of one who has visited Meillerie, and Clarens, and Chillon, and Vevai — classic ground, peopled with tender and glorious imaginations of the present and the past. They have perhaps never talked with one who has beheld, in the enthusiasm of youth, the glaciers, and the lakes, and the forests, and the fountains of the mighty Alps. Such will perhaps forgive the imperfections of their narrative for the sympathy which the adventures and feelings which it re- counts, and a curiosity respecting scenes already rendered interesting and illustrious, may excite. JOURNAL. It is now nearly three years since this journey took place, and the journal I then kept was not very copious ; but I have so often talked over the incidents that befel us, and attempted to describe the scenery through which we passed, that I think few occurrences of any interest will be omitted. We left London, July 28th, 1814, on a hotter day than has been known in this climate for many years. I am not a good traveller, and this heat agreed very ill with me, till, on arriving at Dover, I was refreshed by a sea-bath. As we very much wished to cross the Channel with all possible speed, we would not wait for the packet of the following day (it being then about four in the afternoon) but hiring a small boat, resolved to make the passage the same evening, the seamen promising us a voyage of two hours. The evening was most beautiful ; there was but BO HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. little wind, and the sails napped in the flagging breeze : the moon rose, and night came on, and with the night a slow, heavy swell, and a fresh breeze, which soon produced a sea so violent as to toss the boat very much. I was dreadfully sea- sick, and as is usually my custom when thus affected, I slept during the greater part of the night, awaking only from time to time to ask where we were, and to receive the dismal answer each time — "-Not quite half way." The wind was violent and contrary ; if we could not reach Calais, the sailors proposed making for Boulogne. They promised only two hours' sail from shore, yet hour after hour passed, and we were still far distant, when the moon sunk in the red and stormy horizon, and the fast-flashing lightning became pale in the breaking day. We were proceeding slowly against the wind, when suddenly a thunder-squall struck the sail, and the waves rushed into the boat : even the sailors acknowledged that our situation was peril- ous ; but they succeeded in reefing the sail ; — the wind was now changed, and we drove before the gale directly to Calais. As we entered the harbour I awoke from a comfortless sleep, and saw the sun rise broad, red, and cloudless over the pier. FRANCE Exhausted with sickness and fatigue, I walked over the sand with my companions to the hotel. I heard for the first time the confused buzz of voices speaking a different language from that to which I had been accustomed ; and saw a costume very unlike that worn on the opposite side of the Chan- nel ; the women with high caps and short jackets ; the men with ear-rings ; ladies walking about with high bonnets or coiffures lodged on the top of the head, the hair dragged up underneath, without any stray curls to decorate the temples or cheeks. There is, however, something very pleasing in the manners and appearance of the people of Calais, that prepossesses you in their favour. A national reflection might occur, that when Edward III. took Calais, he turned out the old inhabitants, and peopled it almost entirely with our own country- men ; but, unfortunately, the manners are not English. • We remained during that day and the greater part of the next at Calais : we had been obliged to leave our boxes the night before at the English custom-house, and it was arranged that they should go by the packet of the following day, which, detained by contrary wind, did not arrive until night. S*** and I walked among the fortifications on the outside of the town ; they consisted of fields where the hay was making. The aspect of the country was rural and pleasant. On the 30th of July, about three in the after- noon, we left Calais, in a cabriolet drawn by three horses. To persons who had never before seen anything but a spruce English chaise and post-boy, there was something irresistibly ludicrous in our equipage. Our cabriolet was shaped somewhat like a post-chaise, except that it had only two wheels, and consequently there were no doors at the sides ; the front was let down to admit the passengers. The three horses were placed abreast, the tallest in the middle, who was rendered more formidable by the addition of an unintelligible article of harness, resembling a pair of wooden wings fastened to his shoulders ; the harness was of rope ; and the postilion, a queer, upright little fellow with a long pigtail, craquted his whip, and clattered on, while an old forlorn shepherd with a cocked hat gazed on us as we passed. The roads are excellent, but the heat was in- tense, and I suffered greatly from it. We slept at Boulogne the first night, where there was an ugly but remarkably good-tempered femme-de-chambre. This made us, for the first time, remark the differ- ence which exists between this class of persons in France and in England. In the latter country they are prudish, and if they become in the least degree familiar, they are impudent. The lower orders in France have the easiness and politeness of the most well-bred English ; they treat you unaffectedly as their equal, and consequently there is no scope for insolence. We had ordered horses to be ready during the night, but we were too fatigued to make use of them. The man insisted on being paid for the whole post. Ah! madame, said the femme-de- chambre, pensez-y ; c'est pour dedommager les pauvres chevaux d'avoir perdu leur doux sommeil. A joke from an English chambermaid would have been quite another thing. The first appearance that struck our English eyes was the want of enclosures ; but the fields were flourishing with a plentiful harvest. We observed no vines on this side Paris. HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. B] The weather still continued very hot, and tra- velling produced a very bad effect upon my health ; my companions were induced by this cir- cumstance to hasten the journey as much as pos- sible ; and accordingly we did not rest the following night, and the next day, about two, arrived in Paris. In this city there are no hotels where you can reside as long or as short a time as you please, and we were obliged to engage apartments at an hotel for a week. They were dear, and not very plea- sant. As usual, in France, the principal apartment was a bed-chamber ; there was another closet with a bed, and an ante-chamber, which we used as a sitting-room. The heat of the weather was excessive, so that we were unable to walk except in the afternoon. On the first evening we walked to the gardens of the Tuileries ; they are formal and uninteresting, in the French fashion, the trees cut into shapes, and without any grass. I think the Boulevards infinitely more pleasant. This street nearly sur- rounds Paris, and is eight miles in extent ; it is very wide, and planted on either side with trees. At one end is a superb cascade which refreshes the senses by its continual splashing : near this stands the gate of St. Denis, a beautiful piece of sculp- ture. I do not know how it may at present be disfigured by the Gothic barbarism of the con- querors of France, who were not contented with retaking the spoils of Napoleon, but, with impotent malice, destroyed the monuments of their own defeat. When I saw this gate, it was in its splen- dour, and made you imagine that the days of Roman greatness were transported to Paris. After remaining a week in Paris, we received a small remittance that set us free from a kind of imprisonment there, which we found very irksome. But how should we proceed ? After talking over and rejecting many plans, we fixed on one eccen- tric enough, but which, from its romance, was very pleasing to us. In England we could not have put it in execution without sustaining continual insult and impertinence ; the French are far more tolerant of the vagaries of their neighbours. We resolved to walk through France ; but as I was too weak for any considerable distance, and as C could not be supposed to be able to walk as far as S each day, we determined to purchase an ass, to carry our portmanteau and one of us by turns. Early, therefore, on Monday, August 8th, S and C went to the ass market, and purchased an ass, and the rest of the day, until four in the afternoon, was spent in preparations for our depar- ture ; during which, Madame l'hotesse paid us a visit, and attempted to dissuade us from our design. She represented to us that a large army had been recently disbanded, that the soldiers and officers wandered idle about the country, and that les dames seroient certainement enlei'Ses. But we were proof against her arguments, and packing up a few necessaries, leaving the rest to go by the diligence, we departed in a fiacre from the door of the hotel, our little ass following. We dismissed the coach at the barrier. It was dusk, and the ass seemed totally unable to bear one of us, appearing to sink under the portmanteau, although it was small and light. We were, how- ever, merry enough, and thought the leagues short. We arrived at Charenton about ten. Charenton is prettily situated in a valley, through which the Seine flows, winding among banks variegated with trees. On looking at this scene, C exclaimed, " Oh ! this is beautiful enough ; let us live here." This was her exclamation on every new scene, and as each surpassed the one before, she cried, " I am glad we did not stay at Charenton, but let us five here." Finding our ass useless, we sold it before we proceeded on our journey, and bought a mule for ten napoleons. About nine o'clock we departed. We were clad in black silk. I rode on the mule, which carried also our portmanteau; S and C followed, bringing a small basket of pro- visions. \t about one we arrived at Gros-Bois, where, under the shade of trees, we «,te our bread and fruit, and drank our wine, thinking of Don Quixote and Sancho. The country through which we passed was highly cultivated, but uninteresting ; the horizon scarcely ever extended beyond the circumference of a few fields, bright and waving with the golden harvest. We met several travellers ; but our mode, although novel, did not appear to excite any curiosity or remark. This night we slept at Guignes, in the same room and beds in which Napoleon and some of his generals had rested during the late war. The little old woman of the place was highly gratified in having this little story to tell, and spoke in warm praise of the Empress Josephine and Marie Louise, who had at different times passed on that road. As we continued our route, Provins was the first place that struck us with interest. It was our stage of rest for the night ; we approached it at sunset. After having gained the summit of a hill, the prospect of the town opened upon us as it lay in the valley below ; a rocky hill rose abruptly on one side, on the top of which stood a ruined citadel, with extensive walls and towers ; lower down, but beyond, was the cathedral, and the whole formed a scene for painting. After having 82 HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. travelled for two days through a country perfectly without interest, it was a delicious relief for the eye to dwell again on some irregularities and beauty of country. Our fare at Provins was coarse, and our beds uncomfortable, but the remembrance of this prospect made us contented and happy. We now approached scenes that reminded us of what we had nearly forgotten, that France had lately been the country in which great and ex- traordinary events had taken place. Nogent, a town we entered about noon the following day, had been entirely desolated by the Cossacs. Nothing could be more entire than the ruin which these barbarians had spread as they advanced ; perhaps they remembered Moscow and the destruction of the Russian villages ; but we were now in France, and the distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed, and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detesta- tion of war, which none can feel who have not travelled through a country pillaged and wasted by this plague, which, in his pride, man inflicts upon his fellow. We quitted the great route soon • after we had left Nogent, to strike across the country to Troyes. About six in the evening we arrived at St.-Aubin, a lovely village embosomed in trees ; but, on a nearer «riew, we found the cottages roofless, the rafters black, and the walls dilapidated ; — a few inhabitants remained. We asked for milk — they had none to give ; all their cows had been taken •by the Cossacs. We had still some leagues to travel that night, but we found that they were not post leagues, but the measurement of the inhabitants, and nearly double the distance. The road lay over a desert plain, and, as night advanced, we were often in danger of losing the track of wheels, which was our only guide. Night closed in, and we suddenly lost all trace of the road ; but a few trees, indistinctly seen, seemed to indicate the position of a village. About ten we arrived at Trois-Maisons, where, after a supper on milk and sour bread, we retired to rest on wretched beds : but sleep is seldom denied, except to the indolent ; and after the day's fatigue, although my bed was nothing more than a sheet spread upon straw, I slept soundly until the morning was considerably advanced. S had hurt his ankle so considerably the preceding evening, that he was obliged, during the whole of the following day's journey, to ride on our mule. Nothing could be more barren and wretched than the tract through which we now .passed ; the ground was chalky and uncovered even by grass, and where there had been any attempts made towards cultivation, the straggling ears of corn discovered more plainly the barren nature of the soil. Thousands of insects which were of the same white colour as the road, infested our path ; the sky was cloudless, and the sun darted its rays upon us, reflected back by the earth, until I nearly faulted under the heat. A village appeared at a distance, cheering us with a prospect of rest. It gave us new strength to pro- ceed ; but it was a wretched place, and afforded us but little relief. It had been once large and populous, but now the houses were roofless, and the ruins that lay scattered about, the gardens covered with the white dust of the torn cottages, the black burnt beams, and squalid looks of the inhabitants, presented in every direction the me- lancholy aspect of devastation. One house, a cabaret, alone remained ; we were here offered plenty of milk, stinking bacon, sour bread, and a few vegetables, which we were to dress for ourselves. As we prepared our dinner in a place so filthy, that the sight of it alone was sufficient to destroy our appetite, the people of the village collected around us, squalid with dirt, their countenances expressing everything that is disgusting and brutal. They seemed, indeed, entirely detached from the rest of the world, and ignorant of all that was passing in it. There is much less communication between the various towns of France than in Eng- land. The use of passports may easily account for this : these people did not know that Napoleon was deposed ; and when we asked why they did not rebuild their cottages, they replied, .that they were afraid that the Cossacs would destroy them again upon their return. Echemine (the name of this village) is in every respect the most disgusting place I ever met with. Two leagues beyond, on the same road, we came to the village of Pavilion, — so unlike Echemine, that we might have fancied ourselves in another quarter of the globe ; here everything denoted cleanliness and hospitality ; many of the cottages were destroyed, but the inhabitants were employed in repairing them. What could occasion so great a difference ? Still our road lay over this tract of uncultivated country, and our eyes were fatigued by observing nothing but a white expanse of ground, where no bramble or stunted shrub adorned its barrenness. Towards evening we reached a small plantation of vines : it appeared like one of those islands of ver- dure that are met with in the midst of the sands of Libya, but the grapes were not yet ripe. S was totally incapable of walking, and C and I were very tired before we arrived at Troyes. We rested here for the night, and devoted the HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. 83 following day to a consideration of the manner in which we should proceed. S 's sprain ren- dered our pedestrianism impossible. We accord- ingly sold our mule, and bought an open voiture, that went on four wheels, for five napoleons, and hired a man with a mule, for eight more, to convey us to Neufchatel in six days. The suburbs of Troyes were destroyed, and the town itself dirty and uninviting. I remained at the inn writing letters, while S and C arranged this bargain and visited the cathedral of the town ; and the next morning we departed in our voiture for Neufchatel. A curious instance of French vanity occurred on leaving this town. Our voiturier pointed to the plain around, and mentioned, that it had been the scene of a battle between the Rus- sians and the French. "In which the Russians gained the victory ?" — " Ah no, madame," replied the man, " the French are never beaten." — " But how was it then," we asked, " that the Russians had entered Troyes soon after?" — "Oh, after having been defeated, they took a circuitous route, and thus entered the town." Vandeuvres is a pleasant town, at which we rested during the hours of noon. We walked in the grounds of a nobleman, laid out in the English taste, and terminated in a pretty wood ; it was a scene that reminded us of our native country. As we left Vandeuvres the aspect of the country suddenly changed ; abrupt hills, covered with vine- yards, intermixed with trees, inclosed a narrow valley, the channel of the, Aube. The view was interspersed by green meadows, groves of poplar and white willow, and spires of village churches, which the Cossacs had yet spared. Many villages, ruined by the war, occupied the most romantic spots. In the evening we arrived at Bar-sur-Aube, a beautiful town, placed at the opening of the vale where the hills terminate abruptly. We climbed the highest of these, but scarce had we reached the top, when a mist descended upon everything, and the rain began to fall : we were wet through before we could reach our inn. It was evening, and the laden clouds made the darkness almost as deep as that of midnight ; but in the west an unusually brilliant and fiery redness occupied an opening in the vapours, and added to the interest of our little expedition : the cottage lights were reflected in the tranquil river, and the dark hills behind, dimly seen, resembled vast and frowning mountains. As we quitted Bar-sur-Aube, we at the same time bade a short farewell to hills. Passing through the towns of Chaumont, Langres, (which was situ- ated on a hill, and surrounded by ancient fortifi- cations), Champlitte, and Gray, we travelled for nearly three days through plains, where the country gently undulated, and relieved the eye from a per- petual flat, without exciting any peculiar interest. Gentle rivers, their banks ornamented by a few trees, stole through these plains, and a thousand beautiful summer insects skimmed over the streams. The third day was a day of rain, and the first that had taken place during our journey. We were soon wet through, and were glad to stop at a little inn to dry ourselves. The reception we received here was very unprepossessing, the people still kept their seats round the fire, and seemed very unwilling to make way for the dripping guests. In the afternoon, however, the weather became fine, and at about six in the evening we entered Besancon. Hills had appeared in the distance during the whole day, and we had advanced gradually towards them, but were miprepared for the scene that broke upon us as we passed the gate of this city. On quitting the walls, the road wound underneath a high precipice ; on the other side, the hills rose more gradually, and the green valley that inter- vened between them was watered by a pleasant river ; before us arose an amphitheatre of hills covered with vines, but irregular and rocky. The last gate of the town was cut through the precipi- tous rock that arose on one side, and in that place jutted into the road. This approach to mountain scenery filled us with delight ; it was otherwise with our voiturier : he came from the plains of Troyes, and these hills so utterly scared him, that he in some degree lost his reason. After winding through the valley, we be- gan to ascend the mountains which were its bound- ary : we left our voiture, and walked on, delighted with every new view that broke upon us. When we had ascended the hills for about a mile and a half, we found our voiturier at the door of a wretched inn, having taken the mule from the voiture, and obstinately determined to remain for the night at this miserable village of Mort. We could only submit, for he was deaf to all we could urge, and to our remonstrances only replied, Je ne puis plus. Our beds were too uncomfortable to allow a thought of sleeping in them : we could only pro- cure one room, and our hostess gave us to under- stand that our voiturier was to occupy the same apartment. It was of little consequence, as we had previously resolved not to enter the beds. The evening was fine, and after the rain the air was per- fumed by many delicious scents. We climbed to a rocky seat on the hill that overlooked the village, where we remained until sunset. The night was passed by the kitchen fire in a wretched manner, G 2 84 HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. striving to catch a few moments of sleep, which were denied to us. At three in the morning we pursued our journey. Our road led to the summit of the hills that environ Besancon. From the top of one of these we saw the whole expanse of the valley filled with a white undulating mist, which was pierced like islands by the piny mountains. The sun had just risen, and a ray of red light lay upon the waves of this fluctuating vapour. To the west, opposite the sun, it seemed driven by the light against the rocks in immense masses of foaming cloud, until it became lost in the distance, mixing its tints with the fleecy sky. Our voiturier insisted on remaining two hours at the village of Noe, although we were uhable to procure any dinner, and wished to go on to the next stage. I have already said, that the hills scared his senses, and he had become disobliging, sullen, and stupid.. While he waited, we walked to the neighbouring wood : it was a fine forest, carpeted beautifully with moss, and in various places overhung by rocks, in whose crevices young pines had taken root, and spread their branches for shade to those below ; the noon heat was intense, and we were glad to shelter ourselves from it in the shady retreats of this lovely forest. On our return to the village, we found, to our extreme surprise, that the voiturier had departed nearly an hour before, leaving word that he ex- pected to meet us on the road. S 's sprain rendered him incapable of much exertion ; but there was no remedy, and we proceeded on foot to Maison-Neuve, an auberge, four miles and a half distant. At Maison-Neuve the man had left word that he should proceed to Pontarlier, the frontier town of France, six leagues distant, and that, if we did not arrive that night, he should the next morning leave the voiture at an inn, and return with the mule to Troyes. We- were astonished at the im- pudence of this message, but the boy of the inn comforted us by saying, that by going on a horse by a cross-road, where the voiture could not ven- ture, he could easily overtake and intercept the voiturier, and accordingly we despatched him, walking slowly after. We waited at the next inn for dinner, and in about two hours the boy re- turned. The man promised to wait for us at an auberge two leagues further on. S 's ankle had become very painful, but we could procure no conveyance, and as the sun was nearly setting, we were obliged to hasten on. The evening was most beautiful, and the scenery lovely enough to beguile us of our fatigue : the horned moon hung in the light of sunset, that threw a glow of unusual depth of redness over the piny mountains and the dark deep valleys which they inclosed ; at intervals in the woods were beautiful lawns interspersed with picturesque clumps of trees, and dark pines over- shadowed our road. In about two hours we arrived at the promised termination of our journey. We found, according to our expectation, that M. le Voiturier had pur- sued his journey with the utmost speed. We were enabled, however, to procure here a rude kind of cart, S being unable to walk. The moon became yellow, and hung low, close to the woody horizon. Every now and then sleep overcame me, but our vehicle was too rude and rough to permit its indulgence. I looked on the stars — and the constellations seemed to weave a wild dance, as the visions of slumber invaded the domains of reality. In this manner we arrived late at Pon- tarlier, where we found our driver, who blun- dered out many falsehoods for excuses ; and thus ended the adventures of that day. SWITZERLAND. On passing the French barrier, a surprising difference may be observed between the opposite nations that inhabit either side. The Swiss cot- tages are much cleaner and neater, and the in- habitants exhibit the same contrast. The Swiss women wear a great deal of white linen, and their whole dress is always perfectly clean. This superior cleanliness is chiefly produced by the difference of religion : travellers in Germany remark the same contrast between the protestant and catholic towns, although they be but a few leagues separate. The scenery of this day's journey was divine, exhibiting piny mountains, barren rocks, and spots of verdure surpassing imagination. After descend- ing for nearly a league between lofty cliffs, covered with pines, and interspersed with green glades, where the grass is short, and soft, and beautifully verdant, we arrived at the village of St. Sulpice. HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. 85 The mule had latterly become very lame, and the man so disobliging, that we determined to engage a horse for the remainder of the way. Our voi- turier had anticipated us ; without, in the least, intimating his intention to us, he had determined to leave us at this village, and taken measures to that effect. The man we now engaged was a Swiss, a cottager of the better class, who was proud of his mountains and his country. Pointing to the glades that were interspersed among the woods, he in- formed us that they were very beautiful, and were excellent pasture ; that the cows thrived there, and consequently produced excellent milk, from which the best cheese and butter in the world were made. The mountains after St. Sulpice became loftier and more beautiful. We passed through a narrow valley between two ranges of mountains, clothed with forests,,M the bottom of which flowed a river, •from whose narrow bed on either side the boundaries of the vale arose precipitously. The road lay about half way up the mountain, which formed one of the sides, and we saw the overhanging rocks above us, and below, enormous pines, and the river, not to be perceived but from its reflection of the light of heaven, far beneath. The mountains of this beautiful ravine are so little asunder, that in time of war with France an iron chain is thrown across it. Two leagues from Neufchatel we saw the Alps : range after range of black mountains are seen extending one before the other, and far behind all, towering above every feature of the scene, the snowy Alps. They were a hundred miles distant, but reach so high in the heavens that they look like those accumulated clouds of dazzling white that arrange themselves on the horizon during summer. Their immensity staggers the imagination, and so far surpasses all conception, that it requires an effort of the understanding to believe that they indeed form a part of the earth. From this point we descended to Neufchatel, which is situated in a narrow plain, between the mountains and its immense lake, and presents no additional aspect of peculiar interest. We remained the following day at this town, occupied in a consideration of the step it would now be advisable for us to take. The money we had brought with us from Paris was nearly ex- hausted, but we obtained about ,£38, in silver, upon discount, from one of the bankers of the city, and with this we resolved to journey towards the lake of Uri, and seek, in that romantic and interesting country, some cottage where we might dwell in peace and solitude. Such were our dreams, which we should probably have realised, had it not been for the deficiency of that indispensable article money, which obliged us to return to England. A Swiss, whom S met at the post-office, kindly interested himself in our affairs, and assisted us to hire a voiture to convey us to Lucerne, the principal town of the lake of that name, which is connected with the lake of Uri. This man was imbued with the spirit of true politeness, and en- deavoured to perform real services, and seemed to regard the mere ceremonies of the affair as things of very little value. On the 21st August, we left Neufchatel ; our Swiss friend accompanied us a little way out of the town. The journey to Lucerne occupied rather more than two days. The country was flat and dull, and, excepting that we now and then caught a glimpse of the divine Alps, there was nothing in it to interest us. Lucerne promised better things, and as soon as we arrived (August 23d) we hired a boat, with which we proposed to coast the lake until we should meet with some suitable habitation, or perhaps, even going to Altorf, cross Mont St. Gothard, and seek in the warm climate of the country to the south of the Alps an air more salubrious, and a temperature better fitted for the precarious state of S 's health, than the bleak region to the north. The lake of Lucerne is encompassed on all sides by high mountains that rise abruptly from the water ; — sometimes their bare fronts descend perpendi- cularly, and cast a black shade upon the waves ; — sometimes they are covered with thick wood, whose dark foliage is interspersed by the brown bare crags on which the trees have taken root. In every part where a glade shows itself in the forest it appears cultivated, and cottages peep from among the woods. The most luxuriant islands, rocky, and covered with moss, and bending trees, are sprinkled over the lake. Most of these are decorated by the figure of a saint in wretched wax- work. The direction of this lake extends at first from east to west, then turning a right angle, it lies from north to south ; this latter part is distin- guished in name from the other, and is called the lake of Uri. The former part is also nearly divided midway, where the jutting land almost meets, and its craggy sides cast a deep shadow on the little strait through which you pass. -The summits of several of the mountains that inclose the lake to the south are covered by eternal glaciers ; of one of these, opposite Brunen, they tell the story of a priest and his mistress, who flying from persecution, inhabited a cottage at the foot of the snows. One winter night an avalanche overwhelmed them, but their plaintive voices are still heard in stormy nights, calling for succour from the peasants.. 86 HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. Brunen is situated on the northern side of the angle which the lake makes, forming the extremity of the lake of Lucerne. Here we rested for the night, and dismissed our boatmen. Nothing could be more magnificent than the view from this spot. The high mountains encompassed us, darkening the waters ; at a distance on the shores of Uri, we could perceive the chapel of Tell, and this was the village where he matured the conspiracy which was to overthrow the tyrant of his country ; and indeed, this lovely lake, these sublime mountains, and wild forests, seemed a fit cradle for a mind aspiring to high adventure and heroic deeds. Yet we saw no glimpse of his spirit in his present countrymen. The Swiss appeared to us then, and experience has confirmed our opinion, a people slow of comprehension and of action ; but habit has made them unfit for slavery, and they would, I have little doubt, make a brave defence against any invader of their freedom. Such were our reflections, and we remained until late in the evening on the shores of the lake, conversing, enjoying the rising breeze, and con- templating with feelings of exquisite delight the divine objects that surrounded us. The following day was spent in a consideration of our circumstances, and in contemplation of the scene around us. A furious vent d'ltalie (south wind) tore up the lake, making immense waves, and carrying the water in a whirlwind high in the ah', when it fell like heavy rain into the lake. The waves broke with a tremendous noise on the rocky shores. This conflict continued during the whole day, but it became calmer towards the evening. S and I walked on the banks, and sitting on a rude pier, S read aloud the account of the Siege of Jerusalem from Tacitus. In the meantime we endeavoured to find a habi- tation, but could only procure two unfurnished rooms in an ugly big house, called the Chateau. These we hired at a guinea a month, had beds moved into them, and the next day took pos- session. But it was a wretched place, with no comfort or convenience. It was with difficulty that we could get any food prepared : as it was cold and rainy, we ordered a fire — they lighted an immense stove which occupied a corner of the room ; it was long before it heated, and when hot, the warmth was so unwholesome, that we were obliged to throw open our windows to prevent a kind of suffocation ; added to this, there was but one person in Brunen who could speak French, a barbarous kind of German being the language of this part of Switzerland. It was with difficulty, therefore, that we could get our most ordinary wants supplied. Our amusement meanwhile was commenced a romance on and I wrote to the his writing. S subject of the dictation. Our immediate inconveniences led us to a more serious consideration of our situation. At one time we proposed crossing Mont St. Gothard into Italy ; but the ,£28 which we possessed, was all the money that we could count upon with any cer- tainty, until the following December. S 's presence in London was absolutely necessary for the procuring any further supply. What were we to do ? we should soon be reduced to absolute want. Thus, after balancing the various topics that offered themselves for discussion, we resolved to return to England. Having formed this resolution, we had not a moment for delay : our little store was sensibly decreasing, and ,£28 could hardly appear suffi- cient for so long a journey. It had cost us sixty to cross France from Paris to Neufchatel ; but we now resolved on a more economical mode of travelling. Water conveyances are always the cheapest, and fortunately we were so situated, that by taking advantage of the rivers of the Reuss and Rhine, we could reach England without travelling a league on land. This was our plan ; we should travel eight hundred miles, and was this possible on so small a sum ? but there was no other alter- native, and indeed S only knew how very little we had to depend upon. We departed the next morning for the town of Lucerne. It rained violently during the first part of our voyage, but towards its conclusion the sky became clear, and the sun-beams dried and cheered us. We saw again, and for the last time, the rocky shores of this beautiful lake, its verdant isles, and snow-capt mountains. We landed at Lucerne, and remained in that town the following night, and the next morning (August 28th) departed in the diligence par eau for Loffenberg, a town on the Rhine, where the falls of that river prevented the same vessel from proceeding any further. Our companions in this voyage were of the meanest class, smoked pro- digiously, and were exceedingly disgusting. After having landed for refreshment in the middle of the day, we found, on our return to the boat, that our former seats were occupied ; we took others, when the original possessors angrily, and almost with violence, insisted upon our leaving them. Their brutal rudeness to us, who did not understand their language, provoked S to knock one of the foremost down : he did not return the blow, but continued his vociferations until the boatmen interfered, and provided us with other seats. The Reuss is exceedingly rapid, and we de- HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. ;;7 scended several falls, one of more than eight feet. Most of the passengers landed at this point, to re- embark when the boat had descended into smooth water — the boatmen advised us to remain on board. There is something very delicious in the sensation, when at one moment you are at the top of a fall of water, and before the second has ex- pired you are at the bottom, still rushing on with the impulse which the descent has given. The waters of the Rhone are blue, those of the Reuss are of a deep green. I should think that there must be something in the beds of these rivers, and that the accidents of the banks and sky cannot alone cause this difference. Sleeping at Dettingen, we arrived the next morning at Loffenberg, where we engaged a small canoe to convey us to Mumph. I give these boats this Indian appellation, as they were of the rudest construction — long, narrow, and flat- bottomed : they consisted merely of straight pieces of deal board, unpainted, and nailed together with so little care, that the water constantly poured in at the crevices, and the boat perpetually required emptying. The river was rapid, and sped swiftly, breaking as it passed on innumerable rocks just covered by the water : it was a sight of some dread to see our frail boat winding among the eddies of the rocks, which it was death to touch, and when the slightest inclination on one side would instantly have overset it. We could not procure a boat at Mumph, and we thought ourselves lucky in meeting with a return cabriolet to Rheinfelden ; but our good fortune was of short duration : about a league from Mumph the cabriolet broke down, and we were obliged to proceed on foot. Fortunately we were overtaken by some Swiss soldiers, who were discharged and returning home ; they carried our box for us as far as Rheinfelden, when we were directed to pro- ceed a league farther to a village where boats were commonly hired. Here, although not without some difficulty, we procured a boat for Basle, and pro- ceeded down a swift river, while evening came on, and the air was bleak and comfortless. Our voyage was, however, short, and we arrived at the place of our destination by six in the evening. GERMANY. Before we slept, S had made a bargain for a boat to carry us to<«Mayence, and the next morn- ing, bidding adieu to Switzerland, we embarked in a boat laden with merchandise, but where we had no fellow-passengers to disturb our tranquillity by their vulgarity and rudeness. The wind was vio- lently against us, but the stream, aided by a slight exertion from the rowers, carried us on ; the sun shone pleasantly, S read aloud to us Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters from Norway, and we passed our time delightfully. The evening was such as to find few parallels in beauty ; as it approached, the banks, which had hitherto been flat and uninteresting, became ex- ceedingly beautiful. Suddenly the river .grew narrow, and the boat dashed with inconceivable rapidity round the base of a rocky hill covered with pines ; a ruined tower, with its desolated windows, stood on the summit of another hill that jutted into the river ; beyond, the sunset was illu- minating the distant mountains and clouds, casting the reflection of its rich and purple hues on the agitated river. The brilliance and contrasts of the colours on the circling whirlpools of the stream, was an appearance entirely new and most beautiful ; the shades grew darker as the sun descended below the horizon, and after we had landed, as we walked to our inn round a beautiful bay, the full moon arose with divine splendour, casting its silver light on the before purpled waves. The following morning we pursued our journey in a slight canoe, in which every motion was accompanied with danger ; but the stream had lost much of its rapidity, and was no longer impeded by rocks ; tli£ banks were low, and covered with willows. We passed Strasburgh, and the next morning it was proposed to us that we should proceed in the diligence par eau, as the navigation would become dangerous for our small boat. There were only four passengers besides our- selves, three of these were students of the Stras- burgh university : Schwitz, a rather handsome, good-tempered young man ; Hoff, a kind of shape- less animal, with a heavy, ugly, German face ; and Schneider, who was nearly an idiot, and on whom his companions were always playing a thousand tricks : the remaining passengers were a woman and an infant. The country was uninteresting, but we enjoyed fine weather, and slept in the boat in the open air without any inconvenience. We saw on the ! shores few objects that called forth our attention, : 88 HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. if I except the town of Mannheim, which was strikingly neat and clean. It was situated at about a mile from the river, and the road to it was planted on each side with beautiful acacias. The last part of this voyage was performed close under land, as the wind was so violently against us, that, even with all the force of a rapid current in our favour, we were hardly permitted to pro- ceed. We were told (and not without reason) that we ought to congratulate ourselves on having exchanged our canoe for this boat, as the river was now of considerable width, and tossed by the wind into large waves. The same morning a boat, containing fifteen persons, in attempting to cross the water, had upset in the middle of the river, and every one in it perished. We saw the boat turned over, floating down the stream. ' This was a melancholy sight, yet ludicrously commented on by the batelier; almost the whole stock of whose French consisted in the word seulement. When we asked him what had happened, he answered, laying particular emphasis on this favourite dis- syllable, Cest settlement im bateau, qui etait seulement renverse, et tous les peuples sont seulement noyes. Mayence is one of the best fortified towns in Germany. The river, which is broad and rapid, guards it to the east, and the hills for three leagues around exhibit signs of fortifications. The town itself is old, the streets, narrow, and the houses high : the eathedral and towers of the town still bear marks of the bombardment which took place in the revolutionary war. We took our place in the diligence par eau for Cologne, and the next morning (September 4th) departed. This conveyance appeared much more like a mercantile English affair than any we had before seen ; it was shaped like a steam-boat, with a cabin and a high deck. Most of our companions chose to remain in the cabin ; this was fortunate for us, since nothing could be more horribly dis- gusting than the lower order of smoking, drinking I Germans who travelled with us ; they swaggered and talked, and got tipsy, and, what was hideous to English eyes, kissed one another ; there were, however, two or three merchants of a better class, who appeared well-informed and polite. The part of the Rhine down which we now glided, is that so beautifully described by Lord Byron in his third canto of Childe Harold. We read these verses with delight, as they conjured before us these lovely scenes with truth and vivid- ness of painting, and with the exquisite addition of glowing language and a warm imagination. We were carried down by a dangerously rapid current, and saw on either side of us hills covered with vines and trees, craggy cliffs crowned by desolate towers, and wooded islands, where picturesque ruins peeped from behind the foliage, and cast the shadows of their forms on the troubled waters, which distorted without deforming them. We heard the -songs of the vintagers, and if sur- rounded by disgusting Germans, the sight was not so replete with enjoyment as I now fancy it to have been ; yet memory, taking all the dark shades from the picture, presents this part of the Rhine to my remembrance as the loveliest para- dise on earth. We had sufficient leisure for the enjoyment of these scenes, for the boatmen, neither rowing nor steering, suffered us to be carried down by the stream, and the boat turned round and round as it descended. While I speak with disgust of the Germans who travelled with us, I should, in justice to these borderers, record, that at one of the inns here we saw the only pretty woman we met with in the course of our travels. She is what I should con- ceive to be a truly German beauty ; grey eyes, slightly tinged with brown, and expressive of un- common sweetness and frankness. She had lately recovered from a fever, and this added to the interest of her countenance, by adorning it with an appearance of extreme delicacy. ■ On the following day we left the hills of the Rhine, and found that, for the remainder of our journey, we should move sluggishly through the flats of Holland : the river also winds extremely, so that, after calculating our resources, we resolved to finish our journey in a land diligence. Our water conveyance remained that night at Bonn, and that we might lose no time, we proceeded post the same night to Cologne, where we arrived late ; for the rate of travelling in Germany seldom exceeds a mile and a half an hour. Cologne appeared an immense town, as we drove through street after street to arrive at our inn. Before we slept, we secured places in the diligence, which was to depart next morning for Cleves. Nothing in the world can be more wretched than the travelling in this German diligence : the coach is clumsy and comfortless, and we proceeded so slowly, stopping so often, that it appeared as if we should never arrive at our journey's end. We were allowed two hours for dinner, and two more were wasted in the evening while the coach was being changed. We were then requested, as the diligence had a greater demand for places than it could supply, to proceed in a cabriolet which was provided for us. We readily consented, as we hoped to travel faster than in the heavy diligence ; but this was not permitted, and we jogged on all night behind this cumbrous machine. In the HISTORY OF A SIX WEEKS' TOUR. 89 morning wnen we stopped, we for a moment in- dulged a hope that we had arrived at Cloves, which was at the distance of five leagues from our last night's stage ; but we had only advanced three leagues hi seven or eight hours, and had yet eight miles to perform. However, we first rested about three hours at this stage, where we could not ob- . tain breakfast or any convenience, and at about eight o'clock we again departed, and with slow, although far from easy travelling, faint with hunger and fatigue, we arrived by noon at C16ves. HOLLAND. Tired by the slow pace of the diligence, we resolved to post the remainder of the way. We had now, however, left Germany, and travelled at about the same rate as an English post-chaise. The country was entirely flat, and the roads so sandy, that the horses proceeded with difficulty. The only ornaments of this country are the turf fortifications that surround the towns. At Nime- guen we passed the flying bridge, mentioned in the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague. We had intended to travel all night, but at Triel, where we arrived at about ten o'clock, we were assured that no post-boy was to be found who would pro- ceed at so late an hour, on account of the robbers who infested the roads. This was an obvious imposition ; but as we could procure neither horses nor driver, we were obliged to sleep here. During the whole of the following day the road lay between canals, which intersect this country in every direction. The roads were excellent, but the Dutch have contrived as many inconveniences as possible. In our journey of the day before, we had passed by a windmill, which was so situated with regard to the road, that.it was only by keep- ing close to the opposite side, and passing quickly, that we could avoid the sweep of its sails. The roads between the canals were only wide enough to admit of one carriage, so that* when we encountered another we were obliged sometimes to back for half a mile, until we should come to one of the drawbridges which led to the fields, on which one of the cabriolets was backed, while the other passed. But they have another practice, which is still more annoying : the flax when cut is put to soak under the mud of the canals, and then placed to dry against the trees which are planted on either side of the road ; the stench that it exhales, when the beams of the sun draw out the moisture, is scarcely endurable. We saw many enormous frogs and toads in the canals ; and the only sight which refreshed the eye by its beauty was the delicious verdure of the fields, where the grass was as rich and green as that of England, an appearance not common on the Continent. Rotterdam is remarkably clean : the Dutch even wash the outside brickwork of their houses. We remained here one day, and met with a man in a very unfortunate condition : he had been born in Holland, and had spent so much of his life between England, France, and Germany, that he had ac- quired a slight knowledge of the language of each country, and spoke all very imperfectly. He said that he understood English best, but he was nearly unable to express himself in that. On the evening of the 8th of September we sailed from Rotterdam, but contrary winds obliged us to remain nearly two days at Marsluys, a town about two leagues from Rotterdam. Here our last guinea was expended, and we reflected with wonder that we had travelled eight hundred miles for less than thirty pounds, passing through lovely scenes, and enjoying the beauteous Rhine, and all the brilliant shows of earth and sky, perhaps more, travelling as we did, in an open boat, than if we had been shut up in a carriage, and passed on the road under the hills. During our stay at Marsluys, S continued his Romance. The captain of our vessel was an Englishman, and had been a king's pilot. The bar of the Rhine a little below Marsluys is so dangerous, that with- out a very favourable breeze, none of the Dutch vessels dare attempt its passage ; but although the wind was a very few points in our favour, our captain resolved to sail, and although half repent- ant before he had accomplished his undertaking, he was glad and proud when, triumphing over the timorous Dutchmen, the bar was crossed, and the vessel safe in the open sea. It was in truth an enterprise of some peril ; a heavy gale had pre- vailed during the night, and although it had abated since the morning, the breakers at the bar were still exceedingly high. Through some delay, which had arisen from the ship having got aground in the harbour, we arrived half an hour after the 90 LETTERS FROM GENEVA. appointed time. The breakers were tremendous, and we were informed that there was the space of only two feet between the bottom of the vessel and the sands. The waves, which broke against the sides of the ship with a terrible shock, were quite perpendicular, and even sometimes overhanging in the abrupt smoothness of their sides. Shoals of enormous porpoises were sporting with the utmost composure amidst the troubled waters. We safely passed this danger, and after a navi- gation unexpectedly short, arrived at Gravesend on the morning of the 1 3th of September, the third day after our departure from Marsluys. M. S. LETTERS WRITTEN DURING A RESIDENCE OF THREE MONTHS IN THE ENVIRONS OF GENEVA, IN THE SUMMER OF THE YEAR 1816. LETTER I. Hotel de Secheron, Geneva, May 17, 1816. We arrived at Paris on the 8th of this month, and were detained two days for the purpose of obtaining the various signatures necessary to our passports, the French government having become much more circumspect since the escape of Lava- lette. We had no letters of introduction, or any friend in that city, and were therefore confined to our hotel, where we were obliged to hire apart- ments for the week, although, when we first arrived, we expected to be detained one night only ; for in Paris there are no houses, where you can be accommodated with apartments by the day. The manners of the French are interesting, although less attractive, at least to Englishmen, than before the last invasion of the Allies : the discontent and sullenness of their minds perpetually betrays itself. Nor is it wonderful that they should I regard the subjects of a government which fills i their country with hostile garrisons, and sustains a ; detested dynasty on the throne, with an acrimony and indignation of which that government alone is the proper object. This feeling is honourable to the French, and encouraging to all those of every nation in Europe who have a fellow feeling with the oppressed, and who cherish an unconquerable hope that the cause of liberty must at length prevail. Our route after Paris, as far as Troyes, lay through the same uninteresting tract of country which we had traversed on foot nearly two years before ; but on quitting Troyes we left the road leading to Neufchatel, to follow that which was to conduct us to Geneva. We entered Dijon on the third evening after our departure from Paris, and passing through Dole, arrived at Poligny. This town is built at the foot of Jura, which rises abruptly from a plain of vast extent. The rocks of the mountain overhang the houses. Some difficulty in procuring horses detained us here until the evening closed in, when we proceeded, by the light of a stormy moon, to Champagnolles, a little village situated in the depth of the mountains. The road was serpentine and exceedingly steep, and was overhung on one side by half-distinguished precipices, whilst the other was a gulf, filled by the darkness of the driving clouds. The dashing of the invisible streams announced to us that we had quitted the plains of France, as we slowly ascended, amidst a violent storm of wind and rain, to Champagnolles, where we arrived at twelve o'clock, the fourth night after our departure from Paris. The next morning we proceeded, still ascending among the ravines and valleys of the mountain. The scenery perpetually grows more wonderful and sublime : pine forests of impenetrable thick- ness and untrodden, nay, inaccessible expanse, spread on every side. Sometimes the dark woods descending, follow the route into the valleys, the distorted trees struggling with knotted roots between the most barren clefts ; sometimes the road winds high into the regions of frost, and then the forests become scattered, and the branches of the trees are loaded with snow, and half of the enormous pines themselves buried in the wavy drifts. The spring, as the inhabitants informed us, was unusually late, and indeed the cold was excessive ; as we ascended the mountains, the same clouds which rained on us in the valleys poured forth large flakes of snow thick and fast. LETTERS FROM GENEVA. 91 The sun occasionally shone through these showers, and illuminated the magnificent ravines of the mountains, whose gigantic pines were some laden with snow, some wreathed round by the lines of scattered and fingering vapour ; others darting their spires into the sunny sky, brilliantly clear and azure. As the evening advanced, and we ascended higher, the snow which we had beheld whitening the overhanging rocks, now encroached upon our road, and it snowed fast as we entered the village of Les Rousses, where we were threatened by the apparent necessity of passing the night in a bad inn' and dirty beds. For, from that place there are two roads to Geneva ; one by Nion, in the Swiss territory, where the mountain route is shorter, and comparatively easy at that time of the year, when the road is for several leagues covered with snow of an enormous depth ; the other road lay through Gex, and was too circuitous and dan- gerous to be attempted at so late an hour in the day. Our passport, however, was for Gex, and we were told that we could not change its destination ; but all these police laws, so severe in themselves, are to be softened by bribery, and this difficulty was at length overcome. We hired four horses, and ten men to support the carriage, and departed from Les Rousses at six in the evening, when the sun had already far descended, and the snow, pelting against the windows of our carriage, assisted the coming darkness to deprive us of the view of the lake of Geneva and the far distant Alps. The prospect around, however, was sufficiently sublime to command our attention — never was scene more awfully desolate. The trees in these regions are incredibly large, and stand in scattered clumps over the white wilderness ; the vast ex- panse of snow was chequered only by these gigantic pines, and the poles that marked our road : no river nor rock-encircled lawn relieved the eye, by adding the picturesque to the sublime. The natural silence of that uninhabited desert con- trasted strangely with the voices of the men who conducted us, who, with animated tones and gestures, called to one another in a patois com- posed of French and Italian, creating disturbance, where, but for them, there was none. To what a different scene are we now arrived ! To the warm sunshine, and to the humming of sun-loving insects. From the windows of our hotel we see the lovely lake, blue as the heavens which it reflects, and sparkling with golden beams. The opposite shore is sloping, and covered with vines, which, however, do not so early in the season add to the beauty of the prospect. Gentlemen's seats are scattered over these banks, behind which rise the various ridges of black mountains, and towering far above, in the midst of its snowy Alps, the majestic Mont Blanc, highest and queen of all. Such is the view reflected by the lake ; it is a bright summer scene without any of that sacred solitude and deep seclusion that delighted us at Lucerne. We have not yet found out any very agreeable walks, but you know our attachment to water excursions. We have hired a boat, and every evening, at about six o'clock, we sail on the lake, which is delightful, whether we glide over a glassy surface or are speeded along by a strong wind. The waves of this lake never afflict me with that sickness that deprives me of all enjoyment in a sea voyage ; on the contrary, the tossing of our boat raises my spirits and inspires me with unusual hilarity. Twilight here is of short duration, but we at present enjoy the benefit of an increashig moon, and seldom return until ten o'clock, when, as we approach the shore, we are saluted by the delightful scent of flowers and new-mown grass, and the chirp of the grasshoppers, and the song of the evening birds. We do not enter into society here, yet our time passes swiftly and delightfully. We read Latin and Italian during the heats of noon, and when the sun declines we walk in the garden of the hotel, looking at the rabbits, relieving fallen cockchaffers, and watching the motions of a myriad of lizards, who inhabit a southern wall of the garden. You know that we have just escaped from the gloom of winter and of London ; and coming to this delightful spot during this divine weather, I feel as happy as a new-fledged bird, and hardly care what twig I fly to, so* that I may try my new-found wings. A more ex- perienced bird may be more difficult in its choice of a bower ; but, in my present temper of mind, the budding flowers, the fresh grass of spring, and the happy creatures about me that live and enjoy these pleasures, are quite enough to afford me exquisite delight, even though clouds should shut out Mont Blanc from my sight. Adieu ! M. S. — ♦— LETTER II. COLIGNY GENEVA — PLAINPALAIS. Campagne Chapuis, near Coligny, 1st June. You will perceive from my date that we have changed our residence since my last letter. We now inhabit a little cottage on the opposite shore of the lake, and have exchanged the view of Mont Blanc and her snowy aiguilles for the dark frowning Jura, behind whose range we every 92 LETTERS FROM GENEVA. evening see the sun sink, and darkness approaches our valley from behind the Alps, which are then tinged by that glowing rose-like hue which is observed in England to attend on the clouds of an autumnal sky when day-light is almost gone. The lake is at our feet, and a little harbour con- tains our boat, in which we still enjoy our evening excursions on the water. Unfortunately we do not now enjoy those brilliant skies that hailed us on our first arrival to this country. An almost perpetual rain confines us principally to the house ; but when the sun hursts forth it is with a splendour and heat unknown in England. The thunder storms that visit us are grander and more terrific than I have ever seen before. We watch them as they approach from the opposite side of the lake, observing the lightning play among the clouds in various parts of the heavens, and dart in jagged figures upon the piny heights of Jura, dark with the shadow of the overhanging cloud, while perhaps the sun is shining cheerily upon us. One night we enjoyed a finer storm than I had ever before beheld. The lake was lit up — the pines on Jura made visible, and all the scene illuminated for an instant, when a pitchy black- ness succeeded, and the thunder came in frightful bursts over our heads, amid the darkness. But while I still dwell on the country around Geneva, you will expect me to say something of the town itself : there is nothing, however, in it that can repay you for the trouble of walking over its rough stones. The houses are high, the streets narrow, many of them on the ascent, and no public building of any beauty to attract your eye, or any architecture to gratify your taste. The town is surrounded by a wall, the three gates of which are shut exactly at ten o'clock, when no bribery (as in France) can open them. To the south of the town is the promenade of the Genevese, a grassy plain planted with a few trees, and called Plain- palais. Here a small obelisk is erected to the glory of Rousseau, and here (such is the mutability of human life) the magistrates, the successors of those who exiled him from his native country, were shot by the populace, during that revolution, which his writings mainly contributed to mature, and which, notwithstanding the temporary bloodshed and injustice with which it was polluted, has produced enduring benefits to mankind, which all the chica- nery of statesmen, nor even the great conspiracy of kings, can entirely render vain. From respect to the memory of their predecessors, none of the present magistrates ever walk in Plainpalais. Another Sunday recreation for the citizens is an excursion to the top of Mont Saleve. This hill is within a league of the town, and rises perpendicu- larly from the cultivated plain. It is ascended on the other side, and I should judge from its situa- tion that your toil is rewarded by a delightful view of the course of the Rhone and Arve, and of the shores of the lake. We have not yet visited it. There is more equality of classes here than in England. This occasions a greater freedom and refinement of manners among the lower orders than we meet with in our own country. I fancy the haughty English ladies are greatly disgusted with this consequence of republican institutions, for the Genevese servants complain very much of their scolding, an exercise of the tongue, I believe, per- fectly unknown here. The peasants of Switzerland may not however emulate the vivacity and grace of the French. They are more cleanly, but they are slow and inapt. I know a girl of twenty who, although she had lived all her life among vineyards, could not inform me during what month the vintage took place, and I discovered she was utterly igno- rant of the order in which the months succeed one to another. She would not have been sur- prised if I had talked of the burning sun and deli- cious fruits of December, or of the frosts of July. Yet she is by no means deficient in understanding. The Genevese are also much inclined to puritan- ism. It is true that from habit they dance on a Sunday, but as soon as the French government was abolished in the town, the magistrates ordered the theatre to be closed, and measures were taken to pull down the building. We have latterly enjoyed fine weather, and nothing is more pleasant than to listen to the even- ing song of the vine-dressers. They are all women, and most of them have harmonious although mas- culine voices. The theme of their ballads consists of shepherds, love, flocks, and the sons of kings who fall in love with beautiful shepherdesses. Their tunes are monotonous, but it is sweet to hear them in the stillness of evening, while we are enjoying the sight of the setting sun, either from the hill behind our house or from the lake. Such are our pleasures here, which would be greatly increased if the season had been more favourable, for they chiefly consist in such enjoy- ments as sunshine and gentle breezes bestow. We have not yet made any excursion in the environs of the town, but we have planned several, when you shall hear again of us ; and we will endeavour, by the magic of words, to transport the ethereal part of you to the neighbourhood of the Alps, and mountain streams, and forests, which, while they clothe the former, darken the latter with their vast shadows. Adieu ! M.S. LETTERS FROM GENEVA. 98 LETTER III. To T. P. Esq. MEILLERIE, CLARENS, CHILLON, VEVAI, LAUSANNE. Montalegre, near Coligni, Geneva, July \2lh. It is nearly a fortnight since I have returned from Vevai. This journey has been on every account delightful, but most especially, because then I first knew the divine beauty of Rousseau's imagination, as it exhibits itself in Julie. It is inconceivable what an enchantment the scene itself lends to those delineations, from which its own most touching charm arises. But I will give you an abstract of our voyage, which lasted eight days, and if you have a map of Switzerland, you can follow me. We left Montalegre at half-past two on the 23d of June. The lake was calm, and after three hours of rowing we arrived at Hermance, a beautiful little village, containing a ruined tower, built, the villagers say, by Julius Csesar. There were three other towers similar to it, which the Genevese destroyed for their own fortifications in 1560. We got into the tower by a kind of window. The walls are immensely solid, and the stone of which it is built so hard, that it yet retained the mark of chisels. The boatmen said, that this tower was once three times higher than it is now. There are two staircases in the thickness of the walls, one of which is entirely demolished, and the other half ruined, and only accessible by a ladder. The town itself, now an inconsiderable village inhabited by a few fishermen, was built by a queen of Burgundy, and reduced to its present state by the inhabitants of Berne, who burnt and ravaged everything they could find. Leaving Hermance, we arrived at sunset at the village of Nerni. After looking at our lodgings, which were gloomy and dirty, we walked out by the side* of the lake. It was beautiful to see the vast expanse of these purple and misty waters broken by the craggy islets near to its slant and " beached margin." There were many fish sport- ing in the lake, and multitudes were collected close to the rocks to catch the flies which inhabited them. On returning to the village, we sat on a wall beside the lake, looking at some children who were playing at a game like ninepins. The children here appeared in an extraordinary way deformed and diseased. Most of them were crooked, and with enlarged throats ; but one little boy had such exquisite grace in his mien and motions, as I never before saw equalled in a child. His countenance was beautiful for the expression with which it overflowed. There was a mixture of pride and gentleness in his eyes and lips, the indications of sensibility, which his education will probably per- vert to misery or seduce to crime ; but there was more of gentleness than of pride, and it seemed that the pride was tamed from its original wild- ness by the habitual exercise of milder feelings. My companion gave him a piece of money, which he took without speaking, with a sweet smile of easy thankfulness, and then with an unembarrassed air turned to his play. All this might scarcely be ; but the imagination surely could not forbear to breathe into the most inanimate forms, some likeness of its own visions, on such a serene and glowing evening, in this remote and romantic village, beside the calm lake that bore us hither. On returning to our inn, we found that the servant had arranged our rooms, and deprived them of the greater portion of their former discon- solate appearance. They reminded my companion nf Greece : it was five years, he said, since he had slept in such beds. The influence of the recol- lections excited by this circumstance on our con- versation gradually faded, and I retired to rest with no unpleasant sensations, thinking of our journey to-morrow, and of the pleasure of recounting the little adventures of it when we return. The next morning we passed Yvoire, a scattered village with an ancient castle, whose houses are interspersed with trees, and which stands at a little distance from Nerni, on the promontory which bounds a deep bay, some miles in extent. So soon as we arrived at this promontory, the lake began to assume an aspect of wilder magnificence. The mountains of Savoy, whose summits were bright with snow, descended in broken slopes to the lake : on high, the rocks were dark with pine forests, which become deeper and more immense, until the ice and snow mingle with the points of naked rock that pierce the blue air ; but below, groves of walnut, chesnut, and oak, with openings of lawny fields, attested the milder climate. As soon as we had passed the opposite promon- tory, we saw the river Drance, which descends from between a chasm in the mountains, and makes a plain near the lake, intersected by its divided streams. Thousands of besolets, beautiful water-birds, like sea-gulls, but smaller, with purple on their backs, take their station on the shallows where its waters mingle with the lake. As we approached Evian, the mountains descended more precipitously to the lake, and masses of intermingled wood and rock overhung its shining spire. We arrived at this town about seven o'clock, after a day which involved more rapid changes of atmo-' sphere than I ever recollect to have observed before. .04 LETTERS FROM GENEVA. The morning was cold and wet ; then an easterly wind, and the clouds hard and high ; then thunder showers, and wind shifting to every quarter ; then a warm blast from the south, and summer clouds hanging over the peaks, with bright blue sky between. About half an hour after we had arrived at Evian, a few flashes of lightning came from a dark cloud, directly over head, and continued after the cloud had dispersed. "Diespiter per pura tonantes egit equos :" a phenomenon which cer- tainly had no influence on me, corresponding with that which it produced on Horace. The appearance of the inhabitants of Evian is more wretched, diseased and poer, than I ever recollect to have seen. The contrast indeed between the subjects of the King of Sardinia and the citizens of the independent republics of Switz- erland, affords a powerful illustration of the blighting mischiefs of despotism, within the space of a few miles. They have mineral waters here, eaux savonneuses, they call them. In the evening we had some difficulty about our passports, but so soon as the syndic heard my companion's rank and name, he apologised for the circumstance. The inn was good. During our voyage, on the distant height of a hill, covered with pine-forests, we saw a ruined castle, which reminded me of those on the Rhine. We left Evian on the following morning, with a wind of such violence as to permit but one sail to be carried. The waves also were exceedingly high, and our boat so heavily laden, that there appeared to be some danger. We arrived, how- ever, safe at Meillerie, after passing with great speed mighty forests which overhung the lake, and lawns of exquisite verdure, and mountains with bare and icy points, which rose immediately from the summit of the rocks, whose bases were echoing to the waves. We here heard that the Empress Maria Louisa had slept at Meillerie, — before the present inn was built, and when the accommodations were those of the most wretched village, — in remembrance of St. Preux. How beautiful it is to find that the common sentiments of human nature can attach themselves to those who are the most removed from its duties and its enjoyments, when Genius pleads for their admission at the gate of Power. To own them was becoming in the Empress, and confirms the affectionate praise contained in the regret of a great and enlightened nation. A Bourbon dared not even to have remembered Rousseau. She owed this power to that democracy which her husband's dynasty outraged, and of which it was however, in some sort, the repre- sentative among the nations of the earth. This little incident shows at once how unfit and how impossible it is for the ancient system of opinions, or for any power built upon a conspiracy to revive them, permanently to subsist among mankind. We dined there, and had some honey, the best I have ever tasted, the very essence of the mountain flowers, and as fragrant. Probably the village derives its name from this production. Meillerie is the well-known scene of St. Preux's visionary exile ; but Meillerie is indeed enchanted ground, were Rousseau no magician. Groves of pine, chesnut, and walnut overshadow it ; magnificent and unbounded forests to which England affords no parallel. In the midst of these woods are dells of lawny expanse, inconceivably verdant, adorned with a thousand of the rarest flowers, and odorous with thyme. The lake appeared somewhat calmer as we left Meillerie, sailing close to the banks, whose magni- ficence augmented with the turn of every pro- montory. But we congratulated ourselves too soon": the wind gradually increased in violence, until it blew tremendously ; and, as it came from the remotest extremity of the lake, produced waves of a frightful height, and covered the whole sur- face with a chaos of foam. One of our boatmen, who was a dreadfully stupid fellow, persisted in holding the sail at a time when the boat was on the point of being driven under water by the hurricane. On discovering his error, he let it entirely go, and the boat for a moment refused to obey the helm ; in addition, the rudder was so broken as to render the management of it very difficult ; one wave fell in, and then another. My companion, an excellent swimmer, took off his coat, I did the same, and we sat with our arms crossed, every instant expecting to be swamped. The sail was, however, again held, the boat obeyed the helm, and still in imminent peril from the immensity of the waves, we arrived in a few minutes at a sheltered port, in the village of St. Gingoux. I felt in this near prospect of death a mixture of sensations, among which terror entered, though but subordinately. My feelings would have been less painful had I been alone ; but I knew that my companion would have attempted to save me, and I was overcome with humiliation, when I thought that his life might have been risked to preserve mine. When we arrived at St. Gingoux, the inhabitants, who stood on the shore, unaccus- tomed to see a vessel as frail as ours, and fearing to venture at all on such a sea, exchanged looks of wonder and congratulation with our boatmen, who, as well as ourselves, were well pleased to set foot on shore. St. Gingoux is even more beautiful than Meillerie ; LETTERS FROM GENEVA. 95 the mountains are higher, and their loftiest points of elevation descend more abruptly to the lake. On high, the aerial summits still cherish great depths of snow in their ravines, and in the paths of their unseen torrents. One of the highest of these is called Roche de St. Julien, beneath whose pinna- cles the forests become deeper and more extensive ; the chesnut gives a peculiarity to the scene, which is most beautiful, and will make a picture in my memory, distinct from all other mountain scenes which I have ever before visited. As we arrived here early, we took a voiture to visit the mouth of the Rhone. We went between the mountains and the lake, under groves of mighty chesnut trees, beside perpetual streams, which are nourished by the snows above, and form stalactites on the rocks, over which they fall. We saw an immense chesnut tree, which had been overthrown by the hurricane of the morning. The place where the Rhone joins the lake was marked by a line of tremendous breakers ; the river is as rapid as when it leaves the lake, but is muddy and dark. We went about a league farther on the road to La Valais, and stopped at a castle called La Tour de Bouverie, which seems to be the frontier of Switzerland and Savoy, as we were asked for our passports, on the supposition of our proceeding to Italy. On one side of the road was the immense Roche de St. Julien, which overhung it ; through the gateway of the castle we saw the snowy mountains of La Valais, clothed in clouds, and, on the other side, was the willowy plain of the Rhone, in a character of striking contrast with the rest of the scene, bounded by the dark mountains that over- hang Clarens, Vevai, and the lake that rolls be- tween. In the midst of the plain rises a little isolated hill, on which the white spire of a church peeps from among the tufted chesnut woods. We returned to St. Gingoux before sunset, and I passed the evening in reading Julie. As my companion rises late, I had time before breakfast, on the ensuing morning, to hunt the waterfalls of the river that fall into the lake at St. Gingoux. The stream is indeed, from the declivity over which it falls, only a succession of waterfalls, which roar over the rocks with a perpetual sound, and suspend their unceasing spray on the leaves and flowers that overhang and adorn its savage banks. The path that conducted along this river sometimes avoided the precipices of its shores, by leading through meadows ; sometimes threaded the base of the perpendicular and caverned rocks. I gathered in these meadows a nosegay of such flowers as I never saw in England, and which I thought more beautiful for that rarity. On my return, after breakfast, we sailed for Clarens, determining first to see the three mouths of the Rhone, and then the castle of Chillon ; the day was fine, and the water calm. We passed from the blue waters of the lake over the stream of the Rhone, which is rapid even at a great dis- tance from its confluence with the lake ; the turbid waters mixed with those of the lake, but mixed with them unwillingly. {See Nouvelle Hklo'ise, Lettre 17, Part. 4.) I read Julie all day ; an overflowing, as it now seems, surrounded by the scenes which it has so wonderfully peopled, of sublimest genius, and more than human sensibility. Meillerie, the Castle of Chillon, Clarens, the mountains of La Valais and Savoy, present themselves to the ima- gination as monuments of things that were once familiar, and of beings that were once dear to it. They were created indeed by one mind, but a mind so powerfully bright as to cast a shade of falsehood on the records that are called reality. We passed on to the Castle of Chillon, and visited its dungeons and towers. These prisons are excavated below the lake ; the principal dun- geon is supported by seven columns, whose branch- ing capitals support the roof. Close to the very walls, the lake is 800 feet deep ; iron rings are fastened to these columns, and on them were engraven a multitude of names, partly those of visitors, and partly doubtless of the prisoners, of whom now no memory remains, and who thus beguiled a solitude which they have long ceased to feel. One date was as ancient as 1670. At the commencement of the Reformation, and indeed long after that period, this dungeon was the recep- tacle of those who shook, or who denied the system of idolatry, from the effects of which mankind is even now slowly emerging. Close to this long and lofty dungeon was a nar- row cell, and beyond it one larger and far more lofty and dark, supported upon two tuiornamented arches. Across one of these arches was a beam, now black and rotten, on which prisoners were hung in secret. I never saw a monument more terrible of that cold and inhuman tyranny, which it has been the delight of man to exercise over man. It was indeed one of those many tremendous fulfilments which render the " pernicies humani generis" of the great Tacitus so solemn and irre- fragable a prophecy. The gendarme, who con- ducted us over this castle, told us that there was an opening to the lake, by means of a secret spring, connected with which the whole dungeon might be filled with water before the prisoners could possibly escape ! We proceeded with a contrary wind to Clarens against a heavy swell. I never felt more strongly 96 LETTERS FROM GENEVA. than on landing at Clarens, that the spirit of old times had deserted its once cherished habitation. A thousand times, thought I, have Julia and St. Preux walked on this terraced road, looking to- wards these mountains which I now behold ; nay, treading on the ground where I now tread. From the window of our lodging our landlady pointed out "le bosquet de Julie." At least the inha- bitants of this village are impressed with an idea, that the persons of that romance had actual exist- ence. In the evening we walked thither. It is, indeed, Julia's wood. The hay was making under the trees ; the trees themselves were aged, but vigorous, and interspersed with younger ones, which are destined to be their successors, and in future years, when we are dead, to afford a shade to future worshippers of nature, who love the memory of that tenderness and peace of which this was the imaginary abode. We walked for- ward among the vineyards, whose narrow terraces overlook this affecting scene. Why did the cold maxims of the world compel me at this moment to repress the tears of melancholy transport which it would have been so sweet to indulge, immeasur- ably, even until the darkness of night had swallowed up the objects which excited them ? I forgot to remark, what indeed my companion remarked to me, that our danger from the storm took place precisely in the spot where Julie and her lover were nearly overset, and where St. Preux was tempted to plunge with her into the lake. . On the following day we went to see the castle of Clarens, a square strong house, with very few windows, surrounded by a double terrace that overlooks the valley, or rather the plain of Clarens. The road which conducted to it wound up the steep ascent through woods of walnut and chesnut. We gathered roses on the terrace, in the feeling that they might be the posterity of some planted by Julie's haod. We sent their dead and withered leaves to the absent. We went again to " the bosquet de Julie," and found that the precise spot was now utterly ob- literated, and a heap of stones marked the place where the little chapel had once stood. Whilst we were execrating the author of this brutal folly, our guide informed us that the land belonged to the convent of St. Bernard, and that this out- rage had been committed by their orders. I knew before, that if avarice could harden the hearts of men, a system of prescriptive religion has an influence far more inimical to natural sensibility. I know that an isolated man is some- times restrained by shame from outraging the venerable feelings arising out of the memory of genius, which once made nature even lovelier than itself; but associated man holds it as the very sacrament of his union to forswear all de- licacy, all benevolence, all remorse ; all that is true, or tender, or sublime. We sailed from Clarens to Vevai. Vevai is a town more beautiful in its simplicity than any I have ever seen. Its market-place, a spacious square interspersed with trees, looks directly upon the mountains of Savoy and La Valais, the lake, and the valley of the Rhone. It was at Vevai that Rousseau conceived the design of Julie. From Vevai we came to Ouchy, a village near Lausanne. The coasts of the Pays de Vaud, though full of villages and vineyards, present an aspect of tranquillity and peculiar beauty which well compensates for the solitude which I am accustomed to admire. The hills are very high and rocky, crowned and interspersed with woods. Waterfalls echo from the cliffs, and shine afar. In one place we saw the traces of two rocks of im- mense size, which had fallen from the mountain behind. One of these lodged in a room where a young woman was sleeping, without injuring her. The vineyards were utterly destroyed in its path, and the earth torn up. The rain detained us two days at Ouchy. We, however, visited Lausanne, and saw Gibbon's house. We were shown the decayed summer-house where he finished his History, and the old acacias on the terrace, from which he saw Mont Blanc, after having written the last sentence. There is some- thing grand and even touching in the regret which he expresses at the completion of his task. It was conceived amid the ruins of the Capitol. The sudden departure of his cherished and accustomed toil must have left him, like the death of a dear friend, sad and solitary. My companion gathered some acacia leaves to preserve in remembrance of him. I refrained from doing so, fearing, to outrage the greater and more sacred name of Rousseau ; the contemplation of whose imperishable creations had left no vacancy in my heart for mortal things. Gibbon had a cold and unimpassioned spirit. I never felt more incli- nation to rail at the prejudices which cling to such a thing, than now that Julie and Clarens, Lausanne and the Roman Empire, compelled me to a con- trast between Rousseau and Gibbon. When we returned, in the only interval of sun- shine during the day, I walked on the pier which the lake was lashing with its waves. A rainbow spanned the lake, or rather rested one extremity of its arch upon the water, and the other at the foot of the mountains of Savoy. Some white houses, I know not if they were those of Meillerie, shone through the yellow fire. LETTERS FROM GENEVA. 97 On Saturday the 30th of June we quitted Ouchy, and after two days of pleasant sailing arrived on Sunday evening at Montalegre. LETTER IV. To T. P. Esq. -MONTANVERT- ST. MARTIN — SERVOZ CHAMOUNI- MONT BLANC. Hotel de Londrcs, CJiamouni, July 22nd, 1816. Whilst you, my friend, are engaged in securing a home for us, we are wandering in search of recol- lections to embellish it. I do not err in conceiving that you are interested in details of all that is majestic or beautiful in nature ; but how shall I describe to you the scenes by which I am now surrounded ? To exhaust the epithets which ex- press the astonishment and the admiration — the very excess of satisfied astonishment, where expec- tation scarcely acknowledged any boundary, is this to impress upon your mind the images which fill mine now, even till it overflow ? I too have read the raptures of travellers ; I will be warned by their example ; I will simply detail to you all that I can relate, or all that, if related, would enable you to conceive, what we have done or seen since the morning of the 20th, when we left Geneva. We commenced our intended journey to Cha- mouni at half-past eight in the morning. We passed through the champain country, which ex- tends from Mont Saleve to the base of the higher Alps. The country is sufficiently fertile, covered with corn-fields and orchards, and intersected by sudden acclivities with flat summits. The day was cloudless and excessively hot, the Alps were per- petually in sight, and as we advanced, the moun- tains, which form their outskirts, closed in around us. We passed a bridge over a stream, which dis- charges itself into the Arve. The Arve itself, much swollen by the rains, flows constantly to the right of the road. As we approached Bonneville through an avenue composed of a beautiful species of drooping poplar, we observed that the corn-fields on each side were covered with inundation. Bonneville is a neat little town, with no conspicuous peculiarity, except the white towers of the prison, an extensive building overlooking the town. At Bonneville the Alps commence, one of which, clothed by forests, rises almost immediately from the opposite bank of the Arve. From Bonneville to Cluses the road conducts through a spacious and fertile plain, surrounded on all sides by mountains, covered like those of Meil- lerie with forests of intermingled pine and chesnut. At Cluses the road turns suddenly to the right, following the Arve along the chasm, which it seems to have hollowed for itself among the perpendicu- lar mountains. The scene assumes here a more savage and colossal character : the valley becomes narrow, affording no more space than is sufficient for the river and the road. The pines descend to the banks, imitating, with their irregular spires, the pyramidal crags, which lift themselves far above the regions of forest into the deep azure of the sky, and among the white dazzling clouds. The scene, at the distance of half a mile from Cluses, differs from that of Matlock in little else than in the immensity of its proportions, and in its untameable inaccessible solitude, inhabited only by the goats which we saw browsing on the rocks. Near Maglans, within a league of each other, we saw two waterfalls. They were no more than mountain rivulets, but the height from which they fell, at least of ticelve hundred feet, made them assume a character inconsistent with the smallness of their stream. The first fell from the overhang- ing brow of a black precipice on an enormous rock, precisely resembling some colossal Egyptian statue of a female deity. It struck the head of the visionary image, and gracefully dividing there, fell from it in folds of foam more like to cloud than water, imitating a veil of the most exquisite woof. It then united, concealing the lower part of the siatue, and hiding itself in a winding of its channel, burst into a deeper fall, and crossed our route in its path towards the Arve. The other waterfall was more continuous and larger. The violence with which it fell made it look more like some shape which an exhalation had assumed, than like water, for it streamed beyond the mountain, which appeared dark behind it, as it might have appeared behind an evanescent cloud. The character of the scenery continued the same until we arrived at St. Martin, (called in the maps Sallanches,) the mountains perpetually becoming more elevated, exhibiting at every turn of the road more craggy summits, loftier and wider extent of forests, darker and more deep recesses. . The following morning we proceeded from St. Martin, on mules, to Chamouni, accompanied by two guides. We proceeded, as we had done the preceding day, along the valley of the Arve, a valley surrounded on all sides by immense moun- tains, whose rugged precipices are intermixed on high with dazzling snow. Their bases were still covered with the eternal forests, which perpetually grew darker and more profound as we approached the inner regions of the mountains. On arriving at a small village at the distance of 98 LETTERS FROM GENEVA. a league from St. Martin, we dismounted from our ' mules, and were conducted by our guides to view a cascade. We beheld an immense body of water fall two hundred and fifty feet, dashing from rock- to rock, and casting a spray which formed a mist around it, in the midst of which hung a multitude of sunbows, which faded or became unspeakably vivid, as the inconstant sun shone through the clouds. When we approached near to it, the rain of the spray reached us, and our clothes were wetted by the quick-falling but minute particles of water. The cataract fell from above into a deep craggy chasm at our feet, where, changing its character to that of a mountain stream, it pursued its course towards the Arve, roaring over the rocks that impeded its progress. As we proceeded, our route still lay through the valley, or rather, as it had now become, the vast ravine, which is at once the couch and the creation of the terrible Arve. We ascended, winding between mountains, whose immensity staggers the imagination. We crossed the path of a torrent, which three days since had descended from the thawing snow, and torn the road away. We dined at Servoz, a little village, where there are lead and copper mines, and where we saw a cabinet of natural curiosities, like those of Keswick and Bethgelert. We saw in this cabinet some chamois' horns, and the horns of an exceedingly rare animal called the bouquetin, which inhabits the deserts of snow to the south of Mont Blanc : it is an animal of the stag kind ; its horns weigh, at least, twenty-seven English pounds. It is incon- ceivable how so small an animal could support so inordinate a weight. The horns are of a very peculiar conformation, being broad, massy, and pointed at the ends, and surrounded with a number of rings, which are supposed to afford an indica- tion of its age : there were seventeen rings on the largest of these horns. From Servoz three leagues remain to Chamouni. — Mont Blanc was before us — the Alps, with their innumerable glaciers on high all around, closing in the complicated windings of the single vale — forests inexpressibly beautiful, but majestic in their beauty — intermingled beech and pine, and oak, over- shadowed our road, or receded, whilst lawns of such verdure as I have never seen before, occupied these openings, and gradually became darker in their recesses. Mont Blanc was before us, but it was covered with cloud ; its base, furrowed with dreadful gaps, was seen above. Pinnacles of snow intolerably bright, part of the chain connected with Mont Blanc, shone through the clouds at intervals on high. I never knew — I never imagined — what mountains were before. The immensity of these aerial summits excited, when they suddenly burst upon the sight, a sentiment of ecstatic wonder, not unallied to madness. And remember this was all one scene, it all pressed home to our regard and our imagination. Though it embraced a vast extent of space, the snowy pyramids which shot into the bright blue sky seemed to overhang our path ; the ravine, clothed with gigantic pines, and black with its depth below, so deep that the very roaring of the untameable Arve, which rolled through it, could not be heard above — all was as much our own, as if we had been the creators of such impressions in the minds of others as now occupied our own. Nature was the poet, whose harmony held our spirits more breathless than that of the divinest. As we entered the valley of Chamouni, (which, in fact, may be considered as a continuation of those which we have followed from Bonneville and Cluses,) clouds hung upon the mountains at the distance perhaps of 6000 feet from the earth, but so as effectually to conceal, not only Mont Blanc, but the other aiguilles, as they call them here, attached and subordinate to it. We were travel- ling along the valley, when suddenly we heard a sound as of the burst of smothered thunder rolling above ; yet there was something in the sound, that told us it could not be thunder. Our guide hastily pointed out to us a part of the moun- tain opposite, from whence the sound came. It was an avalanche. We saw the smoke of its path among the rocks, and continued to hear at inter- vals the bursting of its fall. It fell on the bed of a torrent, which it displaced, and presently we saw its tawny-coloured waters also spread themselves over the ravine, which was their couch. We did not, as we intended, visit the. Glacier des Bossons to-day, although it descends within a few minutes' walk of the road, wishing to survey it at least when unfatigued. We saw this glacier, which comes close to the fertile plain, as we passed. Its surface was broken into a thousand unaccountable figures : conical and pyramidical crystallizations, more than fifty feet in height, rise from its surface, and precipices of ice, of dazzling splendour, overhang the woods and meadows of the vale. This glacier winds upwards from the valley, until it joins the masses of frost from which it was produced above, winding through its own ravine like a bright belt flung over the black region of pines. There is more in all these scenes than mere magnitude of proportion : there is a majesty of outline ; there is an awful grace in the very colours which invest these wonderful shapes — a charm which is peculiar to them, quite distinct even from the reality of their unutterable greatness. LETTERS FROM GENEVA. 9.0 July 24. Yesterday morning we went to the source of the Arveiron. It is about a league from this village ; the river rolls forth impetuously from an arch of ice, and spreads itself in many streams over a vast j space of the valley, ravaged and laid bare by its inundations. The glacier by which its waters are nourished, overhangs this cavern and the plain, and the forests of pine which surround it, with terrible precipices of solid ice. On the other side rises the immense glacier of Montanvert, fifty miles in extent, occupying a chasm among mountains of inconceivable height, and of forms so pointed and abrupt, that they seem to pierce the sky. From this glacier we saw, as we sat on a rock, close to one of the streams of the Arveiron, masses of ice detach themselves from on high, and rush' with a loud dull noise into the vale. The violence of their fall turned them into powder, which flowed over the rocks in imitation of water- falls, whose ravines they usurped and filled. In the evening, I went with Ducree, my guide, the only tolerable person I have seen in this country, to visit the. glacier of Bossons. This glacier, like that of Montanvert, comes close to the vale, overhanging the green meadows and the dark woods with the dazzling whiteness of its precipices and pinnacles, which are like spires of radiant crystal, covered with a net-work of frosted silver. These glaciers flow perpetually into the valley, ravaging in their slow but irresistible progress the pastures and the forests which surround them, performing a work of desolation in ages, which a river of lava might accomplish in an hour, but far more irretrievably ; for where the ice has once descended, the hardiest plant refuses to grow ; if even, as in some extraordinary instances, it should recede after its progress has once commenced. The glaciers perpetually move onward, at the rate of a foot each day, with a motion that commences at the spot where, on the boundaries of perpetual congelation, they are produced by the freezing of the waters which arise from the partial melting of the eternal snows. They drag with them from the regions whence they derive their origin, all the ruins of the mountain, enormous rocks, and immense accumulations of sand and stones. These are driven onwards by the irresistible stream of solid ice ; and when they arrive at a declivity of the mountain, sufficiently rapid, roll down, scattering ruin. I saw one of these rocks which had descended in the spring, (winter here is the season of silence and safety,) which measured forty feet in every direction. The verge of a glacier, like that of Bossons, presents the most vivid image of desolation that it is possible to conceive. No one dares to approach it ; for the enormous pinnacles of ice which perpetually fall, are perpetually reproduced. The pines of the forest, which bound it at one extremity, are overthrown and shattered, to a wide extent, at its base. There is something inexpressibly dreadful in the aspect of the few branchless trunks, which, nearest to the ice rifts, still stand in the uprooted soil. The meadows perish, overwhelmed with sand and stones. Within this last year, these glaciers have advanced three hundred feet into the valley. Saussure, the naturalist, says, that they have their periods of increase and decay : the people of the country hold an opinion entirely different ; but as I judge, more probable. It is agreed by all, that the snow on the summit of Mont Blanc and the neighbouring mountains perpetually augments, and that ice, in the form of glaciers, subsists without melting in the valley of Chamouni during its transient and variable summer. If the snow which produces this glacier must augment, and the heat of the valley is no obstacle to the perpetual existence of such masses of ice as have already descended into it, the consequence is obvious ; the glaciers must augment and will subsist, at least until they have overflowed this vale. I will not pursue Buffon's sublime but gloomy theory — that this globe which we inhabit will, at some future period, be changed into a mass of frost by the encroachments of the polar ice, and of that produced on the most elevated points of the earth. Do you, who assert the supremacy of Ahriman, imagine him throned among these desolating snows, among these palaces of death and frost, so sculptured in this their terrible magnificence by the adamantine hand of necessity, and that he casts around him, as the first essays of his final usurpation, avalanches, torrents, rocks, and thunders, and above all these deadly glaciers, at once the proof and symbols of his reign ; — add to this, the degradation of the human species — who, in these regions, are half deformed or idiotic, and most of whom are deprived of anything that can excite interest or admiration. This is part of the subject more mournful and less sublime ; but such as neither the poet nor the philosopher should disdain to regard. This morning we departed, on the promise of a fine day, to visit the glacier of Montanvert. In that part where it fills a slanting valley, it is called the Sea of Ice. This valley is 950 toises, or 7600 feet, above the level of the sea. We had not proceeded far before the rain began to fall, but we h 2 100 LETTERS FROM GENEVA. persisted until we had accomplished more than half of our journey, when we returned, wet through. Chamouni, July 25th. We have returned from visiting the glacier of Montanvert, or as it is called, the Sea of Ice, a scene in truth of dizzying wonder. The path that winds to it along the side of a mountain, now clothed with pines, now mtersected with snowy hollows, is wide and steep. The cabin of Montan- vert is three leagues from Chamouni, half of which distance is performed on mules, not so sure-footed but that on the first day the one which I rode fell in what the guides call a mauvais pas, so that I narrowly escaped being precipitated down the mountain. We passed over a hollow covered with snow, down which vast stones are accustomed to roll. One had fallen the preceding day, a little time after we had returned : our guides desired us to pass quickly, for it is said that sometimes the least sound will accelerate their descent. We arrived at Montanvert, however, safe. On all sides precipitous mountains, the abodes of unrelenting frost, surround this vale : their sides are banked up with ice and snow, broken, heaped high, and exhibiting terrific chasms. The summits are sharp and naked pinnacles, whose overhanging steepness will not even permit snow to rest upon them. Lines of dazzling ice occupy here and there their perpendicular rifts, and shine through the driving vapours with inexpressible brilliance : they pierce the clouds like things not belonging to this earth. The vale itself is filled with a mass of undulating ice, and has an ascent suf- ficiently gradual even to the remotest abysses of these horrible deserts. It is only half a league (about two miles) in breadth, and seems much less. It exhibits an appearance as if frost had suddenly bound up the waves and whirlpools of a mighty torrent. We walked some distance upon its surface. The waves are elevated about twelve or fifteen feet from the surface of the mass, which is intersected by long gaps of unfathomable depth, the ice of whose sides is more beautifully azure than the sky. In these regions everything changes, and is in motion. This vast mass of ice has one general progress, which ceases neither day nor night ; it breaks and bursts for ever : some undulations sink while others rise ; it is never the same. The echo of rocks, or of the ice and snow which fall from their overhanging precipices, or roll from their aerial summits, scarcely ceases for one moment. One would think that Mont Blanc, like the god of the Stoics, was a vast animal, and that the frozen blood for ever circulated through his stony veins. We dined (M , C , and I) on the grass, in the open air, surrounded by this scene. The air is piercing and clear. We returned down the mountain, sometimes encompassed by the driving vapours, sometimes cheered by the sunbeams, and arrived at our inn by seven o'clock. Montalegre, July 28th. The next morning we returned through the rain to St. Martin. The scenery had lost something of its immensity, thick clouds hanging over the highest mountains ; but visitings of sunlight inter- vened between the showers, and the blue sky shone between the accumulated clouds of snowy whiteness which brought them ; the dazzling mountains sometimes glittered through a chasm of the clouds above our heads, and all the charm of its grandeur remained. We repassed Pont Pellisier, a wooden bridge over the Arve, and the ravine *of the Arve. We repassed the pine forests which overhang the defile, the chateau of St. Michael ; a haunted ruin, built on the edge of a precipice, and shadowed over by the eternal forest. We repassed the vale of Servoz, a vale more beautiful, because more luxuriant, than that of Chamouni. Mont Blanc forms one of the sides of this vale also, and the other is inclosed by an irregular amphitheatre of enormous mountains, one of which is in ruins, and fell fifty years ago into the higher part of the valley : the smoke of its fall was seen in Piedmont, and people went from Turin to investigate whether a volcano had not burst forth among the Alps. It continued falling many days, spreading, with the shock and thunder of its ruin, consternation into the neighbouring vales. In the evening we arrived at St. Martin. The next day we wound through the valley, which I have described before, and arrived in the evening at our home. We have bought some specimens of minerals and plants, and two or three crystal seals, at Mont Blanc, to preserve the remembrance of having approached it. There is a cabinet of histoire naturelle at Chamouni, just as at Keswick, Mat- lock, and Clifton ; the proprietor of which is the very vilest specimen of that vile species of quack, that, together with the whole army of aubergistes and guides, and indeed the entire mass of the population, subsist on the weakness and credulity of travellers as leeches subsist on the sick. The most interesting of my purchases is a large col- lection of all the seeds of rare alpine plants, with their names written upon the outside of the papers that contain them. These I mean to colonise in my garden in England, and to permit you to make what choice you please from them. They are companions which the Celandine — the classic JOURNAL. 101 Celandine, need not despise ; they are as wild and more daring than he, and will tell him tales of things even as touching and sublime as the gaze of a vernal poet. Did I tell you that there are troops of wolves among these mountains? In the winter they descend into the valleys, which the snow occupies six months of the year, and devour everything that they can find out of doors. A wolf is more powerful than the fiercest and strongest dog. There are no bears in these regions. We heard, when we were at Lucerne, that they were occasionally found in the forests which surround that lake. Adieu. S. JOURNAL. Geneva, Sunday, \8th August, 1816. See Apollo's Sexton,* who tells us many mys- teries of his trade. We talk of Ghosts. Neither Lord Byron nor M. G. L. seem to believe in them ; and they both agree, in the very face of reason, that none could believe in ghosts without believing in God. I do not think that all the persons who profess to discredit these visitations, really discredit them ; or, if they do in the daylight, are not admonished, by the approach of loneliness and midnight, to think more re- spectfully of the world of shadows. Lewis recited a poem, which he had composed at the request of the Princess of Wales. The Princess of Wales, he premised, was not only a believer in ghosts, but in magic and witchcraft, and asserted, that prophecies made in. her youth had been accomplished since. The tale was of a lady in Germany. This lady, Minna, had been exceedingly attached to her husband, and they had made a vow that the one who died first, should return after death to visit the other as a ghost. She was sitting one day alone in her chamber, when she heard an unusual sound of footsteps on the stairs. The door opened, aad her husband's spectre, gashed with a deep wound across the forehead, and in military habiliments, entered. She appeared startled at the apparition ; and the ghost told her, that when he should visit her in future, she would hear a passing-bell toll, and these words distinctly uttered close to her ear, " Minna, I am here." On inquiry, it was found that her husband had fallen in battle on the very day she was visited by the vision. The intercourse between the ghost and the woman * Mr. G. Lewis— bo named in " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." When Lewis first 6aw Lord Byron, he asked him earnestly,—" Why did you call me Apollo's Sexton ?" The noble Poet found it difficult to reply to this categorical species of reproof. The above stories have, some of them, appeared in print ; but, as a ghost story depends entirely on the mode in which it is told, I think the reader will be pleased to read these, written by Shelley, fresh from their relation by Lewis M. S. continued for some time, until the latter laid aside all terror, and indulged herself in the affection which she had felt for him while living. One evening she went to a ball, and permitted her thoughts to be alienated by the attentions of a Florentine gentleman, more witty, more graceful, and more gentle, as it appeared to her, than any person she had ever seen. As he was .conducting her through the dance, a death-bell tolled. Minna, lost in the fascination of the Florentine's attentions, disregarded, or did not hear the sound. A second peal, louder and more deep, startled the whole company, when Minna heard the ghost's accustomed whisper, anil raising her eyes, saw in an opposite mirror the reflection of the ghost, standing over her. She is said to have died of terror. Lewis told four other stories — all grim. A young man who had taken orders, had just been presented with a living, on the death of the incumbent. It was in the Catholic part of Germany. He arrived at the parsonage on a Saturday night ; it was summer, and waking about three o'clock in the morning, and it being broad day, he saw a venerable-looking man, but with an aspect exceed- ingly melancholy, sitting at a desk in the window, reading, and two beautiful boys standing near him, whom he regarded with looks of the profoundest grief. Presently he rose from his seat, the boys followed him, and they were no more to be seen. The young man, much troubled, arose, hesitating whether he should regard what he had seen as a dream, or a waking phantasy. To divert his dejection, he walked towards the church, which the sexton was already employed in preparing for the morning service. The first sight that struck him was a portrait, the exact resemblance of the man whom he had seen sitting in his chamber. It was the custom in this district to place the portrait of each minister, after his death, in the church. He made the minutest inquiries respecting his 102 JOURNAL. predecessor, and learned that he was universally beloved, as a man of unexampled integrity and benevolence ; but that he was the prey of a secret and perpetual sorrow. His grief was supposed to have arisen from an attachment to a young lady, with whom his situation did not permit him to unite himself. Others, however, asserted, that a connexion did subsist between them, and that even she occasionally brought to his house two beautiful boys, the offspring of their connexion. — Nothing further occurred until the cold weather came, and the new minister desired a fire to be lighted in the stove of the room where he slept. A hideous stench arose from the stove as soon as it was lighted, and, on examining it, the bones of two male children were found within. Lord Lyttleton and a number of his friends were joined during the chase by a stranger. He was excellently mounted, and displayed such courage, or, rather so much desperate rashness, that no other person in the hunt could follow him. The gentlemen, when the chase was concluded, invited the stranger to dine with them. His conversation was something of a wonderful kind. He astonished, he interested, he commanded the attention of the most inert. As night came on, the company, being weary, began to retire one by one, much later than the usual hour: the most intellectual among them were retained latest by the stranger's fascination. As he perceived that they began to depart, he redoubled his efforts to retain them. At last, when few remained, he entreated them to stay with him ; but all pleaded the fatigue of a hard day's chase, and all at last retired. They had been in bed about an hour, when they were awakened by the most horrible screams, which issued from the stranger's room. Every one rushed towards it. The door was locked. After a moment's deliberation they burst it open, and found the stranger stretched on the ground, writhing with agony, and weltering in blood. On their entrance he arose, and collecting himself, apparently with a strong effort, entreated them to leave him — not to disturb him, that he would give every possible explanation in the morning. They complied. In the morning, his chamber was found vacant, and he was seen no more. Miles Andrews, a friend of Lord Lyttleton, was sitting one night alone when Lord Lyttleton came in, and informed him that he was dead, and that this was his ghost which he saw before him. Andrews pettishly told Mm not to play any ridi- culous tricks upon him, for he was not in a temper to bear them. The ghost then departed. In the morning Andrews asked his servant at what hour Lord Lyttleton had arrived. The servant said he did not know that he had arrived, but that he would inquire. On inquiry it was found that Lord Lyttleton had not arrived, nor had the door been opened to any one during the whole night. Andrews sent to Lord Lyttleton, and discovered, that he had died precisely at the hour of the apparition. A gentleman on a visit to a friend who lived on the skirts of an extensive forest in the east of Germany lost his way. He wandered for some hours among the trees, when he saw a light at a distance. On approaching it, he was surprised to observe, that it proceeded from the interior of a ruined monastery. Before he knocked he thought it prudent to look through the window. He saw a multitude of cats assembled round a small grave, four of whom were letting down a coffin with a crown upon it. The gentleman, startled at this unusual sight, and imagining that he had arrived among the retreats of fiends or witches, mounted his horse and rode away with the utmost precipi- tation. He arrived at his friend's house at a late hour, who had sate up for him. On his arrival his friend questioned as to the cause of the traces of trouble visible in his face. He began to recount his adventure, after much difficulty, knowing that it was scarcely possible that his friends should give faith to his relation. No sooner had he mentioned the coffin with a crown upon it, than his friend's cat, who seemed to have been lying asleep before the fire, leaped up, saying — " Then I am the King of the Cats !" and scrambled up the chimney, and was seen no more. Thursday, 29th August. — We depart from Geneva, at nine in the morning. The Swiss are very slow drivers ; besides which we have Jura to mount ; we, therefore, go a very few posts to-day. The scenery is very beautiful, and we see many magnificent views. We pass Les Rousses, which, when we crossed in the spring, was deep in snow. We sleep at Morrez. Friday, 30th. — We leave Morrez, aud arrive in the evening at Dole, after a various day. Saturday, 31st. — From Dole we go to Rouvray, where we sleep. We pass through Dijon ; and, after Dijon, take a different route than that which we followed on the two other occasions. The scenery has some beauty and singularity in the line of the mountains which surround the Val de JOURNAL. 103 Suzon. Low, yet precipitous hills, covered with vines or woods, and with streams, meadows, and poplars, at the bottom. Sunday, September 1st. — Leave Rouvray, pass Auxerre, where we dine ; a pretty town, and arrive, at two o'clock, at Villeneuve le Guiard. Monday 2d. — From Villeneuve le Guiard, we arrive at Fontainebleau. The scenery around this palace is wild and even savage. The soil is full of rocks, apparently granite, which on every side break through the ground. The hills are low, but precipitous and rough. The valleys, equally wild, are shaded by forests. In the midst of this wilder- ness stands the palace. Some of the apartments equal in magnificence anything that I could conceive. The roofs are fretted with gold, and the canopies of velvet. From Fontainebleau we proceed to Versailles, in the route towards Rouen. We arrive at Versailles at nine. Tuesday 3d. — We saw the palace and gardens of Versailles and le Grand et Petit Trianon. They surpass Fontainebleau. The gardens are full of statues, vases, fountains, and colonnades. In all that essentially belongs to a garden they are extraordinarily deficient. The orangery is a stupid piece of expense. There was one orange- tree, not apparently so old, sown in 1442. We saw only the gardens and the theatre at the Petit Trianon. The gardens are in the English taste, and extremely pretty. The Grand Trianon was open. It is a summer palace, light, yet magnificent. We were unable to devote the time it deserved to the gallery of paintings here. There was a portrait of Madame de la Valliere, the repentant mistress of Louis XIV. She was melancholy, but exceed- ingly beautiful, and was represented as holding a skull, and sitting before a crucifix, pale, and with downcast eyes. We then went to the great palace. The apartments are unfurnished ; but even with this disadvantage, are more magnificent than those of Fontainebleau. They are lined with marble of various colours, whose pedestals and capitals are gilt, and the ceiling is richly gilt with compartments of painting. The arrangement of these materials has in them, it is true, something effeminate and royal. Could a Grecian architect have commanded all the labour and money which was expended on Versailles, he would have produced a fabric which the whole world has never equalled. We saw the Hall of Hercules, the balcony where the King and the Queen exhibited themselves to the Parisian mob. The people who showed us through the palace, obstinately refused to say anything about the Revolution. We could not even find out in which chamber the rioters of the 10th August found the king. We saw the Salle d'Opera, where are now preserved the portraits of the kings. There was the race of the house of Orleans, with the exception of Egalit£, all extremely handsome. There was Madame de Maintenon, and beside her a beautiful little girl, the daughter of La Valliere. The pictures had been hidden during the Revolution. We saw the Library of Louis XVI. The librarian had held some place in the ancient court near Marie- Antoinette. He returned with the Bourbons, and was waiting for some better situation. He showed us a book which he had preserved during the Revolution. It was a book of paintings, re- presenting a tournament at the Court of Louis XIV. ; and it seemed that the present desolation of France, the fury of the injured people, and all the horrors to which they abandoned themselves, stung by their long sufferings, flowed naturally enough from expenditures so immense, as must have been demanded by the magnificence of this tournament. The vacant rooms of this palace imaged well the hollow show of monarchy. After seeing these things we departed toward Havre, and slept at Auxerre. Wednesday 4th. — We passed through Rouen, and saw the cathedral, an immense specimen of the most costly and magnificent gothic. The interior of the church disappoints. We saw the burial-place of Richard Coeur de Lion and his brother. The altar of the church is a fine piece of marble. Sleep at Yvetot. ' Thursday 5th. — We arrive at Havre, and wait for the packet — wind contrary. S. LETTERS FROM ITALY. LETTER I. To Leigh Hunt, Esq. Lyons; March 22, 1818. My dear Friend, — Why did you not wake me that night before we left England, you and Mari- anne ? I take this as rather an unkind piece of kindness in you ; but which, in consideration of the six hundred miles between us, I forgive. We have journeyed towards the spring, that has been hastening to meet us from the south ; and though our weather was at first abominable, we have now warm sunny days, and soft winds, and a sky of deep azure, the most serene I ever saw. The heat in this city to-day, is like that of London in the midst of summer. My spirits and health sympathize in the change. Indeed, before I left London, my spirits were as feeble as my health, and I had demands on them which I found it difficult to supply. I have read " Foliage : * with most of the poems I am already familiar. What a delightful poem the " Nymphs" is ! It is truly poetical, in the intense and emphatic sense of the word. If six hundred miles were not between us, I should say what pity that glib was not omitted, and that the poem is not as faultless as it is beau- tiful. But, for fear I should spoil your next poem, I will not let slip a word upon the subject. Give my love to Marianne and her sister, and tell Marianne she defrauded me of a kiss by not waking me when she went away, and that, as I have no better mode of conveying it, I must take the best, and ask you to pay the debt. When shall I see you again ? Oh, that it might be in Italy ! I confess that the thought of how long we maybe divided makes me very mleancholy. Adieu, my dear friends. Write soon. Ever most affectionately yours, P. B. S.* * In a brief journal I kept at that time, I find a few pages in Shelley's handwriting, descriptive of the passage over the mountains of Les Echelles : ** March 26, Thurs- day. We travel towards the mountains, and begin to enter the valleys of the Alps. The country becomes covered again with verdure and cultivation, and white chateaux and scattered cottages among woods of old oak and walnut trees. The vines are here peculiarly pictur- LETTER II. To T. L. P. Esq. Milan, April 1818. My dear P. — Behold us arrived at the end of our journey — that is, within a few miles of it — because we design to spend the summer on the shore of the Lake of Como. Our journey was somewhat painful from the cold — and in no other manner interesting until we passed the Alps : of esque ; they are trellissed upon immense stakes, and the trunks of them are moss-covered and hoary with age. Unlike the French vines, which creep lowly on the ground, they form rows of interlaced bowers, which, when the leaves are green and the red grapes are hanging among those hoary branches, will afford a delightful shadow to those who sit upon the moss underneath. The vines are sometimes planted in the open fields, and sometimes among lofty orchards of apple and pear trees, the twigs of which were just becoming purple with the bursting blossoms. We dined at Les Echelles, a village at the foot of the mountain of the same name, the boundaries of France and Savoy. Before this we had been stopped at Pont Bonvoisin, where the legal limits of the French and Sar- dinian territories are placed. We here heard that a Milanese had been sent back all the way to Lyons, ^because his passport was unauthorised by the Sardinian Consul, a few days before, and that we should be subjected to the same treatment. We, in respect to the character of our nation I suppose, were suffered to pass. Our books, how- ever, were, after a long discussion, sent to Chambery, to be submitted to the censor ; a priest, who admits nothing of Rousseau, Voltaire, &c, into the dominions of the King of Sardinia. All such books are burned. After dinner we ascended Les Echelles, winding along a road cut through perpendicular rocks, of immense elevation, by Charles Emanuel, Duke of Savoy, in 1582. The rocks, which cannot be less than a thousand feet in perpendicular height, sometimes overhang the road on each side, and almost shut out the sky. The scene is like that described in the Prometheus of ^schylus. Vast rifts and caverns in the granite precipices, wintry moun- tains with ice and snow above ; the loud sounds of unseen waters within the caverns, and walls of toppling rocks, only to be scaled as he describes, by the winged chariot of the ocean nymphs. Under the dominion of this tyranny, the inhabitants of the fertile valleys, bounded by these mountains, are in a state of most frightful poverty and disease. At the foot of this ascent, were cut into the rocks in several places, stories of the misery of the inhabitants, to move the com- passion of the traveller. One old man, lame and blind, crawled out of a hole in the rock, wet with the perpetual melting of the snows of above, and dripping like a shower- bath. The country, as we descended to Chambery, continued as beautiful ; though marked with somewhat of a softer character than before ; we arrived a little after night-fall." LETTERS FROM ITALY. 105 course I except the Alps themselves ; but no sooner had we arrived at Italy, than the loveliness of the earth and the serenity of the sky made the greatest difference in my sensations. I depend on these things for life ; for in the smoke of cities, and the tumult of human kind, and the chilling fogs and rain of our own country, I can hardly be said to live. With what delight did I hear the woman, who conducted us to see the triumphal arch of Augustus at Susa, speak the clear and complete language of Italy, though half unintelligible to me, after that nasal and abbreviated cacophony of the French ! A ruined arch of magnificent pro- portions in the Greek taste, standing in a land of road of green lawn, overgrown with violets and primroses, and in the midst of stupendous moun- tains, and a blonde woman, of light and graceful manners, something in the style of Fuseli's Eve, were the first things we met in Italy. This city is very agreeable. We went to the opera last night — which is a most splendid exhibi- tion. The opera itself was not a favourite, and the singers very inferior to our ©wn. But the ballet, or rather a kind of melodrame or pantomimic drama, was the most splendid spectacle I ever saw. We have no Miss Melanie here — in every other respect, Milan is unquestionably superior. The manner in which language is translated into gesture, the complete and full effect of the whole as illus- trating the history in question, the unaffected self- possession of each of the actors, even to the chil- dren, made this choral drama more impressive than I could have conceived possible. The story is Othello, and strange to say, it left no disagreeable impression. I write, but I am not in the humour to write, and you must expect longer, if not more entertain- ing, letters soon — that is, in a week or so — when I am a little recovered from my journey. Pray tell us all the news with regard to our own offspring, whom we left at nurse in England ; as well as those of our friends. Mention Cobbett and politics too — and Hunt — to whom Mary is now writing — and particularly your own plans and yourself. You shall hear more of me and my plans soon. My health is improved already — and my spirits something — and I have many literary schemes, and one in particular — which I thirst to be settled that I may begin. I have ordered Oilier to send you some sheets &c, for revision. Adieu. — Always faithfully yours, P. B. S. LETTER III. To T. L. P. Esq. Milan, April 20, 1818. My dear P. — I had no conception that the distance between us, measured by time in respect of letters, was so great. I have but just received yours dated the 2nd — and when you will receive mine written from this city somewhat later than the same date, I cannot know. I am sorry to hear that you have been obliged to remain at Marlow ; a certain degree of society being almost a necessity of life, particularly as we are not to see you this summer in Italy. But this, I suppose, must be as it is. I often revisit Marlow in thought. The curse of this life is, that whatever is once known, can never be unknown. You inhabit a spot, which be'fore you inhabit it, is as indifferent to you as any other spot upon earth, and when, persuaded by some necessity, you think to leave it, you leave it not ; it clings to you — and with memories of tilings, which, in your experience of them, gave no such promise, revenges your desertion. Time flows on, places are changed ; friends who were with us, are no longer with us ; yet what has been seems yet to be, but barren and stripped of life. See, I have sent you a study for Nightmare Abbey. Since I last wrote to you we have been to Como, looking for a house. This lake exceeds any thing I ever beheld in beauty, with the exception of the arbutus islands of Killarney. It is long and narrow, and has the appearance of a mighty river winding among the mountains and the forests. We sailed from the town of Como to a tract of country called the Tremezina, and saw the various aspects presented by that part of the lake. The mountains between Como and that village, or rather cluster of villages, are covered on high with ches- nut forests (the eating chesnuts, on which the inhabitants of the country subsist in time of scarcity), which sometimes descend to the very verge of the lake, overhanging it with their hoary branches. But usually the immediate border of this shore is composed of laurel-trees, and bay, and myrtle, and wild fig-trees, and olives which grow in the crevices of the rocks, and overhang the caverns, and shadow the deep glens, which are filled with the flashing light of the waterfalls. Other flowering shrubs, which I cannot name, grow there also. On high, the towers of village churches are seen white among the dark forests. Beyond, on the opposite shore, which faces the south, the mountains descend less precipitously to the lake, and although they are much higher, and 106 LETTERS FROM ITALY. some covered with perpetual snow, there inter- venes between them and the lake a range of lower hills, which have glens and rifts opening to the other, such as I should fancy the abysses of Ida or Parnassus. Here are plantations of olive, and orange, and lemon trees, which are now so loaded with fruit, that there is more fruit than leaves, — and vineyards. This shore of the lake is one con- tinued village, and the Milanese nobility have their villas here. The union of culture and the untame- able profusion and loveliness of nature is here so close, that the line where they are divided can hardly be discovered. But the finest scenery is that of the Villa Pliniana ; so called from a foun- tain which ebbs and flows every three hours, described by the younger Pliny, which is in the court-yard. This house, which was once a magni- ficent palace, and is now half in ruins, we are endeavouring to procure. It is built upon ter- races raised from the bottom of the lake, together with its garden, at the foot of a semicircular precipice, overshadowed by profound forests of chesnut. The scene from the colonnade is the most extraordinary, at once, and the most lovely that eye ever beheld. On one side is the moun- tain, and immediately over you are clusters of cypress-trees of an astonishing height, which seem to pierce the sky. Above you, from among the clouds, as it were, descends a waterfall of immense size, broken by the woody rocks into a thousand channels to the lake. On the other side is seen the blue extent of the lake and the mountains^ speckled with sails and spires. The apartments of the Pliniana are immensely large, but ill furnished and antique. The terraces, which overlook the lake, and conduct under the shade of such immense laurel-trees as deserve the epithet of Pythian, are most delightful. We staid at Como two days, and have now returned to Milan, waiting the issue of our negotiation about a house. Como is only six leagues from Milan, and its mountains are seen from the cathedral. This cathedral is a most astonishing work of art. It is built of white marble, and cut into pinnacles of immense height, and the utmost delicacy of workmanship, and loaded with sculpture. The effect of it, piercing the solid blue with those groups of dazzling spires, relieved by the serene depth of this Italian heaven, or by moonlight when the stars seem gathered among those clustered shapes, is beyond any thing I had imagined architecture capable of producing. The interior, though very sublime, is of a more earthly character, and with its stained glass and massy granite columns over- loaded with antique figures, and the silver lamps, that burn for ever under the canopy of black cloth beside the brazen altar and the marble fretwork of the dome, give it the aspect of some gorgeous sepulchre. There is one solitary spot among those aisles, behind the altar, where the light of day is dim and yellow under the storied window, which I have chosen to visit, and read Dante there. I have devoted this summer, and indeed the next year, to the composition of a tragedy on the subject of Tasso's madness, which I find upon inspection is, if properly treated, admirably dra- matic and poetical. But, you will say, I have no dramatic talent ; very true, in a certain sense ; but I have taken the resolution to see what kind of a tragedy a person without dramatic talent could write. It shall be better morality than Fazio, and better poetry than Bertram, at least. You tell me nothing of Rhododaphne, a book from which, I confess, I expected extraordinary success. Who fives in my house at Marlow now, or what is to be done with it 1 I am seriously persuaded that the situation was injurious to my health, or I should be tempted to feel a very absurd interest in who is to be its next possessor. The expense of our journey here has been very considerable— but we are now living at the hotel here, in a kind of Pension, which is very reasonable in respect of price, and when we get into a menage of our own, we have every reason to expect that we shall experience something of the boasted cheapness of Italy. The finest bread, made of a sifted flour, the whitest and the best I ever tasted, is only one English penny a pound. All the necessaries of life bear a proportional relation to this. But then the luxuries, tea, &c, are very dear, — and the English, as usual, are cheated in a way that is quite ridi- culous, if they have not their wits about them. We do not know a single human being, and the opera, until last night, has been always the same. Lord Byron, we hear, has taken a house for three years, at Venice ; whether we shall see him or not, I do not know. The number of English who pass through this town is very great. They ought to be in their own country in the present crisis. Their conduct is wholly inexcusable. The people here, though inoffensive enough, seem both in body and soul a miserable race. The men are hardly men ; they look like a tribe of stupid and shrivelled slaves, and I do not think that I have seen a gleam of intelligence in the countenance of man since I passed the Alps. The women in enslaved countries are always better than the men ; but they have tight-laced figures, and figures and mien which express (Ohow unlike the French!) a mixture of the coquette and prude, which reminds LETTERS FROM ITALY. 107 me of the worst characteristics of the English.* Everything but humanity is in much greater per- fection here than in France. The cleanliness and comfort of the inns is something quite English. The country is beautifully cultivated ; and alto- gether, if you can, as one ought always to do, find your happiness hi yourself, it is a most delightful and commodious place to live in. Adieu. — Your affectionate friend, P. B. S. LETTER IV. To T. L. P. Esq. Milan, April 30th, 1818. My dear P., — I write, simply to tell you, to direct your next letters, Poste Restante, Pisa. We have engaged a vetturino for that city, and leave Milan to-morrow morning. Our journey will occupy six or seven days. Pisa is not six miles from the Mediterranean, with which it communicates by the river Arno. We shall pass by Piacenza, Parma, Bologna, the Apennines, and Florence, and I will endeavour to tell you something of these celebrated places in \ my next letter ; but I cannot promise much, for, though my health is much improved, my spirits are unequal, and seem to desert me when I attempt to write. Pisa, they say, is uninhabitable in the midst of summer — we shall do, therefore, what other people do, retire to Florence, or to the mountains. But I will write to you our plans from Pisa, when I I shall understand them better myself. You may easily conjecture the motives which led ; us to forego the divine solitude of Como. To me, whose chief pleasure in life is the contemplation of nature, you may imagine how great is this loss. Let us hear from you once a fortnight. Do not | forget those who do not forget you. Adieu. — Ever most sincerely yours, P. B. Shelley. LETTER V. To T. L. P. Esq. Livorno, June 5, 1818. My dear P., — We have not heard from you since the middle of April — that is, we have received only one letter from you since our departure from * These impressions of Shelley, with regard to the Italians, formed in ignorance, and with precipitation, became altogether altered after a longer stay in Italy. He quickly discovered the extraordinary intelligence and genius of this wonderful people, amidst the ignorance in which they are carefully kept by their rulers, and the vices, fostered by a religious system, which these same rulers have used as their most successful engine. England. It necessarily follows that some acci- dent has intercepted them. Address, in future, to the care of Mr. Gisborne, Livorno — and I shall receive them, though sometimes somewhat circuit- ously, yet always securely. We left Milan on the 1st of May, and travelled across the Apennines to Pisa. This part of the Apemiine is far less beautiful than the Alps ; the mountains are wide and wild, and the whole scenery broad and undetermined — the imagination cannot find a home in it. The plain of the Milanese, and that of Parma, is exquisitely beautiful — it is like one garden, or rather cultivated wilderness ; because the corn and the meadow-grass grow under high and thick trees, festooned to one another by regular festoons of vines. On the seventh day we arrived at Pisa, where we remained three or four days. A large disagreeable city, almost without inhabitants. We then proceeded to this great trading town, where we have remained a month, and which, in a few days, we leave for the Bagni di Lucca, a kind of watering-place situated in the depth of the Apennines ; the scenery surroundiug this village is very fine. We have made some acquaintance with a very amiable and accomplished lady, Mrs. Gisborne, who is the sole attraction in this most unattractive of cities. We had no idea of spending a month here, but she has made it even agreeable. We shall see something of Italian society at the Bagni di Lucca, where the most fashionable people resort. When you send my parcel — which, by-the-bye, I should request you to direct to Mr. Gisborne — I wish you could contrive to enclose the two last parts of Clarke's Travels, relating to Greece, and belonging to Hookham. You know I subscribe there still — and I have determined to take the Examiner here. You would, therefore, oblige me, by sending it weekly, after having read it yourself, to the same direction, and so clipped, as to make as little weight as possible. I write as if writing where perhaps my letter may never arrive. With every good wish from all of us, Believe me most sincerely yours, P. B. S. LETTER VI. To Ma. and Mas. GISBORNE, (leghorn). You cannot know, as some friends in England do, to whom my silence is still more inexcusable, that this silence is no proof of forgetfuhiess or neglect. 108 LETTERS FROM ITALY. I have, in truth, nothing to say, but that I shall be happy to see you again, and renew our delightful walks, until the desire or the duty of seeing new things hurries us away. We have spent a month here in our accustomed solitude, with the exception of one night at the Casino ; and the choice society of all ages, which I took care to pack up in a large trunk before we left England, have revisited us here. I am employed just now, having little better to do, in translating into my faint and inefficient periods, the divine eloquence of Plato's Symposium; only as an exercise, or, perhaps, to give Mary some idea of the manners and feelings of the Athenians — so different on many subjects from that of any other community that ever existed. We have almost finished Ariosto — who is enter- taining and graceful, and sometimes a poet. For- give me, worshippers of a more equal and tolerant divinity in poetry, if Ariosto pleases me less than you. Where is the gentle seriousness, the delicate sensibility, the calm and sustained energy, without which true greatness cannot be ? He is so cruel, too, in his descriptions ; his most prized virtues are vices almost without disguise. He constantly vindicates and embellishes revenge in its grossest form ; the most deadly superstition that ever infested the world. How different from the tender and solemn enthusiasm of Petrarch — or even the delicate moral sensibility of Tasso, though some- what obscured by an assumed and artificial style. We read a good deal here — and we read little in Livorno. We have ridden, Mary and I, once only, to a place called Prato Fiorito, on the top of the mountains : the road, winding through forests, and over torrents, and on the verge of green ravines, affords scenery magnificently fine. I cannot describe it to you, but bid you, though vainly, come and see. I take great delight in watching the changes of the atmosphere here, and the growth of the thunder showers with which the noon is often overshadowed, and which break and fade away towards evening into flocks of delicate clouds. Our fire-flies are fading away fast; but there is the planet Jupiter, who rises majestically over the rift in the forest-covered mountains to the south, and the pale summer lightning which is spread out every night, at intervals, over the sky. No doubt Providence has contrived these things, that, when the fire-flies go out, the low-flying owl may see her way home. Remember me kindly to the Machinista. With the sentiment of impatience until we see you again in the autumn, I am, yours most sincerely, P. B. Shelley. Bagni di Lucca, July io