3amc9 Ik. fIDofHrt 
 
 PAULINE FORE MOFFITT 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 GENERAL LIBRARY. BERKELEY 
 
ESSAYS-MODERN 
 
^ 
 
ESSAYS 
 
 MODEEN 
 
 BY 
 
 F. W. H. MYERS 
 
 iLontron 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1897 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
First Edition (Crmvn Zvo). 
 Reprinted (Globe ivo) 1897 ^ 
 
 Add to Lib, 
 GIFl 
 
 Printed ly R. & R. Clark, Limitkd, Edinhirgh 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 
 Giuseppe Mazzini 
 
 George Sand . 
 
 Victor Hugo 
 
 Ernest Renan 
 
 Archbishop Trench's Poems 
 
 George Eliot 
 
 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley 
 
 A New Eirenicon 
 
 Rossetti and the Religion of Beauty 
 
 PAQK 
 1 
 
 70 
 105 
 163 
 235 
 251 
 276 
 289 
 312 
 
 905 
 
GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 
 
 *• Fuss' io pur lui ! C a tal fortuna nato 
 Per r aspro esilio suo, con la virtute, 
 Dare' del moudo il piu felice stato." 
 
 Michael Angelo. 
 
 The Eisorgimento, or Eesurrection of Italy, one of the 
 noblest themes which our century has offered, still 
 awaits the philosophic historian. The writings of the 
 friends or disciples of one or other of the three leading 
 characters in the great drama introduce the reader into 
 a world of contradictions more befitting a solar myth 
 than a serious history. Grave biographies have been 
 written of Cavour as the regenerator of Italy, in which 
 Mazzini is mentioned only with an incidental sneer. 
 Noble poems ^ have been dedicated to Mazzini as the 
 regenerator of Italy, in which Cavour is not men- 
 tioned at all. And there is a whole Garibaldian 
 literature in which Mazzini stands quite in the back- 
 ground, while Cavour plays indeed a prominent part, 
 only he is no longer the hero but the villain of the tale. 
 
 ^ For example, Mr. Swinburne's magnificent Song of Italy and 
 Super Flumina Babylonis, and the pathetic poems called The Disciples, 
 by Mrs. Hamilton King. 
 
 VOL. II. & B 
 
o MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 I propose to attempt a less one-sided estimate of 
 the least conspicuous but not the least interesting of 
 the tliree — a man wlio may be said to have been at 
 once more known and more unknown than almost any 
 man in Europe, whose designs were discussed in eveiy 
 Cabinet, and his words welcomed in every " upper 
 room " of political or religious reformers on the Con- 
 tinent, while at the same time his writings and him- 
 self were proscribed in every country except our own, 
 and he lived in lodgings of which not a dozen persons 
 knew the address. 
 
 Giuseppe Mazzini, son of a professor of anatomy, 
 w^as born in Genoa in 1805, and died at Pisa in 1872. 
 
 The years in which he grew up to know Italy were 
 among the most perplexing and desperate of her long 
 decline. Tlie year 1*700 has been sometimes fixed as 
 the darkest moment of her second night — the night 
 between the Eenaissance and the Eisorgimento — but 
 such revival as had come since then had consisted 
 rather in a wakening consciousness of her shame than 
 in any effort to remove it. A few figures appear amid 
 the gloom — figures, some of them, which we may take 
 as typical of the tliree aspects of ruined Italy — her 
 unabashed sensualism, her rebellious passion, her 
 vanishing and mournful soul. We see Casanova, the 
 gaudy fiower of decay, conciliating by the intensity of 
 hLs corruption tyranny itself, and flaunting through 
 Europe his triumphant charlatanism and his greedy 
 amours. We see Al fieri — his republicanism strangely 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 3 
 
 complicated by an intercurrent passion for high-born 
 dames — making of his whole strong life a kind of 
 tragic protest and declamation, living melodrama and 
 thinking in heroics. And we see Leopardi wandering 
 iinrestingly among " the arches and deserted towers," 
 appealing for a visionary sympathy to an impalpable 
 mistress, for a visionary honour to an unassembled 
 host of war, till " not the last liope only of beloved 
 illusions, but the last desire, had flown." 
 
 The " last illusion " in the sphere of politics which 
 Italy underwent was the French invasion of 1796. 
 For a time the word Francese was used by ardent 
 Italians as synonymous with patriot. But unfortun- 
 ately the armies of the French Eevolution were 
 admirable only till they were successful ; and it has 
 been remarked that the proclamation in which Napoleon 
 held out Italy to his troops, not as a nation to deliver, 
 but as a prey to seize, marked the first step in the 
 metamorphosis of the soldiers of the Eepublic into the 
 soldiers of the Empire. The French yoke was thrown 
 off for a few years, but Austria was an equally brutal 
 master. Napoleon's second rule, after Marengo, with 
 its juster codes, its sounder finance, its pubHc works 
 and education, seemed at first a relief; but under 
 ISTapoleon good government itself became the instru- 
 ment of tyranny, and his equalising institutions served 
 but to level all pre-existing rights beneath a single 
 will. And he was not content with exacting money 
 or pictures — he needed men. Thirty thousand Italians 
 
4 MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 were carried ofr to Spain, forty thousand to Russia. 
 I'iedniont, Genoa, Tuscany, Rome itself, were annexed 
 to the French Empire. Italy was not even the subject 
 of France, but her slave. 
 
 Napoleon fell ; Austria again overran Lombardy ; 
 the petty princes returned. Murat from Naples made 
 a vain attempt to unite Italy under himseK ; then he 
 too fell, and Naples was restored to Bourbon rule. 
 The Congress of Vienna, ignoring nationality or national 
 wishes, and preoccupied wdth a system of guarantees 
 against France, confirmed Austria in the possession 
 of Lombardy and Venice, and gave her, through her 
 archdukes, a preponderating influence in Central Italy. 
 The statesmanship of the Congress of Vienna belongs 
 to a past era, both of politics and of humanity ; but it 
 must be noted that no counter-propositions were urged 
 with authority, no powerful voice from Italy protested 
 against the restoration of these foreign masters, and 
 the common people, who still were strongly Catholic, 
 received with satisfaction the return of princes and pope. 
 
 The restored rulers brought with them all the 
 errors of restorations in a form at once exaggerated 
 and paltry. A r>ourbon on the throne of France 
 carries with him a historic majesty to which mucli 
 that is not royal may be forgiven, but it was hard for 
 Modena or l*arma to idealise the petty poltrooneries of 
 a grand duke, or tlie gallantries of a dowager empress. 
 There is no need to r(!])eat the long indictment against 
 the rulers of Italy. AVhilt; liberal tongues were still 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 5 
 
 being torn out with pincers in Eome, — while innocent 
 women were still being flogged in batches through the 
 streets of Milan, — while, in the dungeons of Naples, 
 the " cap of silence " was still being pressed on the 
 head of any man who showed himself more than a 
 slave, — no words were too strong to use ; but as things 
 are now, we may be content with noticing how surely 
 from each of these powers has been exacted the penalty 
 of a false position. Austria, once the favourite, as it 
 were, of unjust Fates, the " felix Austria " of a theory 
 of territorial aggrandisement which ignored all rights 
 but those of kings, has suffered more severely than 
 any nation in Europe from the crumbling of errors 
 which she shared with them all, and scarcely knows 
 even yet how far she must contract her imperial struc- 
 ture before she can find it founded on the rock. The 
 Papacy itself is learning to regret the worldly ambition 
 which confounded the things of God and Caesar and 
 added a perishable coronet to the triple crown. And 
 in Naples the irony of fate has been yet more personal 
 and bitter. Seldom was so grotesque a sport of fortune 
 as that which gave the absolute rule over millions of 
 lives to " Bomba" and his kin. And seldom, as Plato 
 would say, have the souls of slaves been laid bare so 
 shamefully from beneath the vesture of a great king. 
 
 It was in Naples, in 1820, that the long series of 
 revolutions began. This first insurrection founded a 
 type which became common to many Neapolitan in- 
 surrections. The people demanded a constitution and 
 
6 MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 marched on Naples. Tlie king's troops ran away. 
 The king granted a constitution, and swore on tlie 
 crucifix that he would be true to it, invoking the 
 instant vengeance of God if he had a lie in his heart. 
 The Austrians marched on Naples. The parliamentary 
 troops ran away. The king tore up the constitution 
 and hung whom he chose. 
 
 Tliis revolution aimed at internal reform, — always 
 the most urgent preoccupation of Neapolitan patriots. 
 But in 1821 an insurrection broke out in Piedmont, 
 having for its object not merely the grant of a consti- 
 tution to Piedmont, but the liberation of Ijombardy 
 from Austrian rule. Betrayed by Prince Charles Albert, 
 tliis rising collapsed for want of leaders, and Austria 
 was harsher than before. Ten years later the French 
 revolution of 1830 spread excitement through Italy. 
 Eisings in Bologna, Parma, and Modena, revealed the 
 same lack of leaders and of programme, and were 
 repressed by Austrian intervention. These failures 
 made the cause of Itahan liberties seem more hopeless 
 than ever. It was plain that there was no organising 
 bond of union, no leader, no definite plan or idea 
 round which the lovers of Italy could rally ; while 
 Austria was always on the watch to resent not only 
 overt revolts against herself, but even constitutional 
 reforms in the other Italian States. Puling by right 
 of conquest, she chose that the smaller princes, who 
 were in effect her vassals, should keep the liberties of 
 their subjects duwn to the same level. 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 7 
 
 In one direction only was there any sign of hope. 
 The educated class was beginning to recover from the 
 confusion and stupor produced by the French invasions, 
 and to interest itself in patriotic causes. In Tuscany 
 especially a literary movement began — cautious and 
 tentative, but important as accustoming men to speak, 
 and giving them some reason to trust and respect 
 each other. Science, agriculture, — every pursuit, from 
 astronomy to whist, which can unite mankind — was 
 soon used for the same end, and professors or land- 
 owners meeting from different parts of Italy learned 
 to feel that they had a common country. In their 
 various discussions the question really at issue was 
 never mentioned, but never forgotten. 
 
 But means like these could scarcely reach the mass 
 of the people. A more outspoken influence, a new 
 moral force, was needed, and when Charles Albert 
 succeeded to the throne of Piedmont in 1831, a 
 Letter to the King, hy an Italian, showed that the new 
 force was there. " The people," said this stirring 
 appeal, " are no longer to be quieted by a few conces- 
 sions. They seek the recognition of those rights of 
 humanity which have been withheld from them for 
 ages. They demand laws and liberty, independence 
 and union. Divided, dismembered, and oppressed, 
 they have neither name nor country. They have heard 
 themselves stigmatised by the foreigner as a helot 
 nation. They have seen free men visit their country 
 and declare it the land of the dead. They have 
 
8 MODERN ESSAYS. [l 
 
 drained tlie cup of slavery to the dregs, but they liave 
 sworn never to fdl it again." 
 
 The letter pointed out to the king how, by appeal- 
 ing to the whole of Italy, he might unite her people 
 in the struggle for independence. " There is a crown 
 brii^hter and nobler than that of Piedmont — a crown 
 that only awaits a man bold enough to conceive the 
 idea of wearing it, resolute and determined enough to 
 consecrate himself wholly to the realisation of that 
 idea, and virtuous enough not to dim its splendour 
 with ignoble tyranny." This letter, written at the age 
 of twenty -six, was the first manifesto of principles 
 which ]\Iazzini afterwards more fully expressed, but 
 which he retamed unchanged through life. The pro- 
 blem with which he had to deal was a complex one. 
 How were moral and political unity and strength to 
 be won for Italy, partitioned as she was between 
 Austria and semi- Austrian princes, and morally divided 
 into the ultramontane and materialist camps ? A brief 
 statement of his political creed, elicited from his various 
 ^mtings, will show to what extent he was at first alone 
 in the views which he held, and to what extent lie 
 was in unison with other patriots. His programme, 
 then, reduced to its sim})lest expression, may be stated 
 as follows : — 
 
 (1) l^irst of all the Austrians must be driven out 
 of Italy. 
 
 (2) This must be attempted at once, and constantly. 
 (.".) All Italy must unite into one nation. 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MxVZZINI. 9 
 
 (4) The form of her government must then be 
 submitted to her deliberate choice. 
 
 (5-) A republican government must be recommended 
 to her by fair argument. 
 
 (6) It is useless to expect help from Catholicism 
 in regenerating Italy. 
 
 (7) A purer religion must be preached from Eome ; 
 and Eome must once more assume the moral leader- 
 ship of the world. 
 
 (1) The first of these propositions was controverted 
 by some of the best men in Italy — for instance, by 
 Eomagnosi, Eicasoli, and Mayer. They held that in- 
 ternal reforms should first be achieved, and that then 
 Austria, whom it was impossible to dislodge, would 
 soften her rule as well. Had Austria taken advan- 
 tage of this suggestion she might possibly have kept 
 Lombardy and Venice to this day, or at least have 
 sold them to Italy without war. If Francis II. had 
 not flogged so many innocent women through Milan 
 and Verona, if he had not chained so many innocent 
 men to the walls of the Spielberg, and fed them on 
 bread and tallow, Europe might long have looked coldly 
 on Italian claims to independence. But he showed 
 plainly that he preferred to rule Lombardy as a con- 
 quered country, and, moreover, that he would allow no 
 chauGjes in the neic^hbouriuLj Italian States. Men who 
 saw Eadetzky making it the regular business of his 
 life to put down revolutions could not long deny that 
 
10 MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 the expulsion of the Austrians was the prerequisite of 
 all other reform. 
 
 (2) The second point was much more controvertible. 
 The great mass of patriotic Italians, not only the 
 Moderates but the Carbonari, believed that Italy ought 
 to wait for the chapter of accidents, that the expulsion 
 of the Austrians was more than she could manage 
 alone. They pointed to the failures of 1821 and 
 1831, afterwards to the failure of Mazzini's expedition 
 into Savoy in 1834, and said that it was cruel to lead 
 men on to perish when there was no hope. Among 
 the many men who bitterly blamed Mazzini on this 
 ground one name only need be mentioned, that of 
 Cavour. But in the way in which Cavour treated this 
 accusation may be found the key to its true meaning. 
 Cavour's object, though perfectly patriotic, was patri- 
 otic in a different sense from Mazzini's. He wished to 
 liberate Lombardy and Venetia, and to add them, and 
 the small States of the North of Italy, to the Sardinian 
 kingdom. He did not wish to touch Eome or Naples, 
 nor to see Lombardo- Venetia liberated to the profit of 
 a republic. He was, in short, a Piedmontese patriot 
 before he was an Italian patriot. His first object, 
 therefore, was to acquire for Piedmont such a reputa- 
 tion that all that was gained from Austria might fall 
 into her grasp. He wished to make her known as a 
 model constitutional monarchy, equally aloof from 
 Austrian despotism and from republican anarchy. In 
 this plan he completely succeeded. He added its 
 
1.1 GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 11 
 
 finishing touch by despatching Piedmontese troops to 
 the Crimea, where his was not the only government 
 which sought and found a needed advertisement. And 
 when he met the representatives of the Great Powers 
 on equal terms at the Congress of Paris it was felt 
 that his. tone on Italian matters was greatly changed. 
 Till then he had always spoken with horror and con- 
 tempt of the isolated outbreaks of the revolutionary 
 spirit, and had begged that Piedmont might not on 
 their account forfeit the sympathy of the Powers. 
 But now, in that famous note to which the Austrian 
 plenipotentiary refused to reply, he vehemently alleged 
 those constant and irrepressible uprisings as a proof of 
 the intolerable character of Austrian, Papal, and Nea- 
 politan rule. It was then that the opinion of Europe — 
 Count Walewski speaking for France, and Lord Claren- 
 don for England — ranged itself definitely on the side 
 of Italian freedom ; the Austrian occupation was ad- 
 mitted to be an abnormal, therefore a transitory thing, 
 and the Pope and the King of Naples received hints 
 to set their houses in order, which it was their own 
 fault if they ignored. It was seen by all, as it had, 
 no doubt, been seen by Cavour all along, that the con- 
 duct which gains sympathy for oppressed peoples is 
 neither tame endurance nor empty declamation, but 
 heroic, even if unavailing, courage. For the success of 
 Cavour's projects it was as necessary that the people of 
 Lombardy, Parma, Modena, should show this courage, 
 as that Piedmont should show herself fitted by consti- 
 
12 MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 tutionalisni and good order to reap the harvest of which 
 the blood of " Young Italy " had been the seed. 
 
 We cannot doubt, then, that these recurrent revolu- 
 tions were of service to Italy, even if her independence 
 was to be ultimately attained on Cavour's plan — by 
 awaiting a series of happy conjunctures and alliances 
 with other Powers. But to defend Mazziui's policy 
 thus would be to shirk his main issue; for he did Twt 
 wish to call in the help of other nations — he did not 
 intend his risings simply as demonstrations, but as a 
 mode of warfare which, if persisted in, would gradually 
 make the Austrian position untenable. No one can 
 say with certainty how this plan would have worked 
 if it had not been superseded by Cavour's. But what 
 is doubtful is not so much the feasibility of the plan in 
 itself, if the Italians acted up to it, as the possibility 
 of eliciting from them as much heroism and patience 
 as the plan required. If all Italy had made common 
 cause with Lombardy and Venetia, if each of her cities 
 had fought like the Romans under Mazzini, or the 
 Venetians under Manin, if there had been twenty such 
 guerrilla bands as that " thousand " with which Gari- 
 baldi conquered a kingdom, Austria could not have 
 held her giound for long. The dis})arity between her 
 strength and that of Italy was after all by no means 
 overwlielming, smd to occupy a mountainous and bitterly 
 hostile country needs overwhelming force. The inter- 
 vention of foreign powers might have complicated the 
 l)rubleni, but if, as IMuzzini wished, tlie war had been 
 
I] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 13 
 
 conducted with strict respect for Catholicism, and the 
 question of form of government deferred for the con- 
 sideration of United Italy, foreign powers, in the grow- 
 ing coldness with which the treaties of Vienna were 
 regarded, would have had no adequate reason to inter- 
 fere. Still, they might have interfered ; the spirit of 
 Italy might have given wayj and her freedom might 
 have been deferred for generations. On Mazzini's, as 
 on Cavour's plan, there was a chance of failure ; and 
 Mazzini's plan was sure to cost more blood, though it 
 might gain more ItaKan territory than Cavour's. Our 
 preference for one or the other plan will, in fact, depend 
 upon the objects for which we desire the existence of 
 Italy as a nation. If we care mainly for her material 
 prosperity and peace, for the " white flocks of Clitum- 
 nus," for the " heavy-hanging harvests and Bacchus in 
 his Massic flow," we may feel that Cavour led Italy 
 along her surest way. But if we desire first of all that 
 the " Saturnian land " should once again be the mighty 
 mother not only of fruits but of heroes, if self-respect 
 and constancy seem to us things worth purchase at the 
 cost of any pain, then we may feel that it had been 
 better for her if " fire-breathing bulls had ploughed the 
 soil and dragon's teeth been sown, and helm and javelin 
 had bristled in a crop of men." 
 
 " Italy will never live," said Emilio Bandicra, " till 
 Italians have learnt to die." No word need be uttered 
 in disparagement of a people to which the whole world 
 wishes well, which men of so many nations have loved 
 
14 MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 the next to their own. But are not the best Italians 
 themselves the first to say that their redemption has 
 been too often received as a gift from others instead of 
 being worked out by themselves ? that there might be 
 something more of nobility, distinction, power, in Italy's 
 bearing among the nations now, if she had felt within 
 her more of the spirit of that other people of the past, 
 who (in Thucydides' words) " dared beyond their 
 strength, and hazarded against their judgment, and 
 in extremities were of an excellent hope " ? 
 
 (3) "All Italy must unite into one nation." Now 
 that all Italian soil (except Nice, Corsica, and the 
 Trentino) is, in fact, united under one government, this 
 proposition needs no defence. It is plain that there 
 was no reason for leaving out any part of Italy, and 
 that her independence and progress depend in even an 
 exceptional degree on her status as a great power. 
 She has a danger which other powers have not ; she 
 has to face the Ultramontanism of the world. 
 
 And, in fact, no exclusion of any integi'al part of 
 Italy, of Eome or Naples, could have been long main- 
 tained. The history of the struggle shows that the 
 resolution to achieve Italian unity was the one strong 
 popular fcHiliiig on which either republicans or mon- 
 archists could count. This was a surprise to both 
 parties ; for the lesson of combination and self-restraint 
 was one which it had seemed that no suffering could 
 teach to Italy. Wlien, after tlie internecine struggles 
 of her rci»ul>lics, she sank into her second night, she 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 15 
 
 was still passionately attached to small civic units and 
 to the very extravagance of self-government. But 
 when her new day dawned she was found to be bent 
 above all things on national unity, and so indifferent 
 to her form of government, that this was decided almost 
 wholly by Cavour's genius and by the accident of 
 Garibaldi's admiration for the personal courage of 
 Victor Emmanuel. Garibaldi was a more typical 
 national hero than either Mazzini or Cavour, and his 
 eagerness to seize on Naples for Italy, with his gro- 
 tesque perplexity as to what to do with it when he 
 had got it, represents well enough the national ardour 
 for union, and the national irresolution as to anything 
 beyond. 
 
 But, however necessary the union of the whole of 
 Italy may seem to us now, Mazzini at first was almost 
 alone in preaching it. In 1831, and for long after, 
 alliances between the princes, the formation of three 
 Italian States, or an Amphictyonic council under the 
 presidency of the Pope, were the alternatives most 
 often urged. It was an alliance of constitutional States 
 tliat was desired by Cesare Balbo, Eomagnosi, Massimo 
 d'Azeglio. It was an alliance of aristocratical States 
 that was the ideal of Alfieri, Gioberti, Botta. And 
 even so late as 1859 it was the extension of the Sar- 
 dinian kingdom over North Italy which was the limit 
 of the aspirations of Cavour. 
 
 But in this case also IMazzini's programme was 
 based not only on political foresight, but on what was 
 
16 MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 to him a religious principle. The principle of nation- 
 alities was one which he deduced directly from his 
 conception of the moral universe. The nation, he said, 
 is within humanity wliat the family is within the nation 
 — a divinely -constituted group with a special mis- 
 sion of its own, to be pursued independently, though 
 in association with the groups around it. To break up 
 a nationality — a group set apart by race and tongue — 
 was to deny to it the only right which an individual or 
 a society can possess, the right of developing itself freely 
 along its appointed patli. And much of his energy 
 was spent in insisting on this view ; not in the case of 
 Italy alone, but on behalf of the Greeks, the Belgians, 
 the Slavs, the Eoumanians, the Magyars. The principle, 
 as these names suggest to us, is a hard one to apply. 
 It is subject, perhaps, to more limitations than !Mazzini 
 supposed. But no one can deny him the credit of 
 having been its first systematic, persistent, and inlhi- 
 ential supporter. And it is a commonplace to remark 
 that in the liistory of the last half century in Europe 
 the principle of nationalities has been superseding the 
 old system of territorial compensations and dynastic 
 claims as irresistibly as the Natural system of botany 
 has superseded that of Linnasus. 
 
 (4) The next point in ]\Iazzini's programme — that 
 united Italy should be left to choose her own govern- 
 ment — seems plainly just. In his view each party 
 and province ought to lielp every otlier in the attain- 
 ment of the common end, but witliout pledging any 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 17 
 
 illy to the acceptance of its own scheme of rule. On 
 two occasions Mazzini was strongly urged, from oppo- 
 site quarters, to give way on this point. In 1848 
 Charles Albert, fighting against Austria in alliance 
 with revolted Lombardy, wished to enrol all Lom- 
 bard and other volunteers in his own army. His ob- 
 vious preference of Piedmontese to Italian interests 
 had in other ways much injured the movement, and 
 this proposal had the effect of gTeatly checking the 
 influx of soldiers. Mazzini stood out, and the Lom- 
 bard volunteers were incorporated in regiments of 
 their own, though officered by Piedmontese. He thus 
 protested, not against the union of Italy under a king, 
 but against a king's assumption of a right to rule over 
 Italy, made in a manner which lessened the chances of 
 Italian union. 
 
 The other occasion when his firmness in this matter 
 was tested was when he spoke to Italy in the name of 
 the Eepublic of Eome. Men whose hopes, like his own, 
 were fixed on a Eepublic of Italy urged him to use 
 the unique opportunity to found at least in title the 
 unique ideal. But he refused to prejudge in any way 
 the decision of the rest of the country, and in his brief 
 hour of triumph he did not derogate from the prin- 
 ciples of his long defeat. 
 
 (5) The next article of his belief is far more open 
 to debate. The question whether a monarchy or a 
 republic is indicated by history as the government 
 best fitted for a united Italy, may be plausibly argued 
 
 VOL. II. c 
 
18 MODERN ESSAYS. [r. 
 
 on botli sides. If we consider Italy simply as one of 
 llu; provinces of tlie dismembered Roman empire, 
 analogy is in favour of monarchy. Speaking generally, 
 each of the principal provinces of that empire associ- 
 ated its fortunes sooner or later with some family of 
 Germanic princes, and the hereditary succession of 
 these princes served as a nucleus for the newly-formed 
 State. The prince's power was from the first limited 
 by the riglits of minor chieftains and heads of families, 
 and from these limitations the civil liberties of Europe 
 sprang. Italy alone rejected consolidation under a 
 northern prince ; she refused the hereditary dominion 
 of a Gothic or Lombard family ; she preferred an 
 anarchic liberty modified by external Powers, whose 
 indefinite pretensions she vaguely admitted, and whose 
 incursions her factions or her patriotism alternately 
 invited and repelled. This system of municipal self- 
 government broke down, and Italy was parcelled out 
 under foreign rulers, identified not with her interests, 
 Ijul witli the interest of the reigning families of other 
 countries. It might seem, therefore, that the surest 
 way of guaranteeing the continued existence of a 
 united Italy would be simply to replace her in tlie 
 road whicli slie should never have quitted — to identify 
 lier with the fortunes of some family of northern 
 origin, and to trust that the stability and progressive 
 constitutionalism wliicli had on the whole followed 
 on such a course in France, Austria, England, Spain, 
 and Portugal, might result in Italy as well. In tlie 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 19 
 
 latest instance of the revival of a nation of Soutlicrn 
 Europe this j)lan was tried : Greece was placed under a 
 northern family ; and, if the experiment has not been 
 fully successful, there has at least been no sign that 
 a republic, or a federation of republics, would have 
 answered even as well. 
 
 The house of Savoy fulfilled the necessary condi- 
 tions ; and there was a kind of historic propriety in 
 giving the leadership of Italy to Piedmont, the pro- 
 vince of Italy as yet least distinguished in history. 
 Even so had each plain and promontory of Greece in 
 turn held the hearthfire of her national existence ; in 
 each in turn that fire burnt low ; and her last renewal 
 came to her from the unexhausted byways of her 
 people, from villages unnoticed by Thucydides, and 
 goat-pasturing islets almost unnamed amid the sea. 
 These, in one view, are the analogies of history, and 
 these analogies history has confirmed. Italy has been 
 remade into a nation in the easiest way. 
 
 Few historical problems, however, are so simple as 
 to admit of only one solution by analogy, and the 
 same broad facts of Italian history may be read into a 
 very different meaning. We miss, it may be said, the 
 very lesson which the exceptional character of Italy's 
 history should teach us if we attempt to force her 
 destinies into the vulgar mould. At a time when 
 monarchy was essential to the very existence of other 
 States she refused monarchy — refused it on account of 
 her excess, not her defect, of national life ; — because 
 
20 MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 the patriotism of her sons lies in devotion to a country 
 and not to a king ; because each group of Italian men 
 and women, each sacred shrine and hill, was enough 
 to give scope to all human faculties, to form a centre 
 of heroism, art, and love. Meantime other nations 
 grew strong by their very subjection, by the want of 
 individuality in their units, by the joyless discipline 
 which made the State a machine of war. Then came 
 the time when small States could exist no longer, 
 and the Italian communities were delivered over to 
 northern tyrants. But now that Italy was to rise 
 again, she ought surely to retain her old strength 
 while avoiding her old weakness. Her strength was 
 in her democracy, in the vivid sense of participation 
 in the national life which animated the least of her 
 citizens. Pieprosentative government, — unknown to the 
 ancient or the mediaeval world, — makes possible the 
 existence of large republics with all the institutions 
 of local freedom, and without the perils of federation. 
 It is in this direction that the civilised world tends. 
 Even the old monarchical States of Europe are being 
 republicanised now. The only great new State which 
 the modern age has produced is the republic of North 
 America. If Italy is to head tlie world she must 
 range herself on the winning side. 
 
 Balanced in this way, the argument leaves much 
 to the bias of individual minds. And it was not in 
 reality from a comparison of historical analogies that 
 Mazzini was a republican. It was because " to the 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZmi. 21 
 
 unhappy he felt himself near of kin," because his 
 sympathies moved most readily with the hopes of the 
 masses, and the upward struggles of toiling men. 
 
 In men who have risen to wide-reaching power we 
 generally observe an early preponderance of one of 
 two instincts — the instinct of rule and order, or the 
 instinct of sympathy. The one instinct may degener- 
 ate into bureaucracy, the other into sentimentalism. 
 Eightly ordered, they make the master or the leader 
 of men. 
 
 The earliest anecdotes told of Cavour and Mazzini 
 will illustrate my meaning. Wlien Cavour was about 
 six years old he was taken on a posting journey. On 
 one stage of this journey the horses were unusually 
 bad. The little boy asked who was responsible for 
 the horses. He was told it was the postmaster. He 
 asked who appointed the postmaster. He w^as told it 
 was the syndic. He demanded to be taken at once 
 to the syndic to get the postmaster dismissed. 
 
 Mazzini as a child was very delicate. When he 
 was about six years old he w^as taken for his first 
 walk. For the first time he saw a beggar, a venerable 
 old man. He stood transfixed, then broke from his 
 mother, threw his arms round the beggar's neck and 
 kissed him, crying, " Give him something, mother, give 
 him something." " Love him well, lady," said the aged 
 man ; " he is one who will love the people." 
 
 The tendency of recent thought has been to dwell 
 rather upon the hierarchy than upon the unity of 
 
22 MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 mankind. And as the race develops, the difference 
 between man and man, already vast, may perhaps 
 grow not less, but greater. We can place no limit to 
 the ascendency which may be exercised by the mere 
 intellect of some epoch-making man. But we may 
 safely prophesy that no one will ever uplift his fellow- 
 men from within, or leave a name which draws tears 
 of reverence from generations yet unborn, who has not 
 himself, as it were, wept over Jerusalem, and felt a 
 stirring kinship with even the outcast of mankind. 
 
 " God and the People," Mazzini's watchword, was 
 no mere phrase to him. It represented the two 
 streams of adoring and of compassionate sympathy 
 which make a double current in the generous heart, 
 unless fate sends an object around which both can 
 flow, and mingles either effluence in a single love. 
 
 There is, indeed, no reason whatever why God's 
 worship or the people's welfare should be bound up 
 with a republican form of government. The danger 
 of modern societies comes from plutocracies rather 
 than from kings or nobles ; and against the power of 
 money republics offer no safeguard of their own. 
 Mazzini, perhaps, hardly realised this. Or rather, 
 what he desired was hardly what we call democracy ; 
 for he defines democracy as " the progress of all 
 through all, under the leadership of the best and 
 wisest." And what he desired was, in Irutli, tlie 
 common weal, was rul)lic Virtue, and it was because 
 the monarchies around him gave liini no sufficing 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 23 
 
 image of lier rule that he pictured her re-arisen in 
 her ancient vesture and called by her Eoman name. 
 
 (6) " No help in the deliverance of Italy is to be 
 looked for from the Catholic Church." This principle 
 also has been proved to be sound by the march of 
 events. But it was opposed to some of the strongest 
 currents of popular feeling in Italy, and to the aspira- 
 tions of some of her noblest minds. The political 
 programme of the " new Guelph movement " may 
 seem to us plainly futile ; its political leaders, — 
 Gioberti or Eossi, — may be little to our taste. But 
 behind them there was a force which was even trai^ic 
 in its intensity, — the passionate reluctance of men 
 who have entrusted their souls to a spiritual guide to 
 admit to themselves that that guide betrays, — the 
 determination at any cost to reconcile Catholicism 
 with patriotism, the creed of the fathers with the duty 
 of the sons. 
 
 The real knot of the situation was in the temporal 
 power, which throughout this century, at least, has 
 been a very millstone round the neck of the Papacy. 
 The recent Popes, in fact, have been in a false position, 
 in which their predecessors were seldom placed. In 
 the days of the great Popes of the Middle Ages the 
 temporal power was an almost nominal or at least a 
 slightly-regarded thing. The policy of a Gregory or 
 an Innocent was Catholic, not Italian. After the 
 return of the Popes from Avignon the character of 
 their aspirations changed : tliey sank into petty in- 
 
24 MODERN ESSAYS. [r. 
 
 triguing princes like the princes around them. Tlie 
 policy of an Alexander or a Leo was Italian, and not 
 Catholic. But the time came when each of these 
 terms might be interpreted in two ways. An Italian 
 policy might mean a policy by which the Pope aimed 
 first of all at preserving his position as an Italian 
 prince, or a policy by which he placed himself at the 
 head of the national aspirations of Italy. A Catholic 
 policy might mean a policy by which he conciliated 
 the despotic governments of Austria and Naples in 
 return for material support, or a policy which kept 
 him the spiritual leader of that great religious move- 
 ment which is proceeding, quite independently of 
 forms of civil government, in the old and the new 
 world. Attachment to the temj)oral power has led 
 the recent Popes in each case to choose the narrower 
 alternative. How much the Catholic Church has lost 
 through the endless series of compromises and con- 
 cordats which the interests of the temporal power have 
 necessitated, it is hard to say. In such traffic the 
 rate of exchange rises all too rai)idly against the 
 vendor of impalpable wares. And now that the 
 struggle is over and the temporal power gone, it is 
 felt by the wisest Catholics themselves that a new 
 independence is breathed into the Vatican counsels. 
 Jf, then, it has been well for the Popes even to be 
 forcibly deprived of the temporal power, what might 
 they not have gained by its voluntar}' refcjrm ; — nay, 
 even by its dignified and timely surrender ! No party 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 25 
 
 in Italy deserves a deeper sympathy than the men, 
 Catholics at once and patriots, who watched with 
 powerless regret the loss of this unique opportunity. 
 What chivalry in d'Azeglio, unable to the last to 
 conceive of a severance between reliiiion and honour ! 
 what pathos in Tosti, as he called to the marching 
 patriots from the sanctuary of his Benedictine hill, 
 " Sitting among the ruins of a day that is gone, I 
 follow you witli my love from far ! " 
 
 This great problem of the relation of regenerate 
 Italy to Catholicism was at once a personal and a 
 public one to every Italian. Cavour and Mazzini 
 solved it in their different ways. For his own part, 
 Cavour especially retained a devoted priest to absolve 
 his last hour, and made his way into heaven itself by 
 a stroke of diplomacy. And his solution of the 
 general question was of a similarly diplomatic kind. 
 The Free Church in a Free State is a political and 
 not a moral remedy for the deep division of the 
 Italian people ; it is all that statesmanship can offer, 
 but it is no more than a modus vivencli between two 
 halves of a nation. 
 
 To Mazzini, on the other hand, the spiritual unity 
 of Italy seemed far more necessary, though far harder 
 to achieve, than the political. He could more easily 
 endure that Italian labour should enrich foreign rulers, 
 than that in Italian hearts there should be any impulse 
 of truth or virtue which did not unite in that full 
 current of spiritual influence which it was Italy's 
 
26 MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 mission to pour upon the world. And yet how was 
 this unity to be attained ? A moral force can be 
 absorbed or modified only by a stronger force of the 
 same kind. And he who would offer to Catholics an ideal 
 higher than the Catholic Church must needs resemble 
 tliat Indian hermit of whom M. Renan tells us, who, 
 expelled from the heaven of Indra, created, by the force 
 of his meditation and the intensity of his merits, 
 another Indra and a new Jvcaven. 
 
 (7) And this brings us to the last article of 
 Mazzini's programme : " Eome must give Europe a 
 new religion — must a third time head and regenerate 
 the world." 
 
 It is enough for the present to say that this has 
 not been done. AVlien we discuss ^lazzini's own 
 springs of action we shall be better able to estimate 
 the value and the future of his religious ideas. But 
 in the world of public action these hopes have failed. 
 And here, at last, we come upon a point which seems 
 to justify the common view of ^Mazzini as a visionary 
 and a Utopian. 
 
 In using these words, however, we must beware of 
 confusion of thought. In dealing with men there are 
 two distinct questions — IIow can we improve their 
 condition now ? and, ITow far may that condition be 
 improved ultimately ? If a man through holding en- 
 thusiastic views as to the future of the race mistakes or 
 neglects the measures which they need now, it is just 
 to censure him as a fanatic. But it is ])ossil)lc to 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINL 27 
 
 combine glowing hopes for the future with cautious 
 sagacity in the present. The founders of the United 
 States believed that tlieir republic would be a moral 
 pattern to mankind ; but this did not prevent them 
 from constructing a business country on business 
 principles. Hardly Plato himself was in the world 
 of theory more visionary than Bacon ; and yet Bacon 
 was the Apostle of Experiment, and in his conduct of 
 the Court of Chancery was found to err even from 
 excess of practicality. If we are to call men like 
 Washington and Bacon Utopians the word has lost 
 its sting. 
 
 And, like these men, Mazzini had two aspirations, 
 the one practical and the other visionary. The first 
 was the unity of Italy; the second the establishment 
 therein of a religion and a republic. But the line 
 which he took with reference to these two objects was 
 essentially different. As to the first he accepted no 
 compromise. He forgave no dereliction of this end, 
 no halt on the road to its attainment. But his second 
 object, though he held it the higher one, was never 
 suffered to interfere with the first. Althoudi nothincf 
 
 O O 
 
 was done for Italy in the way that he would have 
 chosen, there was nothing done for Italy that he did 
 not support. For proof of this assertion there is no 
 need to appeal to any controverted matter. His public 
 manifestoes, which extend over his whole career and 
 determined the action of liis party, are e\ddence 
 enough. This surely is all that we have a right to 
 
28 MODERN ESSAYS. [i 
 
 demand of a roformer, that lie sliall set before him 
 some actually attainable ideal, and secure it at what- 
 ever cost of self-suppression or compromise. If he 
 does this, we need not blame him if he would have 
 liked to do more. We need not blame him if in his 
 desire for the happiness and virtue of others he refuses 
 to be satisfied with the attainment of any given step 
 upon an upward progress whose limit is unknown; if 
 in reviewincj his own work he will call nothinc: jijood 
 which might have been better. 
 
 These, then, were the leading principles which 
 Mazzini upheld through life by every line of thought, 
 every form of action, which circumstances allowed. 
 At first his influence was mainly through the press 
 and correspondence. In literary and critical essays he 
 gave to his views on life and duty a clear and digni- 
 fied expression. By the association of " Young Italy " 
 — so called from no fantastic preference for youth, but 
 because hardly any grown men remained to Italy who 
 still dared to hope — he spread these views through 
 the length and breadth of the land. Another nssocia- 
 tion, " Young Europe," brought the revolutionary 
 element in other nations into sym})athy witli Italian 
 freedom. And in a host of articles and pamphlets he 
 afforded the impulse necessary to evoke the spark of 
 patriotism in many a hesitating company of men, to 
 " beat the twilight into flakes of Are." 
 
 It is of course impossible to define witli exactness 
 the amount of inlhieiice thus exerted; but it is; notice- 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 29 
 
 able that we seldom fmd an Italian patriot ascribing 
 his first ardour of public spirit to any other source ; 
 nor does any other source seem to have existed from 
 which the rising people of Italy could draw their 
 necessary and sustained inspiration. Giusti gave 
 them trenchant satire. Guerrazzi gave them a mass 
 of vigorous polemic. Gioberti offered such incitement 
 to Gfreatness as can be drawn from volumes of 
 
 o 
 
 panegyric of a type which we are more accustomed 
 to see addressed to the people of Paris. But Mazzini 
 almost alone gave them what they needed most, a 
 strain of manly virtue. " I love you too well," he 
 wrote in the preface to his treatise on The Duties of 
 Man, " either to flatter your passions or caress the 
 golden dreams by which others seek to gain your 
 favour. My voice may sound too harsh, and I may 
 too severely insist on proclaiming the necessity of 
 virtue and sacrifice, but I know, and you will soon 
 know also, that the sole origin of every right is in a 
 duty fulfilled." 
 
 The short treatise to which these words are prefixed 
 should be read by those who have been accustomed to 
 think of Mazzini as a violent revolutionary. Their 
 first impression will probably be one of surprise at the 
 subordination of political to religious dogma. The 
 author has plainly more in common with Huss or 
 Savonarola than with Eobespierre or Mirabeau. 
 
 It will then be observed that, if we except his pre- 
 ference for a republic as the logical form of govern- 
 
30 MODERN ESSAYS. [r. 
 
 iiient by the people, there is little in liis opiuious 
 which would have disqualified him (for instance) from 
 forming a member of an ordinary English liberal 
 ministry. Even on questions of political economy — 
 the great crux of the reformer — it may surprise us to 
 find him both sound and inventive. Co-operation is 
 his leading economical doctrine, and some of the 
 practical measures by which he would encourage this 
 are already at work in some towns of Italy, and are 
 likely enough to spread farther. On one point alone 
 economists will agree in pronouncing him mistaken ; — 
 in his wish to raise the public revenue almost wholly 
 by an income-tax. This is an extreme view, but it is 
 still far enough from socialism or anarchy. 
 
 His literary work was much broken by the active 
 business of insurrections. He took a personal part in 
 all the movements which he originated, as well as in 
 many which he disapproved as immature, but was 
 unable to arrest.^ He was remarkable for his cool 
 courage in the presence of danger, and Colonel Medici 
 has described his conduct as a private in the disastrous 
 campaign of Garibaldi's Volunteers near ]\Iilan in 
 1848 in terms which recall the well-known story of 
 tlie constancy of Socrates in the retreat from Potidiea. 
 His skill as a tactician was thought highly of by his 
 party. We know too little of the chances which were 
 seized or missed to enable us to form an independent 
 opinion, but it is ])l;iiii that he applied to tlie art of 
 
 * Seo Joseph Mazziui, a Aluiiioir, l»y K. A. V. 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 31 
 
 war the same liiimble and painstaking spirit which led 
 him to shrink from no duty as paltry or uncongenial 
 if it could serve Italy. We read his Catechism of 
 Guerilla Warfare, and find the delicate student who 
 began life with an Essay on a European Literature 
 applying his mind to the right rules for lighting delu- 
 sive camp fires and firing at the enemy's legs. And 
 then in the intervals of these adventures we find tlie 
 dangerous outlaw spending almost every evening for 
 seven years (1841-48) in teaching a night-school of 
 Italian organ -boys in his shabby lodgings in Hatton 
 Garden. 
 
 Work such as this may seem a waste of time in a 
 political leader. But the potency of Mazzini's sym- 
 pathies was much increased by his coming thus to 
 Italy as one that ministered — by his being, like 
 Dominic, the amoroso drudo of a lofty and absorbing 
 faith. And time was preparing for him a culminant 
 opportunity when no fragment of knowledge, influence, 
 reverence, which he had won, should be forgotten or in 
 vain. The things which he had done in secret were 
 to be proclaimed openly, and the banner of " God and 
 the People " was to fly from the capitol of Eome. 
 
 II. 
 
 The first years of the pontificate of Pius IX. can be 
 remembered with satisfaction by no party. Seldom has 
 history shown a more curious complication of false posi- 
 
32 MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 tions and inextricable dilemmas. The main points of 
 the situation are well known. The new Pope took 
 from the first a lofty view of his spiritual prerogative, 
 but began his reign without a definite temporal policy. 
 He was kindly and simple-minded, but accessible to 
 flattery and wanting in wisdom, and rather obstinate 
 than strong. The liberal party took advantage of an 
 amnesty which he issued on his accession — in itself a 
 very ordinary act — to credit him with liberal tendencies, 
 and to exalt him as the heaven-sent patron of Italian 
 unity and freedom. He promised reforms, and was 
 rewarded by calculated acclamations. There was 
 something contemptible in this mode of cajoling a 
 ruler, and there was something undignified in the way 
 in which the flatteries were swallowed and the reforms 
 postponed. The war of Piedmont witli Austria in 
 1848 put an end to this child's play. At first, indeed, 
 the demagogues pretended that the Pope had gone to 
 war with Austria, and there was much debate as to 
 whether he had or had not blessed the banners of the 
 volunteers, and, if he had, whether his blessing would 
 still be valid if they crossed the Po. But on April 
 29, 1848, the Pope published an allocution in which 
 he definitely took the Austrian side. Prom that 
 moment his popularity was gone. Alarmed at its loss 
 he temporised agahi. 
 
 In the autumn of 1848 lie i^laced liossi at the 
 head of affairs. Eossi tried to steer a middle course. 
 The task Wdn impossible ; his own harshness and 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 33 
 
 pedantry embittered the enmities on both sides which 
 his policy evoked, and he succeeded in uniting the 
 contending factions only in the single object of assassi- 
 nating himself. On November 15 he was stabbed at 
 the door of the parliament. The cowardly Assembly 
 held its session without alluding to the fact that the 
 prime minister had been killed on the stairs. Both 
 parties welcomed this crime. The liberal papers spoke 
 of it without reprobation ; the ultra-papal commandant 
 of gendarmes refused to make any attempt to punish 
 the assassins. The terrified Pope fled to Gaeta in 
 disguise, and surrendered himself to the influence of 
 Antonelli, who had pretended to join in the constitu- 
 tional movement, but now showed his true colours, and 
 kept his power till he died. It was now AntonelU's 
 object that Eome should fall into anarchy. Com- 
 missioners were appointed to govern in the Pope's 
 name, who refused to do anything except protest 
 against the assumption of power by any one else. 
 The deadlock was complete. Gradually a demand 
 arose that Mazzini and Garibaldi should be sent for. 
 Both accepted the call, Mazzini writing sternly of what 
 had passed, and advising the convocation of a constit- 
 uent assembly and the proclamation of a republic. 
 This advice was followed, and on March 20, 1849, 
 Mazzini and two Eomans were chosen triumvirs. 
 
 In the deliberate absence of any ruler the Eomans 
 had no choice but to create a republic, but it was clear 
 from the first that the fortunes of that republic were 
 
 VOL. ir. D 
 
34 MODERN ESSAYS. [l 
 
 almost desperate. Three of the four Catholic powers, 
 Austria, Naples, and Spain, were certain to attack it. 
 From two quarters only was help possible, from the 
 rest of Italy or from France, the fourth Catholic power, 
 but a power which was at that time republican also. 
 As regarded help from the rest of Italy, the moment 
 for seeking it had gone by. A year before Eome 
 would have found all Italy, almost all Europe, in revolu- 
 tion, but now the flame was dying out. The defeat 
 of No vara, on March 23, put an end to hope from 
 Piedmont. An earnest attempt, made by Mazzini 
 before his arrival in Rome, to secure co-operation 
 from Tuscany failed, and the ill-conducted Tuscan con- 
 stitutional movement expired with the return of the 
 grandduke on April 13. Venice remained in arms; 
 her heroic defence against Austria was adding the 
 last glory to her famous name. But she could spare 
 no help to Rome. From France Mazzini never hoped 
 much, though neither he nor the French nation were 
 prepared for what actually took place. France was 
 undergoing a reaction from the exaggerated enthusiasms 
 of 1848, in a dark hour of apathy and fears in which 
 more than one sinister ambition was finding a con- 
 genial air. 
 
 M. Thiers ^ has related with cynical frankness the 
 secret history of the despatch of the French expedition to 
 Rome. Without his express authority we might have 
 suspected, but should hardly have allowed ourselves to 
 
 * Conversations with Mr. Senior, Fortnightly Review, October 1877. 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 35 
 
 assert, that the expedition was from beginning to end 
 a deliberate fraud upon both the French and Italian 
 peoples ; that almost every word uttered by the French 
 ministers in the Assembly and the French general in 
 Italy was a conscious falsehood; that, as M. Thiers 
 says, " It was not for the sake of the Eoman people, it 
 was not for the sake of Catholicism, that we went to 
 Eome, it was for the sake of France ; " and for the sake 
 of France in what way ? In the first place to gain for 
 the Prince-President the support of the clerical party, 
 and in the second place to assert the influence of 
 France in Italy in opposition to that of Austria, since, 
 said M. Thiers, " rather than see the Austrian eagle on 
 the flagstaff that rises above the Tiber, I would destroy 
 a hundred constitutions and a hundred religions." 
 This seems a needless energy of resolve, but M. Thiers 
 tells us that we ''can hardly conceive the interest 
 which France takes in Eome," not only on vulgar 
 grounds which all may share, as the centre of Catholi- 
 cism, art, and history, but " as having long been the 
 second city of the French Empire." 
 
 From any less exalted point of view it was certainly 
 hard to find a reason why France should interfere in 
 Eome in 1849. As a Catholic country she could not 
 be expected to help the Eoman republic against the 
 Pope. Still less did it befit her, as a republic, to stifle 
 a sister repubhc which had in many ways a stronger 
 right to existence than herself. But although France 
 was a republic, her ministers were not republicans ; 
 
36 MODERN ESSAYS. [l 
 
 tliey were paving the way, as fast as tliey dared, for an 
 ultramontane empire; tliey were resolved to crush the 
 Roman republic, and to help them to deceive the 
 Assembly which they led they counted upon their 
 countrymen's vanity, on their desire to pose as heroes 
 on every stage which the world's history offers. M. 
 Odilon Barrot rested his proposal for the despatch of 
 troops to Italy on " the expediency of maintaining the 
 French influence in Italy, and the wish to be instru- 
 mental in securing to the Eoman people a good govern- 
 ment, founded on liberal institutions." The Assembly 
 consented, and a body of troops under General Oudinot 
 was sent to Civita Vecchia. Before them went an 
 aide-de-camp to anjiounce " that the wish of the 
 majority would be respected, and no form of govern- 
 ment imposed which the Eoman people had not chosen." 
 Won by fair words, the municipality of Civita Vecchia 
 allowed the French to land. The triumvirs remon- 
 strated, but it was too late. They then sent to Oudinot 
 a dignified protest, stating that this invasion was a 
 violation of the law of nations, and declaring their 
 intention to resist. Oudinot replied with a proclama- 
 tion, written by M. Drouyn de Lhuys, which repeated 
 that the French " had no wish to exercise an oppressive 
 influence, or to impose a government contrary to the 
 wish of the Romans." He then declared Civita Vecchia 
 in a state of siege, disarmed the garrison, and forbade 
 the municipality to meet. The prefect protested, and 
 Oudinot put him in prison. 
 
1.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 37 
 
 The French Assembly had authorised Oudinot to 
 enter Eome " if he were likely to meet with no serious 
 resistance, or were invited thither by the wish of the 
 population." The triumvirs repeatedly told him that 
 any attack on Eome would be strenuously resisted. 
 He did, however, attack Eome on April 30, and was 
 driven off by Garibaldi, leaving many wounded and 
 prisoners. The wounded were carefully tended by a 
 band of Eoman ladies, who were afterwards described 
 in the French Assembly as courtesans. The prisoners 
 were released by the triumvirs, who refused to keep 
 captive republicans who had been deluded into a 
 fratricidal war. They thus expressed their belief in 
 the brotherhood of all free men, just as Callicratidas, 
 by releasing Greek prisoners, expressed his belief in 
 the brotherhood of all Hellenes. 
 
 The news of this attack on Eome caused great 
 discontent in France. M. Barrot disavowed Oudinot's 
 action, but sent him reinforcements instead of recalling 
 him. The general displeasure, however, compelled the 
 ministers to send some man of high reputation as 
 diplomatic agent, " to devote himself to negotiations 
 and the relations to be established between the Eoman 
 authorities and the Eoman people." M. de Lesseps, then 
 one of the first of diplomatists, as he is now the first of 
 engineers, was despatched with full powers. The mas- 
 terly State-paper in which he afterwards defended his 
 mission, supplemented as it is by the original documents, 
 remains the unanswered history of these transactions. 
 
38 MODERN ESSAYS. [l. 
 
 Reaching Rome on May 10, M. do Lesseps found 
 that the French position was an entirely false one, that 
 the Romans were by no means in a state of anarchy, 
 but resolute, united, and in no need of French arbitra- 
 tion. The most alarming element in the situation 
 was the wounded vanity of the French officers, who 
 wished to wipe out the memory of their defeat before 
 Rome by a second assault upon that friendly city. 
 Wliile M. de Lesseps negotiated they prepared their 
 attack. In spite of the armistice they threw a bridge 
 of boats across the Tiber, and cut the communication 
 between Rome and the sea ; they seized the church of 
 St. Paul- without-the- walls ; they occupied ]\Ionte Mario 
 — a most important position. There was a peculiar 
 perfidy in this last act, since M. de Lesseps himself 
 was deceived into informing the Roman government 
 that this occupation was a mere " misunderstanding," 
 and intended to guard Rome against the advance of 
 foreign foes. The triumvirs, justly impressed with M. 
 de Lesseps' honour, took pains to quiet the natural 
 anger of the Roman people, who thus saw one point 
 after another seized by the French troops. Meantime 
 M. de Lesseps and the triumvirs concluded a conven- 
 tion as follows : — The Romans, welcoming the French 
 as friends, allowed them to take up such positions out- 
 side Rome as health and the defence of the country 
 required. This arrangement was in no case to be put 
 an end to, except at a fortnight's notice. 
 
 M. de Lesseps signed this convention, as he was 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 39 
 
 fully empowered to do. But General Oudinot refused 
 to be bound by it. He went farther; he broke a 
 promise of his own, given in writing to General Koselli, 
 that he would defer the attack on Eome at any rate 
 till June 4c, and began the attack on June 2. Almost 
 at the same moment — on May 29 — M. de Lesseps was 
 recalled. The fact was that on that very day the Con- 
 stituent had given place to the Legislative Assembly, 
 there was a shifting of power at Paris, and M. Barrot 
 and those behind him could do as they pleased. 
 
 We may pause here to consider the internal con- 
 dition of Eome. At the time when the Eepublic was 
 proclaimed there was much to justify the contempt 
 which was widely felt in Europe for the new govern- 
 ment. The Eomans seemed to be acting only be- 
 cause they could not help it ; and the debates in the 
 Assembly showed little except aimlessness and terror. 
 Suddenly this temper changed. A mass of men in 
 imminent danger may be sobered by it or maddened, 
 according to the impulse given, and the Eomans were 
 like the crew of a sinking ship whose captain comes on 
 deck and takes the command. A diplomatic despatch ^ 
 has preserved for us an account of Mazzini's arrival in 
 the Assembly, and the transformation of a scene of 
 confused recrimination into a scene of enthusiasm and 
 vigorous action. His influence on the troops was of 
 the same kind. On his election as triumvir the officers 
 of the National Guard told him that most of the guard 
 
 * Bianchi's Diplomazia Europea, vol. vi. p. 452. 
 
40 MODERN ESSAYS. [r. 
 
 would refuse to defend the city. " It seemed to me," 
 he says, " that I uuderstood the Eoman people far 
 better than they, and I therefore gave orders that all 
 the battalions should defile in front of the Palace of the 
 Assembly, that the question might be put to the troops. 
 The universal shout of war that arose from the ranks 
 drowned in an instant the timid doubts of the leaders." 
 
 It is, however, to Garibaldi that the credit of the 
 heroic military defence of liome must be mainly 
 ascribed. We must look to the internal management 
 of the city, its finances, order, religion, for definite traces 
 of Mazzini's government. And here M. de Lesseps 
 must first be heard. After speaking of a suspicion which 
 he at first entertained that Mazzini was influenced 
 against France by Protestant missionaries, he adds : — 
 
 " I have the less hesitation in making known the 
 opinion which I then held of Mazzini, with whom I 
 was in open conflict, inasmuch as throughout our sub- 
 sequent negotiations I have nothing but praise for the 
 loyalty and moderation of his character, which have 
 won my entire esteem. Now that he has fallen from 
 power, and is doubtless seeking a refuge in some foreign 
 country, I owe an expression of homage to the nobility 
 of his feelings, the sincerity of his convictions, his higli 
 ciipacity, his integrity, and his courage." 
 
 When the triumvirs assumed power the state of 
 the public finances was such tliat their first act was to 
 debate whether government could be carried on at all. 
 Under the papal rule the treasury had been entrusted 
 
l] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 41 
 
 to a dignified person who could not be called upon to 
 show accounts, and was only removable by being made 
 a cardinal. During the three perilous months of the 
 triumvirate the finances were thoroughly put in order, 
 and a large reserve of money collected, which was 
 duly appropriated by the papal functionary on his 
 return. The republican leaders left office poorer than 
 when they accepted it. Mazzini, as triumvir, dined 
 for two francs a day ; Garibaldi, less provident than 
 when, in 1860, after conquering a kingdom, he found 
 that he had still nearly thirty pounds, left Eome in 
 absolute penury. More surprising was the unwonted 
 honesty of the lowest of the people. Some families 
 whose houses were endangered by the French bom- 
 bardment were quartered in the empty palaces of Eoman 
 nobles who had fled to Gaeta, leaving money and jewel- 
 lery lying about their rooms. Not so much as a brooch 
 was stolen. Crime, in fact, was for the time almost 
 unknown. Some assassinations were committed at 
 Ancona, which Mazzini instantly punished with terrible 
 severity, threatening to send half the forces of the 
 republic to Ancona if such crimes were repeated. If 
 order, honesty, courage, are tests of civic life, it is not 
 too much to say that Eome had never been so Eoman 
 since the Punic Wars. This spirit found a fit expres- 
 sion in Mazzini's State-papers, which show the charac- 
 teristic Eoman dignity, the absence of flattery or 
 exaggeration, the stern assumption that the aim of 
 every Eoman is to live and die for Eome. 
 
42 MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 The accusations brought against Mazzini's govern- 
 ment elude for the most part precise examination. To 
 call liim a communist, a bandit, a " modern Nero," was 
 merely to use conventional language in describing a 
 republican chief. There was more force in the com- 
 plaints of some of his own party that by his Quixotic 
 regard for the property and life of enemies, he threw 
 away advantages which Eome coidd ill spare, — as when 
 he exempted the rich men who had fled to Gaeta from 
 taxation because they had not consented to be taxed, — 
 or forbade Garibaldi to follow up the flying French 
 army on April 30 because the Eomans could not 
 believe themselves to be at war with a friendly republic, 
 except when they caught the French in the act of try- 
 ing to enter Eome. 
 
 On a more serious matter Mazzini's government 
 provoked fears in many quarters. It was suspected 
 that he meant to disestablish Catholicism in favour of 
 Protestantism, or of some other schismatic communion. 
 It is worth while to consider what position he actually 
 took up. He seems to have interfered with nothing 
 which he did not think absolutely immoral, but rather 
 to have laid stress on those acts of common worship 
 or reverence which have the same force for all. Thus, 
 on the one hand, he turned the Inquisition into a 
 lodging-house for poor families, and protected monks 
 and nuns who wished to re-enter the world. But when 
 the people took some confessionals to strengtlien barri- 
 cades he ordered them to be instantly replaced, and 
 
T.] GIUSEPPE MAZZTNI. 43 
 
 warned the Eomans to shun even the appearance of an 
 outrage against the religion of their fathers. 
 
 Easter, which fell in the time of the triumvirate, 
 was celebrated with the accustomed solemnity. It is 
 not the Pope whom Christians worship, and his absence 
 need not stop a Christian feast. A priest blessed the 
 people from the balcony of St. Peter's, and Mazzini, as 
 representative of the republic, consented to stand there 
 too, — a prophetic figure intercalated among so many 
 pontiffs more strangely than Cromwell among the 
 English kings. 
 
 Eome was defended long and bravely, but on June 
 30 the French were masters of the bastions and all 
 the heights, and it was plain that the end was near. 
 Mazzini then proposed a scheme which recalls " the 
 oath of the Phocaeans," and one of Horace's noblest 
 odes. He proposed that the triumvirs, the Assembly, 
 the army, and such of the people as chose, should 
 leave Eome, and create in the Campagna a centre of 
 desperate resistance to Austria and France. But the 
 Assembly refused. " The singular calmness," adds 
 Mazzini with some naiveU, " which they had shown 
 until that moment had induced me to believe that 
 they would have hailed the proposition with applause." 
 This voluntary exile of the whole State — this carry- 
 ing, as it were, into the desert of the fortune and the 
 fame of Eome — would doubtless have created a pro- 
 found impression throughout Italy and Europe. The 
 men who made that expedition would probably all 
 
44 MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 have been killed — as almost all the men who did 
 actually go out with Garibaldi were killed — but if 
 they had maintained themselves even for a few months, 
 it is still conceivable that Italy might have risen. 
 The Assembly were not ready to do this ; but what 
 they did has won them the praise of heroism from 
 judges less stern than the triumvir. Through all the 
 perils of the siege they sat unmovedly — such of them 
 as were not needed on the walls — perfecting the new 
 constitution ; and when the French were in the city, 
 when once again — 
 
 " Galli per dumos aderant, arcemque tcnebant, 
 Defensi tenebris et done noctis opacoe," — 
 
 on that last morning the Assemljly — destined, every 
 man of them, to exile, imprisonment, or death — pro- 
 claimed upon the Capitol the Statutes of Republican 
 Eonie. Like the Eoman who bought the field on 
 which Hannibal was encamped, they testified to their 
 belief that the enemies of the Eternal City should 
 perish and that she should endure. 
 
 The French entered Eome. Garibaldi marched out 
 with a handful of brave men, meaning to fight his way 
 to Venice, which was still in arms. Mazzini remained 
 in Eome to watch for any chance of renewing the 
 struggle ; but he knew in his heart that no such chance 
 would come. 
 
 It is hard to lose the dream ol' a life ; and \\\wn 
 that dream has drawn all its lustre from virtue, when 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 45 
 
 joy has been conceived only in the loving service of 
 the noblest being, the highest ideal we know, then if a 
 man sees his ideal crushed before his eyes, and feels 
 that honour itself has turned against him, and that 
 because he has disdained base things he has lost all — 
 then shall it be known whether his virtue is a deriva- 
 tive and conquerable thing, or has in it an inbred 
 energy that is incapable of despair. If he can raise 
 his head to fight anew, he will find all fighting easy 
 now. The worst has come to the worst ; henceforth 
 can no man trouble him ; he bears in his spuit the 
 tidemark of its highest woe. 
 
 Through such an hour Mazzini passed, sitting 
 among the ruins of his Eome. He waited for friends 
 to rally round him, but none dared to rally — for foes 
 to slay him, but no man dared to slay. At last he 
 passed through the midst of them and went his way, 
 and as for the last time he saw the sun set on Eome, 
 he might surely have said with more truth than any 
 Cato of tragedy, 
 
 " Son Eoma i fidi miei, Eoma son io." 
 
 And here, if it were cast into a drama, the tale of 
 Mazzini's life would close ; for there are careers which 
 culminate in defeat, as others in victory, and the 
 labours of another score of years gave no second 
 chance to face unshaken such a crash and ruin of a 
 world. The year 1849, in spite of its crushing de- 
 feats, was in fact a turning-point in Italian fortunes. 
 
46 MODERN ESSAYS. [l 
 
 Men had measured themselves with the enemy ; they 
 liati learnt to dare ; and the movement throughout 
 Italy was never wholly checked again. In each on- 
 ward step Mazzini aided. His words, his \mtings, 
 gaining fresh authority as advancing years confirmed 
 their wisdom in the past, were the fountain-head of 
 that clear and continuous manifestation of the national 
 will which impelled and enabled the Piedmontese 
 government to take advantage of each opportunity 
 tliat offered for the unification of Italy. Of the way 
 in which this was done, however, he often disapproved. 
 Nothing, for instance, could be more distasteful to him 
 than the French alliance on which Piedmont depended 
 in 1859. He foretold, and truly, that it would be 
 bought at an extravagant price. And had it been 
 granted without sinister end, he yet could not endure 
 that Lombards or Venetians, the descendants of Livy 
 and Dandolo, should owe their Liberty to a foreign 
 despot's gi-ace, should accept from an unclean hand 
 
 *' A gift of that which is not to be given 
 By all the blended powers of earth and heaven." 
 
 After the peace of Villafranca he used all his influence 
 to induce the small States of Central Italy to annex 
 themselves to the Piedmontese monarchy — unity, as 
 ever, being his first aim. It was lie again who pre- 
 pared, and urged Garibaldi to undertake, the revohi- 
 tion in Sicily and Naples, promising that if it succeeded 
 he would claim nothing of the glory, and tliat if it 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 47 
 
 failed it should be accounted a " Mazzinian dream." 
 After Garibaldi's splendid success in Naples in 1860 
 Mazzini's eyes were turned to Venice and Eome. The 
 liberation of Venice was marred by the same interven- 
 tion which had marred the liberation of Lombardy. 
 The deliverance of Eome was long, and, as Mazzini 
 thought, needlessly delayed; and when it came in 1870 
 it came only to show him that the Eome of his aspira- 
 tion, the religious republican Eome, which was a third 
 time to head the world, was not to be built in a day. 
 
 He felt, too, a sorrow which came not from Italy 
 alone — the sorrow of seeing the cause of liberty and 
 progress in Europe defiled by anarchy and divorced 
 from religion — tyranny and bigotry opposed not by 
 free co-operation and deeper faith, but by communistic 
 outrages and materialistic unbelief And of all this 
 his religious isolation weighed on him the most. "The 
 religious question," he wrote in 1865, "pursues me 
 like a remorse ; it is the only one of any real import- 
 ance." And although to the last, and through the 
 long decay of a terrible disease, he continued his active 
 work of all kinds, and died by inches in harness, toil- 
 ing without haste or rest, yet his increasing preoccu- 
 pation with religious ideas becomes plainly evident. 
 This is accompanied by a melancholy wonder that 
 others cannot see as he sees, by a painful yearning for 
 the progress of kindred souls. Yet with this there is 
 that serenity which often comes to those to whom 
 youth has been a generous struggle, and manhood a 
 
48 MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 disciplining pain. There is a disengagement as of a 
 spirit which has ah-eady borne all ; and wliich, like 
 one who awaits a solemn ceremony, is making ready 
 for the Sacrament of Death. 
 
 And surely, when Mazzini's story shall have passed 
 into Italian legend and song, men will say, in old 
 Greek fashion, that it was " not without the will of 
 heaven " that it was appointed to this man to die not 
 in Genoa, turbulent nurse of heroes, where in dark 
 days he had been born ; not in Kome, where he had 
 ruled in manhood, more royal than a king ; but in that 
 still city upon Arno's stream, to which, after all her 
 tumults, it has been given to become the very sanctuary 
 and image of peace, — 
 
 " To body forth the ghostliness of things 
 In silence visible and perpetual calm." 
 
 Even so, will their poets answer, Apollo souglit the 
 body of Sarpedon, " best-beloved of men," and carried 
 liim far from the battle, and washed him in Scaman- 
 der's wave, and gave him to two mighty ministers to 
 bear him home, — 
 
 "Yttvo) Kttt 6ava.T(a StSr/taoati', oi pd fitv S)Ka 
 KdrOea-av iv Avko/s evpeiip ttlovl Syfi(^, 
 
 111. 
 
 In discussing a public life we naturally consider it 
 first as the public saw it — its struggles or weaknesses 
 concealed beneath at any rate an external strength 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 49 
 
 and consistency. But when the character is so ex- 
 ceptional as Mazzini's, we desire also to know some- 
 thing of its springs of action, of the natural instincts 
 which transformed themselves into so unusual a vigour 
 of public virtue. And Mazzini has himself told the 
 story of the chief inward crisis of his life, after the 
 failure of his first insurrection and the death of many 
 of his friends. A few quotations will indicate the 
 sources alike of his weakness and of his strenjith : — 
 
 " Were I to live for a century I could never forget the 
 close of that year (1836), nor the moral tempest that 
 passed over me, and amid the vortex of which my spirit 
 was so nearly overwhelmed. I speak of it now with re- 
 luctance, and solely for the sake of those who may be 
 doomed to suffer what I then suffered, and to whom the 
 voice of a brother who has escaped from that tempest — 
 storm-beaten and bleeding indeed, but with re-tempered 
 soul — may, perhaps, indicate the path of salvation. 
 
 " It was the tempest of doubt, which I believe all who 
 devote their lives to a great enterprise, yet have not dried 
 and withered up the soul, hke Robespierre, beneath some 
 barren intellectual formula, but have retained a loving 
 heart, are doomed, once at least, to battle through. My 
 heart was overflowing with and greedy of affection ; as 
 fresh and eager to unfold to joy as in the days when sus- 
 tained by my mother's smile ; as full of fervid hope, for 
 others at least, if not for myself. But during those fatal 
 months there darkened around me such a hurricane of 
 sorrow, disillusion, and deception, as to bring before my 
 eyes, in all its ghastly nakedness, a foreshadowing of the 
 VOL. II. E 
 
50 MODERN ESSAYS. [l 
 
 old age of my soul, solitary, in a desert world, wherein no 
 comfort in the struggle was vouchsafed to me. 
 
 " It was not only the overthrow, for an indefinite 
 period, of every Italian hope ; the dispersion of the best of 
 our party ; the series of persecutions which had undone 
 the work we had done in Switzerland and driven us away 
 from the spot nearest Italy ; the exhaustion of our means, 
 and the accumulation of almost insurmountable material 
 obstacles between me and the task I had set myself to do ; 
 — it was the falling to i:)ieces of that moral edifice of faith 
 and love, from which alone I had derived strength for the 
 combat ; the scepticism I saw rising around me on every 
 side ; the failure of faith in those who had solemnly bound 
 themselves with me to pursue unshaken the path we had 
 known at the outset to be choked with sorrows ; the dis- 
 trust I detected in those most dear to me as to the motives 
 and intentions which sustained and urged me onward in 
 the evidently unequal struggle. Even at that time the 
 adverse opinion of the majority was a matter of little 
 moment to me ; but to see myself suspected of ambition or 
 any other than noble motives by the one or two beings 
 upon whom I had concentrated my whole power of attach- 
 ment, prostrated my spirit in deep despair. And these 
 things were revealed to me at the very time when, assailed 
 as I was on every side, I felt most intensely the need of 
 comforting and re-tempering my spirit in communion with 
 the fraternal souls I had deemed capable of comprehend- 
 ing even my silence, of divining all that I suftered in deli- 
 berately renouncing every earthly joy, and of smiling in 
 suffering with me. It was precisely in this hour of need 
 that these fraternal souls withdrew from mo. 
 
 "When I felt that T was indeed alone in the world — alone, 
 but for my poor mother, far away and unhappy also for my 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 51 
 
 sake — I drew back in terror at the void before me. Then, 
 in that moral desert, doubt came upon me. Perhaps I 
 was wrong and the world right 1 Perhaps my idea was 
 indeed a dream 1 Perhaps I had been led on not by an 
 idea but by my idea ; by the pride of my own conception, 
 an intellectual egotism withering the spontaneous impulses 
 of my heart, which would have led me to the modest 
 virtues of a limited sphere, and to duties near at hand and 
 easy of fulfilment. 
 
 " I will not dwell upon the effect of these doubts on my 
 spirit. I will simply say that I suffered so much as to be 
 driven to the confines of madness. At times I started 
 from my sleep at night and ran to the window, in delirium, 
 believing that I heard the voice of Jacopo Ruffini calling 
 to me. The slightest incident, a word, a tone, moved me 
 to tears. Whilst I was struggling and sinking beneath my 
 cross I heard a friend, whose room was a few doors dis- 
 tant from mine, answer a young girl — who, having some 
 suspicion of my unhappy condition was urging him to 
 break in upon my solitude — by saying, ' Leave him alone ; 
 he is in his element — conspiring and happy.' " 
 
 He goes on to narrate how the conviction came to 
 him that his sufferings were the temptations of egotism, 
 and arose from a misconception of life, from some 
 remaining influence exercised on him by the theory 
 which proposes to each man the search after happi- 
 ness as the aim of his existence here. 
 
 " I had combated the evil in others, but not sufficiently 
 in myself. In my own case, and as if the better to seduce 
 me, that false definition of life had thrown off every baser 
 stamp of material desires, and had centred itself in the 
 
52 MODERN ESSAYS. [l. 
 
 affections, as in an inviolable sanctuary. I ought to have 
 regarded them as a blessing of God, to be accepted with 
 gratitude whenever it descended to irradiate or cheer my 
 existence, not demanded them either as a right or as a 
 reward. I had unconsciously made of them the condition 
 of the fulfilment of my duties. I had been unable to 
 realise the true ideal of love — love Avithout earthly hope — 
 and had unknowingly worshipped, not love itself, but the 
 joys of love. When these vanished I had despaired of 
 all things ; as if the joys or sorrows I encountered on the 
 path of life could alter the aim I had aspired to reach ; as 
 if the darkness or serenity of heaven could change the pur- 
 pose or necessity of the journey. . . . 
 
 " I came to my better self alone ; without aid from others, 
 through the help of a religious conception, which I verified 
 by history. From the idea of God I descended to the 
 conception of progress ; from the conception of progress, to 
 a true conception of life ; to faith in a mission and its 
 logical consequence — duty, the supreme rule of life ; and 
 having reached that faith I swore to myself that nothing 
 in this world should again make me doubt or forsake it. 
 ... I dug with my own hands the grave, not of my 
 affections — God is my witness that now, grayheaded, I feel 
 them yet as in the days of my earliest youth — but of all 
 the desires, exigencies, and ineffable comforts of affection ; 
 and I covered the earth over that grave, so that none might 
 ever know the Ego buried beneath. From reasons — some 
 of them apparent, some of them unknown — my life was, is, 
 and were it not near the end, would remain unhappy ; but 
 never since that time have I for an instant allowed myself 
 to think that my own unhappincss could in any way in- 
 fluence my actions. AVhether the sun shine with the 
 serene splendour of an Italian morn, or the leaden corpse- 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 53 
 
 like hue of the northern mist be above us, I cannot see 
 that it changes our duty. God dwells above the earthly 
 heaven, and the holy stars of faith and the future still 
 shine within our own souls, even though tlieir light con- 
 sume itself unreflected as the sepulchral lamp." 
 
 Is not this what the poet means when he speaks of 
 Virtue like a household god promising empire ? — this 
 return upon itself of the resolute spirit, beginning, as 
 it were, an inward epoch with a Hegira from all 
 earthly joy, and proclaiming an unknown triumph in 
 the very extremity of disaster and defeat ? I have 
 quoted this passage because of all his writings it best 
 explains the man ; because it shows that the passion 
 of love in its loftiest meaning was the guiding energy 
 of his whole career, so that if Garibaldi is "one of 
 Plutarch's men," Mazzini is one of Plato's ; he is the 
 ipcoTCKOf; fxera (f>iXo(TO(j)La<;, the man who has carried 
 down with him the instincts of love and of philo- 
 sophy from the heaven where he has looked on truth; 
 he mounts from step to step that chain of high 
 affections along which Plato teaches that a soul can 
 rise from the love of its human counterpart to the 
 love of God. The intermediate passion between these 
 two is the love of country — the love, as Plato has 
 it, of institutions and of laws — the devotion to great 
 ideas which widely influence the welfare of mankind. 
 For the patriot too is enamoured ; he is enamoured of 
 his conception of a great multitude of kindred souls, 
 leadino: the life which he deems noblest after the 
 
54 MODERN ESSAYS. [r. 
 
 fashion which he can picture best, happy amid the 
 scenes inwoven with Ms earliest and his inmost joy. 
 
 This parallel between the lover, the patriot, the 
 samt, might be carried far. It will be enough here to 
 notice some analogies between Mazzini's love for Italy 
 and that love which the world has agreed to take as 
 the loftiest type of individual passion, the love of 
 Dante for Beatrice. Both loves were wholly free from 
 self-assertion and jealousy, both were intensified and 
 exalted by sorrow. 
 
 Mazzini's whole public career was a series of self- 
 abnesjations. He sowed the harvest which another 
 statesman reaped ; the people for whom he had toiled 
 the first and the hardest made its idol of another hero. 
 But for this there is not in his most intimate corre- 
 spondence the shadow of a regret. The only solicitude 
 which he shows is for the memory of some of his ear- 
 liest friends — the Euffini, the Bandiera — whom he 
 thinks in danger of missing the reverence which is 
 their due. To his own acts he rarely alludes; and 
 but for the pressure which induced him to write some 
 autobiographical notes towards the close of his life, 
 there would already be great difficulty in retracing his 
 career. It is owing to the care of others that his 
 writings have not been dispersed and lost. Wliat need 
 was there for him to put on record his love for Italy ? 
 What could other men's knowledge or ignorance of it 
 add to it or take away ? That Italy, as he conceived 
 her, should exist, would have been enough for hiiu. 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 55 
 
 Another form of jealousy leads the lover to dis- 
 parage all loves except his own, from his uneasy fear 
 lest she may not in truth be so unique as he wishes 
 to believe her. From this also the truest lovers, the 
 truest patriots, are free. Like Dante, they desire that 
 Monna Vanna should walk with Monna Bice on the 
 flowery way, that Lucia should stand beside Beatrice 
 in the height of heaven, that all fair women should 
 grow to their best and fairest, and keep thereby the 
 sweeter company with her whom they never can excel ; 
 or their patriotism is like Mazzini's, who desired that 
 all other nations also should be free and grow, that 
 each should express to the full the divine idea which 
 is the centre of her strength, being assured that the 
 place of Italy could none other take, nor city in either 
 hemisphere diminish the name of Eome. 
 
 Consider again the influence, on lover or patriot, of 
 exile, severance, sorrow. There are some, indeed, who 
 have called human love an importunate and perishable 
 thing, which must be fed with such food as earth can 
 give it, lest it pine and die; but a love like Dante's 
 is not so, but grows more pervading through self-control, 
 and more passionate through the austerity of honour, 
 and only draws a stronger aliment from separation, 
 anguish, and death. And similarly the intensification 
 of Mazzini's love for Italy, through her sorrows and 
 his own, is manifest in all his works. Loving Italy 
 in every phase of her existence, he " less loves her 
 crowned than chained ; " his passion is the passion of 
 
56 MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 a chivalry wliicli at once compassionates and adores. 
 And we see it strengthen in his own yearning solitude ; 
 we feel it in many a mournful sentence, whose im- 
 mediate impulse we can now no more retrace than the 
 anatomist can retrace the pang which has given birth 
 to a tear. 
 
 Few natures could have derived more suffering than 
 Mazzini's from a life of conspiracy and exile. Com- 
 pare him, for instance, with his fellow- townsman Bixio, 
 the true type of the Genoese revolutionaiy. Bixio 
 needed for his happiness nothing but adventure and 
 storm. When the last despot in Italy was overthrown, 
 " the second of the thousand " of Garibaldi's heroes 
 could find no peace till he went out to struggle with 
 the elements and an unsailed sea. Men like Bixio, 
 like Garibaldi, are at ease in revolutions. Mazzini 
 was differently wrought. The beautiful melancholy 
 countenance, the delicate frame, the candid and yearn- 
 ing heart, — all these indicated a nature born for 
 thouglit and affection, not meant for suspicions and 
 controversies and the bitterness of a life-long war. 
 Courage, indeed, was easy, conspiracy was endurable, 
 but exile broke his heart, Dante was exiled, but 
 Dante could still look on Italian faces and hear Italian 
 speech, and know that the city of his love and hatred 
 lay beneath the same arch of heaven. With this other 
 exile it was not so. It was in London — the visible 
 type of a universe hastening confusedly to unknown 
 ends and careless of individual pain — that Mazzini 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. ' 57 
 
 must regret that land whose name, even to men born 
 far off, seems to make a part of all soft desire, — the 
 land whose very air and memory invite to unworldly 
 amotion and to passionate repose. 
 
 And in that inward exile of the heart it was easy 
 in comparison for Dante to sustain long life upon the 
 brief possession of what no soul can forget. Mazzini's 
 was a harder lot. No eyes were to promise him his 
 peace, — noi darem 'pace a voi diletto ; he must imagine 
 for himself the unknown delight ; he must recognise, 
 as he said, those for whom he cared most deeply rather 
 by the pain they could give him than the joy. Even 
 as for the sake of Italy he must endure to be exiled 
 from Italy, so for love's sake he must renounce love ; 
 his affections must be the more ardent because imper- 
 sonal ; he must foster them only to forego. 
 
 It does not seem, however, that Mazzini considered 
 himself as entitled to any special pity. Had he chosen 
 his own lot on earth it is likely that he would have 
 desired that some great cause should absorb his ener- 
 gies and teach him to make life one effort of virtue, 
 and to adventure his all unreservedly upon the instinct 
 of duty which he carried in his heart. It is likely 
 that he would have purchased this temper at the cost 
 of life-long pain, if he could make of unselfish sorrow 
 his initiation into the mystery of human fellowship, 
 his needed impulse to an impersonal hope. For indeed 
 tenderness is as necessary as courage if a life of sorrow 
 is to be made wholly heroic. The very unselfish- 
 
58 • MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 ness of such a nifin's work for others is in danger of 
 brin<]:in<:j witli it sometliinix of isolation as well as of 
 sympathy. Against his will a certain sternness and 
 aridity will infuse itself into his manner and liis style ; 
 by silence rather than by speech his self-suppression 
 will be too plainly seen. 
 
 It is against such an impression of Mazzini as this 
 that his friends are at most pains to guard. They 
 wish us to imagine him as a man kept in deep peace 
 by aspiration only, and by such simple pleasures as 
 are inseparable from the child-like heart. They tell 
 us of his playful humour, of the mild brightness of his 
 friendly eyes, of his delight in birds, in flowers, in child- 
 ren — of moments when the yearning exile was over- 
 heard singing softly to himself at dead of night, while 
 his guitar " spake low to him of sweet companionships." 
 They would have us believe that " there is nothing 
 which a spirit of such magnitude cannot overcome or 
 undergo " — that the storms which beat on such a head 
 can only give a new depth to tenderness, a new dignity 
 to the appealing look, die par sorriso ed d dolore. 
 
 And what then, we may ask, were the beliefs from 
 which this constancy was born ? On what conception 
 of the universe did he sustain this impregnable calm ? 
 
 The answer to this question, which has already 
 been given in effect in Mazzini's own words, is some- 
 what singular. Without appeal to revelation, with 
 only the afterthought of an appeal to history, he as it 
 were discovered and lived by a theology of his own. 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 59 
 
 He became the apostle and martyr of a view of the 
 sum of things which simply occurred to him, of dogmas 
 which no one taught him, and which, though he con- 
 stantly preached them, he scarcely attempted to prove. 
 Before we consider the dogmas themselves, we may 
 pause to inquire whether there can be any justification 
 for this prophetic attitude in an age which may be sup- 
 posed to have learnt to attain truth by organised 
 methods, and independently of individual enthusiasms. 
 In this age of profound modification of received 
 beliefs it would seem that a man's duty with regard to 
 religion may be of three kinds. There are some who, 
 though almost hopeless of arriving at any convictions 
 as to an unseen world, seem strong enough to dispense 
 with hope ; who can labour for their own progress, 
 though they believe it ended in the tomb, — for the pro- 
 gress of the race, though they doubt whether man will 
 ever raise into any greatness or worthiness his " transi- 
 tory and perilous " being. The duty of these is clear. 
 They are the champions of a forlorn adventure ; their 
 mission is to show by their lives that Virtue can never 
 be a paradox ; that she can approve herself by the 
 mere fact of her existence even in a world where the 
 truth is bad. But these, above all men, must be strong. 
 Cato and Brutus were men of iron ; but these men 
 must be made of sterner stuff than Brutus or Cato. 
 They must be able to meet unflinchingly the most ini- 
 quitous ruin, the last defeat; and not despair, like 
 Cato, of the Ptepublic ; nor fall, like Brutus, exclaiming 
 
60 MODERN ESSAYS. [l 
 
 in death's disillusionment, " Ah, wretched Virtue ! thou 
 wert then notliing but a name." 
 
 There are others, again, who, while they do not assert 
 that religious tradition suffices to meet the wider view 
 and keener scrutiny of tlie advancing time, consider, 
 nevertheless, that there is something premature, some- 
 thing almost impatient, in already abandoning, as in- 
 soluble, problems of such import to mankind. So 
 variously may history be read that, while to some minds 
 we may seem the empty-handed heirs of all the ages, 
 who have asked every question and found every answer 
 vain, to others it appears that those ages have been 
 but the infancy of man ; that he has hardly as j^et 
 formulated the question which he would ask of the 
 Unseen ; that as yet he can neither estimate the value 
 of such answers as have been given nor anticipate those 
 which are to come. For Socrates, too, prided himself 
 on having brought philosophy down from heaven to 
 earth, from unprovable speculations about the firma- 
 ment to debates upon the nature of man, while in 
 reality the speculations of Thales and Anaxagoras, 
 though premature, were not useless ; and meantime 
 Euclid was writing, as it were, upon the dust the first 
 letters of that learning which should weigh and analyse 
 the very stars of heaven. Men who take this view, 
 also, have their duty clear. If they surmise that it 
 may not be impossible to know something of the des- 
 tinies of man, they must pursue that searcli, tliough it 
 be by means which bear as humble a relation to tlie 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 61 
 
 moral universe as the diagrams of Euclid bore to the 
 sidereal heaven. 
 
 There are others, again, to whom a certain view of 
 the universe appears axiomatic ; who seem to them- 
 selves to be speaking that which they do know, testi- 
 fying that which they have seen, when they describe 
 the character and counsels of the Eternal. Such men 
 the world tests by a rough standard of its own ; if it 
 holds them for prophets it suffers itself to be swayed 
 by them, even if they produce no evidence of what 
 they affirm. 
 
 Such was Mazzini's case. He appealed, indeed, to 
 history ; but who has not appealed to that echo of our 
 own voices from the past ? In reality he rested his 
 doctrine upon the convictions of his own heart. Nor 
 need this defect of evidence make us refuse to consider 
 his creed. For we know that even in ages when proof 
 was very readily admitted, religious feeling rested far 
 less upon proof than upon intuition. Some religions 
 scarcely appeal to proof at all ; in almost all religions 
 the religious instinct is presupposed and the alleged 
 proofs do but direct its manifestation. And as the 
 world advances, this subjectivity of religion becomes 
 increasingly apparent. For the mass of religious feel- 
 ing increases while at the same time alleged proofs are 
 more vigorously tested and more freely overthrown. 
 The result is that the old revelations, while they remain 
 sacred, tend gradually to affect mankind in a new way 
 — less as an external evidence of an unseen world 
 
62 MODERN ESSAYS. [i 
 
 than as a venerable confirmation of what is felt within. 
 It may, indeed, be urged that if in an exact age we 
 are to attain to any conclusive knowledge of an unseen 
 world we must attain it by an increased power of 
 accurately apprehending unseen forces — by experiment 
 rather than by tradition, by scientific ratlier tlian 
 historical inquiry. This is not the prophet's business ; 
 and he may fairly assume that in the meantime reli- 
 gious conviction must be held instinctively if it is to 
 be held at all, and that nothing would be gained by 
 invoking defective evidence to supplement imperfect 
 intuition. 
 
 This absolute and prophetic tone, commending 
 itself irresistibly to many minds as the vehicle of 
 lofty truth, was the source of much of Mazzini's influ- 
 ence in the political as well as in the religious sphere. 
 And hence the effect which he produced was within 
 its own limits more intense and pervading than the 
 effect — powerful though this was — produced by Gari- 
 baldi or Cavour. A physical analogy will serve to 
 illustrate my meaning. 
 
 We are apt to pass through somewhat similar 
 stages in our contemplation of Nature and of Man. 
 The child or savage takes the common course of 
 things for granted, and is impressed only by the 
 abnormal and prodigious ; he reverences the tempests 
 and not tlie tides, tlie thunderbolt rather than tlio 
 dew. With the birth of Science our view changes. 
 We Iciirn to see in Order the liighest Force, to recog- 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 63 
 
 nise the highest Will in adherence to unchanging 
 Law. The sense of power which this conception 
 gives is such that the mind seems capable of coping 
 with the sum of things ; we are tempted to believe 
 that there is no room in the universe for phenomena 
 that transcend our analysis. 
 
 But in the face of certain problems the inquirer is 
 forced to change his tone once more. For he finds 
 that the laws and operations which can be known 
 liave no finality ; that they afford him a subtle, almost 
 a visionary, perception of operations beyond his ken, 
 of laws of which our highest generalisations may be 
 but the specialised case or the incidental aspect. 
 Standing on the shore of the sea of truth, he divines 
 a universe alive and restless as the sea — the storm of 
 inconceivable energies, and the stress of an unknown 
 control. 
 
 And thus it is with our judgment of the lives of 
 men. Our first admiration is for heroic impulse : 
 great cities surge around the progress of a deliverer, 
 whose deeds have overpassed the common measure of 
 humanity, and confronted him with death and fame. 
 Later comes our reverence for statesmanship and 
 wisdom — the reign of Law without, the reign of 
 Eeason within ; it seems clear that all other ideals 
 can be but distortions or mutilations of this. Nor 
 does the great statesman ignore the faiths and im- 
 pulses which most men dimly feel : he accepts their 
 validity up to a certain point, and the fact that he 
 
64 MODERN ESSAYS. [i. 
 
 goes no farther seems to prove that there is no farther 
 to go. In our sense that such a man is a microcosm, 
 we half forget that even our cosmos is an island in an 
 infinite sea. 
 
 It may well be that nothing leads us to change our 
 ideal again. Men have few aims which cannot be com- 
 passed by a Garibaldi or a Cavour. 
 
 But a sterner stress may come. For ourselves, or 
 for a whole people, we may need a courage which no 
 chivalrous eagerness can sustain, nor wisdom of this 
 world justify, which shall be at once persistent as 
 deliberate habit, and unhesitating as the impulse of 
 one crowning day. Then we learn that the lever 
 which moves the earth has its fulcrum in the unseen, 
 that the maximum of human energy can only be 
 evoked by one whom we may call as we please enthu- 
 siast or prophet. 
 
 The indications of a Higher Law to which a 
 preacher like Mazzini appeals may always seem to us 
 inconclusive, may sometimes seem illusory : but whether 
 the cause of his faith and hope be real or unreal there 
 is reality in their effects ; the very aspect and rumour 
 of lofty conviction carries a sovereignty among men, 
 and to those who have had close cognisance of such a 
 soul it will seem to have been raised up like a god's 
 statue facing eastward in the market-place, ut claws 
 spedaret in ortus — to look towards the dawn of day — 
 to make " a precursory entrance into the must holy 
 place, by a divine transportation." 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 65 
 
 Such, at least, was the impression which Mazzini 
 produced upon minds attuned to his message — upon 
 men who died, like Quadrio, affirming their belief in 
 " God, Mazzini, and Duty." And what Mazzini 
 preached was God and Duty — God, indwelling, just, 
 and good ; Duty that prompts to endless effort, 
 rewarded by endless progress, while the soul mounts 
 through ascending existences to an inconceivable one- 
 ness with the Divine. There is nothing new in such 
 a conception of man's destinies as this. It descended 
 in a mystery from the East, and before it was preached 
 by Plato and Virgil, the prophets of the Greek and 
 Eoman world, it had been through infinite sorrows the 
 consolation of unnumbered men. Nay, more — Mazzini 
 believed that Christ Himself, looking with an unique 
 foreknowledge beyond the horizon of His earthly age, 
 had foretold the progressive revelation of a faith whose 
 teaching should embrace His own ; He had said that 
 it was expedient that He should depart from us that 
 the Paraclete might come ; He had promised us the 
 Spirit of Truth, who should guide us into all truth, 
 who should show us the things to come, who should 
 abide with us for ever. And Mazzini — continuing 
 that controversy between prophet and priest which is 
 as old as the Jewish Theocracy — believed that religion 
 is not a tradition maintained by rites, but an inspira- 
 tion renewed by the Spirit ; and that the Holy Ghost 
 is with us now ; and that chosen souls express the 
 message, as the whole world works out the thoughts of 
 
 VOL. II. F 
 
66 MODERN ESSAYS [i. 
 
 God. Each quickening of the higher life, each pure 
 strain of reverence for God, for Nature, for Humanity, 
 which science or art, or solitary musing, or the collec- 
 tive action of nations could teach, he held as a gift 
 from the same hand which had already given our all. 
 And it was his passionate impulse to "incarnate in 
 humanity," as he said, " that portion of eternal truth 
 which it is granted to us to perceive — to convert into an 
 earthly reality so much of the kingdom of heaven, the 
 Divine conception permeating life, as it is given us to 
 comprehend," which " haunted him like a remoi'se," 
 which controlled him as a mission, which bade him 
 speak as one having authority, and confront the 
 (Ecumenical Council with a theology more august than 
 their own. 
 
 "The arch of the Christian heaven," he said to thcm,^ 
 " is too narrow to embrace the earth. Beyond that heaven, 
 across the fields of the infinite, we discern a vaster sky, 
 illumined by the dawn of a new dogma ; and on the rising 
 of its sun your own heaven will disappear. We are but 
 the precursors of that dogma — few as yet, but earnestly 
 believing ; fortified by the collective instincts of the peoples, 
 and sufficiently numerous to convince you — had you sense 
 to comprehend it — that when the tide of materialism shall 
 recede, you will find yourselves confronted by a far other 
 foe. God, the Father and Educator — the law prefixed by 
 lliin to life — the capacity, inborn in all men, to fulfil it — 
 free-will, the condition of merit — progress upon the ascent 
 
 ^ Letter to the CKcumunical Council. Furtnijhtli/ Review, Juiio 1, 
 1871. 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 67 
 
 leading to God, the result of right choice — these are the 
 cardinal points of our faith. 
 
 "You believe — thus depriving yourselves of every basis 
 of intellectual certainty and criterion of truth — in miracles; 
 in the supernatural ; in the possible violation of the laws 
 regulating the universe. 
 
 " We believe in the Unknown, in the Mysterious — to be 
 one day solved — which now encompasses us on every side ; 
 in the secrets of an intuition inaccessible to analysis ; in the 
 truth of our strange presentiment of an Ideal, which is the 
 primitive fatherland of the soul ; in an unforeseen power 
 of action granted to man in certain rare moments of faith, 
 love, and supreme concentration of all the faculties towards 
 a determinate and virtuous aim ; but we believe all these 
 things the preordained consequence of laws hitherto with- 
 held from our knowledge. 
 
 " You believe in a heaven extrinsic to the universe ; in 
 a determinate portion of creation, on ascending to which 
 we shall forget the past, forget the ideas and affections 
 which caused our hearts to beat on earth. 
 
 " We believe in One Heaven in which we live, and move, 
 and love ; which embraces — as an ocean embraces the islands 
 that stud its surface — the whole indefinite series of exist- 
 ences through which we pass. We believe in the continuity 
 of life ; in a connecting link uniting all the various periods 
 through which it is transformed and developed ; in the 
 eternity of all noble affections ; in the progressive sanctifi- 
 cation of every germ of good gathered by the pilgrim soul 
 in its journey upon earth and otherwhere. 
 
 " We reject the possibility of irrevocable perdition as a 
 blasphemy against God, who cannot commit self-destruction 
 in the person of the creature issued from himself — as a 
 negation of the law prefixed to life, and as a violation of 
 
 I 
 
68 MODERN ESSAYS. [l 
 
 the idea of love which is identical with God. We believe 
 that God called us, by creating us ; and the call of God 
 can neither be impotent nor false. Grace, as we understand 
 it, is the tendency or faculty given to us all gradually to 
 incarnate the Ideal ; it is the law of progress which is His 
 ineffaceable baptism upon our souls." 
 
 It is plain that he who believes these things has 
 nothinsj left to desire. What can we ask of the sum 
 of things but an eternity of love, an eternity of virtue, 
 — to mount upwards to the utmost limits of the con- 
 ceivable, and still be at the beginning of our hope ? 
 And yet we need not wonder that Mazzini was mourn- 
 ful. High thoughts bring a deep serenity ; but whQe 
 his brother men were so suffering and so imperfect the 
 yearning for their progress was to him an ever-present 
 pain. His mind had taken so strong a bent that he 
 conceived the future always for himself as duty, and 
 only for others as joy. Such an one must " see of the 
 travail of his soul and be satisfied ;" it must be enough 
 for him — 
 
 " That to him too the high fates gave 
 Grace to be sacrificed and save." 
 
 And is there any life which on reflection seems to 
 us more desirable than this ? Is there not something 
 within us whicli even exults at the thought that 
 Mazzini's years were passed in imprisonment and exile, 
 in solitude and disappointment, in poverty and pain ? 
 Are we not tempted to feel a proud triumph in the 
 contrast between such a man's outer and his inward 
 
I.] GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 69 
 
 fortunes, in the obloquy or indifference which sur- 
 rounded so high a soul ? And this feeling, though 
 exaggerated, has in it a germ of truth. For we may 
 rejoice for any one that for him life has been stripped 
 of its tinsel, that things have been shown him as they 
 are, that there has been nothing to disguise or darken 
 the chief concerns of man. And as in the case of 
 some private heroism, dear to our hearts, we may be 
 well content that it has run its fair course unnoted, 
 and in silence passed away, so we may be glad, even 
 for a public and national hero, that he has missed the 
 applause of the unworthy and all that is vulgarising in 
 a wide renown. Yet all are bound, so far as they 
 may, to use the memory of a good man's life as he 
 used the life itself, as an example to whom it may 
 concern ; and for this reason, perhaps, those who can 
 speak of Mazzini with better right than I, may pardon 
 this imperfect picture of one whom we would not 
 willingly that base men should so much as praise : 
 
 o-vSpos., bv ovS' alvctv TOLcrt KaKotcn Oefiis. 
 
GEOEGE SAND. 
 
 3)d€ yap Kparei 
 ywaiKbt audpo^ovKov iXirl^ov K^ap, 
 
 A GREAT spirit has passed from among us ; and many, 
 no doubt, have of late been endeavouring to realise 
 distinctly what kind of pleasure they have drawn, what 
 lessons they have learnt, from the multitudinous writ- 
 ings of the most noteworthy woman, with perhaps one 
 exception, who has appeared in literature since Sappho. 
 
 To estimate the general result and outcome of a 
 series of romances like George Sand's is no easy task. 
 For while on the one hand they contain implicitly 
 what amounts to a kind of system of philosophy and 
 theology, yet on the other hand the exposition of this 
 system is so fluctuating and fitful, so modified by the 
 dramatic necessities of varied plots, that it is hard to 
 disentangle the operative and permanent from the inert 
 and accidental matter. 
 
 Yet it is distinctly as a force, an intluence, a pro- 
 mulgation of real or supposed truths, rather than as a 
 repertory of graceful amusement, that these books claim 
 consideration. AYe know that the moral leadership of 
 
II.] GEORGE SAND. 71 
 
 the mass of the reading world has passed to a great 
 extent into the hands of romance-writers. Voltaire, 
 Rousseau, Bernardin de St. Pierre, Chateaubriand, are 
 some of the names which at once occur of Frenchmen 
 who have found in j)rose fiction a powerful means of 
 influencing the ideals and the conduct of their con- 
 temporaries. George Sand and Victor Hugo have 
 succeeded to this power, and these two have, for nearly 
 two generations, been the most popular authors in 
 France. Long ago Sainte-Beuve placed George Sand 
 and Lamennais at the head of living French writers ; 
 but the fame of Hugo has waxed ; the fame of Lamen- 
 nais has waned ; George Sand's continues to shine with 
 a steady lustre. 
 
 Inferior, perhaps, to Balzac in the power of accurately 
 reproducing the society around her, George Sand chooses 
 by preference subjects which she can approach, not so 
 much from without as from within ; her works are the 
 outcome of a meditative nature which lives in imagina- 
 tion through many lives, and applies to all the same 
 guiding conceptions of man's duty and his fate. 
 
 It is somewhat strange, therefore, though the anomaly 
 might be paralleled in the case of some more formal 
 teachers, — that while every one agrees that George 
 Sand's stories are pre-eminently novels with a purpose 
 — " Tendenz-Novellen " — yet there is by no means the 
 same concurrence as to what that purpose is, down 
 what stream of tendency they do actually flow. 
 
 Her name was for many years " a word of fear "in 
 
72 MODERN ESSAYS. [il. 
 
 British households, where she was known chiefly from 
 secondhand accounts of Indiana, and was pictured as 
 the semi-masculine assailant of marriage and Christian- 
 ity. Some German critics, on the other hand, less 
 keenly interested in the maintenance of propriety all 
 over the world, have preferred to view in her " the 
 exponent of the ideas of 1830," the representative of 
 that shadowy alliance between aristocracy, intellect, 
 and the working man, as opposed to the bourgeoisie and 
 the juste milieu, which ended in 1848-51 with the 
 temporary triumph of the working man and the ulti- 
 mate downfall of everybody. And there is some truth 
 in both of these views. From Indiana (1831) till 
 Mauprat (1836), in what may be called the Eomances 
 of Search, there is a tone of indignant protest against 
 the structure of French society which amounts at times 
 to revolt and bitterness. And from Simon (1836) till 
 Ze Pdch4 de M. Antoine (1845), there are frequent 
 traces of the political influence exercised over her by 
 Michel de Bourges, Barbes, Louis Blanc, and Pierre 
 Leroux. These strains of feeling correspond to well- 
 marked but passing epochs of her life — the first to 
 her married wretchedness, the second to her absorp- 
 tion, under Michel's ascendency, in the constitutional 
 struggles of a few hopeful but troubled years. But an 
 attentive study of her works, or of her autobiography, 
 reveals a life -long preoccupation of a very difterent 
 kind. " Elle a toujour s 4t6 tourmentde des chases divines.'* 
 Such are the words in which she sums up the true, the 
 
II.] GEORGE SAND. 73 
 
 inner history of her life — words well expressing the 
 unrest of a ceaseless search, and the pain of a never- 
 satisfied desire. " Ceci est I'histoire de ma vie" she says ; 
 " ma veritable histoire." 
 
 The passages in her books which indicate this per- 
 petual preoccupation are in a certain sense so obvious 
 as to escape notice. That is to say, they are so numer- 
 ous and so long that the general reader has for the 
 most part acquired the habit of skipping them. He 
 shares the feelings of the able editor of the Bevue des 
 Betcx Mondes : " Pour Dieu, m'^crivait souvent Buloz, 
 pas tant de mysticisme ! " It is George Sand's gravest 
 artistic fault that she overloads her stories with such 
 a mass of religious reverie. " C'est bien possible," she 
 replies, " mais je ne vois pas trop comment j'eusse pu 
 faire pour ne pas ecrire avec le propre sang d^ mon 
 coeur et la propre flamme de ma pens^e." 
 
 The defect in art is obvious : it goes so far as to 
 make some of her books almost unreadable, except to 
 religious inquirers (e.g. Sjpiridion, Mile, la Quintinie) ; 
 but, on the other hand, the heartfelt sincerity of her 
 sermons is equally undeniable. 
 
 In the earlier romances, the Eomances of Search, 
 we hear her appealing with passionate earnestness for 
 light and revelation to an irresponsive heaven. And 
 in the Romances of Exposition, which constitute the 
 great bulk of her works, we have the scheme of the 
 universe, at which she ultimately arrived, enforced 
 upon us in a hundred different ways. This scheme is 
 
74 MODERN ESSAYS. [ii. 
 
 nothing new ; it has even come by this time to possess 
 a kind of orthodoxy of its own ; but forty years ago it 
 was less widely held, and its adoption by one who had 
 passed through the extreme phase of Catholicism indi- 
 cated, in the then state of religious parties, no little 
 breadth and moderation of mind. Briefly stated, it is 
 much as follows : — There is a God, inconceivable and 
 unknown, but approachable by prayer under the aspect 
 of a Father in Heaven; there is a Holy Spirit, or 
 ceaseless influx of grace and light, receivable by sincere 
 and ardent souls : and among the beings who have 
 been filled fullest with this divine inspiration the first 
 place belongs to Jesus Christ, whose life is the highest 
 model which humanity has known. Progi-ess is the 
 law of the universe; the soul's progress, begun on 
 earth, is continued through an infinite series of exist- 
 ences ; nor is there any soul which may not ultimately 
 rise to purity and happiness. Unselfish love is the 
 best and most lasting of earthly experiences, for a love 
 begun on earth may endure for ever. Marriage affords 
 the best and the normal setting for such love ; but 
 under exceptional circumstances it may exist outside 
 the married state. Eeligious aspiration and unselfish 
 love should form, as it were, the spirit of life ; its 
 substance is best filled out by practical devotion to 
 some impersonal ideal, — the scientific or meditative 
 observation of Nature, the improvement of the condi- 
 tion of the people, or the realisation of our visionary 
 conceptions in a sincere and noble art. 
 
II.] GEORGE SAND. 75 
 
 There is nothing original in this : " Ce que je suis," 
 says George Sand, " tout le monde pent I'etre : ce que 
 je vois, tout le monde pent le voir : ce que j'espere, 
 tout le monde pent y arriver. II ne s'agit que d'aimer 
 la v^rite, et je crois que tout le monde sent le besoin 
 de la trouver." 
 
 Perhaps the reader will best be able to test the 
 accuracy of this synopsis of George Sand's teaching if 
 we consider in detail, and with as many extracts as space 
 will allow, her relation to each of these fundamental 
 topics, the People, the Sexes, Art, Nature, Religion. 
 
 This mode of dividing a complex subject will admit 
 of the introduction of a few reflections upon the events 
 of Mme. Dudevant's life, considered as originating or 
 modifying her opinions ; and in the course of our 
 analysis we shall perhaps arrive almost insensibly at 
 some more general estimate of her magnitude as an 
 author. 
 
 I. To begin, then, with her relation to " the people," 
 under which vague word we mean to include the whole 
 mass of social and political phenomena which have in 
 her time overloaded the French calendar with so many 
 mysterious allusions : the Hundred Days, the revolu- 
 tion of February, the state trials of April, the days of 
 June, the revolution of July, the events of December — 
 landmarks emerging, as it were, from the mingled and 
 turbid under-current of Legitimism, Orleanism, Bona- 
 partism, Saint-Simonism, and the terrible " doctrine of 
 Babeuf." 
 
76 MODERN ESSAYS. [ii. 
 
 It has often been remarked that her strangely-mixed 
 ancestry seems to have fitted her in an especial manner 
 for comprehending the most widely-separated classes 
 of society. On one side she was descended from 
 Augustus the Strong, King of Poland, whose gigantic 
 and almost mythical figure towers above a weltering 
 chaos of lust and war ; and the blood of the great 
 Maurice de Saxe ran with indelible nobility through 
 the veins of her father, a gallant officer in Napoleon's 
 army. Her mother was the daughter of a bird-catcher, 
 and a true specimen of the grisette of Paris in all her 
 ignorance, her excitability, her frailty, and her charm. 
 Her father died early, and the care of her childhood 
 was divided between her father's mother, a refined and 
 stately lady of the old regime, and her own mother, 
 who could not live away from the bustle of the Boule- 
 vards and the petty quarrels and trifling pleasures of 
 a woman of the people. The mutual antagonism 
 between these two guardians taught the girl many a 
 lesson on the relation of class to class ; and the affec- 
 tion which she felt for both combatants helped to give 
 to the works of her later life that catholicity of view 
 which enabled her to enter with equal ease into the 
 essential feelings of every rank of life, to compose both 
 Ze Marquis de Villemer and Francois le Champ i. 
 
 And it is a noteworthy result of this origin and 
 this education that although George Sand is sometimes 
 coarse and often fantastic in her descriptions of what 
 is called " high life," she is never vulgar in the way in 
 
II.] GEOKGE SAND. 77 
 
 which so many French authors, since the First Empire, 
 have been vulgar, — with the vulgarity of a literary 
 class revelling in the luxury and fashion into which 
 intellectual power has raised them. Th^ophile Gautier, 
 for instance, with all his wealth of imagination and 
 grace of style, obviously does not possess what we in 
 England call " the instincts of a gentleman." Now 
 George Sand always has " the instincts of a gentleman," 
 though she may not always have those very different 
 instincts which we call " the instincts of a lady." 
 
 Through all her dealings with the ordinary literary 
 and political world around her, this difference between 
 her and them is discernible. She is free from their 
 effusive self-assertion, their uneasy vanity ; she is 
 indifferent to luxury and to fame ; there is about her 
 a tranquillity like that of the Sphinx, to which her 
 baffled admirers so often compared her — something 
 steadfast, disdainful, and serene. The very length 
 and vigour of her life seemed to attest the potency of 
 her race. She had, as it were, the power of living 
 down everybody and everything — enemies, partisan- 
 ships, scandals, loves — whole schools of thought and 
 whole generations of men. These pass away and 
 leave her in great old age sitting beneath the roof 
 that sheltered her earliest years, and writing for her 
 grandchildren stories in which her own childhood 
 lives anew. 
 
 Let us consider, then, in what way this largeness 
 and serenity of view which we claim for George 
 
78 MODERN ESSAYS. [ii. 
 
 Sand's mature works manifests itself in her dealings 
 with public questions. It will be found, we think, 
 that while inspired by a strong and steady love of 
 liberty and progress, she was free from the obvious 
 faults of ordinary French reformers : their violent party 
 spirit, their extravagant doctrines, and their tendency 
 to expect the salvation of society from without rather 
 than from within ; to imagine that a rearrangement 
 of institutions can actually raise a man, whereas it 
 can do no more than give him a better chance of 
 raising himself. Now George Sand, as her fellow- 
 liberals often complained, had no party spirit, none of 
 that " fi^vre d'espoir et d'angoisse " which a generous 
 but one-sided man feels in the crash of revolutions. 
 French revolutions are short cuts which are apt to 
 take the lover of liberty a long way round ; and in the 
 preface to her Fetite Fadette, a story written in 1848, 
 George Sand expresses the profound and hopeless pity 
 which led her at such moments to take refuge in the 
 stillness and sanctity of Nature from the confusion of 
 raving tongues. 
 
 " Dans les temps oil le mal vient de ce que les hommes 
 so m^connaissent et se ddtestent, la mission de I'artistc est 
 de cel^brer la douceur, la confiance, I'amitie, et de rappeler 
 ainsi aux hommes endurcis ou d6courag6s, que les moeurs 
 pures, les sentiments tendres, et I't^quit^ primitive sent ou 
 peuvent etre encore de ce monde. 
 
 " Prccher Tunion quand on s'6gorge c'est crier dans le 
 desert. II est dcs tomps oil les Times sont si agitrcs 
 qu'clles sont sourdcs ii toute exhortation directe. D<}})uis 
 
II.] GEORGE SAND 79 
 
 ces journ^es de juin dont les 6v6nements actuels sont 
 rin6vitable consequence, I'auteur du conte qu'on va lire 
 s'est impost la tache d'etre aimable, diit-il en mourir de 
 chagrin. II a laiss6 railler ses hergeries, comme il avait 
 laiss6 railler tout le reste, sans s'inqui6ter des arrets de 
 certaine critique. II sait qu'il a fait plaisir a ceux qui 
 aiment cette note -la, et que faire plaisir k ceux qui 
 soufFrent du meme mal que lui, a savoir I'horreur de la 
 haine et des vengeances, c'est leur faire tout le bien qu'ils 
 peuvent accepter : bien fugitif, soulagement passager, il est 
 vrai, mais plus r^el qu'une declamation passionn6e, et plus 
 saisissant qu'une demonstration classique." 
 
 Again, George Sand keeps wonderfully clear of 
 extravagant doctrines. Horace, a book which pro- 
 cured for her, she tells us, " une douzaine d'ennemis 
 bien conditionnes," contains a scathing exposure of the 
 egoism, folly, and conceit which inflate the legitimate 
 aspirations of poor but clever young Frenchmen into 
 so bombastic an unreaKty. Horace was for a certain 
 class in France what The Booh of Snohs was for a 
 certain class in England, a castigation after which the 
 same meannesses could hardly be repeated in the 
 same way. 
 
 Le P4cM de M. Antoine is the book in which she 
 deals most freely with the question of property. But 
 her ideal remedy for the inequalities of its distribu- 
 tion turns out to be not communism, but co-operation, 
 "communaut^ par association" — an idea which it was 
 well worth while to preach in France, and which may 
 yet have a great future before it if the existing re- 
 
80 MODERN ESSAYS. [ii. 
 
 lations between Capital and Labour should ultimately 
 break down. 
 
 Again, we remark that the characteristic moral of 
 George Sand's books — the doctrine that every eleva- 
 tion, whether of a class or of an individual, must be 
 effected primarily from within — is as strongly insisted 
 on in the case of the working classes as in the some- 
 what similar case of the female sex. " Dans cette 
 longue serie," she says, "plusieurs ouvrages (je puis 
 dire le plus grand nombre) ont ^t^ inspires par le d^sir 
 d'^clairer le peuple sur ses devoirs autant que sur ses 
 droits." And, in fact, few of her books are without 
 some example of a working man (or woman) whose 
 self- reverence and self-control end by placing him on 
 an acknowledged equality with those whose original 
 station was far above his own. And, like the author 
 of Felix Holt, George Sand is always anxious to show 
 that a true rise in life does not necessarily consist in 
 a man's quitting the class in which he was born, but 
 rather in his rendering the appropriate work of that 
 class worthy of any class by thoroughness, honesty, 
 artistic or scientific skill. One book, Le Compag7ion 
 du Tour de France, avowedly draws an ideal portrait, 
 — suggested by the character of Agricol Perdiguier, 
 " cabinetmaker and representative of the people," — 
 of what the working man may be, and although we 
 may think that this ideal artisan has somewhat the 
 air of having been bathed in rose-water, we must 
 acknowledge that the soundest method of beneiiting 
 
II.] GEORGE SAND. 81 
 
 any class is to try to raise tlieir own conceptions of 
 what they ought eventually to become. " Pourquoi," 
 she asks in her preface to the book in question — 
 
 " Pourquoi, en supposant que men type fiit trop id6alis6, 
 n'aurais-je pas eu le droit de faire pour les hommes du 
 peuple ce qu'on m'avait permis de faire pour ceux des 
 autres classes 1 Pourquoi n'aurais-je pas trac6 un portrait, 
 le plus agr6able et le plus s6rieux possible, pour que tous 
 les ouvriers intelligents et bons eussent le desir de lui 
 ressembler ? Depuis quand le roman est-il forc6ment la 
 peinture de ce qui est, la dure et froide r6alit6 des hommes 
 et des choses contemporaines 1 II en pent ^tre ainsi, je le 
 sais, et Balzac, un maltre devant le talent duquel je me 
 suis toujours inclin6, a fait la Com6die humaine. Mais, tout 
 en (^tant 116 d'amitie avec cet homme illustre, je voyais les 
 choses humaines sous un tout autre aspect, et je me 
 souviens de lui avoir dit, a peu pres k I'epoque ou j'6crivais 
 le Compagnon du Tour de France : ' Vous faites la ConUdie 
 humaine. Ce titre est modeste ; vous pourriez aussi bien 
 dire le drame, la tragidie humaine. Oui, me r6pondit-il ; et 
 vous, vous faites I'epop^e humaine. Cette fois, repris-je, 
 le titre serait trop relev6. Mais je voudrais faire Viglogue 
 humaine, le jpohme, le roman humain. En somme, vous 
 vouiez et savez peindre Thomme tel qu'il est sous vos yeux, 
 soit ! Moi, je me sens porte a le peindre tel que je 
 souhaite qu'il soit, tel que je crois qu'il doit etre.' " 
 
 This unconscious repetition of the well-known 
 
 criticism of Aristotle upon Sophocles and Euripides 
 
 illustrates not only the relation of George Sand to 
 
 Balzac, but the manner in which she consciously 
 
 VOL. II. G 
 
82 MODERN ESSAYS. [ii. 
 
 modified or selected from the realities around her 
 under the influence of a meditative idealism and an 
 ethical purpose. 
 
 II. Passing on to the cognate topic of George 
 Sand's treatment of the duties and position of women, 
 we find that the distinction between the two periods 
 of her writings, between what we have called the 
 Eomances of Search and the Eomances of Exposition, 
 is very marked. Her first few books were written 
 when the world seemed crumbling around her, when 
 distressing doubt had succeeded to Christian ecstasy, 
 and a most unsuitable and painful marriage to the 
 tranquil affections of her convent and her country 
 home. These books, of which Ldia is the type, 
 are the cry of a bewildered child for the light ; 
 they are the dizzy and Byronic phase of a nature 
 essentially just and serene. Their style gave them 
 a popularity which their author did not anticipate, 
 and which she hardly desired. But it is not from 
 these immature and dreamy productions that she 
 ought to be judged. 
 
 In the Romances of Exposition, of which Coiisuclo 
 is one of the earliest, and one of the best, examples, 
 we find the question of Women's Eiglits treated in an 
 eminently sound spirit ; that is, we find a series of im- 
 pressive but temperate protests against such injustices 
 towards women as are sanctioned in France by society 
 and law, but coupled herewith a continual encourage- 
 ment to women to begin by develo^iing and respecting 
 
II.] GEORGE SAND. 83 
 
 themselves — to deserve at any rate the respect of men, 
 and to be confident that the state of any class of 
 human beings will ultimately conform itself to their 
 intrinsic deserts. This is the chief lesson of Consuelo's 
 history ; the child of an unknown father and of a 
 gipsy tramp — the struggling singer at the opera of 
 licentious towns — she rises by the sheer force of her 
 own modest self-respect to a position of acknowledged 
 moral greatness which attracts the affection and rever- 
 ence of all classes of men. 
 
 In a series of works, one of whose main themes is 
 the power which women possess of elevating theii 
 character, and rectifying the injustices of their position 
 by the exercise of " self-reverence, self-knowledge, self- 
 control," it is painful to observe the frequent recur- 
 rence of the pervading fault of French literature — 
 even of much of that literature which is meant to 
 have, and has, a direct moral tendency — namely, a 
 want of reticence and delicacy in matters connected 
 with the relation between the sexes. Probably this 
 disagreeable characteristic of so many of the best 
 French books should in great measure be considered 
 simply as a branch of that general want of dignity 
 and reserve to which the French character is so un- 
 fortunately prone. That character is, of course, as 
 capable of purity and refinement as the English, but 
 a Frenchman who lacks these qualities is more likely 
 to show it than an Englishman ; because he degener- 
 ates in the direction, not of sullen stolidity, but of 
 
84 MODERN ESSAYS. [ii. 
 
 complacent effusiveness — a. " Trunkenheit ohne Wein " 
 which leads him to interlard, his life and literature 
 with uninteresting teai-s, needless embraces, and re- 
 marks in the worst taste. 
 
 George Sand is capable of maintaining a level of 
 lofty and militant purity; many of her books are 
 wholly free from any kind of taint ; but in others we 
 feel the need of that instinctive incapacity to dwell 
 on anything gross or morbid which is the glory of the 
 best English literature, and of that Hterature almost 
 alone. It should be observed, however, that one 
 accusation, which has been brought against George 
 Sand's novels, that they tend to bring the institution 
 of marriage into contempt, can certainly not be main- 
 tained. Few authors have more convincingly insisted 
 on the paramount excellence of a single, a permanent, 
 a wedded affection. Few have more unshrinkingly 
 exposed the misery which follows on the caprices of 
 selfish and transitory passion. There are, indeed, 
 passages in her works, where certain incidents of 
 marriage which French opinion tolerates, and especi- 
 ally the infidelity of the husband to the wife, too 
 lightly regarded in that country, are assailed with 
 indignant eloquence. But shall we in England be 
 concerned to defend a social state in which the old 
 conception of the sanctity of marriage is retained just 
 so far as to render indissoluble a union contracted 
 without love, and maintained without fidelity ? does 
 not an institution like tliis need some purification 
 
il] GEOKGE sand. 85 
 
 before it can be justifiably acquiesced in as unalterable 
 or preached as divine ? 
 
 George Sand's own life forms a curious commentary 
 on many social questions. To put the kernel of the 
 position in a few words, she was greatly superior to 
 almost all the Frenchmen of her time both in char- 
 acter and intellect, while at the same time she was 
 subject to many weaknesses characteristic of the 
 feminine mind. The result is, that when we con- 
 sider any controversy, speculative or emotional, be- 
 tween her and the men about her, we are for the 
 most part constrained to take her view, while yet we 
 feel this view to be in some way unfamiliar to us, and 
 in itself incomplete. The lioness has succeeded in 
 imposing upon us her picture of the subjugated man ; 
 we cannot deny its vraisemUance ; we can only say 
 that we are not accustomed to see the gTOup drawn in 
 that position. And perhaps there is some poetical 
 justice in the fact that the French, with their per- 
 petual talk about women, and pursuit of them, should 
 at last, as it were, have fallen in with a woman so 
 very much too strong for each and all of them. 
 
 I believe that one single characteristic of George 
 Sand's, as admitted by herself, is enough to explain 
 the painful series of collisions between her and some 
 of her once dearest friends. The fact is that she was 
 apt to idealise people for a time, and then to cease to 
 idealise them. It is obvious that nothing is more dis- 
 agreeable than this. We can endure a want of 
 
86 MODERN ESSAYS. [n. 
 
 appreciation — reflecting that it is not given to all to be 
 able to appreciate us — but that a woman who has taken 
 an enthusiastic and emotional view of our character 
 and abilities should suddenly begin to judge us in a 
 calm manner, and indicate obvious defects, this is, 
 indeed, enough to lash our self-love into fury. And 
 if anything could make it worse, it would be to see 
 the woman in question, whose intellectual superiority 
 to us seems already a breach of the implied contract 
 between the sexes, move on tranquilly occupied with 
 the accomplishment of her destiny, reserving merely 
 the right of describing us fictively in the Revue des 
 Deux Mondes. A feminine Goethe is more than man- 
 kind can endure, and there is much that is like 
 Goethe in the emotional history of George Sand. 
 
 Wlien, however, we consider in a more general 
 way the treatment of love in her romances, we do not 
 find any parti pris, or one-sidedness of view, interfer- 
 ing with her power of developing the history of that 
 passion under the most diverse forms. In this respect, 
 indeed, she seems to me unsurpassed. It so happens 
 that most of our great English novelists — Miss Austen, 
 Scott, Dickens, Thackeray — have had but a thin vein 
 of experience or imagination in this direction. Cliar- 
 lotte Bronti'. in the past, George Meredith, and the 
 greatest name of all, George Eliot, in the present, 
 afford better examples of the light in which love 
 presents itself to an English artist. But English 
 dignity and reticence form an ever-present and inipas- 
 
II.] GEORGE SAND. 87 
 
 sable limit to their descriptive skill. In George Eliot, 
 for instance, with all her profound knowledge of the 
 heart, there is always a certain austerity and reserve, 
 a subordination of amatory to ethical situations ; there 
 are no dSbordements, no cris cC amour et d'angoisse ; nay, 
 the only love letter which I can recall in her works 
 was written by Mr. Casaubon. I believe that this 
 spirit of dignity in literature makes the highest and 
 best literature now existing in the world ; but in this, 
 as in other ways, noUesse oblige, and it is plain that a 
 French author has a much wider field to work in. 
 
 The names of Eousseau, Benjamin Constant, Mme. 
 de Stael, Balzac, Victor Hugo, occur at once as those 
 of authors who have not merely described love in its 
 commoner forms, but have done something to extend 
 our conception of its variety and power. But George 
 Sand seems to me to take a wider range than any one 
 of these. The NouvelU Hilo'ise is scarcely fuller of 
 mournful and philosophic sentiment than the Lettres 
 dun VoyageuT or the Lettres a Marcie. Adolphe is 
 not more intense or hopeless than Ze Dernier Amour. 
 Corinne and Belphine, with all the eloquence and 
 enthusiasm of their passion, are not more eloquent or 
 more enthusiastic than Za Daniella. Za Cousine Bette 
 is not more true or more terrible than Zeone Zeoni. 
 Nor can any of Victor Hugo's contrasts between stain- 
 less innocence and environing evil outdo the simplicity 
 and dignity of Consuelo. 
 
 We might extend this list much farther ; but we 
 
88 MODEliN ESSAYS. [ii. 
 
 are here only concerned to show that George Sand is 
 before all things catholic in lier conception of human 
 passion ; that her romances are not mere illustrations 
 of some favourite theory or special pleadings in defence 
 of some personal cause. 
 
 There is no doubt one form of love which occurs 
 oftenest in her books, especially where a woman is 
 telling her own story — namely, the protective and 
 admiring compassion which a woman of strong nature 
 may feel for a gifted but weak or faulty man. This 
 form of affection was abundantly illustrated by George 
 Sand's own history; and seems to be allied to that 
 eager maternal instinct which was the dominant 
 emotion of her life ; yet we may perceive in her also 
 a capacity, which her career on earth was not per- 
 mitted to develop, of feeling love in its more normal 
 and satisfactory form, in which the instinct of the 
 woman is to absorb herself in a reverent devotion to 
 the man, while his corresponding instinct is to rever- 
 ence this very devotion in lier, as a token of her 
 worthiness rather than of his own. 
 
 The conclusion of Mademoiselle Mcrquem, a novel 
 whose heroine much resembles George Sand herself, 
 illustrates what I mean. ]\Ille. Merquem, won at 
 length after a long and respectful courtship, is address- 
 ing the husband of her choice, wlio here repeats her 
 words and adds his comment thereupon. 
 
 " ' N'ouhliez pas,' she says, 'que j'ai ct6 longtemps une 
 ptrsonne raisonnablc, et suiivencz-vous (jiie la raison com- 
 
II.] GEORGE SAND. 89 
 
 mande d'etre absolument d6voue et soumis a ce que Ton 
 aime par-dessus tout. J'ai accept6 Tamour, non comme 
 un egarement et une faiblesse, mais comme une sagesse et 
 une force dont, apres quelque doute de moi-meme, j'ai 6te 
 fiere de me sentir capable. Chaque jour qui s'est 6coul6 
 depuis ce premier jour de confiance et de joie m'a rendue plus 
 stire de moi-meme, plus fike de mon choix, plus reconnaiss- 
 ante envers vous. A present, commandez-moi ce que vous 
 voudrez, puisque je ne connais plus qu'un plaisir en ce 
 monde ; celui de vous ob6ir.' 
 
 " Je dus accepter cet abandon absolu, continuel, irrevoc- 
 able de sa volont^. Le refuser ett et6 le m6connaitre. Je 
 lui ai jur6 et je me suis jur6 a moi-meme que je me ser- 
 virais de cette possession de son ame pour faire d'elle la 
 plus respectee et la plus heureuse des femmes. Je me 
 m^priserais profond6ment le jour ou je croirais y avoir le 
 moindre m6rite. Avec une telle compagne la vie est un 
 reve du ciel. Jamais pareille egalite d'ame ne fut le 
 partage d'une creature humaine. J'ai trouv6 en elle un 
 ami s6rieux, solide dans toutes le 6preuves, spontanement 
 gen^reux et prudent, comme si son doux et profond regard 
 embrassait a la fois les deux faces du vrai dans I'appr^cia- 
 tion de toutes les choses de la vie. . . . Peut-etre ne sait- 
 on pas a quel degr6 de charme et de m6rite pourrait s'61ever 
 la femme bien dou6e, si on la laissait murir, et si elle-meme 
 avait la patience d'attendre son developpement complet pour 
 entrer dans la vie complete. On les marie trop jeunes, 
 elles sont m^res avant d'avoir cess6 d'etre des enfants, 
 on les 6leve, d'ailleurs, de maniere a prolonger cette en- 
 fance toute la vie ; aussi ont-elles perdu toute puissance 
 r^elle et toute action legitime dans la soci6t(i" 
 
 Nor is George Sand unable to rise to that highest 
 
90 MODERN ESSAYS. [il 
 
 form of earthly passion in which its personal elements 
 seem to fade and disappear, and it becomes not so much 
 a desire as a revelation, an inlet into some supernal 
 world, approachable only through the annihilation of 
 self. 
 
 In the Comtesse de Rudolstadt,- — an ill-constructed 
 but a noble story, — there is a passage w^here Consuelo 
 is called upon to choose, as she supposes, between love 
 and duty. She has been led by the priests of a secret 
 society through subterranean halls filled with the 
 implements and memorials of all tortures and tyran- 
 nies that have been practised upon men ; the misery of 
 the world has been manifested to her with one appall- 
 ing shock, and she has resolved to renounce all personal 
 happiness for a life-long devotion to the cause of the 
 wretched and oppressed. After a noble appeal to her 
 lover not to hinder but to strengthen her in her 
 high resolve, the fusion between earthly emotion and 
 religious aspiration effects itself in a burst of song, 
 and the long story of her fortunes leaves her with the 
 same words upon her lips which first revealed to her- 
 self and to the world of music that music was the 
 passion of her soul. 
 
 " L'enlhousiasme de Consuelo etait port6 aucomble; les 
 paroles ne lui suffisaient plus pour I'exprimer. Une sorte 
 de vertige s'empara d'elle, et, ainsi qu'il arrivait aux 
 pythonisses, dans le paroxysme de leurs crises divines, de 
 so livrer a des cris et k d'6trangos fureurs, elle fut cntraln^o 
 a manifester remotion qui la dcbordait par rexpression qui 
 
II.] GEORGE SAND. 91 
 
 lui 6tait la plus naturelle. EUe se mit a chanter d'une 
 voix 6clatante et dans un transport au moins 6gal a celui 
 qu'elle avait 6prouv6 en chantant ce meme air a Venise, en 
 public pour la premiere fois de sa vie, et en presence de 
 Marcello et de Porpora : 
 
 " ' I cieli immensi narrano 
 Del grande Iddio la gloria ! ' 
 
 " Le chant lui vint sur les levres, parce qu'il est peut-etre 
 I'expression la plus naive et la plus saisissante que la 
 musique ait jamais donn6e a I'enthousiasme religieux. Mais 
 Consuelo n'avait pas le calme n6cessaire pour contenir et 
 diriger sa voix ; apres ces deux vers, I'intonation devint un 
 sanglot dans sa poitrine, elle fondit en pleurs et tomba sur 
 ses genoux." 
 
 III. The mention of Consuelo may serve as our 
 point of transition from George Sand's treatment of 
 Love to her treatment of Art. For the aesthetic his- 
 tory of Consuelo, as contrasted v^ith that of Gorilla 
 and Anzoleto, is perhaps the best example of the 
 lesson which in these romances is so often repeated, 
 that Art, like everything else which is worth having 
 or worth doing, is the result and outcome of a certain 
 inward and spiritual state ; that to good Art moral 
 qualities are as necessary as intellectual; that those who 
 fail in Art fail oftenest through egoism and ambition, 
 through license and vanity ; while those who succeed 
 succeed through delight in their work and devotion to 
 an impersonal and lofty aim. 
 
 To take instances almost at random ; the art of 
 acting is treated much in this way in the Chdteau des 
 
92 MODERN ESSAYS. [n. 
 
 DSserfes, and (incidentally) in Narcisse ; authorship in 
 Hm^ace ; mosaic-work in Les Maitres Moswistes ; por- 
 trait-painting in Le Chdteau de Pictordu; landscape- 
 painting in La Daniella and 3fl!e. Merquem ; and, to 
 end with a characteristic example from one of her 
 latest books, the art of bird-stuffing, in that capital 
 child's story Zes Ailes de Courage. George Sand, in 
 fact, insists as constantly as Mr. Kuskin on the gi^eat 
 maxim which lies at the root of art ; that in order to 
 represent anything well we must love to look at it, in 
 order to do anything well we must love to do it, quite 
 apart from all thought of rivalry, or profit, or fame. 
 
 Her own artistic history was as consistent with her 
 convictions as the tyranny of circumstances would 
 allow. That is to say, she was indifferent to Jame, — 
 greatly disliking its concrete form, general recognition 
 and notoriety, — and she at no time shaped or modified 
 her published opinions with a view to profit. But 
 she was forced to write much faster than she liked 
 that she might earn money — not in order to enjoy 
 wealth or luxury, for which she felt a singular indiffer- 
 ence — but in order to secure her own independence 
 and the education of her children. She had also a 
 feminine bias towards almsgiving, which went so far 
 that in later life she denied herself the pleasure and 
 instruction of travel that she might have more to give 
 away. 
 
 The results of this excessive haste arc most marked 
 in her earlier writings. She has not had time to make 
 
II.] GEORGE SAND. 93 
 
 them short. The grace of her language never fails, 
 but she is often tedious and full of repetitions, and 
 before she has gained experience of life she tends to 
 be fantastic and unreal. Much of L6lia, though the 
 book created so great a sensation, seems now unread- 
 ably dull. As time goes on her style improves ; its 
 dignity and melody remain ; its longueurs gradually 
 disappear. From Consuelo onwards she seems able to 
 say whatever she wishes in admirable form. Her 
 tendency to religious disquisition continues often to 
 interfere with the march of her romances, but in the 
 diction itself there is little which either Frenchman or 
 foreigner has censured. With maturity she gained 
 simplicity; her pastoral romances are models of pas- 
 toral speech ; and her latest works, Flamarande, La 
 Tour de Percemont, etc., are almost as concise and clear 
 as Voltaire himself. 
 
 But certain characteristics remain unchanged through 
 the five-and-forty years of her literary life. In almost 
 all the books there is the same air of unlaboured spon- 
 taneity and irresistible inspiration ; in almost all there 
 is the same subordination of the verisimilitude of minor 
 events to the development of one central character, one 
 dominant idea, one absorbing passion. And the defects 
 of a class of romances which aim so high are almost 
 inseparable from their merits. Some novelists, like 
 some painters, have preferred to confine themselves to 
 effects of twilight or candlelight, that so their colour 
 within these limits may be wholly natural and true ; 
 
94 MODERN ESSAYS. [n. 
 
 a wider range of light and shade brings added difficul- 
 ties of harmonious representation ; and those who would 
 " set the blazing sun in heaven " must be content to 
 sacrifice much truth of local colouring if they would 
 maintain, with the imperfect means at their disposal, 
 some likeness of the irreproducible gradations between 
 Nature's blackness and her glow. 
 
 IV. I have been endeavouring so to arrange these 
 remarks as to proceed as it were from without inwards 
 in our review of George Sand's life and work. From 
 considering her relation to the political world about 
 her, to the other sex, and to the small confraternity of 
 art, we pass now to the subjects on which her reverie 
 habitually dwelt — nature first, and then all which lies 
 beneath nature for a reverent and meditative mind. 
 She approached nature from many sides. As the 
 owner of a country property, which for many years 
 she managed herself, she was able to give to her rustic 
 pictures a vivid reality, which a Parisian like Balzac 
 could not by any study achieve. All the world knows 
 La Petite Fadette, and the rest of that series of gentle 
 idylls, of which La Mare au Didble and Nanon are, 
 perhaps, the most touching. They form the nearest 
 French parallel to Wordsworth's Waggoner and Pder 
 Bell. George Sand has also what Wordsworth liad 
 not — a subtle feeling for the charm which lies in the 
 transformation of meditative observation into definite 
 science : the moment when one, who has long pored 
 over some fragment of nature for his delight, discovers 
 
II.] GEORGE SAND. 95 
 
 that he has learnt something which few or none have 
 learnt before him. I know no French novel in which 
 science is treated with a profounder sympathy than in 
 Valvklre, — a work which supplies a corrective to all 
 of morbid that Valentine and Indiana contain, — so full 
 is it of matter and wisdom, so natural and complete is 
 the triumph which science, simplicity, and virtue gain 
 over immoral and egoistic languor. And, to pass over 
 a host of similar instances, one of the last and simplest 
 of her stories, Marianne, culminates in a moment at 
 which the girl's gentle and joyous observation of nature 
 is found to have laid for her the basis of a more scien- 
 tific knowledge of the plants which she loves. This 
 last sketch is so slight that I feel half ashamed to dwell 
 on it ; and yet it has a peculiar charm ; a picture 
 drawn in great old age by the world-famous writer, of 
 a girl riding about the country as she herself had done 
 in youth, and entering, in the same simple and pro- 
 found fashion, into the teaching of nature and her joy. 
 There is something touching in this "link of natural 
 piety," which connects the youth and age of one, whose 
 ardent genius had impelled her in the meantime into 
 forms of life so remote from quiet Berry and the shades 
 of the Vallee Noire, and who yet returned to that still 
 home, and spent life's long declension among the gar- 
 dens where she had played as a child. More, perhaps, 
 than any author of our century, save Wordsworth him- 
 self, she deserves Claudian's praises of that ancient and 
 home-keeping man — 
 
96 MODERN ESSAYS. [ii. 
 
 " Ingentem meminit parvo qui germine quercnm, 
 Aequaevumque videt consenuisse nemus." 
 
 And lier books, in many places, show how deeply this 
 life-long refuge of Nohant had tranquillised her soul 
 — how often the cares and loves of life fell from her 
 in the presence of Nature's slow consolations, and her 
 abidincj calm. 
 
 \. It was, then, in a life which, though often pro- 
 foundly agitated, had yet a certain unity and back- 
 ground of peace, that George Sand experienced that 
 series of religious changes and awakenings which, as 
 she herself has told us, constitute her essential history 
 and her true career. 
 
 The first stage was an unusual one. She was 
 brought up by a grandmother and a tutor who held 
 Voltairian views, but did not wish to impress them 
 upon a child. Consequently they left her with no 
 religious teaching at all. Some stories, impartially 
 told her, about Christ and Jupiter, were all the theo- 
 logy that was impressed on the blank paper of her 
 mind. Thereupon she did what a philosopher might 
 have expected her to do. Not being told that there 
 was a God, she found it necessary to invent one. Few 
 passages in literature are more touching than the pages 
 where she describes how she felt, at the age of ten, the 
 need of some Divine Being to love and worship ; and 
 liow, in her uncertainty between Christ and the gods 
 of Greece, she feared that all were alike unreal ; and 
 liow, in some half-waking vision, her inner need clothed 
 
II.] GEORGE SAND. 97 
 
 itself in a deity whom she imagined for herself, to 
 worship him ; and Coramhd — neither male nor female, 
 neither human nor quite divine — hovered between 
 heaven and earth in her day-long dream, willingly in- 
 carnating himself sometimes to assuage some misery 
 of men, or sometimes punished at the hands of a 
 supreme power by an enforced sojourn among the 
 unhappy mortals to whom he had shown too much 
 mercy. 
 
 To him, upon a secret and woodland shrine, she 
 sacrificed not by slaying but by setting free ; and when 
 a bird released upon his altar lingered for a moment 
 among the branches of the shadowing maple-tree, she 
 took the sign as a token of Corambe's acceptance of 
 the benign and bloodless offering : — and those who like 
 may fancy that some Power was there to welcome the 
 unblemished gift, and to fill with gladness that inno- 
 cent sanctuary in the heart of a child. 
 
 But the little Aurore grew older, and was sent to 
 the convent of the Anglaises at Paris, where Catholi- 
 cism was presented in its most winning form by the 
 religious English ladies, to whom the education of some 
 of the best-born girls in France and in our own islands 
 was at that time entrusted. For a long time Aurore 
 withstood their inliuence ; she became the riugleader 
 of all such wild and innocent mischief as the convent 
 knew ; she was enrolled among the dictbles ; she seemed 
 as far as possible from becoming sage. 
 
 VOL. II. H 
 
98 MODERN ESSAYS. [ii. 
 
 But her hour came — the hour wliich in some fonn 
 or other probably comes to every ardent ond reverent 
 soul — the hour of the dedication of self to a new-felt 
 and absorbing power. 
 
 In a fit of weariness, after some long frolic, she had 
 strayed into the convent chapel. She sat through the 
 evening service in a state of strange abstraction and 
 serenity. What followed shall be described in her own 
 words : — 
 
 "L'heure s'avan9ait, la pri^re etait sonnee, on allait 
 fermer 1 eglise. J'avais tout oubli6. Je ne sais ce qui se 
 passait en moi. Je respirais une atmosphere d'une suavity 
 indicible, et je la respirais par I'anie plus encore que par les 
 sens. Tout k coup je ne sais quel 6branlement se 2)roduisit 
 dans tout mon etre, un vertige passe devant mes yeux 
 comme une lueur blanche dont je me sens envelopp^e. Je 
 crois entendre une voix murmurer h mon oreille : Telle, 
 lege. Je me retourne, croyant que c'est Marie Alicia qui 
 me parle. J'6tais seule. 
 
 "Je ne me fis pas d'orgueilleuse illusion, je necrus point 
 a \m miracle. Je me rendis fort bien compte de I'espoce 
 d'hallucination oil j'6tais tombec. Je n'en fus ni enivr6e 
 ni effray6e. Je ne cherchais ni k I'augmenter ni k m'y 
 soustraire. Sculemcnt, je scntis que la foi sVmparait de 
 moi, comme je I'avais souliait6, par le coeur. J 'en fus si 
 reconnaissante, si ravie, qu'un torrent de larmes inonda 
 mon visage. Je sentis encore que j'aimais Dieu, que ma 
 pens6e embrassait et acceptait pleinement cot ideal de jus- 
 tice, de tcndresse et de saintet6 que je n'avais jamais revoque 
 en doute, mais avec lequel je ne m'etais jamais trouvee en 
 communication dirccte; jc sentis cnfin cette communication 
 
n.] GEORGE SAND. 99 
 
 s'6tablir soudainement, comme si un obstacle invincible so 
 ftit abim6 entre le foyer d'ardeur infinie et le feu assoupi 
 dans mon ame. Je voyais un cliemin vaste, immense, sans 
 bornes, s'ouvrir devant moi ; je briilais de m'y 61ancer. 
 Je n'etais plus retenue par aucun doute, par aucune froi- 
 deur. La crainte d'avoir a me reprendre, a railler en moi- 
 meme au lendemain la fougue de cet entrainement ne me 
 vint pas seulement a la pensee. J'6tais de ceux qui vont 
 sans regarder derri^re eux, qui h^sitent longtemps devant 
 un certain Rubicon a passer, mais qui, en touchant la rive, 
 ne voient d6jk plus celle qu'ils viennent de quitter." 
 
 Her conversion was complete. It was followed by 
 months of ecstatic happiness and self-denial, and only 
 the wise reluctance of the nuns in charge prevented 
 the enthusiastic girl from insisting on taking the veil. 
 At last her grandmother removed her from the con- 
 vent. But her faith and her wish to become a nun 
 persisted long. Her first shock arose from the perusal 
 of Chateaubriand's G4nie dio Christianisme, a book 
 recommended to her by her confessor, but which she 
 found to be in so direct an opposition to the Imitatio 
 Christi, on which her devotion had long been fed, that 
 she was led to doubt the truth and unity of a system 
 which could thus be authoritatively expounded in two 
 such different senses. But she seemed to be cjlidinsj 
 gently into a tranquil Theism, when all at once her 
 troubles came. Her grandmother died. Her home at 
 Nohant was broken up. Her fatlier's family were 
 alienated by her mother's temper. Her mother was 
 worse than no guardian to the sensitive and inexperi- 
 
100 MODERN ESSAYS. [u. 
 
 enced girl. In her distress and loneliness she allowed 
 a M. Dudevant to persuade her that he would be a 
 solid and lasting friend. She married him, and thus 
 committed the greatest blunder of her life, not through 
 excess, but through defect of emotional sensibility. 
 For she should never have married M. Dudevant. 
 She never loved him, and he never loved anybody. 
 He drank ; he kept low company ; he was openly un- 
 faithful to his wife. After years of miserable union, 
 and years of informal separation, the wife procured a 
 judicial separation, and the custody of the children 
 was left in her hands. But during the wretched years, 
 from 1826 to 1836, — years during which other sins 
 besides those of M. Dudevant disturbed her inward 
 peace, and, enlightened by her own sorrows, her eyes 
 opened upon the sorrows of the world, — her faith was 
 deeply shaken ; she lost her trust in the moral govern- 
 ment of the universe ; her spiritual life became a mere 
 voice of protest and cry for light to a sealed and un- 
 answering heaven. 
 
 Slowly the answer came. 
 
 "By-and-by [says Mazzini] hor thoughts elevate and 
 clear themselves : her looks turn oftener to the future ; the 
 religious sentiment, so prominent in George Sand, becomes 
 more and more developed and intense. The turbid stream 
 purifies itself in mounting towards lieaven, and falls again 
 in dew. Calm succeeds to storm ; the very shallow of 
 scepticism has disappeared before faith ; faith, sad and with- 
 out the spring of youth, for its torch does not shine on 
 this side of the tomb ; but strong, and unsliakeable as all 
 
II.] GEORGE SAND. 101 
 
 religious conviction. Our earthly life is not the Right to 
 happiness, it is the Duty of development ; sorrow is not 
 Evil, since it stimulates and purifies : virtue is constancy 
 in devotion j all error passes away ; truth is eternal, and 
 must, by a law of Providence, triumph sooner or later in 
 the individual as in humanity. George Sand has learnt 
 these things, and repeats them to us with the sweet and 
 impressive voice of a sister. There is still, as in the sound 
 of the ^olian harp, an echo of a past agony ; but the voice 
 of the angel preponderates." 
 
 Mazzini here has merely stated the change which 
 took place, without attempting to assign its reason. 
 Perhaps this silence is wise. In a universe which is 
 of so mixed a character that optimism and pessimism 
 are both of them plausible views, it seems almost futile 
 to try to determine what thought or fact it is which 
 makes for each man the transition from despair to 
 faith. There are plenty of phenomena to lead any- 
 body to any conclusion. 
 
 It is enough to give her own account of the means 
 by which this change was effected ; which means she 
 believed to be divine grace, sent in answer to pro- 
 longed and earnest prayer : — 
 
 " Je crois encore a ce que les chretiens appellent la grace. 
 Qu'on nomme comme on voudra les transformations qui 
 s'op^rent en nous quand nous appelons ^nergiquement le 
 principe divin de I'infini au secours de notre faiblesse ; que 
 ce bienfait s'appelle secours ou assimilation ; que notre 
 aspiration s'appelle priere ou exaltation d'esj^rit, il est cer- 
 tain que Tame se retrempe dans les (jilans religieux. Je I'ai 
 
102 MODERN ESSAYS. [ii. 
 
 toujours (5prouv6 d'une manierc si (^ividente pour raoi, que 
 j'aurais mauvaise grace k en mat^rialiser rexpression sous 
 ma plume. Prier comme certains divots pour demander 
 au ciel la pluie ou le soleil, d'est-a-dire des pommes de terre 
 et des ^cus, pour conjurer la grele ou la foudre, la maladie 
 ou la mort, c'est de I'idolatrie pure ; mais lui demander le 
 courage, la sagesse, I'amour, c'est ne pas intervertir Tordre 
 de ses lois immuables, c'est puiser a un foyer qui ne nous 
 attirerait pas sans cesse si, par sa nature, il n'dtait pas 
 capable de nous r^chauflfer." 
 
 Through whatever agency, the change took place. 
 For the rest of her long life George Sand was not 
 strictly a Christian, but one of those who must be 
 ranged along with Christians in any reckoning of the 
 spiritual forces of the world. For we know that the 
 true controversy is no longer between those within and 
 those without the walls of any given church, but ou a 
 wider scale and involving profounder issues. It is a 
 controversy between Spiritualism and Materialism, be- 
 tween those who base their life upon God and immor- 
 tality, and those who deny or are indifferent to both. 
 And the spiritual cause has the more need of cham- 
 pions now that a distinct moral superiority can no 
 longer be claimed on either side. Perhaps the loftiest 
 and most impressive strain of ethical teaching which 
 is to be heard in England now comes from one who 
 invokes no celestial assistance, and oilers to virtue no 
 idtimate recompense of reward.^ The Stoics arc again 
 
 ^ This Essay apitcarcd iu Gcorgo Eliot's lil'ctiiue. 
 
II.] GEORGE SAND. 103 
 
 among lis ; the stern disinterestedness of their " coun- 
 sels of perfection " is enchaining some of our noblest 
 souls. But the moral elevation of any portion of man- 
 kind tends to the elevation of all. And although to 
 those who rest tranquil in their belief in immortality 
 this stoical view will appear extreme, one-sided, hope- 
 less, impossible to man, it will yet teach them no 
 longer to speak as if virtue were to be rej)aid with 
 pleasures which it needs no virtue to enjoy. They 
 will rather claim that a spirit of ceaseless aspiration 
 shall be satisfied with a ceaseless progress ; that virtue 
 shall be rewarded by her own continuance, " the wages 
 of going on, and not to die." 
 
 Few writers have dwelt on this prospect with a 
 more sustained and humble aspiration than George 
 Sand. I quote one of numberless passages : — 
 
 " Saintes promesses des cieux ou Ton se retrouve et ou 
 Ton se reconnait, vous n'etes pas un vain r^ve. Si nous ne 
 devons pas aspirer a la beatitude des purs esprits du pays 
 des chimeres, si nous devons entrevoir toujours au-dela de 
 cette vie un travail, un devoir, des epreuves et une organ- 
 isation limit^e dans ses facult^s vis-4-vis de I'infini, du 
 moins il nous est permis par la raison, et il nous est com- 
 mando par le coeur de compter sur unc suite d'existences 
 progressives en raison de nos bons desirs. Les saints de 
 toutes les religions qui nous orient du fond de Fantiquit^ 
 de nous d^gager de la matiere pour nous 6lever dans la 
 hi^rarchie celeste des esprits ne nous out pas tromp6s quant 
 au fond de la croyancc admissible a la raison moderne. 
 Nous pensons aujourd'hui que, si nous sommes immortels, 
 
104 MODERN ESSAYS. [ii. 
 
 c'est a la condition dc revetir sans ccsse des organes nou- 
 veaux pour completer notre etre, qui n'a probablement pas 
 le droit de devenir un pur esprit ; mais nous poiivons 
 regarder cette terre comme un lieu de passage et compter 
 sur un r6veil plus doux dans le berceau qui nous attend 
 ailleurs. De mondes en mondes, nous pouvons, en nous 
 d^gageant de Tanimalitdi qui combat ici-bas notre spiritual- 
 isme, nous rendre propres k revetir un corps plus pur, plus 
 appropri6 aux besoins de Tame, moins combattu et moins 
 entrave par les infirmites dc la vie humaine telle que nous 
 la subissons ici-bas." 
 
 With some such thoughts as these we should close 
 our contemplation of the earthly career of a strong, a 
 militant, an eager soul. To one who traces the vic- 
 tories of such a soul, in this dimness of her captivity, 
 that which she hath done will seem " but earnest of 
 the things that she shall do ;" we imagine her delivered 
 from the bewildering senses, the importunate passions 
 of the flesh, no longer " tormented," but satisfied, with 
 the things of God ; glad in those spiritual kinships 
 and that inward calm towards which " her continual 
 longing has been her continual voice." 
 
VICTOE HUGO. 
 
 "Ocrcrav iir' Ov\v/inr(p jiifxaaav O^jxev, avrap eir "0(T<jri 
 lli^Xiov elvocricpvXKov, IV ovpavbs d/j-lSaTos €L7], 
 
 "Dans le domaine poetiqne," says the sternest of 
 French critics, "I'autorit^ de I'Angleterre ne vaiit pas 
 moins que I'aiitorite de la Grece dans le domaine de 
 la sculpture." And we may fairly accept this dictum 
 of Gustave Planche's as just, and maintain that in no 
 country of modern Europe has so much good poetry 
 or good criticism on poetry been produced as in Eng- 
 land. The more important, then, is the fact that an 
 Englishman who, like Mr. Swinburne, stands in the 
 very foremost rank both of our poets and of our critics, 
 should have proclaimed with all his eloquence that 
 M. Hugo is the greatest of living poets — nay, more, 
 " the name that is above every name in lyric song " — 
 a Master after whom our age will be called, as Shake- 
 speare's age is called after Shakespeare. And Mr. 
 Swinburne, though he may write extravagantly, never 
 writes at random. We feel that in his wildest flights 
 he has yet a grasp upon the very spirit of poetry, a 
 wide, exact, and penetrating knowledge of the greatest 
 
106 MODERN ESSAYS. [iir. 
 
 achievements of the human imagination, which may 
 well make us pause where we cannot follow him, and 
 believe that he sees more than we. His judgment of 
 M. Hugo has prompted me to a long and careful study 
 of that author's works, in the course of which I have 
 seemed to understand how Mr. Swinburne's aboundincj 
 poetical power runs over, as it were, upon the poets whom 
 he criticises, and glorifies them with his own glow. Such 
 criticism is generous, eloquent, suggestive ; yet it leaves 
 room for a soberer estimate, which shall refer the works 
 in question as much to a moral as to an artistic standard. 
 I think, then, — to begin by a broad expression of 
 views which I hope to develop in some detail, — that 
 M. Hugo's central distinction lies in his unique power 
 over the French language, greatly resembling Mr. 
 Swinburne's power over the English language, and 
 manifesting itself chiefly in beauty and inventiveness 
 of poetical form and melody. In prose the same 
 power supplies an endless fertility of rhetoric, and a 
 countless store of epigrams which evince the faculty 
 of manipulating rather than of originating thought. 
 Moreover, a singular vividness and intensity of ini- 
 jigination, with a command over the striking incidents 
 of life and the broad outlines of character, somewhat 
 akin to the generalship with which he marshals his 
 stately words and phrases, render M. Hugo a great 
 master of scenic effect — of that shock and collision of 
 pathos, horror, and surprise, to which in plays and 
 romances we give the name of melodrama. 
 
III.] VICTOE HUGO. 107 
 
 In Lis moral nature we shall find much that is 
 strong, elevated, and tender ; a true passion for France, 
 a true sympathy for the poor and the oppressed, a 
 true fondness for children. Farther than this it will 
 be hard to go ; so plain will it be that the egoism 
 which penetrates M. Hugo's character is a bar to 
 all higher sublimity, and has exercised a disastrous 
 effect on his intellectual as well as on his moral 
 career. 
 
 In calling M. Hugo egoistic I am far from accusing 
 him of vulgar self-seeldng — of an undue regard for 
 any tangible form of personal advantage. What I 
 mean is that he seems never to forget himself; that 
 whatever truth he is pursuing, whatever scene he 
 describes, his own attitude in regard to it is never 
 absent from his mind. And hence it results that all 
 other objects are unconsciously made secondary to the 
 great object of making an impression of the kind de- 
 sired. From the smallest details of style up to the 
 most serious steps in political conduct this preoccupa- 
 tion is visible. It was the same spirit which prompted 
 the poet to begin one of his most solemn elegiac poems 
 with the repeated assertion " that it should never be 
 said that he kept silence, that he did not send a sombre 
 strophe to sit before his children's tomb " — and which 
 prompted the politician to resign in a moment the 
 trust wdiicli Paris had committed to him because the 
 Assembly w^ould not listen to him with the respect 
 which he thoucjht his due. 
 
 o 
 
108 MODERN ESSAYS. [iir. 
 
 The sources of this self -absorption — this "auto- 
 theism/' as a French critic lias called it — are to some 
 extent obvious, and M. Hugo has but yielded more 
 openly than some others to a temptation which has 
 come to him with unusual force. 
 
 Among the dangers of advancing culture lies a fact 
 which at first sight appears wholly an advantage — 
 namely, the increased respect and attention paid to 
 intellect — to artists, men of science, and men of letters. 
 In England the importance of this class has of late 
 grown rapidly, owing not only to the increase in the 
 number of persons able to appreciate them, but to the 
 tranquillity of the country, which has afforded few 
 impressive careers to the warrior or the statesman. 
 In France the man of letters has long held a position 
 of unnatural prominence. For the artificial equality 
 wliich the Revolution produced has left so few leaders 
 to whom the people can naturally look, that the liter- 
 ary guild has in some sense replaced both priesthood 
 and aristocracy, and in times of stress and tumult 
 poets and pamphleteers have more than once been 
 called to the helm of the State. A career like 
 Lamartine's may well justify Comte's insistence on a 
 separation between the functions of the man of thought 
 and the man of action. But the danger which here 
 concerns us is of a more general kind. It consists in 
 tlie fact tliat the artist and i)oct are much more easily 
 injured by deference than by neglect. The more in- 
 ward and intimate is the merit for which we praise a 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 109 
 
 man, the harder is it for us to praise him with good 
 taste, or for him to receive the praise with dignity. 
 We can applaud the great actions of a general without 
 injuring his capacity for war ; but if we dwell too 
 much on the delicate thoughts of a poet — of a man 
 whose claim to represent his fellow-men is mainly 
 that his sensibilities are more exquisite than theirs, 
 his ideal higher, his moral sense more true — there is 
 much fear lest we injure in him what we admire, lest 
 his emotions no longer seem to flow spontaneously 
 into music, and to be overheard, but rather to be 
 adjusted to the expectations of his admiring public. 
 Other intellectual fields have cognate dangers. In the 
 domain of music we are the grieved spectators of the 
 enormous self-applause of the most conspicuous com- 
 poser of our time. And science herself — once the 
 type of lofty and impersonal labour — has learnt some- 
 times to speak with brazen lips, and to defame all 
 sanctities but her own. On living examples of the 
 contrary temper it would be indecorous to dwell. It 
 is enough to recognise that the evil of which I have 
 spoken is not universal; that England has not lost 
 her tradition which couples modesty with greatness ; 
 that in this age of desecrating publicity it is still 
 possible for a man, with ears open to the world's in- 
 finite voices, to be ignorant only of the praises which 
 salute his name.^ 
 
 1 The allusion to Mr. Darwin may be made explicit now that he is 
 no lonf:cer amon^ us. 
 
110 MODERN ESSAYS. [iil 
 
 How confidently, on the other hand, M. Hugo has 
 arranged all voices of lieaven and earth in a cantata 
 to liis own glory may be seen from the following 
 passage on tlie duties of the poet : — 
 
 " Dans ses poemes il mettrait les conseils au temps pre- 
 sent, les esqiiisses reveuses de Tavenir ; le reflet, tantut 
 (^blouissant, tantot sinistre, des (5v(^^nements contemporains ; 
 les pantheons, les tombeaux, les ruines, les souvenirs ; la 
 charity pour les pauvres, la tendresse pour les mis6rables ; 
 les saisons, le soleil, les champs, le mer, les montagnes; 
 les coups d'oeil furtifs dans le sanctuaire de Tame ou Ton 
 aper9oit sur un autel myst^rieux, comme par la porte 
 entr'ouverte d'une chapelle, toutes ces belles urnes d'or : 
 la foi, resp6rance, la po(isie, ramour ; enfin il y mettrait 
 3ette profonde peinture du moi, qui est peut-etre I'oeuvre 
 la plus large, la plus gdnerale et la plus universelle qu'un 
 penseur puisse faire." 
 
 There is a sense in which these last words may 
 be true. A man like Wordsworth, on whom unique 
 sensibilities have bestowed as it were a new revela- 
 tion, may perceive that his life's object must be to 
 explain to others what he sees and feels ; he may justi- 
 fiably be wrapped up in this ; he may without rebuke 
 even exaggerate the importance of the boon which 
 lie has to bestow. For it is not on himself that his 
 heart is set, but on that of which he is the interpreter. 
 ]>ut M. Hugo's first thought is almost always of his 
 own greatness ; his first care for his own glory. His 
 teaching shifts from pole to pole ; the only lodestar to 
 which it always turns is the poet himself. I do not 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. Ill 
 
 care to accumulate proofs of this. I will not quote 
 from William Shakespeare, with its almost insane pas- 
 sages of inflated self-esteem, where the poet seems to 
 intimate that the fourteen men whom he deims to 
 honour in former ages have been previous incarnations 
 of himself. I will take a poem, in metrical form 
 among our author's best, where the poet is expressing 
 himself as plainly as the sublimity of his theme 
 allows. 
 
 The Ode d, Olympio (a barbarous name intended to 
 imply M. Hugo's analogy to Jupiter) is obviously, and 
 one may say avowedly, an address by the poet to him- 
 self. The address is put into the mouth of a nameless 
 friend, and is thus introduced : — 
 
 " Un jour I'ami qui reste k ton coeur qu'on d6chire 
 Contemplait tes malheurs, 
 Et tandis qu'il parlait ton sublime sourire 
 Se melait a ses pleurs." 
 
 One hardly knows which to admire most, the servile 
 tears of the man of straw, or the poet's description 
 of his own sublime smile. " Te voila," says the 
 friend — 
 
 " Te voila sous les pieds des envieux sans nombre 
 Et des passants rieurs, 
 Toi dont le front superhe aecoutumait cc Vomhre 
 Les fronts infdrieurs / " 
 
 After further allusions to " ton front calme et tonnant," 
 " ton nom rayonnant," etc., the friend continues — 
 
112 MODERN ESSAYS. [iii. 
 
 " Tous ceiix qui de tos jours orageux et sublimes 
 S'approclient sans effroi, 
 licviennent en disant qu'ils ont vu ties abimes 
 En se pencliant sur toi ! 
 
 " Mais peut-etre, a, travers I'eau <le ce gouffre immense 
 Et de ce cocur profond, 
 On verrait cette perle qu'on appelle innocence, 
 En regardant au fond ! 
 
 " On s'arrcte aux brouillards dont ton Time est voilee ; 
 Mais moi, juge et temoin, 
 Je sais qu'on trouverait une voUte dtoilee 
 Si Ton allait plus loin ! " 
 
 The critics naturally come in for a mild rejoinder. 
 
 " lis auront bicn toujours pour toi toute la haine 
 Dcs demons pour le dieu, 
 Mais un souffle eteindra leur bouclie impure, pleine 
 De paroles de feu. 
 
 " lis s'(3vanouiront, et la foule ravie 
 Verra, d'un ceil pieux, 
 Sortir de ce tas d' ombre amass6 par renvio 
 Ton front majestueux ! " 
 
 After this we find it difficult to be much interested 
 in the universal benevolence of the poet's abstract views. 
 Critics have admired a prophetic passage in which, in 
 the general rehabilitation of everybody, ])elial grows 
 so angelic that the Almighty is })uzzled to distinguish 
 him from Christ. But universality of appreciativeuess 
 is, in this nineteenth century, no longer surprising. 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 113 
 
 Many of us will feel that our sympathies have expanded 
 so widely that we can enter into the point of view of 
 the very devil, — so long as he says nothing unpleasant 
 about ourselves. 
 
 And surely never was amour propre more watchful 
 than M. Hugo's. To keep silence about him is almost 
 as dangerous as to criticise him. Any suspicion of 
 lukewarmness is met with the vigorous expression of 
 a pain about which poets have perhaps said enough — 
 the pain which they derive from the stupidity and 
 jealousy of mankind. There is no doubt much truth 
 in such complaints. A man of any emotional force 
 and originality will be often misunderstood. Over- 
 valued, perhaps, by some, he will be undervalued by 
 others. The many forces that fight on the side of 
 commonplace will unite to exaggerate his faults and 
 to explain his virtues away. All this is a matter of 
 course. Everything that is exceptional has its incon- 
 veniences. But troubles like these should be borne 
 in silence ; to dwell on them before the world is both 
 unmanly and arrogant. He who sings of grief should 
 sing of griefs which others also feel, and to which his 
 song can bring consolation. There are, indeed, some 
 cases, like Byron's or Shelley's, in which the poet's lot 
 has been made so tragic by causes closely connected 
 with his genius that we cannot wish him to keep 
 silence. But M. Hugo's literary troubles have never 
 been of this kind. They have rather been such as 
 are naturally provoked by the assumption of the 
 
 VOL. IT. I 
 
114 MODERN ESSAYS. [iii. 
 
 leadership of a militant school in literature. A man 
 who claims to rule by right of conquest must expect 
 that the conquered persons will call him an usurper. 
 AVe will not dwell on the petty histories of cabals and 
 jealousies, alliances and discipleships, which have oc- 
 cupied too often the literary world of France. But 
 we may well question whether either French literatui-e 
 or French society has really gained by the abolition of 
 the old pre-eminence accorded to the accident of birth. 
 Have wealth and talents shown themselves to be 
 worthier objects of deference ? Are they found to be 
 more frequently united with that moral elevation to 
 whicli we all desire to pay our chief respect ? A 
 plutocracy we may take to be an admitted evil, em- 
 bodying the self-indulgence whicli is the weakness of 
 an aristocracy without the sense of responsibility which 
 ought to be its strength. And surely we are intro- 
 ducing a still worse element into our reconstructed 
 society if we erect poets or dramatists into the heads 
 of factions, each witli his band of janissaries, who 
 salute him in newspaper or theatre with preconcerted 
 applause. There is no surer way of ruining a man 
 than to thrust upon him a counterfeit greatness, and 
 he who would play the part of Napoleon in the re- 
 public of letters can suffer no evil so disastrous as his 
 own success. 
 
 Ill what terms an <»ffeii(lcd potentate vaui resent im- 
 ])artial opinion may be judged from the following lines, 
 among the most forcible which ]\I. Hugo has ever 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 115 
 
 written, and whose application is fixed, by an in- 
 genuity of insult, upon one of the most just and 
 scrupulous critics whom France has known ; — 
 
 " Jeune homnie, ce m6chant fait une lache guerre. 
 Ton indignation ne I'^pouvante guere. 
 Crois-moi done, laisse en paix, jeune homme au noble 
 
 cceur, 
 Ce Zoile a I'oeil faux, ce malheureux moqueur. 
 Ton mepris 1 mais c'est I'air qu'il respire. Ta haine 1 
 La haine est son odeur, sa sueur, son haleine. 
 II sait qu'il pent souiller sans peur les noms fameux, 
 Et que pour qu'on le touche il est trop venimeux. 
 II ne craint rien: pareil au champignon difforme 
 Pouss6 dans une nuit au pied d'un chene 6norme, 
 Qui laisse les chevreaux autour de lui paissant 
 Essayer leur dent folle a I'arbuste innocent ; 
 Sachant qu'il porte en lui des vengeances trop sures, 
 Tout gonfle de poison il attend les morsures." 
 
 Literature has few expressions of rage and hatred 
 more concentrated than this. But worse remains. Self 
 is an idol to which a man must sacrifice not only his 
 critics but his deities, and not only the present but the 
 past. Eetrospective jealousy knows no limitations. 
 As M. Hugo has advanced in his self-worship the 
 objects of his reverence have become fewer and fewer, 
 and those noble admirations which make the very sub- 
 stance of our spiritual being have dropped one by one 
 from his soul. In most cases his judgments are worth 
 noticing only as illustrating his own moral decline. 
 That M. Hugo, after admiring Virgil, should 2)Ostpone 
 
116 MODERN ESSAYS. [iii. 
 
 Virgil to Juveual (because he can more easily pretend 
 that he was once Juvenal himself), matters little to 
 any one except M. Hugo. But when his faint praise 
 falls upon authors who, though superior, are com- 
 parable to himself— r when Eacine and Corneille, for 
 instance, are indicated as the mere forerunners of the 
 author of Cromwell and Buy Bias — a more serious pro- 
 test is needed. I am no blind admirer of the great 
 French tragedians. No English critic is likely to 
 overlook their obvious faults and limitations. But I 
 surely still have the best French judgments with me 
 in believing that the moral world in which those 
 classical poets have their being is one of such refine- 
 ment and loftiness as M. Hugo has never known. 
 How crude, how strained, in a word how melodramatic, 
 are the ethical struggles and triumphs of his Marion, 
 his Tisbe, his Hernani, compared with Eacine's gentle 
 magnanimities, and pure compassions, and cadences of 
 delicate distress ! We might as well compare a picture 
 by Dore or Wiertz to a picture by Andrea del Sarto. 
 And Corneille's strain is in a still higher mood. No 
 other French dramatist has written a play "beau 
 comme le Cid," because no other French dramatist 
 has had a nature like Corneille's — a nature grave, re- 
 served, and solitary, but cherishing as it were a hidden 
 fervency and a secret habit of honour, and linding at 
 last its longed-for outlet in that ringing tale of chivalry 
 and war, ol' the ecstasies ol' lii'roic passion and the 
 counterchange of love and death. 
 
m.] VICTOR HUGO. 117 
 
 The society- in which these men's genius was 
 fostered may have been artificial, transitory, unjust. 
 It may have been based upon the slavery of the Com- 
 mons of France. But it contained within it certain 
 ideals which France has lost and hardly has regained. 
 A truer religion, a sounder polity, than Catholicism and 
 Divine Eight, may yet enlighten the eyes of French 
 singers with a wider vision than of old. But M. Hugo 
 is "singing before sunrise," and his horizon is lit 
 rather with some shifting radiance of the northern 
 lights than with a steady promise of the day. 
 
 Let us attempt to give distinctness to our mingled 
 judgment of M. Hugo's character and powers, first by 
 a short examination of the literary form of his poems, 
 dramas, and romances ; and then by considering his 
 political career, his personal emotions as revealed to 
 us in his works ; and, lastly, his position with regard 
 to the profoundest problems which affect mankind. 
 
 II. 
 
 The literary form in which M. Hugo's work, and 
 especially his poetry, has been cast, presents much of 
 interest. For we may take him as the leading represent- 
 ative of the romantic school so conspicuous in France 
 during the first half of this century. And this school, 
 beginning with wide pretensions, has ended, like some 
 other revolutions in cognate arts, in little more than 
 an improvement in technical procedure. Those re- 
 
118 MODERN ESSAYS. fnL 
 
 forms alone are permanent wliicli are based on a 
 thorough knowledge of the matter in hand, and it was 
 to Frencli versification that tlie Eomanticists gave 
 their most serious attention. Their professed study of 
 the history and literature of other countries was seldom 
 much more than a search for sensational incidents or 
 novel themes for declamation. But their mastery of 
 old French poetry led to a real re-discovery of disused 
 metrical effects, and a real invention of new ones. 
 And it is in these matters that M. Hugo was most 
 truly the heir of this literary revolution; his naturally 
 fine ear was taught and stimulated by the technical 
 discussions which surrounded liis early years. 
 
 It is worth while to dwell in some detail upon the 
 improvements in versification which M. Hugo has suc- 
 cessfully adopted, and of which he is in some degree 
 himself the author. These improvements consist 
 mainly in an increased richness of rhynu and an in- 
 creased variety of rhytlim} 
 
 First as to rhyme. Frenchmen, as we know, 
 designate as poor rhymes most of such rhymes as 
 English verse allows — namely, collocations of similar 
 syllables beginning with different consonants, as page 
 and rage, nuit and instruit. They give the name of 
 rich rhymes to collocations of similar syllables beginning 
 with the same consonant, as d}}crihiment and firmament, 
 vile and r?7/c, which in English would not count as 
 rhymes at all. This difference of taste seems partly 
 to depend on llie more intimate liaison existing in 
 1 Soo Note A, p. 335. 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 119 
 
 French pronunciation between the consonant and the 
 syllable which follows it — which syllable will often 
 consist of a vowel sound very rapidly pronounced, like 
 the terminations in the accented 4, or very indeter- 
 minately pronounced, like the nasal terminations in m 
 and n. If the consonant, which gives the whole char- 
 acter to terminations like these, differs in the two 
 rhyming lines, there seems to be hardly enough sub- 
 stance left in the rhyme to satisfy the ear's desire for 
 a recurring sound. This view is illustrated by such 
 English rhymes as alone and floivn, where an additional 
 richness seems sometimes gained from the presence of 
 the I in both the rhyming syllables. Mr. Smnburne 
 affords a brilliant instance of this wealth of assonance 
 in the following lines : — 
 
 " As scornful Day represses 
 Night's void and vain caresses, 
 And from her duskier tresses 
 Unwinds the gold of his ; " 
 
 where the persistence of the r sound gives to the 
 stanza a cumulative force which could hardly have 
 been otherwise attained. This so-called richness of 
 rhymes is found in M. Hugo's poems in wonderful 
 profusion. In a page of his taken at random I find 
 eleven rich rhymes to three poor ones ; in a page of 
 Eacine taken at random, seven rich rhymes and seven 
 poor ones. A difference like this implies a wonderful 
 command over language. But this is not all. A rhyme, 
 
120 MODERN ESSAYS. [rir. 
 
 to give the greatest pleasure, sliould seem fortunately 
 accidental ; it must not depend too visibl)^ upon a 
 similarity of grammatical termination. Thus in 
 English tlie words me and sea make a more satisfac- 
 tory rhyme than me and tlice, because we feel that mc 
 and thee are words formed in the same way, and that 
 the poet is taking advantage of a coincidence which 
 contains no element of surprise. Airow and narroio 
 make a better rhyme than salvation and condemnation, 
 because in the latter pair of words we feel that a Latin 
 termination supplies a consonance ready-made, and 
 dwelling, so to speak, not in the essence of the words, 
 but in their uninteresting accretion of final syllables. 
 These considerations are still more important in 
 French, where many large classes of words exist which 
 have the same final syllables. I have not space for 
 examples, but the most cursory comparison of M. Hugo 
 with (for instance) Eacine will show the admirable in- 
 genuity of the romantic poet in this respect. It is 
 strange indeed that, after the way in wliich the French 
 and English tongues have been ransacked for centuries 
 past, M. Hugo and Mr. Swinburne should have been 
 able to introduce new rhymes by dozens, and not 
 merely grotesque rhymes, which arc easy to multiply, 
 but rhymes which can be used in lofty poetry. M. 
 Hugo's prodigious wealth of vocabulary, manifest 
 throughout his works in many ways, is in notliing 
 more manifest than in this. 
 
 The question of metre is a much more c(tni]>lt'x one. 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 121 
 
 Some attempt at explanation must be made, though 
 the subject can only be treated here in the broadest 
 and most elementary manner. Speaking generally, 
 then, we know that among the Greeks and Eomans 
 accent and quantity both existed, but the structure of 
 classical Greek and Latin poetry was determined almost 
 entirely by quantity, a certain number of long and 
 short syllables, in one of certain arrangements, being 
 needed to make up a verse. The poetry of modern 
 Europe is for the most part formed on this model, with 
 the substitution of accent for quantity ; that is to say, 
 the definite arrangement of feet is retained, but accented 
 syllables fill the places formerly occupied by long ones. 
 In modern English poetry there is always a definite 
 skeleton of metre, containing a definite number of 
 accents, from which the lines may somewhat vary, but 
 to which they always tend to recur. We can never 
 be in doubt, for instance, as to whether an English 
 poem is written in iambic or anapaestic rhythm, that is 
 to say, whether the accent normally falls on every 
 second or on every third syllable. A definite metrical 
 structure, however, is not absolutely necessary to 
 poetry. Its absence has been supplied, for example, 
 by antithesis among the Hebrews, by alliteration among 
 the early English. And the trotcvdres of northern 
 Erance, from whom, rather than from the more 
 Latinised trouhadours of the south, French poetry 
 mainly descends, seem to have gradually acquiesced in 
 a still simpler scheme of poetical requirements. Many 
 
122 MODERN ESSAYS. [iir. 
 
 of them thought it enough to divide tlieir words into 
 rhyming lines containing an equal number of syllables, 
 though not necessarily an equal number of accents. 
 Perhaps this course was suggested to them 1.)y an 
 unusual difficulty which French accentuation presents 
 to the poet. The tendency, common to all the 
 Romance languages, to drop the syllables which suc- 
 ceed the accented syllable has been carried to its 
 extreme in France. For in the French tonjnie the 
 accent always falls on the last syllable of a word 
 except when that syllable has a mute c for its only 
 vowel, when the accent falls on the syllable before it. 
 
 This uniformity of accentuation makes any regular 
 metre more difficult to manage, as (neglecting the mute 
 c) a word must end wherever an accent is wanted. It 
 is perhaps mainly from this cause that it has come to 
 pass that in a line of French poetry (unless specially 
 written for music) the thing which in English poetry is 
 fixed — namely, the number of accents — is variable, 
 and tlie thincj which in English is variable — 
 namely, the number of syllables — is fixed. There 
 is no normal arrangement of feet to which a French 
 alexandrine tends to recur. All that is necessary is 
 that there should be an accent (and consequently 
 the end of a word) in the sixth place, and again in the 
 twelfth place, at the end of the line. It is therefore a 
 mistake to try to read French alexandrines as if they 
 were to be referred to an iambic type. The number of 
 accented syllables in a Frencli alexandrine varies, and 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 123 
 
 their position varies also. Sometimes the line has no 
 marked accents except in the sixth and twelfth places; 
 sometimes it has a marked iambic character, sometimes 
 an anapcestic character. Oftenest, perhaps, it is a loose 
 arrangement of anapsests interspersed with iambi. 
 Take this couplet as an example — 
 
 " Sacha'nt qu'il po rte en lui' des vengea'nces trop sA'res, 
 Tout gonfle de poison il atten'd les morsu'res." 
 
 The first of these lines begins in an iambic rhythm, and 
 ends in an anapaestic rhythm. The second line is 
 anapaestic throughout. 
 
 It would take too much space to develop this 
 theme. The important point to notice is the latitude 
 which is thus given to the poet. The structure of the 
 verse neither much confines nor much assists him ; 
 whatever metrical charm it is to have he must himself 
 supply. And it is the great glory of M. Hugo that he 
 has supplied this charm in such variety — has so far sur- 
 passed the elder poets in the number and complexity of 
 his metrical effects both in lyric, epic, and dramatic verse. 
 
 There is indeed one point for which he is often 
 praised, but in which his success is less complete than 
 at first sight a]3pears. He has taken great pains to 
 avoid the chevilles, or otiose adjectives, etc., introduced 
 by the tragedians at the ends of lines in order to secure 
 a rhyme. But the exigencies of rhyme have forced 
 him often to introduce half a line or a whole line 
 which looks as if it had a meaning of its own, but 
 
124 MODERN ESSAYS. [iii. 
 
 proves on examination to be no better than a preten- 
 tious cJievillc. Let us take as an example the well- 
 known couplet — 
 
 " Ce si^cle avait deux ans ; Rome remplarait Sparto, 
 D(^j^ Napoldon per9ait sous Bonaparte." 
 
 Here the words " Eome remplarait Sparte " have a 
 faux air of epigram. But when we discover that all 
 they mean is that the extremely slight resemblance of 
 Paris to Sparta in 1793 was succeeded by its still 
 slighter resemblance to Eome in 1802, and that the 
 word " Sparte " has been dragged in at any cost for the 
 rhyme's sake, we feel that a cheville, like some other 
 concessions to the intractable nature of things, is least 
 offensive when it asks for no admiration. 
 
 On the other hand, M. Hugo's use of cnjamhcmcnt 
 — the interlacing of one line with the next — which 
 the tragedians avoid, and his habitual use of the mot 
 proprc, or really descriptive word, instead of the insipid 
 paraphrases once in fasliion, are conspicuous instances 
 of the skill with which he has extended the conven- 
 tional limits of versification. And this extension was 
 much needed in France. Few nations have had to 
 contend with a language less poetically flexible, a 
 syntax more infertile, a vocabulary more confined. 
 And few nations have laid upon themselves laws of 
 poetical dignity so rigorous and arbitrary — laws im- 
 posed not by rhythmical instinct, but l)y a tyrannical 
 spirit of symmetry and ]i()m]) ; laws whose fullilment 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 125 
 
 could bring little pleasure, while their infraction was 
 punished with a bitterness of censure such as in most 
 countries is kept for moral faults alone. 
 
 The changes adopted by M. Hugo, therefore, have 
 been almost wholly advantageous. Where it was well 
 to make the old rules more stringent, as in the case of 
 rhymes, he has done so ; where it was well to relax 
 them, as in the case of the cnjamhement, he has relaxed 
 them ; where a wholly new life and variety were 
 needed — namely, in the rhythmical structure of the 
 three main classes of poetry — he has infused that life. 
 He has revived what was good in early French poetry, 
 and has added new artifices of his own. And he has 
 outlived the opposition to his innovations, and is now 
 himself an accepted model of French versification. 
 
 It must not be supposed that M. Hugo is the only 
 modern French poet who has achieved results of this 
 kind. The works of Lamartine and De Musset, for 
 instance, contain examples of metrical charm which it 
 would be hard to surpass. But M. Hugo covers more 
 ground than they. His works form an unfailing 
 repertory both of metrical and of rhetorical artifices; and 
 it is not extravagant to say that he has shown a more 
 complete command over the resources of the French 
 language than any previous author. 
 
 If we are asked to what rank among French poets 
 M. Hugo is entitled by his possession of this unique 
 power over the vehicle of poetry, we find it hard to 
 reply. The analogy of Mr. Swinburne at once occurs. 
 
126 MODERN ESSAYS. [in 
 
 Most persons wlio take this kind of virtuoso interest in 
 language and metre Avill probably consider that ^Ir. 
 Swinburne has shown a power of handling the Englisli 
 tongue which no other poet has ever surpassed. And, 
 on the other hand, in M. Hugo, as well as in the 
 English poet, there is something of that unreality 
 which, as it has been well said, often makes it 
 necessary for the reader of Mr. Swinburne's most 
 impassioned poems to contribute the sincerity of 
 feeling himself. And if in ]\I. Hugo there is some- 
 times a greater weight and force — if Lcs Chdtimcnts is 
 on the whole a stronger book than Songs hcfore Sim- 
 rise, yet there is surely nothing in M. Hugo to equal 
 Mr. Swinburne's highest flights — no elevation like that 
 of the lines Super Flumina Babylonis, which show us 
 once more with what a glory of inspiration a great 
 poet can praise a great hero. The poetical sujoeriority 
 of the English language to the French tells both ways 
 in this comparison. On the one hand, the lack of 
 richness, majesty, and glamour in the French tongue 
 will sometimes seem to leave M. Hugo's best poetical 
 artifices naked, as it were, before our eyes — will make 
 us think in half-disgust that this, after all, is what 
 poetry as poetry comes to. On the other hand, the 
 very jejunencss of tlie language fits it for the produc- 
 tion of a peculiar class of ell'ects — effects of crystalline 
 clearness and triumphant simplicity, which give us 
 perhai)S a more magical sense of art which has con- 
 cealed its art than any English versification can olfer. 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 127 
 
 But I must content myself with indicating this parallel, 
 without attempting to adjudge a poetic rank which 
 must depend so largely upon what it is with which the 
 reader desires that poetry should supply him. 
 
 That potency of imagination in M. Hugo to which 
 I have already referred — his power of projecting him- 
 self, as it were, into some strange and strong situation 
 with all his ordinary intellectual resources still about 
 him — is of course visible not only in his poems, but in 
 his plays and romances. These, however, are so 
 familiar to English readers, and have received such 
 ample appreciation, that I do not propose to discuss 
 them at length, especially since they seem to me to 
 constitute rather the outworks than the central citadel 
 of their author's fame. For the imasjinative realisation 
 which is so admirable in certain crowning moments of 
 these stories has hardly been extended to their general 
 conduct or their inner consistency. And an historical 
 novel can hardly be quite satisfactory unless it be, like 
 Scott's, the outcome of a life which has identified itself 
 from childhood with the scene, and almost with the 
 age, described. At the least it ought, like Bomola, to 
 be the flower which blossoms from a study as accurate 
 and profound as would be needed for an indej)endent 
 history. In the picture in Les MisiraUcs of Paris early 
 in this century, M. Hugo's art fulfils these conditions. 
 But when he describes scenes or places more remote, 
 he rapidly loses verisimilitude, till L Homme qui rit, 
 the scene of which professes to be laid in Queen Anne's 
 
128 MODERN ESSAYS. [m. 
 
 Enirland, would have won more credence if it had been 
 given out as an episode occurring in the island of 
 Barataria. 
 
 The interest, therefore, of these romances is in great 
 measure independent of their historical framework. It 
 is the interest which we feel in seeing life treated by a 
 man who can deal with emotion in large masses and 
 move freely among great ideas. The literary artifices 
 employed may be sometimes unworthy of high art. 
 We may be often reminded of the crude touches by 
 which Dickens, or certain authors much inferior to 
 Dickens, produce their powerful general effects. But 
 at any rate the effect is produced, and Esmeralda, 
 Bishop Myriel, Fan tine, Valjean, Gilliatt, Gavroche, 
 have entered definitively into that gallery of strongly- 
 realised characters whose substantive existence seems 
 almost to be demonstrated by the " permanent possibili- 
 ties of sensation" which their names evoke in our hearts. 
 
 M. Hugo's dramas, again, exhibit his strong and his 
 weak points in a concentrated form. His mastery 
 over rhythm and rhyme, his wealth of declamation 
 and epigram, are seen at their best in Hcrnani and Lc 
 Boi s'amusc ; and his instinct for all that is stirring, 
 grandiose, and emphatic in human ailiiirs, aijds him in 
 the presentation of scenic effects and the conduct of 
 rapid action. The more must we regret to iind tluit 
 these striking dramas contain, one may almost say, no 
 truth whatever ; neither truth to liistory nor truth to 
 nature. It is not worth while to analyse the plot of 
 
iir.] VICTOR HUGO. 129 
 
 each play. A glance at Cromioell or Marie Tudor will 
 be enough to show an English reader that M. Hugo 
 can hardly have made any serious attempt to maintain 
 historical probability. But the unreality of the per- 
 sonages in themselves is still more disappointing, as 
 being in such direct opposition to the precepts of M. 
 Hugo's own school. Eacine and Corneille create, for 
 the most part, characters which are typical rather than 
 individual. A few leading qualities are given, and the 
 action of circumstances is made to illustrate these 
 qualities in a simple and massive manner, with no 
 attempt to place before us, as Shakespeare does, a 
 living personage conceived from within, and presenting 
 a personality in itself indefinable, but capable of holding 
 together a complex web of mental and moral charac- 
 teristics. But the Eomanticists professed to imitate 
 Shakespeare rather than Eacine in this respect ; and 
 the modern school of French drama has produced many 
 realistic and many delicate sketches. M. Hugo claims 
 more loudly than any one that it is thus that he 
 understands drama ; but the very words in which he 
 describes his way of going to work are enough to 
 explain its comparative failure. 
 
 " Eh bien ! qu'est-ce que c'est que Lucrezia Borgia % 
 Prenez la difFormite morale la plus hideuse, la plus repous- 
 sante, la plus complete ; . . . et maintenant melez a toute 
 cette difformit6 morale un sentiment pur, le plus pur que 
 la femme puisse 6prouver, le sentiment matemel ; dans 
 voire monstre mettez une mere ; et le monstre interessera ; 
 VOL. II. K 
 
130 MODERN ESSAYS. [m. 
 
 et le monstre fera pleurer, et cette creature qui faisait pcur 
 fera pitie, et cette ame difforme deviendra presque belle 
 a vos yeux. Ainsi, la paternity sanctifiant la difformite 
 physique, voila Le Roi s' amuse ; la maternity purifiant la 
 difformit6 morale, voil^ Lacrke Borgia." 
 
 This system of predetermined paradox, of embodied 
 antithesis, is surely not likely to produce figures which 
 will seem to live before us. Imagination is thrown 
 away when it devotes itself to imagining what is so 
 grotesquely impossible. How differently does a real 
 knowledoje of the human heart clothe itself in fiction ! 
 Take, for instance, the way in which the fraternal 
 affection between Tom and Maggie Tulliver is treated 
 in TJte Mill on the Floss ; its half-animal growth, its 
 dumb persistence, its misunderstandings and repulsions, 
 and then its momentary self-revelation in the ecstasy 
 of death. These primary emotions are not simply spells 
 to conjure by, magical ingredients which we can throw 
 into the cauldron of human passions and change it 
 in a moment from blood-red to sky-blue. They are 
 the simple impulses of complex action ; they are life- 
 long forces which modify the character as a partial 
 access to liQ;ht modifies the ijrowth of a tree. 
 
 No doubt it is difficult to imply all this within the 
 narrow limits and amid the thronging incidents of 
 a play ; difficult to paint an emotional history which 
 shall be catastrophic without being discontinuous. ^M. 
 Hugo's catastrophes are too apt to snap the thread of 
 his story. Tribuulet as a spiteful court fuol is despi- 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 131 
 
 cable ; Triboulet as an injured father is almost sublime ; 
 but there is little more connection between his speeches 
 in the two characters than is involved in the appear- 
 ance of the same name at their head. The want of 
 any real conception of the interaction of human beings 
 upon each other is felt throughout. The most potent 
 genius cannot create other personalities wholly out of 
 its own : the greatest like the least of us, if he would 
 understand his fellows, needs laborious observation, 
 patient analysis, and, above all, that power of sym- 
 pathy which steals like daylight into the heart's hidden 
 chambers in whose lock no key will turn. 
 
 It is the want of knowledge, the want of truth, 
 which has left M. Hugo no " reincarnation of Shake- 
 speare," but only the most magnificent of melo- 
 dramatists. 
 
 The want of truth ! It is hardly credible how this 
 moral defect, this reckless indifference to accuracy of 
 assertion, has infected M. Hugo's works. We could 
 forgive an absence both of the historical and the 
 scientific instinct, if our author at least took care to be 
 correct in details. We could forgive carelessness in 
 details if a true instinct for history or for science 
 determined the general effect. But too often all is 
 wrong together, and, worse still, this quagmire of 
 falsity is surrounded with placards emphatically 
 announcing that every inch of the ground is firm. 
 
 I have neither the knowledge nor the space to go 
 through the hundredth part of M. Hugo's blunders. 
 
132 MODERN ESSAYS. [in. 
 
 Nihil tetifjit quod non confiulcrit. Engineers and 
 j^hysicists will explain the absurdity of the engineering 
 and the physics which make up so large a part of Les 
 Travailleurs de la Mer. Men familiar with the 
 languages of Brittany and of Guernsey have shown 
 how M. Hugo has transferred dozens of words from a 
 Guernsey dictionary to put into the mouths of Breton 
 peasants. Men who know the slang and the ruffians 
 of Paris will bear witness to the gratuitous arrogance 
 of his pretentions to this unsavoury lore, in which he 
 is, as compared with Gaboriau or Zola, as a child to a 
 professor. We can all judge of his etymology of the 
 name of that famous Scotch " headland," " The First of 
 the Fourth." We can all estimate the verisimilitude of 
 the tale of the fortunes of that great peer, Lord Lin- 
 na3us Clancharlie, a voluntary exile from his truly 
 British country-seats of Hell-kerters, Homble, and 
 Gumdraith. Yet, if we are to take M. Hugo's word for 
 it, he knows more about every country in Europe than 
 the natives themselves. " II est bien entendu," he says 
 in a note to Buy Bias, on w^hich M. Blanche's sarcasm 
 has fixed, " il est hien entendu que dans Euy Bias, 
 comme dans tons les ouvrages precedents de I'auteur, 
 tons les details d'erudition sont scrupuleusement 
 exacts." Methinks M. Hugo doth protest too much. 
 For in support of his assertion that he is intimately 
 acquainted with the language, literature, and secret 
 history of Spain, he deigns only to furnish us with an 
 explanation of tlie word Almojarifazyo. Almojarifazgo! 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 133 
 
 One is tempted to embark upon a " key to all mytho- 
 logies " on the strength of a sound acquaintance with 
 the etymology of Abracadabra. 
 
 There is one subject — his own ISTotre-Dame — on 
 which we might have trusted that M. Hugo would have 
 been safe from attack. But when we come on a de- 
 scription of this sanctuary as consisting of " deux 
 tours de granit faites par Charlemagne " our confidence 
 vanishes with great suddenness. For it is certain that 
 there is not an ounce of granite in the towers of Notre- 
 Dame, and that Charlemagne had just as much to do 
 with building them as Caligula. 
 
 It is of course on the moral side that these inac- 
 curacies are most important. There is no question 
 as to M. Hugo's powers of acquisition, comprehension, 
 memory. He might easily have become a real savant, 
 a real historian, if he had given to other subjects the 
 same kind of attention which he has given to versifica- 
 tion and grammar, if he had cared as much for what 
 he said as for the style in which he said it. But here 
 once more his self- adoration has interfered. It has 
 taught him that he is sujpra scientiam, that neither 
 ]N"ature nor History can possibly have any secrets 
 hidden from him, that a royal road has taken him to 
 the very source and fount of things. And when he 
 asserts that some preposterous misdescription of nature, 
 some staring historical blunder, is absolutely correct, 
 we must not think that he is wilfully trying to deceive 
 us. We must remember how easy a man finds it to 
 
134 MODERN ESSAYS. [iii. 
 
 forget that external facts have any existence independ- 
 ent of his own mind ; how soon the philosopher's ipse 
 dixit becomes convincing to the philosopher himself. 
 
 From the literary let us turn to the political side 
 of M. Hugo's career. And here especially we shall 
 find him " French of the French," summing up in one 
 life the conflicting tendencies of his time. 
 
 The Frenchmen whose youth fell early in this cen- 
 tury were born into a moral chaos. They awoke, as 
 it were, in a desecrated temple, with a shattered Dagon 
 stretched across its floor. It was plain that Napoleon 
 had ruined France, and yet there was no idol to set 
 up in his stead. The Bourbons, brought back by 
 strangers, seemed to symbolise only the humiliation of 
 France — the loss even of that military glory which 
 she had accepted as a substitute for the freedom and 
 virtue which the Eevolution had proclaimed so often, 
 but had never enthroned. Aspiring youths were hard 
 put to it to create an ideal. It was almost a chance 
 whether they became Ultramontane and Eoyalist, or 
 dreamt of a far-off republic, too often discounted at the 
 barricades. But the mass of men throughout the first 
 half of the century were slowly falling back into the 
 Napoleonic illusion ; they had not virtue enough to 
 save them from admiring what was without virtue, and 
 thus from ultimately expiating their worship of ignoble 
 glory by fellowship in ignoble ruin. Victor Hugo's 
 political attitude was determined mainly by personal 
 sympathies. He was brought up by a Eoyalist mother,. 
 
rii.] VICTOR HUGO. 135 
 
 and spent his early youth with the young Eomanticists, 
 who were, for the most part, EoyaUst and Catholic. 
 The Odes et Ballades and some later poems express this 
 phase of his life. 
 
 The death of his brother Eugene recalled his father 
 from a kind of voluntary exile. The Comte Hugo had 
 been a Bonapartist general, always in semi- disgrace for 
 his republican opinions — the Baron de Pontmercy of 
 Lcs MisdraNes, where Marius represents the author 
 himself. From his father the young poet learnt Kepub- 
 licanism, and added of his own motion a worship of 
 the gTcat conqueror whose character in some points 
 resembled his own — " Napoleon, soleil dont je suis le 
 Memnon." 
 
 We need not condemn this change of front. Young 
 men will often veer round rather abruptly on their first 
 contact with actual life. For each set of views has a 
 poetry of its own, which may attract the imagination 
 of youth, but which is apt to appear unreal when con- 
 fronted with this mixed world. And a reaction from 
 ideals which we can no longer idealise is responsible 
 for no small share of our working principles. 
 
 It is more important to notice how superficial has 
 been M. Hugo's grasp, whether of the monarchical or 
 of the republican conception of society. Charles the 
 Tenth may not have been an inspiring person. But 
 the relation between France and her kings, one of the 
 most imposing themes in history, might have suggested 
 something better than the hanaliUs of the " Funeral 
 
136 MODERN ESSAYS. [in. 
 
 Ode " in the Voix InUricurcs. And if the shallowness 
 here be ascribed to immaturity, it must be replied that 
 we find the same vague and empty rhetoric in M. 
 Hugo's praises of the Eepublic. And yet there is no 
 subject on which a political preacher in France needs 
 to be more explicit. For under the name of Eepublic 
 are included two forms of government as dissimilar as 
 forms of government can be. A republic may be con- 
 structed, like the American Eepublic, on individualistic 
 principles, reducing the action of government to a 
 minimum, and leaving every one undisturbed in the 
 pursuit of private well-being. Or it may be con- 
 structed on socialistic principles, such as those which 
 Fourier or Saint-Simon laid down, involving a profound 
 reconstruction of society and a levelling of ranks and 
 fortunes. A republic of the first type may yet be 
 permanently established in France. But its danger 
 lies in its failure to satisfy the enthusiasts of any party. 
 For it is the second type of Eepublic towards which 
 the eager spirits of the great French towns seem in 
 reality to tend. But this socialistic democracy has 
 never yet been able to manifest itself in a practicable 
 form, or to avoid even such obvious roads to ruin as 
 political economy can point out. Surely the preacher 
 of the Eepublic in France should say which of these 
 types or what modification of them he desires — should 
 explain how far the United States answer to his idi'al, 
 or to what extent and with wliat safeguards he tliinks 
 Ills country prepared to accopt a communistic scheme. 
 
III.] VICTOK HUGO. 137 
 
 No real instruction on these points can be got from M. 
 Hugo's writings or speeches. Poets are not bound to 
 be politicians. But when a poet claims also to be a 
 statesman and a prophet, he ought to give a reason for 
 the faith that is in him ; he ought to show some sign 
 of having loosened the political knots by reflection 
 before he cuts them by epigram and imagery. If he 
 merely boxes the rhetorical compass — if he merely 
 gives us a series of declamations on the glories of the 
 Bourbons, of Napoleon, of the EepubHc which is to 
 be — we cannot attach much value to his professed 
 inspiration. 
 
 It may be said that there is at least one social 
 reform on which M. Hugo has dwelt consistently 
 through all his phases — the abolition of the punish- 
 ment of death. Like those branches of mathematics 
 which involve infinite quantities, any question con- 
 cerned with human life and death is a favourite lurk- 
 ing-place of fallacies. We will speak here only of M. 
 Hugo's ground of objection, which lies in the cruelty of 
 the punishment. So far as the cruelty consists in the 
 pain of anticipation, that pain is divisible into two 
 factors — regret at leaving a family unprovided for, and 
 actual terror. The first factor, if felt at aU, is felt 
 equally by the convict who is going to the galleys for 
 life. And the second factor we may surely neglect. 
 If a man has left his neighbour's family mourning, we 
 need not be tender over a few days of selfish terror 
 for himself. Then comes, according to M. Hugo, the 
 
138 MODERN ESSAYS. [iii. 
 
 crowning cruelty of removing him from this workl. 
 We may reply that if we remove him from his home 
 to a prison for life we are pretty sure that we are doing 
 him an injury. But if, instead of this, we remove 
 him from the earth altogether, we have no means of 
 knowing whether we are doing him an injury or not. 
 Surely there are plenty of other benevolent causes to 
 be taken up which, if less susceptible of pathetic advo- 
 cacy, are also less dependent on a turn of metaphysics. 
 But in fact, during the years preceding the coup 
 d'etat, M. Hugo was increasingly in want of something 
 to say. His style continued to improve ; his mastery 
 over rhythm and rhyme grew more magical than ever. 
 But each succeeding volume of verse — Zes Voix Inte- 
 rieures, Zes Bayons et les Omhres — was weaker than 
 the last. It was supposed that he had written him- 
 self out. The Eevolution of 1848 did not bring him 
 to the front. But in July 1851 he delivered in 
 the Assembly an impassioned speech against Louis - 
 Napoleon, who, till his treasonable designs on the Ee- 
 public became manifest, had been the poet's intimate 
 friend. After the coup d'Uat and a few days of futile 
 counterplotting, which all the literary artifices of the 
 Histoire d'un Crime can hardly make impressive, M. 
 Hugo made his escape from France. From Jersey and 
 Guernsey he despatched that marvellous series of songs 
 and satires which were passed secretly from hand to 
 hand in Paris, and read with tears and cries of rage 
 during that national paralysis which ended in the 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 139 
 
 Second Empire. Les Chdtiments is perhaps M. Hugo's 
 best work. Sarcasm, declamation, song, all his powers 
 culminate and are concentrated there. Can anything 
 be more melodious, simpler, more touching, than these 
 last words of a dying exile ? — 
 
 " Un proscrit, lass6 de soufFrir, 
 Mourait ; calme, il fermait son livre ; 
 Et je lui dis : ' Pourquoi mourir ? ' 
 II me r6pondit : ' Pourquoi vivre ? ' 
 Puis il reprit : ' Je me d6livre. 
 Adieu ! je meurs. N6ron-Scapin 
 Met aux fers la France fl^trie.' . . . 
 — On ne pent pas vivre sans pain ; 
 On ne pent pas non plus vivre sans la patrie. — 
 
 '■ • • • * Je meurs de ne plus voir les champs 
 Ou je regardais I'auhe naitre, 
 De ne plus entendre les chants 
 Que j'entendais de ma fen^tre. 
 Men ame est ou je ne puis etre. 
 Sous quatre planches de sapin, 
 Enterrez-moi dans la prairie.' 
 — On ne pent pas vivre sans pain ; 
 On ne pent pas non plus vivre sans la patrie. — " 
 
 Has sarcasm ever barbed itself with bitterer em- 
 phasis than in the following song ? — 
 
 " Sa grandeur ^blouit Thistoire. 
 Quinze ans, il fut 
 Le dieu qui trainait la victoire 
 Sur un affut ; 
 
140 MODERN ESSAYS. [ni. 
 
 L'Eiirope sous sa loi guerriere 
 
 Se d6battit. — 
 Toi, son singe, marche derri^re, 
 
 Petit, petit. 
 
 " Napoleon dans la bataille, 
 
 Grave et serein, 
 Guidait k travers la mitraille 
 
 L'aigle d'airain. 
 II antra siir le pont d'Arcole, 
 
 H en sortit. — 
 Voici de Tor, viens, pille et vole, 
 
 Petit, petit. 
 
 " Berlin, Vienne, ^taient ses maitresses ; 
 
 II les for9ait, 
 Leste, et prenant Ics forteresses 
 
 Par le corset ; 
 II triompha de cent bastilles 
 
 Qii'il investit. — 
 Voici pour toi, voici des filles, 
 
 Petit, petit 
 
 " II passait les monts et les plaines, 
 Tenant en main 
 La palme, la foudre et les renes 
 
 Du genre humain ; 
 II etait ivre de sa gloire 
 
 Qui retentit. — 
 Voici du sang, accours, viens boire, 
 Petit, petit. 
 
 " Qnand il tomba, lachant lo monde, 
 L'immense mcr 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 141 
 
 Guvrit a, sa chute profonde 
 
 Le gouffre amer ; 
 II y plongea, sinistre archange, 
 
 Et s'engloutit. — 
 Toi, tu te noiras dans la fange, 
 
 Petit, petit." 
 
 Finally I must quote the song which seems to me 
 the best of all, expressing as it does with a sound so 
 ringing, with so passionate an intensity, that strange 
 antithesis in the " twy-natured " French — their capa- 
 city at once for base materialism and for ecstatic 
 ideality — the way in which the whole nation will 
 seem suddenly to cast its slough as a serpent does, 
 and to leap to life at a word. 
 
 " II est des jours abjects oil, seduits par la joie 
 Sans honneur, 
 Les peuples au succes se livrent, triste proie 
 Du bonheur. 
 
 " Alors des nations que berce un fatal songe 
 Dans leur lit, 
 La vertu coule et tonibe ainsi que d'une eponge 
 L'eau jaillit. 
 
 *' Alors devant le mal, le vice, la folie, 
 Les vivants 
 Imitent les saluts du vil roseau qui plie 
 Sous les vents. 
 
 " Alors festins et jeux ; rien de ce que dit Tame 
 Ne s'entend ; 
 On boit, on mange, on chante, on danse, on est inf^me 
 
 Et content. 
 
142 MODERN ESSAYS. [iii. 
 
 ** Le crime heureux, servi par d'immondes ministres, 
 Sous les cieux 
 Kit, et vous frissonnez, grands ossements sinistres 
 Des aieux. 
 
 " On vit honteux, les yeux troubles, le pas oblique, 
 H6bet6 ; 
 Tout-^-coup un clairon jette aux vents : Rupublique ! 
 Liberie ! 
 
 " Et le monde, 6veill^ par cette apre fanfare, 
 Est pareil 
 Aux ivrognes de nuit qu'en se levant eflfare 
 Le soleil." 
 
 A volume could not paint more vividly than these 
 magnificent lines that characteristic shock and awaken- 
 in cr — that divine and unreasonable fire — which seems 
 to run through Paris in time of revolution like 
 Rumour through the Hellenic host in the crisis of 
 victory. But where the song ends the story has too 
 often ended. How often has some noble protest, 
 some just and armed appeal, sounded along the streets 
 and Boulevards like the angel's trump, and has been 
 followed by no Great Assize, no new and heavenly 
 order, but by uncertain voices, angry eyes, confusion 
 worse confounded, and the old round of frauil and 
 tyranny begun anew ! 
 
 It is guidance, not awakening, which France needs ; 
 wisdom, not impulse ; a sincere self-condemnation for 
 the sins of the past before she builds her castles in 
 the future air. 
 
til] victor HUGO. 143 
 
 Few persons will now be concerned to defend 
 Napoleon the Third, that most inglorious representa- 
 tive of glory. Thus far it is easy to sympathise with 
 Les Chdtiments and NapoUon le Petit. But we in 
 England cannot consent to throw, as M. Hugo too 
 often throws, the blame of the establishment of this 
 base empire wholly on those who profited thereby. 
 We must hold that every town, every village, every 
 adult in France were sharers to some degree in the 
 shame of such an overthrow at the hands of such men. 
 Least of all can those be absolved who made the 
 ignoble crimes of the Second Empire possible by their 
 adoration of the splendid crimes of the First. When 
 " the Memnon of Napoleon " complained that 
 
 " Ce voleur de nuit alluma sa lanterne 
 Au soleil d'Austerlitz," 
 
 he should have asked himself whether he had done 
 well in helping to keep the sun of Austerlitz alight. 
 
 This and much other fault might be found with 
 the temper of M. Hugo's exile. We miss the high 
 self-forgetfulness, the resolute justice, of Mazzini 
 banished and defamed. But the great fact remains. 
 M. Hugo, in scorn of amnesties and invitations, lived 
 out nineteen years of exile ; his voice did not fail nor 
 his heart falter ; he stood on his rock in the free 
 British seas like Elijah on Carmel, spokesman and 
 champion of all those who had not bowed the knee to 
 Baal. It is this exile that has given dignity to liig 
 
144 MODERN ESSAYS. [in. 
 
 life ; it is banishment from France that has made liiiii 
 one of her heroes. Ferierat, nisi periisset. 
 
 And when at last that evil empire set in blood the 
 exile's triumph came. From Brussels, on the eve of 
 re-entering Paris, he wrote some of his most splendid 
 verses — verses in which all that there is of ardent in 
 his spirit, of majestic in his personality, seems to lift 
 and carry us along with him as in a chariot of fire. 
 
 " Alors qu'on entendait ta fanfare do fete 
 Retentir, 
 Paris, je t'ai fui comrae le noir proph^te 
 Fuyait Tyr. 
 
 " Quand I'empire en Gomorrlie avait chang6 Lut^ce, 
 Morne, amer, 
 Je me suis envole dans la grande tristcsse 
 De la mer. 
 
 " La, tragique ; c^coutant ta chanson, ton delire, 
 Bruits confus, 
 J'opposais k ton luxe, a ton reve, h. ton lire, 
 Un refus. 
 
 " Mais aujourd'hui qu'arrive avec sa sombre foulo 
 Attila, 
 Aujourd'hui que le nionde aiitour de toi sV'croule, 
 Me voila. 
 
 " France, etre sur ta claie k I'hcure oh Ton te tratne 
 Aux chcvcux, 
 O nui mere, et porter uion anneau de ta cliaiiio, 
 Je le veux ! 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 145 
 
 " J'accours, puisque sur toi la bombe et la mitraille 
 Ont crache. 
 Tu me regarderas debout sur ta muraille, 
 Ou couch^. 
 
 *' Et peut-etre, en ta terre ou brille I'esp^rance, 
 Pur flambeau, 
 Pour prix de mon exil, tu m'accorderas, France, 
 Un tombeau." 
 
 M. Hugo's career since his return to Paris need be 
 but briefly recounted. He remained in Paris during 
 the siege, and his poems served as a rallying-point of 
 patriotism, hatred of the Prussians, and hope of re- 
 venge. L Annie Terrible, it is true, gives a most crude 
 and violent expression to the heated feelings of the 
 time. Its contrast with M. Eenan's writings of the 
 same date shows all the difference between the patriot 
 who is before all things a philosopher and the patriot 
 who is before all things a rhetorician. Where the one 
 seeks to prove how contrary to the true interests and 
 instincts of Germany as a whole is the Prussian spirit 
 of military conquest, the other out-herods Herod in 
 his comparisons of the German Emperor to every 
 pickpocket and cut -throat in history. Of course 
 M. Hugo's method of treatment was the more popular 
 of the two. At the close of the siege the Parisians 
 elected him second only to M. Louis Blanc on the 
 long list of members for the Department of the Seine, 
 February 8, 1871. He resigned his seat at Bordeaux 
 on the 8 th of March because the Assembly would not 
 
 VOL. II. L 
 
146 MODERN ESSAYS. [m. 
 
 listen to a speech from him in honour of Garibaldi. 
 The sudden death of his son on the 13th of March 
 sent him on family business to Brussels, where he 
 remained during the Commune, ^^^lile he was in 
 Brussels the Belgian Government announced that it 
 would not receive escaped Communists as political exiles. 
 M. Hugo wrote to a newspaper to say that he would 
 receive them in his house at Brussels. On this his 
 windows were broken by a mob of young Belgians 
 " flown with insolence and wine," who raised the 
 singular cry of " A bas Lord Clancharlie 1 " but were 
 unable to beat in the door, which the nursery-maid 
 had wisely bolted. Expelled from Belgium, M. Hugo 
 returned to Paris. He was made a Senator, and has 
 spoken repeatedly in the Senate and elsewhere. 
 
 Most of the measures which M. Hugo has during 
 these years recommended — the rejection of the treaty 
 of peace, the retention in the Assembly of the members 
 for the ceded provinces, the recognition of the " riglit 
 to labour," with its accompanying " State workshops," 
 and the issue of bank-notes bearing interest, hillcts de 
 hanque a rcvenu — have been such as to inspire in 
 English politicians little confidence in his judgment. 
 But, in truth, his work during this critical period has 
 lain less in the advocacy of any particular measures 
 tlian in the delivery of stirring and liighly-wrouglit 
 discourses on tlie text that Paris is supreme; Paris 
 is holy ; Paris is the capital of the world, and includes 
 witliin luTsclf the progress and tlie hopes of man. 
 
III.J VICTOR HUGO. 147 
 
 Outside France we need hardly discuss the truth of 
 these propositions ; a more practical question is whether 
 in France's deep depression it might possibly have 
 been wise to proclaim them — whether, in Plato's 
 words, it can ever be well for a public man to play 
 the part of the confectioner rather than of the physician. 
 On this delicate point a French and an English critic 
 will be apt to differ ; but both must admire the extra- 
 ordinary vigour of style and thought, the contagious 
 enthusiasm and ardour of spirit, which enable this 
 " old man eloquent " to lead at will " that fierce de- 
 mocracy" in any direction except into the secrets of 
 their own bosoms and the sins of their own past. 
 
 " French of the French ! " Our sober English 
 maxims fail us when we would take counsel for a 
 nation which can unite so much that we think despi- 
 cable with so much that all must think great, which 
 can keep her hope high through ruin, through chaos, 
 and through shame, and which, when she least is 
 leading the nations, will never quit her claim to the 
 primacy of the world. Let us say with M. Eenan 
 that when a nation brings forth a Universal Idea it is 
 at the cost of much shattering of her own frame, much 
 exhaustion of her separate life; that it was by cen- 
 turies of national humiliation that Greece expiated 
 her creation of science and of art, and Italy her 
 foundation of the Empire and the Papacy, and Germany 
 h^r assertion of the freedom of the thought of man ; 
 and that the French Kevolution, though a lesser thing 
 
148 MODERN ESSAYS. [m. 
 
 than these, was great ; and therefore that till the echo 
 of the thunderpeals which announced that birth has 
 died away, we shall see the strongest sons of France 
 still staggering blindly beneath " the too vast orb of 
 her fate." 
 
 III. 
 
 Turning from M. Hugo's political career to such 
 of his personal emotions as he has chosen to reveal to 
 us in his poems, we shall find the same rich and puis- 
 sant nature shut in by the same moral barriers which 
 we have already defined. He who cannot w^illingly 
 take any but a central place may have friendships 
 and loves in plenty, but there will be a point where 
 all these will cease. The self-w^orshipper may not enter 
 the shrine of another soul. He can never know an in- 
 timate and absolute comradeship, a second conscience 
 in the heart of a friend. Still less can he experience 
 that rarest joy of a man and a woman's love, when the 
 man feels with a proud triumph her stainless spirit 
 outsoar his own, and bear him with her to a paradise 
 which she both creates and reveals. These things, to 
 such as have known them, are the very substance and 
 dclitrht of Hfe. Yet much remains. All that is bene- 
 volent, protective, paternal — compassion for the poor 
 and the suffering, loving joy in childhood and infancy, 
 loving remembrance of the dead — all this a man may 
 feel without comi)romising the dignity of tlie idol 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 149 
 
 seated in his breast. And all this — pressed down, as 
 it were, and running over — is to be found in M. 
 Hugo's works. It is with him as we often see it 
 with very vain but kindly people, who pour themselves 
 with a prodigality of warm-heartedness into those 
 affections where no equality can be claimed or desired. 
 Valjean the convict, Gilliatt the fisherman, Gavroche 
 the gamin de Paris, divide the honours of his romances. 
 And the. poems to his baby grandchildren are the true 
 crown and glory of his age. 
 
 His amatory poems have not carried the world with 
 them. More tact, perhaps, than he has deigned to 
 nse is necessary if we would touch on our own suc- 
 cesses. He has naturally wished to descant on the 
 being (or beings) who watch with mute devotion the 
 thinker's brow, or kindle into rapture at the occasional 
 largess of his smile. But he has forgotten that the 
 heart of the male reader, unless it be skilfully sur- 
 prised, is apt to be hardened by an obscure instinct 
 which tells him that there is something almost shock- 
 ing in the notion of a woman's adoring any man but 
 himself The truth is that the pleasures of love, like 
 all pleasures, require a certain element of self-sup- 
 pression before they can be made typical in art ; the 
 want which separates patronage and desire from chivalry 
 and passion is more easily felt than described ; nor can 
 we make the lover's fortunes our own till his love has 
 dethroned him from his own heart. 
 
 And yet perhaps this is to moralise overmuch. Some 
 
150 MODERN ESSAYS. [in. 
 
 love-poems there must be in which these serious con- 
 siderations find no place — some careless bird-songs 
 of an emotion which existed before morality had its 
 birth. 
 
 " Si tu veux, faisons un r^ve, 
 
 Montons sur deux palefrois ; 
 
 Tu m'emmenes, je t'enl^ve. 
 
 L'oiseau chante dans les hois. 
 
 " Je suis ton maitre et ta proie ; 
 Partons, c'est la fin du jour ; 
 Men cheval sera la joie. 
 Ton cheval sera I'amour. 
 
 " Nous ferons toucher leiirs tetes ; 
 Les voyages sont aises ; 
 Nous donnerons a ces betes 
 Une avoine de baisers. 
 
 " Allons-nous-en par la terre, 
 Sur nos deux chevaux charmants, 
 Dans I'azur, dans le mystere, 
 Dans les 6blouissements ! 
 
 " Tu seras dame et moi comte ; 
 Viens, mon coeur s'(5panouit, 
 Viens, nous conterons ce contc 
 Aux 6toiles de la nuit." 
 
 These exquisite stanzas from Eviradnus may fairly be 
 compared with Mr. Swinburne's If you were ApHVs 
 lady J and I were lord in May, in the sense which they 
 give of all the dash of playful adventure, the amorous 
 eagerness of a flying and irresponsible joy. 
 
 The love of Marius for Cosette in Les Mis6rahlcs 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 151 
 
 attempts a higher flight, and reflects the poet's most 
 fervent days. And here there is much that is pas- 
 sionate and sweet. But there is, too, a strong element 
 of selfishness in the lovers' conduct towards every one 
 but each other. And the attempted delineation of 
 delicate innocence suggests the effort of an imperfect 
 memory. " Le pur et seraphique Marius," we are told, 
 " eut ^t^ plutot capable de monter chez une fille pub- 
 lique que de soulever la robe de Cosette k la hauteur 
 de la cheville." A sentence like this somehow fails to 
 convey the impression of seraphic purity. We need 
 not dwell on tliis topic. But I must allude to one 
 scene in L Homme qui rit which Mr. Swinburne has 
 highly praised. This is the scene where Josiane offers 
 herself to the distorted and outcast Gwynplaine. 
 Surely to admire this scene is to confound monstrosity 
 with power. It is no new idea that a woman may 
 have vile impulses and yet dally on the verge of vice ; 
 it is not hard to draw a staring picture of this unlovely 
 self-restraint. Nor is Josiane's morbid desire for utter 
 debasement in any degree novel; the sixth satire of 
 Juvenal would furnish forth a hundred Josianes. But 
 in the sixth satire of Juvenal the words which describe 
 vicious instincts are written, as it were, with a brand 
 on the offender's flesh. In L Homme qui rit the in- 
 decency is decked out with rhetoric, and presented to 
 us as a psychological revelation. Surely MM. Gautier, 
 Feydeau, and Zola might be left to supply us with 
 such revelations as this. 
 
152 MODERN ESSAYS. fin. 
 
 Connected perliaps with this defect is another form 
 of want of sensibility even more repugnant to a healthy 
 mind. We mean the taste which delights in dwell- 
 ing not only on physical ugliness, but on physical 
 horroi-s, which, without any wish to be crueb pleases 
 itself in realising the details of torture, filth, and cor- 
 ruption. M. Hugo's readers are not always safe from 
 outrage of this kind. He has written, for instance, a 
 poem called Ze Grapaud, which I regret having read, 
 and must decline to transcribe. Suffice it to say that 
 it describes minutely certain acts of hideous cruelty 
 perpetrated on a toad by the young Victor and his 
 schoolboy friends — described as "blonds, charmants," 
 " I'aube dans les yeux," " le printemps sur la joue," and 
 so forth. Before comparing a French boy's behaviour 
 with that of an Etonian or a Wykehamist, we ought 
 to make allowance for the system of French education, 
 which is said to foster a certain unmanliness for which 
 the boy himself is hardly to blame. But such excuses 
 can avail little here. The sport of these children 
 "with the morning in their eyes" consisted in a kind of 
 loathsomeness of cruelty for which an English National 
 School boy would have been kicked. And half a cen- 
 tury afterwards the great poet puts this shameful story 
 into a poem in order to point a copy-book moral to 
 the effect that beasts are sometimes kinder than men ! 
 We need not be sentimental with regard either to pain 
 or to death. Many reasons may make it desirable to 
 inflict or to suffer either. But when we find a man 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 153 
 
 who can derive a literary pleasure from enlarging 
 effectively upon the details of torture, then, however 
 philanthropic his general aims may be, we cannot 
 pardon him ; we must assert that his mind is tainted 
 with a disease more hateful than obscenity itself. 
 
 Let us turn rapidly from these horrors to the poems 
 which treat of the loveliness and mystery of childhood. 
 Here M. Hugo is always at his best. Never does the 
 exile's regret appear so noble as when he laments 
 above all things that he is exiled from his daughter's 
 tomb ; never is the gray head so venerable as when it 
 bends over the cradle or the memory of a child. 
 
 " Jeanne ! Georges ! voix dont j'ai le coeur saisi ! 
 Si les astres chantaient ils b6gaieraient ainsi. 
 Leur front tourn6 vers nous nous 6claire et nous dore. 
 Oh ! d'ou venez-vous done, inconnus qu'on adore ? 
 Jeanne a Fair etonne ; George a les yeux hardis. 
 lis tr6buchent, encore ivres du paradis." 
 
 I would gladly linger on these charming poems. But 
 they have been praised already more eloquently than 
 I could praise them. I will not attempt to vie with 
 the force and abundance of Mr. Swinburne's style. 
 But while I would refer the reader to these cflowinsr 
 and generous criticisms I must in fairness add some 
 words of caution. The limits within which M. Hugo 
 can preserve truth and pathos are somewhat narrow. 
 While he talks only about children he can bring tears 
 into our eyes. But the least allusion to himself or to 
 
154 MODERN ESSAYS. [m. 
 
 God is immediately disastrous. In the elegiac poems, 
 for instance, the picture of the vanished child is grace 
 itself: — 
 
 *' IClle ^tait pale et pourtant rose, 
 Petite avec de grands cheveux ; 
 EUe disait souvent : Je n'ose, 
 Et ne disait jamais : Je veux." 
 
 But when the mourner attempts a higher strain the 
 old unreality recurs. It would need all the simplicity 
 of the saints to keep us in sympathy with an address 
 to God couched in terms like these : — 
 
 " Je sais que vous avez bien autre chose k faire 
 Que de nous plaindre tous, 
 Et qu'un enfant qui meurt, dt^sespoir de sa mere, 
 Ne vous fait rien, k vous ! " 
 
 Not can we think it dignified for a man thus to urge 
 liis own merits on the Almighty : — 
 
 " Consid6rez encor que j 'avals, d^s Taurore, 
 Travaill6, combattu, pens6, march6, lutt6, 
 Expliquant la nature a rhomme qui I'ignore, 
 Eclairant toute chose avec votre clart6 ; 
 
 " Que j'avais, affrontant la haiiic ct la colore, 
 Fait ma taclie ici-bas, 
 Que je ne pouvais pas m'attendre a ce salaire," etc. etc. 
 
 There is something which provokes a smile in the 
 notion of M. Hugo's demanding special consideration 
 from the Author of Nature on account of tlio very 
 original cxplauatiuns whicli he has given from time to 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 155 
 
 time of natural phenomena. But had his achieve- 
 ments in this line been all that he imagines them, can 
 we sympathise with a man whose mind in this hour 
 of deepest bereavement reverts irresistibly to his own 
 merits ; whose first feeling is that he is not as other 
 men are, and ought not to suffer as they ? Is not this 
 a strange contradiction to the noble idea which lies at 
 the root of Christianity — that he alone can become 
 representative of humanity who has borne to the utter- 
 most the sorrows of men ? 
 
 The same defect of the higher instincts appears 
 strikingly in the poem in memory of Charles Vac- 
 querie, the husband of M. Hugo's daughter, who com- 
 mitted suicide after vainly attempting to rescue his 
 drowning wife. 
 
 This young man left behind him a mother " pale et 
 perdant la raison," and, we may suppose, the ordinary 
 duties and responsibilities of life. M. Hugo, however, 
 considers no explanation necessary ; he treats the 
 deliberate suicide of sane persons under the pain of 
 bereavement as an act which deserves unquahfied 
 praise, and has adopted it as the crowning glory of 
 more than one of his imaginary heroes. 
 
 " Oh ! s'immoler, sortir avec I'ange qui sort, 
 Suivre ce qu'on aima dans I'horreur de la mort, 
 
 Dans le s6pulcre ou sur les claies, 
 Donner ses jours, son sang et ses ilhisions ! 
 J6sus baise en pleurant ces saintes actions 
 
 Avec les l^vres de ses plaies." 
 
156 MODERN ESSAYS. [ni. 
 
 All easy heroism ! To yield to the first impulse of 
 anguish, to enter ^\'ith Eurydice among the shades, to 
 follow from a world grown desolate some beloved and 
 incomparable soul ! Jesus, and that code of cour- 
 ageous virtue which the name of Jesus represents, 
 teach us a different lesson. They teach us that the 
 way to reunion with the best and dearest lies not 
 through defection and despair, but through work and 
 hope, and that those alone can expect the reward of 
 great hearts who have borne with constancy all that 
 great hearts can bear. " 'Tls better tlutt our griefs 
 should not spread far ." 
 
 TV. 
 
 Before we close our survey of this puissant and 
 many-gifted nature it is natural to ask ourselves 
 wliether we can discern any guiding conception which 
 has regulated the exercise of all these powers — any 
 individual and consistent view of the sum of things 
 which reveals itself from time to time amid these 
 labyrinths of song. Certain principles we can plainly 
 discern, a belief in France, a belief in democracy, a 
 true sympathy with the weak, the outcast, the oppressed. 
 To some of us the exaggeration of his patriotism may 
 seem to fit it rather for boys than men. To some of 
 us an admiration for republics as such may seem rather 
 fanciful than sublime, unless it be, as in Mazzini, 
 simply the form in which a profound craving for public 
 
III.] VICTOE HUGO. 157 
 
 virtue finds, from historical causes, its readiest channel. 
 But at any rate these are living watchwords : France, the 
 Republic, Childhood, the Oppressed — these are worthy 
 themes for a great poet to sing. And here we would 
 stop, but that it is plain that these are not all that he has 
 aimed at singing. He claims to speak to us not only 
 as a Frenchman and a philanthropist, but as a preacher 
 and a seer. Vision, revelation, mission, apostolate — 
 words like these are ever on his lips. He would have 
 us believe that he has gazed deeply into the Infinite, 
 that he has heard the words which issue from the 
 " Mouth of Shade." As confidently as any " God- 
 intoxicated " mystic, he invokes as his authority and 
 inspiration the Eternal Name. 
 
 Is there any reality in all this ? Is there any har- 
 monising truth about the universe, any illuminating 
 conception of the Divine, which this great poet has 
 received, and has been sent to teach us ? With real, 
 with deep regret I answer that I believe that there is 
 not. Eeluctantly T say that long study of his works 
 has revealed only a wild and whirling chaos — a cloud- 
 land which reflects no figure grander than the poet's 
 own. 
 
 Friends of M. Hugo's have indeed affirmed that he 
 has given us the clue to his inner meaning — that he 
 has in many ways indicated that the central point of 
 his system, his true kernel of belief, is that religion 
 within religions which we associate with the name of 
 Pythagoras, which reappears under ditl'erent semblances 
 
158 MODERN ESSAYS. [iii. 
 
 in many ages and many lands, and which, it is hinted, 
 some mysterious revelation has impressed with special 
 force on this poet's mind. But I cannot say that 
 these visions of his seem to me to bring us any light, 
 or that his mystical and transmigi-ational poems (from 
 Ce qiic clit la houche d'Omhre to Le Po'eme du Jar din 
 des Plantcs) are written with a truer accent of convic- 
 tion than a thousand other pages embodying a hundred 
 other faiths. For all faiths are there. Theism, pan- 
 theism, atheism, every mood from a glowing optimism 
 to a cynical despair — all these appear in turn and are 
 used alike as the vehicle of the accustomed rhetoric, 
 the old self-praise. Even when words are put into 
 God's own mouth we cannot help feeling that no alias 
 is more transparent than M. Hugo's God. 
 
 How deep an irreverence is here ! We are shocked 
 by the Dieu des Bmines Gens of Beranger, the Dicfit 
 devant qui Von sHTwline le verre en main, the vulgar 
 patron of ignoble pleasures. But at least a God like 
 Beranger's is hardly meant to be taken seriously ; he 
 is the offspring of an imagination bound and rooted 
 in this world and amid the shows of things. M. Hugo 
 has profaned a higher light — has driven astray a 
 chariot which miglit, in l*lato's words, have followed 
 with the company of gods across the vault of heaven. 
 He has sought first his own glory, and the glory of the 
 Invisible has been hid from his eyes. And thus it 
 has come to pass that in this age of faith's fomuition 
 and of faitli's decay, which feels above all things its 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. 159 
 
 need of the sincere expression of all shades of reasoned 
 belief and unbelief, of heartfelt confidence or despair 
 — in this age, when a harmony as yet unknown is 
 shaping itself, as it were, audibly from the cry and 
 shock of souls, this great singer's strain has no part in 
 that attuning choir ; his voice that fain had filled in- 
 finity dies out into the void. 
 
 I might double the length of this essay with pas- 
 sages illustrative of my meaning here. I will quote 
 one alone, a passage in which the Almighty does not 
 escape the fate which befalls every one whose name 
 M. Hugo mentions — the fate of being employed as a 
 foil and contrast to the greatness and goodness of M. 
 Hugo. 
 
 To understand the lines in question a few words 
 of introduction are required. 
 
 Most men who think at all, whatever their creed 
 may be, have at one time or another faced the terrible 
 possibility that after all there is no hope — that there 
 are no " gods who prefer the just man to the unjust " 
 — that our loves and aspirations do but mock us with 
 an ever unattainable desire. And the poets who have 
 been the voices of humanity have given utterance to 
 this dark fear in many a passage which has sunk 
 deeply into human hearts — from the stern realism of 
 Achilles among the shades down to the visionary de- 
 spair of the end of Alastor — from the bitterness of 
 the Hebrew preacher down to the melodious complain- 
 ings of " the idle singer of an emj)ty day." Often, 
 
160 MODERN ESSAYS. [in. 
 
 indeed, we measure the elevation of the poet or of the 
 race to which he sings by noting the nature of the 
 regret on which he chiefly dwells — whether it be, as 
 often with the Greeks, mainly for the loss of our own 
 joy in life and sunlight, or, as in the sadder Psalms, 
 resentment at the outrage of Death against Justice, or 
 the still nobler agony of the thought that the claim of 
 Love to its own continuance shall be made in vain. 
 
 By what indeed are we to judge a man if not by 
 the way in which he meets this problem ? Be his 
 speculative conclusions what they may, if there be any 
 unselfishness in him, if any heroism, if any holiness, he 
 will show them in the face of these extreme possibili- 
 ties, this one hope worth hoping, this only formidable 
 fear. 
 
 In one of the last poems of VAntiAe Terrible ]\I. 
 Hugo paints at great length and with startling rhetoric 
 the possibility that God may at last be found to have 
 deceived us all along — that " the moral cosmos may be 
 reduced to a chaos," and man, the sport of destiny, 
 expire in a ruined universe. What, then, is the central 
 point of this poem ? what is the idea which stands out 
 for our strength or solace from this profusion of rhetoric 
 and metaphor ? It is — I blush with shame for M. 
 Hugo in writing it down — it is that M. Hugo himself 
 may be relied upon to chase and catch the recalcitrant 
 Deity, like a wolf in the forest, and to overawe Him 
 by the majesty of liis personal appearance and the 
 eloquence of liis rebuke : — 
 
III.] VICTOR HUGO. IGl 
 
 " J'irais, je le verrais, et je le saisirais 
 Dans les cieux, comme on prend un loup dans les for^ts, 
 Et terrible, indigno, calme, extraordinaire, 
 Je le d6noncerais k son propre tonnerre." 
 
 M. Hugo, forsooth, would be terrible ! M. Hugo 
 would be calm ! M. Hugo would be extraordinary ! 
 It seems likely that at the crack of doom even M. 
 Hugo might see something more terrible and extra- 
 ordinary than himself. 
 
 Can the force of egoism farther go ? Can we accept 
 as a teacher or a prophet a man who sees on the whole 
 vault of heaven only the Brocken-spectre of his own 
 soul ? Must not all our admiration for this man's 
 talents enclose within itself an ineffaceable core of 
 contempt ? 
 
 Or rather let us say that this, like all contempt, 
 must ultimately resolve itself into a profound compas- 
 sion. Must we not pity the man, however great his 
 genius or his fame, who has not found in this or the 
 other world one love or one worship which could teach 
 him to forget himself ? Let him call his works moun- 
 tains, himself a Titan, if he will : the Titans with their 
 heaped-up mountains could never scale the sky. 
 
 But we will not accept his metaphor. We will not 
 part from him except with a comparison which has in 
 it at once less of arrogance and more of hope. For 
 when we ponder on that keen but troubled vision, that 
 soaring but self- captive spirit, we recur to Plato's 
 charioteer, who has indeed in times foregone driven 
 
 VOL. II. M 
 
162 MODERN ESSAYS. [iii. 
 
 upwards to feast and festival with tlie blessed gods — 
 who has looked, indeed, for a moment on very Justice, 
 very Beauty, very Truth, but in the midst of the thunder 
 of rebellious horses and a storm and confusion of the 
 soul, — till he crashes downwards to the earth, and feeds 
 upon the semblances of things, and half forgets and 
 half remembers what that true world has shown. For 
 him, in Plato's myth, there yet is a glorious hope ; 
 there remains for him some needful draught of self- 
 forgetfulness, some purifying passage beneath the earth ; 
 and then again he may look with the gods on Truth, 
 and stand with firmer footsteps upon the heavenly 
 way. 
 
EENEST EENAN. 
 I. 
 
 Zev irdrep, dWct <x^ pvcrai utt' 7]^pos vlas 'AxaLwp, 
 Iloirjcrov 5' aWprr)v, 56s 5' otpddXfjLocatv ISiadai, 
 'Ei' 5^ (paeL Koi SXecraov, iirei vij tol evaSeu oCtws. 
 
 The little town of St. Eenan in Cornwall, and various 
 springs and waters in other Celtic regions, preserve for 
 ns the memory of an anomalous and a formidable saint. 
 Eonan or Eenan, indeed, seems properly to have been 
 one of those autochthonous divinities, connected with 
 earth and the elements, who preceded almost everywhere 
 the advent of more exalted gods. He was received, how- 
 ever, after some hesitation, into the Christian Pantheon, 
 and became the eponymous saint of a Celtic clan. This 
 clan of Eenan migrated from Cardiganshire to Ledano 
 on the Trieux in Brittany, about the year 480, and 
 have ever since lived in honourable poverty, engaged 
 in tilling the ground and fishing on the Breton coast; 
 one of the families who there form an unexhausted 
 repository of the pieties and loyalties of the past. 
 
 From this simple and virtuous stock, in this atmo- 
 
164 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 sphere of old-world calm, Ernest Renan was born sixty 
 years ago. In a charming series of antobiograpliical 
 papers he has sketched his own early years ; his child- 
 hood surrounded by legends of the saints and of the 
 sea; his schooling received from the pious priests of 
 Tr(3guier; and then his sudden transference, in 1836, 
 as the most promising boy of his district, to the Petit 
 Seminaire Saint Nicolas du Chardonnet at Paris, where 
 for three years he was one of M. Dupanloup's most 
 eager pupils. Thence he was sent for four years to 
 Issy, the country establishment of the Seminaire Saint- 
 Sulpice, to receive his final preparation for the priest- 
 hood. For to that life he had always aspired, and had 
 he been left beneath the shadow of his Breton cathe- 
 dral he might have become a learned and not an 
 unorthodox priest. But now his education had gone 
 too far; sojourn in Paris, even in a seminary, had 
 awakened his critical and scientific interests, and he 
 began to feel that such a career was impossible to him. 
 He left it with hesitation and much self-questioning, 
 but without bitterness and without subsequent regrets. 
 Much pain naturally followed on this disruption of 
 life-long affections and ties. There were material 
 hardships, too, but his sister's devoted care solaced and 
 supported him till he had made friends of his own 
 and reached an independent position. His attainment, 
 in 1847, of the Volney Prize for a treatise on the 
 Semitic languages, afterwards developed into a general 
 history, may be taken as the first step in a long career of 
 
IV.] ERNEST RENAN. 165 
 
 successful literary and scientific labour. To one episode 
 in that career — his professorship of Hebrew at the 
 College de France — we shall have to recur again ; but 
 with this exception we may confine our attention to his 
 published works alone ; always the most satisfactory 
 course in the case of a yet living man whose writings, 
 and not his actions, have made him a public character. 
 The subjects of these works are so various, and 
 they indicate so far-reaching a study of the develop- 
 ment of the human mind, that some brief sketch of 
 their scope is essential if we would understand on how 
 wide an induction the views of this great historical 
 critic are based. It is in the garden of Eden that M. 
 Renan makes his first appearance on the field of his- 
 tory, and his localisation of that cradle of the Semitic, — 
 perhaps also of the Aryan race, — in the Beloortag, near 
 the plateau of Pamir, at the junction of the Beloortag 
 with the Himalayas, forms one of the most interesting 
 discussions in his history of the Semitic languages.^ 
 It is at this point in the world's career that he is 
 inclined to place the beginning of articulate speech ; 
 and his treatise on the origin of language^ embodies 
 a theory of great ingenuity, but which, however, our 
 increasing knowledge of primitive man is daily render- 
 ing less plausible. From the great delicacy and com- 
 plexity of some of the oldest idioms which have 
 reached us, and from the fact that the history of 
 
 ^ Hidoire Geniralc des Langues Simitiques. 
 2 De I'Origine du Langage. 
 
166 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 language, almost everywhere that we can trace it, is 
 a history of simplification and dissolution, M. Kenan 
 argues that language appeared at once in a highly- 
 organised state, as the suddenly projected image of the 
 mental operations of families of mankind far removed 
 from barbarism. Comparative philology has entered 
 on a different phase since this treatise appeared, and 
 should it ever be re- written its author will have to take 
 into account many further observations on the pheno- 
 mena of savage speech, many new conceptions as to 
 the development of the mind of primitive man. From 
 these prehistoric questions we pass on to the great 
 settled civilisations, Cushite, Chamite, or Turanian, of 
 the early world. On China,^ Nineveh,^ Egypt,^ M. 
 Renan has published admirable essays, but essays 
 which show power of generalisation rather than any 
 specialised acquirement. A brilliant paper on Berber 
 Society,^ and some pages on the Soudan,^ come under 
 the same category. At Babylon he enters the field as 
 an independent investigator. His tractate " On the 
 Book of Nabathsean agriculture" (which survives for 
 us in an Arabic form), is held to have disposed of 
 Professor Chwolson's theory that a literary civilisation 
 existed at Babylon 3000 years before our era. 
 
 Coming now to the Semitic stem we find the traces 
 of M. Kenan's labours on every member of this group 
 
 ^ L' Tnslrticlion Publique en Chine. ^ La DicouvcrU de Ninivt. 
 ^ LAncieniic ^tjijpte. * La SocUU BcrUre. 
 
 ° La Dhert el le Soudan. 
 
IV.] ERNEST RENAN. 167 
 
 of languages. His Comparative History — a standard 
 work — has been already referred to. The Phoenicians 
 are his especial province. His work on the mission to 
 Phoenicia/ a government expedition of archseological 
 survey in which he took part in 1860, is recognised as 
 the highest authority on that ancient people ; and he 
 has completed the Phoenician department of the great 
 collection of Semitic inscriptions.^ On the Arabs he 
 has written much which carries great weight. His 
 exhaustive monograph on Averroes^ is a complete guide 
 to one of the most complex byways of philosophical 
 history. His essay on Mahomet/ and his articles on 
 Hariri, Ma9oudi, Ibn-Batoutah,^ compress into a short 
 compass the very spirit of Arab literature and life. It 
 is, however, on the history and literature of the Jews 
 that he has expended most time and thought. With- 
 out dwelling on minor performances, in the Journal de 
 la Societe Asiatiqite and elsewhere, we may notice first 
 his translations of Job^ and of Solomon's Song,'^ as 
 admittedly equal to any German work for thoroughness 
 and accuracy, while showing in their style and in the 
 introductions prefixed to them a literary grace and in- 
 sight which are M. Eenan's own. The preface to the 
 Book of Job, in particular, may well lead us to look 
 forward with a peculiar interest to that History of the 
 Jewish People by which it is understood that M. Eenan 
 
 1 Mission de PMyiicie. ^ Corjms InscHptionum Semiticarum. 
 
 * Averrohs et V Averroisme. ^ In the Etudes d'Histoire Rcligieuse. 
 
 ^ In the Melanges d'Histoire et de Voyages. 
 
 * Le Livre de Job, etc. ^ Le Gantique des Caniiques, etc. 
 
168 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 purposes to complete his account of the origins from 
 which Christianity sprang. In the meantime it is with 
 the birth of Christ that his systematic treatment of 
 Jewish history and literature begins. The Vie de J^siis, 
 which forms the first volume of the Origines clu Chris- 
 tianisme, owes both to its merits and its defects a 
 celebrity which has tended to cast into the background 
 other works of its author, w^hich possess at least equal 
 value. The Vie de J^sics has been followed by Lcs 
 Apotres, Saint Paul, VAnteclirist, les Evangiles, L^Eglise 
 Chr^tienne, and the series has now been concluded by 
 Marc Aurdle, which last volume leaves the Christian 
 Church an establislied power in the full light of day. 
 
 M. Eenan's labours, however, have not been con- 
 fined to the Semitic race. Turning to the Aryan stock 
 we find to begin with an essay on the Primitive 
 Grammar of India, and for the Persian branch, an 
 article on the Schahnameh.^ On the Greco-Roman 
 branch of the family he has written much of interest, 
 though not often in a separate form. Essays on the 
 Greek grammarians, on the philology of the ancients, 
 on the Secret History of Procopius, indicate unlooked- 
 for stores of learning held in reserve. The volumes on 
 the Origin of Christianity deal with the history of the 
 earlier Empire with a vividness and mastery unequalled 
 ])y any other historian of that age. Tii ^farcus 
 Aimluis, e8])ecially, he has found a hero on wlium lie 
 can dwell willi all tlie eln(|uence of complete sympathy. 
 
 ^ In the MdaiKjcs (Vllistoirc ct de Voyages. 
 
IV.] ERNEST RENAN. 169 
 
 Descending now to the Latin nations of modern times, 
 we find an interesting essay on Mussulman Spain, and 
 two on the Eevolutions of Italy, and Dom Luigi Tosti/ 
 the second of which will be recognised as a master- 
 piece by all who are familiar with the great story of 
 Italy's resurrection. French history may conduct us 
 from the Latin to the Celtic branch of the Aryan 
 stock. And here, too, M. Eenan fills a leading place. 
 He has been an important collaborator in the great 
 Benedictine history of French literature, which, begun 
 a century and a half ago, is still far from completion. 
 In conjunction with M. Victor le Clerc, he supplied 
 the history of the fourteenth century, taking the pro- 
 gress of the fine arts as his especial department. His 
 history of Gothic architecture is full of learning and 
 originality, though suggesting (were this a fitting 
 occasion) many topics of aesthetic controversy. Minor 
 essays on the cause of the decline of mediaeval art, on 
 the sources of the French tongue, on the farce of Patelin, 
 etc., indicate how completely he has made this period 
 his own. The numerous essays on Frenchmen of more 
 modern date, Thierry, de Sacy, Cousin, Lamennais, 
 Beranger, Villemain, belong rather to literature or to 
 philosophy than to history proper. To conclude, then, 
 with the Celtic stock, to which M. Eenan himself 
 belongs. Nothing that he has written is better than 
 his essay on the poetry of the Celtic races,^ a model of 
 
 * In Essais dc Morale ct de Critique, 
 " In the same volume. 
 
170 MODERN ESSAYS. [ 
 
 IV. 
 
 that kind of conij^osition, erudite without ostentation, 
 and attractive in the highest degree without loss of 
 dignity or of precision. 
 
 I will not extend the list farther. It will be 
 obvious that M. Eenan has not spared his pains ; that 
 his opinions are not founded on a narrow historical in- 
 duction, on a one-sided acquaintance with the develop- 
 ment of the mind of man. 
 
 We must now inquire what are the main lines of 
 the teaching which he can support, if necessary, by 
 so varied an appeal to the lessons of the past. This 
 teaching resolves itself into three main branches — 
 educational, political, and religious. I might add the 
 heading of philosophy, under which one at least of his 
 most attractive works would seem naturally to fall.^ 
 But his own view, as indicated in his essay on the 
 Future of Metaphysics, is less ambitious, and prefers to 
 regard philosophy rather as a comprehensive term for 
 the mere aggregate of the highest generalisations than 
 as forming a distinct and coherent department of human 
 study. 
 
 M. Kenan's educational convictions do not need any 
 elaborate historical support ; nor will they be openly 
 disputed in this country. They arc, briefly, that the 
 higher instruction should be untrammelled, and that 
 it should be thorough. That the most competent 
 teachers should be appointed, irrespective of any con- 
 siderations of sect or party ; that tliey should tlien be 
 
 ^ Dialogues ct Fragvunts Philosophiques. 
 
IV.] ERNEST KENAN. 171 
 
 allowed to exercise their functions without interference 
 from Church or State ; and, on the other hand, that it 
 is their imperative duty to follow truth with their 
 hest efforts whithersoever she may lead ; these are the 
 substantive themes of many essays of M. Eenan's, 
 whether he is praising the Institut for its catholicity, 
 or the College de France for its independence, or the 
 Academy for its permanent and stable power. These 
 topics, indeed, may seem little more than truisms, but 
 truisms may acquire a certain dignity when a man 
 is call'^d upon to suffer for their truth ; and it so hap- 
 pens that M. Eenan's own career contains an episode 
 which well illustrates the dangers to which honest and 
 candid teaching may still sometimes be exposed, and 
 the spirit in which such dangers should be met. 
 
 In the year 1857 the death of M. Quatremere left 
 vacant the chair of " the Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Syriac 
 languages " at the College de France. The College de 
 France was founded by Francis I. expressly for the pur- 
 pose of providing a lay and independent arena for the 
 exposition of studies which were treated by the Sor- 
 bonne under closer restrictions, and in accordance with 
 traditional rules. There is at the College de France 
 no theological chair, nor has the institution ever been 
 connected with any Church. The functions of its 
 Hebrew professor are in no way hortatory or polemical ; 
 on the contrary, it is the place above all others in 
 France where real philological teaching, unbiassed by 
 considerations external to philology, may fairly be 
 
172 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 looked for. The appointment virtually rests with the 
 other professors and with the members of the Academy 
 of Inscriptions, whose recommendation, addressed to 
 the Minister of Public Instruction, is ratified as a 
 matter of course. 
 
 Perhaps through some timidity as to the result of 
 either the appointment or the non-appointment of M. 
 Renan to the vacant chair, the Emperor did not fill it 
 up till 1861. In that year the Minister of Instruction 
 inquired, according to custom, what candidate the ex- 
 isting professors propose to nominate. These professors 
 and the Academy of Inscriptions nominated M. Renan, 
 and his appointment was confirmed in January 1862. 
 
 It is customary at the College de France, as in most 
 other academical lecture-rooms, that a newly-elected 
 professor, of however special and minute a character 
 his subsequent teaching is to be, should take in his 
 inaugural discourse a wider scope, and give some 
 general sketch of the manner in which he conceives 
 his subject. To have evaded this custom in this 
 special instance would have been to abandon, on the 
 threat of personal inconveniences to follow, the right 
 and duty of those to whom the higher education of 
 their country is entrusted to speak with frankness, 
 though of course with moderation, on all such topics 
 as fall within the competence of their chair. M. 
 Renan did not thus shrink. He gave a masterly 
 sketch of the function of the Semitic peoples in the 
 history of civilisation, and needing to toucli on the 
 
IV.] ERNEST RENAN. 173 
 
 greatest Figure whom those races have produced, he 
 described him as " un homme incomparable — si grand 
 que, bien qulci tout doive ^tre juge au point de vue de 
 la science positive, je ne voudrais pas contredire ceux 
 qui, frappes du caractere exceptionnel de son oeuvre, 
 I'appellent Dieu." " Jesus of Nazareth," said St. Peter, 
 " a man approved of God among you ; " and if M. 
 Eenan had been willing by a turn of phrase to use 
 the Apostle's words for his own, it would have been 
 hard for the orthodox to find an occasion of censure. 
 As it was, the demonstration which had been prepared 
 against him was held in check by a large body of 
 students who maintained order during his lecture and 
 accompanied him home. He had announced that his 
 future lectures were to be purely grammatical ; but the 
 imperial government, which was at that time much 
 under the influence of the clerical party, pronounced 
 that a continuance of the course would be dangerous, 
 and closed his lecture-room. M. Eenan lectured for 
 two years in his own apartments. The government 
 then announced to him his appointment to a post in 
 the Imperial Library, a post which he could not fill 
 so long as he held the professorship, at the same time 
 abolishing the emolument of his professorship by an 
 ingenious meanness of administrative detail. M. Eenan 
 refused to accept the post in the Library, or to resign 
 the professorship. Another professor was appointed, 
 held the post for a few years, and died. On his 
 death in 1870 M. Eenan was again selected by the 
 
174 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 College de France and the Institut as the fitting candi- 
 date. And now the Emperor consented, but M, Ollivier 
 shuffled, and the war came. It was the Government 
 of National Defence which, in November 1870, signed 
 the decree which re-established the dispossessed pro- 
 fessor in the chair which he now fills. 
 
 The Grand Inquisitor, like Pope and Pagan, has in 
 our age lost most of his teeth. There can hardly be 
 a surer way, and this episode shows it, of conferring 
 a benefit on a man of learning and virtue than by 
 persecuting him for his opinions' sake. He gets all 
 the advantage of adversity without disablement, and 
 obloquy without disgrace. He has the opportunity 
 (too rarely occurring in the savant's quiet career) of 
 showing courage, sincerity, and dignity of character. 
 And meantime his influence is not impaired but in- 
 creased ; his books become more widely known, his 
 personality is invested with greater interest. Tlie 
 time, moreover, is past when anything can be done for 
 opinions accounted orthodox by raising those who 
 hold them to posts for which they are otherwise unfit. 
 These are not days when income can give influence, or 
 official precedence make proselytes. 
 
 Attempts of this kind, to make conformity with 
 received opinions rather than intellectual competence 
 the first requisite in a teacher, have, in fiict, theu* 
 origin in a mood of mind of which religious intoler- 
 ance is only one manifestation. They spring from a 
 deep-rooted infidelity as to the princii)les themselves 
 
IV.] ERNEST KENAN. 175 
 
 on which all higher education rests. Those principles 
 are, that it is good to have a mind as active and open 
 as possible, and to know all the truth about the 
 universe which can be known. But though these 
 principles are seldom openly contested, many men, — 
 most even of those whose business in life it is to apply 
 them, — hold them in reality in a quite different form. 
 They hold that it is good to have a mind well trained 
 for puiposes of work or enjoyment, and to know 
 enough about the universe to enable us to live well 
 and happily. Now this second view, though it may 
 in some minds be almost identical with the first, may 
 also drop in other minds to a level at which mental 
 training becomes little more than a repertory of artifices, 
 and knowledge than an accomplishment. The tendency 
 to keep the mind shut and to be contented without 
 knowledge is so strong that it is only by steadfastly 
 regarding knowledge as an end in itself that we can 
 be safe against its gradual limitation, till even the arts 
 which affect our material well-being are starved by its 
 decay. 
 
 The force with which Germany has grasped this 
 principle has been, it need hardly be said, one of the 
 main elements in all her successes. She has had more 
 scientific curiosity, more interest in truth for truth's 
 own sake, than any other nation, and she has reaped 
 her reward in the serious and painstaking habit of 
 mind, open to new information, and resolved to see 
 things as they are, which has in its turn led her to 
 
176 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 military and political greatness. It has been one of 
 M. Eenan's life-long tasks to hold up to his countr}'- 
 men the example of Germany, to insist on the need 
 of laborious thoroughness in study, on the nobility of 
 the self-forgetfulness which makes a man neglect his 
 own fame in the interest of his subject. Some of his 
 most striking essays, — those, for instance, on Creuzer, 
 Eugene Burnouf, J. V. le Clerc, — are devoted to the 
 setting forth of such a life with a kindred enthusiasm. 
 And both in France and England such exhortations 
 are greatly needed. Physical science, indeed, is in 
 both countries ardently pursued. But the philological 
 and historical sciences are apt in France to form the 
 mere material for rhetoric, in England the mere 
 machinery of education. 
 
 One of the main directions in which the influence 
 of M. Eenan's historical-mindedness is felt is in his 
 utterances on politics. There, at any rate, the study 
 of history has saved him from any tendency to rash- 
 ness or idealism. It has taught liim, above all, the 
 doctrine of compensations, — the application, as one 
 may say, of the law of the conservation of energy to 
 states and nations, which assures us that more than 
 a certain sum of efficiency cannot be extracted from 
 any one race, and that, after gross errors have been 
 avoided, what is gained in force by the body politic 
 in one direction is likely to be lost in another. On the 
 examples of this thesis M. Eenan delights to dwell, 
 from the Berljers, enjoying absolute social eiiuality and 
 
IV.] ERNEST RENAN. 177 
 
 government by commune at the cost of all national 
 or even tribal coherence, to the German Empire, its 
 collective strength based on a fusion of bureaucracy 
 and feudalism which, in M. Eenan's view, must neces- 
 sarily involve the painful self-abnegation of the mass 
 of men. 
 
 One may say, indeed, that the greatness of a nation 
 depends on her containing a certain amount, but only 
 a certain amount, of unselfishness ; on her keeping her 
 spiritual life neither above nor below a certain tem- 
 perature. She can achieve no powerful collective 
 existence if public virtue in her have grown so cold 
 that she contains no class ready to make serious 
 sacrifices for the general good. And on the other 
 hand, if the popular devotion to some impersonal idea 
 be raised to too glowing a pitch, the nation loses in 
 concentration what she gains in diffusion ; her idea 
 takes possession of the world, but she herself is spent 
 in the effort which gave it birth. Greece perishing 
 exhausted with her creation of art and science ; Eome 
 disappearing, like leaven in the mass, in her own 
 universal empire ; Judaea expiating by political nullity 
 and dispersion the spiritual intensity which imposed 
 her faiths, in one form or another, upon civilised man ; 
 such are some of the examples with which M. Kenan 
 illustrates this general view. And such, to some 
 extent, is his conception of the French Eevolution. In 
 the spiritual exhaustion and unsettlement which have 
 followed on that crisis, France has felt the reaction 
 
 VOL. II. N 
 
178 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 from that fervour of couviction and proselytism with 
 which she sent forth her " principles of '89 " to make 
 the circuit of the world. But those principles were 
 not wholly salutary nor wholly true ; they were the 
 insistence — exaggerated by the necessary recoil from 
 privilege and inequality — on one side only of the 
 political problem, on the individual right to enjo}^TQent 
 without regard to those ties and subordinations which 
 make the permanence and the unity of states. 
 
 The French Eevolution, indeed, was but the mani- 
 festation, in a specially concentrated form, of a phase 
 through which the awakening consciousness of the 
 masses must needs conduct every civilised nation in 
 turn. Its characteristic assertions of the independence, 
 the essential equality of men, are apt to lead, if rashly 
 applied, not to any improved social structure, but to 
 sheer individualism, to the jealous spirit of democracy, 
 which resents the existence of lives fuller and richer 
 than its own. This spread of an enlightened selfish- 
 ness is in the moral world, as M. Eenan has remarked, 
 a fact of the same nature as the exhaustion of coal- 
 fields in the physical world. In each case the exist- 
 ing generation is living upon, and not replacing, the 
 economies of the past. A few words of explanation 
 will make this view clearer. As a general rule, we 
 may roughly say that the self -regarding im])ulses of 
 brutes and men are limited in the last resort by the 
 need of a certain amount of social instinct, if tlieir 
 family or tlieir species is to be preserved at all. And 
 
IV.] ERNEST RENAN. 179 
 
 this instinct, if it may be said without paradox, is 
 often more moral than choice. For reasoning powers, 
 though probably acquired as the result of highly social 
 habits, sometimes partially destroy the very habits out 
 of which they arose, by suggesting that more immediate 
 pleasure can be obtained by reversing them. For 
 instance, male monkeys are not systematically cruel to 
 female monkeys. Instinct teaches them to divide the 
 work of the family in the way best suited to the 
 attainment of healthy offspring. But in Australian 
 savages the family instinct is interfered with by a 
 reasoning process which shows them that men are 
 stronger than women, and can unite to make them 
 their slaves. They enslave and maltreat their women, 
 with the result that they injure their progeny, and 
 maintain so low a level of vigour that a slight change 
 in their surroundings puts an end to the race. Some- 
 thing of the same kind is the contrast between the 
 feudal peasant of the middle ages and the self-seeking 
 artisan of the present day. The mediaeval peasant owed 
 his very existence to the high development of certain 
 social instincts, — fidelity, self-abnegation, courage in 
 defence of the common weal. And thus in a Highland 
 clan, for instance, the qualities which enable a society 
 to hold together existed almost in perfection. The 
 sum of social instincts with which each of its members 
 was born far exceeded any such self-seeking impulses 
 as might (for instance) have led him in time of war to 
 enrich himself by betraying his chief. 
 
180 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 Instinctive virtue of this kind, however, can hardly 
 be maintained except by pressure from without. As 
 civilisation develops, the need for it becomes less ap- 
 parent. The self-abnegation which in a rude society 
 was plainly needed to prevent the tribe's extinction 
 now seems to serve only to maintain a pampered and 
 useless court or aristocracy. The proletariat gra- 
 dually discover that they are the stronger party, 
 and their instinctive reverence for their hereditary 
 leaders dies away. If circumstances are favour- 
 able they devote themselves to pleasure and money- 
 making ; if not, they rise, perhaps, as in 1789, and 
 " decapitate the nation," leaving themselves incapable 
 of self-government, and certain to be made the prey 
 of military force, the only power left standing among 
 them. 
 
 Meantime it is not only the proletariat whose 
 coherence in the body politic is loosened by the dictates 
 of an enlightened selfishness. The feudal leader, quite 
 as much as his retainer, subsisted by virtue of his 
 possession of certain social instincts, — courage in de- 
 fending his clan, and a rude identification of his inter- 
 ests and pleasures with theirs. Even amid the more 
 refined scenes of the Eenaissance the noble had still 
 much in common with the peasant. The young aristo- 
 crat (to take M. Kenan's illustration), whose marriage 
 procession defiled through the streets of Gul)bio or 
 Assisi was delighting the populace and himself by the 
 same action. His instinct was to share his pleasures 
 
IV.] ERNEST RENAN. 181 
 
 thus with the commonalty, and he enjoyed them tlie 
 more for so doing. 
 
 But as civilisation becomes more assured there is 
 no longer anythmg which the nobleman feels plainly 
 called on to do for the common people, who are pro- 
 tected by law without his aid. And moreover, as 
 numbers get vaster, and differences of wealth more 
 extreme, the rich man finds his pleasure more and 
 more aloof from the poor. His instincts, both of 
 leadership and of companionship, tend to decay ; he 
 lives in some luxurious city, and converts his territorial 
 primacy into a matter of rents. 
 
 Individualism, in short, as opposed to active patriot- 
 ism, becomes increasingly the temptation of rich and 
 poor alike. Questions as to forms of government, 
 rivalries of dynasties, are of small importance as com- 
 pared with the progress of this disintegrating tendency, 
 which forms a kind of dry-rot in all civilised states. 
 The reserve forces of inherited and instinctive virtue 
 (to return to the simile of the coal-fields) are becoming 
 exhausted, and while we live in a society which has 
 been rendered possible by the half-conscious self-devo- 
 tions of the past, we have not as yet discovered a souVce 
 of energy which shall maintain our modern states at 
 the moral temperature requisite for organic life. 
 
 Eeflections of this nature, long familiar to M. 
 Eenan, were forced upon all Frenchmen by the Franco- 
 German war. That contest, as has been often observed, 
 repeated the old histories of tlie incursions of the bar- 
 
182 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 barians into the declining Roman empire in its con- 
 trast between tlie naive and self-devoted unity of the one 
 force, and the self-seeking apathy which ruined the other. 
 The main difference was that the Germans, having 
 applied their patient efforts to self-education as well as 
 to warfare, united in a certain sense the advantages of 
 a civilised with the advantages of a barbarous people. 
 
 The war passed by, and M. Eenan's was perliaps 
 the wisest voice which discussed the maladies of France. 
 France seemed to have before her then the choice of 
 two paths ; the one leading through national self- 
 denial to national strength, the other through demo- 
 cratic laxity to a mass of private well-being, likely to 
 place its own continuance above all other aims. In 
 a collection of political essays,^ published in 1871, 
 M. Renan advocates the sterner policy in a series of 
 weighty suggestions too detailed for insertion here. 
 Yet he feels the difficulty of carrying out tliis regime of 
 penitence and effort without the help of a commanding 
 central power. He regrets (for he had already fore- 
 seen) the impossibility of placing at the head of France 
 a strong dynasty, capable of direction to serious ends. 
 All her dynasties have fallen ; the experience of 1830, 
 1848, 1870, has shown that not one of them can sur- 
 vive a single blow ; nor can the departed instinct of 
 loyalty be revived by partisans wielding the weapons 
 of su])erstition, corruption, insolent bravado. Already 
 when M. Renan wrote there seemed no choice but a 
 
 ^ La Riformc Inicllcditellc ct Morale dc la France. 
 
IV.] ERNEST EENAN. 183 
 
 Eepublic ; and a striking passage (put, it is fair to say, 
 into the mouth of an imaginary speaker) will indicate 
 with how mixed a hope he regarded that prospect : — 
 
 "Des r6formes, supposant que la France abjure ses pr6- 
 jug^s d6mocratiques, sent des r6formes chim6riques. La 
 France, croyez-le, restera un pays de gens aimables, doux, 
 honnetes, droits, gais, superficiels, pleins de bon coeur, de 
 faible intelligence politique ; elle conservera son adminis- 
 tration m6diocre, ses comites entet^s, ses corps routiniers, 
 persuad6e qu'ils sont les premiers du monde ; elle s'enfon- 
 cera de plus en plus dans cette voie de mat6rialisme, de 
 republicanisme vulgaire vers laquelle tout le monde moderne, 
 except(§ la Prusse et la Eussie, parait se tourner. " 
 
 Such a state, in M. Eenan's view, can never hope 
 to rival Prussia's strength in the field, — a strength 
 founded on a social organisation which can transform 
 itself into a military organisation when need is, with- 
 out shock, unwillingness, or delay. The revenge of 
 France, he thinks, is likely to be rather of that insidi- 
 ous kind which saps the enemy's robust self-denial by 
 the spectacle of ease and luxury, and gradually draws 
 down its neighbours to a self-indulgent impotence like 
 its own. 
 
 The events of the dozen years which have elapsed 
 since this prophecy was uttered may seem to have 
 tended towards its fulfilment. On the one hand there 
 is visible in Germany an increased impatience of the 
 hardships of the Prussian rSgime, a growing exodus of 
 the lower class to states which demand less of risk and 
 
184 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 self-sacrifice from their constituent members. And on 
 the other liand the prestige of Paris as the city of 
 pleasure has revived ; the wealth of France, and her 
 eagerness in the pursuit of wealth, are greater than ever 
 before. Her habits and institutions (as M. Renan 
 predicted) are undoubtedly assimilating her not to 
 Germany, but to the United States. The example of 
 the United States, — capable, under strong excitement, 
 of putting forth such military energy from the midst 
 of a society apparently so self-seeking and incoherent, 
 may well prevent us from asserting that democratic 
 France can never wage a successful war with Germany. 
 But such strong impulses will be rare, and for the most 
 part it would seem that we must look on France as 
 swelling that dominant current of the modern world 
 which sets in the direction of mere wealth and luxury, 
 and threatens to dissolve the higher aims and unity of 
 nations in its enervating flow. 
 
 " Without war," says Von Moltke, " the world 
 would stagnate, and lose itself in materialism." The 
 problem is to prevent this ; to secure that as the world 
 gradually changes from a place of struggle into a place 
 of enjoyment the change shall not sap the roots of 
 virtue or the structure of society. As the old social 
 superiorities, defined by birth, and resting ultimately 
 on force and conquest, tend to disappear, we must 
 create new social superiorities, marked enougli to com- 
 pel the respect of the multitude to their fitting leaders, 
 and attained by enougli of effort to give to the cliaracter 
 
iv.J ERNEST REN AN. 185 
 
 of those leaders the same force and self-confidence which 
 were previously won in war. 
 
 In pursuing this train of thought M. Eenan sur- 
 prises the English reader by his apparent want of 
 acquaintance with the similar speculations of Comte. 
 Yet these two greatest thinkers of modern France 
 traverse to a considerable extent the same ground. 
 Fully to note their points of agreement and of differ- 
 ence would demand a separate essay. They agree in 
 the spirit, — historical, scientific, positive in the best 
 sense of the term, — in which they approach these 
 social problems, and which guarantees them alike 
 against revolutionary vehemence and against the mere 
 sentimentality of reaction. On the other hand, Comte's 
 confident dogmatism, and the prophetic and hieratic 
 pretensions of his later years, are little in accord with 
 M. Eenan's gentle and sceptical irony, his strain of 
 aristocratic nonchalance. In their respective views as 
 to the nature of the government of the future these 
 divergences are plainly marked. Comte's hierarchy 
 of bankers is the conception of a complacently industrial, 
 a frankly optimistic age ; while in M. Eenan's fastidi- 
 ous attitude towards material prosperity we discern a 
 certain loss of moral prestige which wealth has tended 
 to undergo even while its practical predominance in 
 the world has increased. Wealth is, of course, the 
 form of superiority which the multitude tend more and 
 more exclusively to respect as the traditional reverence 
 for birth declines. And, in some cases, wealth is a 
 
186 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 tolerable criterion of merit, as indicating diligence and 
 ability in those by whom it is made, liabits of refine- 
 ment in those by whom it is inherited. But, unfortun- 
 ately, it becomes increasingly evident that the criterion 
 is too rough ; there is too much ill-gotten wealth in 
 the world to allow us to respect it without inquiry ; 
 and the dishonest rich man is not merely not better, 
 but is more actively mischievous than his neighbours. 
 America, in short, has become our type of a country 
 which has sought wealth with success ; and America is 
 not a country where kings are philosophers and philoso- 
 phers are kings. Virtue, again, (the criterion which 
 we should all prefer), is not easy to recognise on a public 
 arena, and its genuineness is not recommended to us 
 when it loudly claims recognition. We are driven 
 back upon intellectual superiority ; and here the pro- 
 blem is to find that disinterested wisdom which is, in 
 fact, a part of virtue, and not the mere plausibility of 
 skilful egoism. There is no certain method of attain- 
 ing this, but the method which looks most promising 
 is to raise a considerable number of the citizens to a 
 pitch of knowledge and culture which ought, at least, 
 to teach them to look on human affairs as philosophers, 
 and not as adventurers or as partisans. And this, at 
 least, we can do ; by the thoroughness of our higher 
 education we can create a new aristocracy, an aristo- 
 cracy which will not press its services on tlio multitude, 
 but will constitute a weiglity court of ai)peal from 
 popular passion and prejudice. Some such position, 
 
IV.] ERNEST REN AN. 187 
 
 indeed, has long been held by men of talent in France, 
 owing to the inadequacy of the French noUesse, which 
 never performed important political functions, and has 
 now practically disappeared. And in other countries, 
 too, the public is learning to recognise a sort of senate 
 in one group of learned men, — in the professors, namely, 
 of the physical sciences. Their superior knowledge can 
 be palpably proved and is readily believed in ; their 
 advice is urgently needed about many matters, and the 
 decisiveness of utterance natural to men much occu- 
 pied with definite and soluble problems is in itself con- 
 vincing to those who wish for guidance. But to the 
 devotees of the historical sciences the world has hitherto 
 paid less attention. Philologists cannot hit upon lucra- 
 tive inventions ; rival critics cannot demonstrate their 
 historical insight by a crucial experiment. The his- 
 torian is not so convincing as the physicist, nor does 
 he labour so manifestly for the practical good of man- 
 kind. Comte, indeed, claimed to have done away with 
 both these distinctions. He claimed to have given to 
 the science of society a precision which enabled it to 
 be at once applied as an art, and he was eager to 
 subordinate even the highest speculations to the actual 
 needs of men. M. Eenan, on the other hand, while 
 desiring no such direct dogmatic influence, is not dis- 
 posed ■ to shape the course of his researches according 
 to their immediate bearing on the common weal. That 
 "passion for truth in itself, without any mixture of 
 pride or vanity," which Comte condemns as " intense 
 
188 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 egoism," is the very breath of M. Eenan's being ; and, 
 as is wont to be the case when truth rather than 
 utility is aimed at, there are many matters on which 
 he is unwilling to preach any very definite doctrine. 
 " La vdrit^ est dans une nuance," he says ; and again, 
 " Qui sait si la finesse d'esprit ne consiste pas k s'abstenir 
 de conclure ?" It is the part of men like this to pro- 
 test against all extreme views, all patriotic illusions, to 
 sit dispersed amid the countries of civilised men, and 
 to try their hopes and creeds by an appeal to the laws 
 of their own being, and to their own forgotten past. 
 
 " Ex necessitate est," the old saying runs, " ut sit 
 aliquis philosophus in specie humana." In order that 
 humanity may be fully conscious of itself there must, 
 we instinctively feel, be somewhere on earth a life 
 disengaged from active or personal aims, and absorbed 
 in the mere exercise of intellectual curiosity. And 
 such a life, which sometimes seems to us to lie outside 
 all human interests and emotions, will sometimes also 
 appear as the centre of them all. For the universe in 
 which man is placed so far transcends his power to 
 grasp it, — the destinies amidst whicli his future lies 
 are so immense and so obscure, — that the most diverse 
 manners of bearing ourselves among them will in turn 
 occupy our full sympathies, satisfy our changing ideal. 
 Sometimes a life of action seems alone worthy of a 
 man ; we feel that we exist in vain unless we manage 
 to leave some beneficent trace of our existence on the 
 world around us ; unless we enrich it with art, civilise 
 
IV.] ERNEST KENAN. 189 
 
 it by education, extend it by discovery, pacify it with 
 law. Sometimes, again, our relations to the Unseen 
 will take possession of the soul ; thought is lost in 
 love, and emotion seems to find its natural outlet in 
 spiritual aspiration and prayer. But there is a mood, 
 again, in which all action, all emotion even, looks futile 
 as the sport of a child ; when it is enough to be a 
 percipient atom swayed in the sea of things ; when 
 the one aim of the universe seems to be consciousness 
 of itself and all that is to exist only that it may at 
 last be known. 
 
 There was a time when all these strains of feeling 
 could co-exist effectively in a single heart. Plato, 
 "the spectator of all time and of all existence," was 
 also the centre of the religion of the world. And if 
 this can rarely be so now, it is not necessarily or 
 always that saints and philosophers in themselves are 
 smaller men, but rather that man's power of thought 
 and emotion has not expanded in proportion to the 
 vast increase of all that is to be felt and known. 
 There has been a specialisation of emotions as well as 
 of studies and industries ; it has become necessary that 
 what is gained in extension should in some degree be 
 lost in intensity, and that the wisdom that compre- 
 hends the world should cease to be compatible with 
 the faith that overcomes it. 
 
 Let us not, then, expect all things from any man. 
 Let us welcome the best representative of every mood 
 of the mind. And if the philosophic mood can scarcely 
 
190 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 find expression without some pitying consciousness of 
 the ignorance and error which envelop the multitude 
 of men, let us remember that this compassion- 
 ating tone, though it can hardly be made agreeable to 
 the mass of men, may nevertheless be most salutary. 
 For so much knowledge is now diffused amon^^ 
 men of ordinary education that it is difficult to remain 
 steadily conscious how small a fraction this is of what 
 it imports us to know. It is not that we fail in 
 admiration for eminent talents ; never, perhaps, has 
 eminent talent been more admired. But we cannot 
 habitually realise to ourselves our incapacity to form 
 true opinions ; we decide where doctors disagree ; we 
 rush in where a Goethe has feared to tread. We 
 have to make up our minds, we say, for we have to 
 act. Be it so, but we must be content to be reminded 
 that in tliat case our decision proves nothing, except 
 that we were anxious to decide. 
 
 In the domain of the physical sciences we are less 
 tempted thus rashly to dogmatise, and the blunders to 
 which our dogmatism leads us are more easily seen. 
 It is when we deal with questions affecting the inner 
 being, the profounder beliefs of men, that we are able 
 contentedly to forget tliat these beliefs repose ulti- 
 mately on historical and philological considerations 
 with which we have made no eilbrt to acquaint our- 
 selves. Yet as the conception of science broadens and 
 deepens, this apathy must pass away ; and already 
 during recent years there has been a marked awaken- 
 
IV.] ERNEST RENAN. 191 
 
 ing in the European mind, a growing perception that 
 the historical sciences will prove to be as essential 
 to our guidance through life as the physical sciences 
 have already shown themselves to be. " L'union de la 
 philologie et de la philosophic," says M. Eenan, "de 
 1 erudition et de la pens^e, devrait etre le caractere 
 du travail intellectuel de notre epoque." And again, 
 "C'est aux sciences de 1' humanity qu'on demand- 
 era desormais les elements des plus hautes specula- 
 tions." 
 
 But desisting from further summary of discussions 
 whose fulness and subtlety make them alrriost impos- 
 sible to summarise, let us test, by a few concrete 
 instances, the value of this philosophical outlook on 
 contemporary history. M. Eenan has lived in close 
 contact with the French and German people, and with 
 the " Bretons bretonnants " who linger around his 
 early home. Let us inquire if there be anything in 
 his way of regarding these nations which indicates 
 a mind accustomed to an impartial weighing of the 
 fates of men ; anything beyond the conventional glorifi- 
 cation of France, the conventional bitterness against 
 Gerniany ; anything which penetrates beneath surface 
 characteristics to a race's true genius and essential 
 power. 
 
 And inasmuch as pliilosophy is an aroma which 
 should penetrate every leaflet of the tree, I will take 
 my illustration of M. Eenan's insight into the character 
 of his own countrymen from a short article on the 
 
192 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 Theology of Beranger,^ called forth by the appearance 
 of a family edition of the works of the poet of Lisette 
 and Chambertin, at first sight so ill-adapted for domestic 
 perusal. 
 
 " 'De toutes les parties du systeme po6tique de Beranger,' 
 says M. Renan, after some admirable comments on the 
 moral side of his poems, 'celle qui me surprit le plus, 
 quand je le lus pour la premiere fois, ce fut sa theologie. 
 Je connaissais pen alors I'esprit fran^ais ; je ne savais pas 
 les singulieres alternatives de legerete et de pesanteur, de 
 timidity 6troite et de foUe t6merit6, qui sent un des traits 
 de son caractere. Toutes mes id^es furent troubl6es quand 
 je vis que ce joyeux convive, que je m'etais figur6 mecreant 
 au premier chef, parlait de Dieu en langage fort arrett^, et 
 engageait sa maitresse a 
 
 * Lever les yeux vers ce monde invisible 
 Ou pour toujours nous nous reunissons.' 
 
 *" La naivet6 toute bourgeoise de cette th(^ologie d'un 
 genre nouveau, cette fa^on de s'incliner le verre en main 
 devant le Dieu que je chcrchais avec trcmblement, furent 
 pour moi un trait de lumiere. A I'indignation que me 
 causa rid6e d'une confraternity religicuse avec ceux qui 
 adorent de la sorte se mdla le sentiment de ce qu'il y a de 
 fatalement limite dans les mani(!!res de voir et do ^entir 
 de la France. L'incurable m^diocritc religicuse de ce grand 
 pays, orthodoxe jusque dans sa gaiete, me fut r6vijl<^e, et le 
 Dieu des bons gens m'apparut comme IV'ternel dieu gaulois 
 contre lequel lutterait en vain toute tentative de philosophic 
 et de religion 6puree.' " 
 
 And from this text he argues how closely akin arc 
 
 ^ In Qucdiuu^ Contcmpovaiiics. 
 
IV.] ERNEST RENAN. 193 
 
 licence and bigotry ; how it is the same spirit of con- 
 tented shallowness which in each direction is impatient 
 of modest self-restraint ; which leads to easy vulgarity 
 in the domain of morals, empty rhetoric in the domaui 
 of literature, ready and confident dogmatism in the 
 domain of religion. To protest against each of these 
 in turn has been the mission of M. Eenan, and surely 
 by no other example or exhortation could he have de- 
 served better of France. 
 
 It is needless to say that he can also praise his 
 country with grace and enthusiasm, though never with 
 that monstrous adulation to which she is sometimes 
 too willing to lend her ear. More remarkable is 
 the generous candour with which, in the very shock 
 and crisis of the war, when nothing was heard on 
 either side but outrage and execration, the French 
 philosopher did justice to the impulse which urged 
 Germany to assert her unity and her place among 
 great nations.^ 
 
 " S'il y a une nationality qui ait un droit Evident d'exister 
 en toute son ind6pendance, c'est assur6ment la nationality 
 allemande. L'Allemagne a le meilleur titre national, je 
 veux dire un role historique de premiere importance, une 
 ame, une litt6rature, des hommes de g^nie, une conception 
 particuliere des choses divines et humaines. L'Allemagne 
 a fait la plus importante revolution des temps modernes, la 
 Eeforme ; en outre, depuis un siecle, I'Allemagne a produit 
 un des plus beaux d6veloppements intellectuels qu'il y ait 
 
 ^ Lettre a M. Strauss. 
 VOL. II. ^ 
 
194 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 jamais eu, iin d^voloppement qui a, si j'ose le dire, ajout6 
 un degr6 de plus k I'esprit liumain en profondeur et en 
 6tendue, si bien que ceux qui n'ont pas particip6 a cette 
 culture nouvelle sont k ceux qui I'ont travers6e comme 
 celui qui ne connait que les mathematiques 6l6mentaires 
 est k celui qui connait le calcul diff6rentieL" 
 
 He proceeds to draw a picture of what united Ger- 
 many might become, the Prussian leaven disappearing 
 when it has leavened the whole lump, and leaving a 
 nation open, perhaps, beyond any other, to the things 
 of the spirit; more capable, perhaps, than any other 
 of founding a State organisation on a scientific and 
 rational basis. And he concludes with a dignified 
 appeal to the moral intervention of Europe in the 
 present extremity, a dignified protest against the dis- 
 memberment and degradation of France. 
 
 On reading the letter to M. Strauss from which 
 this passage is taken — a letter full of large general 
 views and scrupulous candour — one is tempted to 
 think that it must be an easy thing for a professed 
 philosopher to retain his philosophy even, as the 
 ancients said, " when earth is mixed with fire." A 
 curious incident to which this correspondence gave 
 rise may be quoted, however, as showing how difficult 
 it is in these moments of excitement, even for the 
 controversialist whose arguments are supi)orted by 
 thirty legions, to maintain a tone on which he can 
 afterwards look back witli satisfaction. The corre- 
 spondence in question was begun by M. Strauss, who 
 
IV.] ERNEST REN AN. 195 
 
 addressed a letter to M. Eenan in the Augsburg Gazette 
 of the 18th of August 1870. M. Eenan caused a 
 translation of this letter to appear in the Journal des 
 Ddbats of the 15 th of September, — no easy matter, as 
 may be supposed, in that fury of rage against Ger- 
 many ; and on the 16 th of September appeared M. 
 Eenan's own reply. The Augsburg Gazette refused to 
 insert this reply of M. Eenan's ; and perhaps no one 
 circumstance was more significant than this of the 
 temper of Germany at the time. There was not a 
 word (it is needless to say) in M. Eenan's letter which 
 could give just offence ; but, nevertheless, the organ of 
 the victorious nation, having itself challenged a dis- 
 cussion, refused to insert the courteous reply of the 
 vanquished party. It might have been thought that 
 under these circumstances M. Strauss would withdraw 
 with displeasure from his connection with a newspaper 
 which took this view of what was fair and honourable. 
 But it was not so. On the contrary, he wrote a reply 
 to M. Eenan's letter, and inserted it in the Augsburg 
 Gazette on the 2d of October 1870, at a time when 
 the Prussian blockade of Paris of course prevented 
 M. Eenan from receiving the newspaper. By this 
 ingenious method of controversy M. Strauss was able 
 to appear to challenge a champion of the opposite side 
 to an impartial discussion ; then to permit the suppres- 
 sion of that champion's reply; then to write to him 
 again in a still more violent tone (with misrepresenta- 
 tions on which I need not dwell), and to choose a 
 
196 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 moment for this rejoinder when his antagonist could 
 not possibly receive or reply to it. All this he did as 
 one philosopher communing with another philosopher, 
 and with the consciousness that he belonged to an 
 entirely virtuous nation, which was justly chastising 
 a nation sunk in ignorance and corruption. 
 
 I have said that M. Strauss permitted the suppres- 
 sion in the Augsburg Gazette of M. Eenan's letter. 
 He chose, however, to give it to the world in another 
 fashion. He translated it into German, and published 
 it, arong with his own two letters, for the benefit of 
 a German military infinnary. 
 
 The Nouvelle lettre a M. Strauss (September 1871), 
 in which M. Eenan gently recounts these transactions, 
 and indicates some particulars in which the great 
 German people may seem still to faU short of perfec- 
 tion, affords perhaps as good an instance as this century 
 has to show of the sarcastic power of the French 
 language in hands that can evoke its subtleties and 
 manoeuvre its trenchant blade. The paragraph which 
 I quote below appears as if its only tinxiety were to 
 make excuses for M. Strauss. But it would be hard 
 to find any passage since Pope's Atticus which it 
 would be more disagreeable to have addressed to one. 
 
 "II est vrai que vous m'avez fiiit ensuite un honneur 
 auquel jc suis sensible conmie jo le dois. Vous avez 
 traduit vous-meme ma r6ponse, et I'avez reunie dans une 
 broclmre a vos deux Icttres. Vous avez voulu (jue cette 
 brochure se vendit au profit d'un (itabhssement d'invalides 
 
IV.] ERNEST KENAN. 197 
 
 allemands. Dieu me garde de vous fairc ui.o chicane au 
 point de vue de la propri6t6 litt6raire ! L'oeuvre k laquelle 
 vous m'avez fait contribuer est d'ailleurs une oeuvre 
 d'humanit6, et si ma chetive prose a pu procurer quelques 
 cigares k ceux qui ont pill6 ma petite maison de Sevres, je 
 vous remercie de m'avoir fourni I'occasion de conformer 
 ma conduite a quelques-uns des pr^ceptes de J6sus que je 
 crois le plus authentiques. Mais remarquez encore ces 
 nuances l^geres. Certainement, si vous m'aviez permis de 
 publier un ecrit de vous, jamais, au grand jamais, je n'aurais 
 eu rid6e d'en faire une edition au profit de notre Hotel des 
 Invalides. Le but vous entralne ; la passion vous empeche 
 de voir ces mievreries de gens blasts que nous appelons le 
 goCit et le tact." 
 
 From the temper of mind which calls forth M. 
 Kenan's strongest expressions of repulsion, — this 
 temper of domineering dogmatism and blind conceit, 
 — let us pass to the opposite extreme. Let us turn 
 to the race from which M. Eenan sprang, the race 
 whose character is traceable in all that he has written. 
 The nationality of the romantic, emotional, unpractical 
 Celt, surviving in his western isles and promontories 
 from an age of less hurrying effort, less sternly-moulded 
 men, has fallen into the background of the modern 
 world. Yet every now and then we are reminded — 
 by some persistent loyalty, as in La Vendee, to a de- 
 throned ideal ; by some desperate incompatibility, as 
 in Ireland, with the mechanism of modern progress — 
 that there exists by our side a nation whose origin, 
 language, memories, differ so profoundly from our own. 
 
198 MODERN ESSAYS. [nr. 
 
 M. Eenan is a Celt who has become conscious of his 
 Celtic nature; a man in whom French savoir-vivre, 
 German science, are perpetually contending with alien 
 and ineradicable habits of mind, — " comme cet animal 
 fabuleux de Ctesias, qui se mangeait les pattes sans 
 s'en douter." This mixed nature, the residt, as one 
 may say, of a modern intelligence working on a 
 temperament that belongs to a far-off past, and making 
 of him " un romantique protestant contre le romantisme, 
 un utopiste prechant en politique le terre-^-terre, un 
 idealiste se donnant inutilement beaucoup de peine 
 pour paraitre bourgeois," has rendered M. Eenan's 
 works unintelligible and displeasing to many readers. 
 " Twy-natured is no nature " is the substance of many 
 a comment on the great historian's union of effusive 
 sympathy and destructive criticism. But there is a 
 sense in which a man may be doubte-minded without 
 being hypocritical, and the warp and woof of his 
 nature, shot with different colours, may produce for 
 this very reason a more delicate and changing charm. 
 In his essay on Celtic poetry M. Eenan has abandoned 
 himself to his first predilections. Nowhere is he more 
 unreservedly himself than when he is depicting that 
 gentle romance, that lialf humorous sentiment, that 
 devout and pensive peace, which breathe alike in 
 Breton, in Welsh, in Irish legend, and which, after so 
 many a journeying into the imaginary or the invisible 
 world, find their truest earthly ideal in the monasteries 
 of lona or Lindisfarne. Here it is that we discern 
 
IV.] ERNEST REN AN. 199 
 
 liis spiritual kin ; among these saints and dreamers 
 whose fancy is often too unrestrained, their emotion 
 too femininely sensitive, for commerce with the world, 
 these populations who to the faults inherent in weak- 
 ness have too often added the faults that are begotten 
 of oppression, but yet have never wholly sunk to 
 commonness, nor desisted from an unworldly hope. 
 There have been races whieh have had a firmer grasp 
 of this life. There have been races which have risen 
 on more steady and soaring wing when they would 
 frame their conceptions of another. But there has 
 been no race, perhaps, which has borne witness more 
 unceasingly, by its weakness as by its strength, to 
 that strange instinct in man's inner being which makes 
 him feel himself as but a pilgrim here ; which rejects 
 as unsatisfying all of satisfaction that earth can bring, 
 and demands an unknown consolation from an obscurely 
 encompassing Power. 
 
 " ' freres de la tribu obscure,' exclaims M. Kenan, 
 ' au foyer de laquelle je puisai la foi a I'invisible, humble 
 clan de laboureurs et de marins, a qui je dois d'avoir con- 
 serve la vigueur de men ame en un pays 6teint, en un 
 siecle sans espt^rance, vous errates sans doute sur ces mers 
 enchant6es oii notre pere Brandan cherchait la terre de 
 pramission ; vous parcouriites avec saint Patrice les cercles 
 de ce monde que nos yeux ne savent plus voir. . . . Inutiles 
 en oe monde, qui ne comprend que ce qui le dompte ou le 
 sert, fuyons ensemble vers I'Eden splendide des joies de 
 Tame, celui-Ia meme que nos saints virent dans leurs songes. 
 Consolons-nous par nos chimeres, par notre noblesse, par 
 
200 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 notre d^dain. Qui salt si iios reves, a nous, ne sont pas 
 plus vrais que la r6alit6 1 Dieu m'est t^moiii, vieux p^res, 
 que ma seule joie, c'est que parfois je songe que je suis 
 votre conscience, et que par moi vous arrivez a la \'ie et a 
 la voix.' '' 
 
 Enough, perhaps, has now been said to give a gene- 
 ral conception of the sum of powers and tendencies 
 which M. Eenan brings to bear on the complex pro- 
 blems of man's life and destiny. We have seen that 
 his mind is stored with wide - reaching knowledge, 
 thoroughly penetrated with the scientific spirit. We 
 have seen at the same time that he is by instinct 
 conservative ; that his sympathies are aristocratic rather 
 than democratic ; but aristocratic in the highest sense, 
 as desiring to fortify or replace the aristocracy of birth 
 by an aristocracy of unselfish wisdom, which may serve 
 as a barrier against the ignoble deference too often paid 
 to wealth alone. We have seen, again, that this philo- 
 sophy which he preaches is in liimself no merely 
 nominal or idle thing ; but has enabled him not only 
 to bear himself with dignified firmness under the mild 
 persecution of modern days, but also — a harder achieve- 
 ment — to recognise, though a Frenchman, the faults of 
 France, and in the crisis of an embittered struggle to 
 admit with generous largeness the essential worth and 
 mission of the foe. Lastly, we have traced his sym- 
 pathies to their deeper roots, and have discerned in his 
 vein of emotion — ever between a smile and a sigh — 
 the Litest self-ex})ression of a gentle old-world race, the 
 dreamy prophesyings of the Merlin of a later day. 
 
IV 
 
 ,] ERNEST RENAN. 201 
 
 We shall thus, it may be hoped, be better qualified 
 to estimate M. Eenan's views on those great matters 
 to which his thoughts have mainly turned ; man's 
 position, namely, in the spiritual universe, as he has 
 himself in different ages regarded it, or as to us it may 
 now appear ; and especially the story, full of ever new 
 interest and wonder, which tells how one conception 
 of man's Creator and his destiny has overcome the rest, 
 and one life of perfect beauty has become the model of 
 the civilised world. 
 
 II. 
 
 Whether or no this modern age be in its actual 
 practice manifesting an increased regard for morals and 
 religion, there seems at least to be no doubt that those 
 subjects occupy now a larger space in its thoughts than 
 has been the case since the Eeformation. Discussions 
 of this kind pervade all schools of opinion, and Goethe 
 himself could scarcely in our days maintain his antique 
 impassiveness amid the problems of man's life and 
 destiny. To students of the historical sciences these 
 questions are necessarily of the first importance. A 
 language and a religion are the legacies of every race, 
 and these two things are for the most part indistin- 
 guishably fused together into a single record of the 
 minds of far-off men. In Germany and Holland, and 
 less markedly in France and England, the current of 
 research has for some time set strongly in the direction 
 
202 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 of the history of religions. And no book of this kind 
 has attained a greater fame, as none has dealt with a 
 theme more important, than M. Kenan's Origines du 
 Christianisme, now concluded by the volume entitled 
 Marc-AurHe, after occupying twenty years of its author's 
 labours. 
 
 Detailed criticism on a learned work of this magni- 
 tude would be hardly in place here. It must suffice 
 to indicate some general points of view, often over- 
 looked amid the desultory and acrimonious comment 
 to which a work of such scope and novelty, on themes 
 of such close concern to all, is not unnaturally exposed. 
 
 We may remark, in the first place, that M. Kenan's 
 great work almost exactly fills up the gap between the 
 two most considerable histories of ancient times to 
 which modern erudition has given birth. Between 
 the foundation of the Koman Empire, where Mommsen 
 ends, and the reign of Commodus, where Gibbon begins, 
 the main event in the world's history is the rise of 
 Christianity, and of this, with much reference to con- 
 temporary occurrences, M. Kenan treats. 
 
 Better examples than these three writers it would 
 be hard to find of the various tempers of mind in which 
 the historian may approach the facts and personages 
 with which he has to deal : — examples of philosophic 
 indifference, of strong and clear convictions, of many- 
 sided sympathy. Gibbon's method lays him least open 
 to criticism, but it is suited only for a Byzantine abase- 
 ment of human things. Many tracts in liis thousand 
 
IV.] ERNEST RENAN. 203 
 
 years of history still seem as if they had been made to 
 suit him ; but wherever extraordinary characters or 
 impulses of strong life and passion claim a place on 
 his canvas we feel that all his learning does not save 
 him from being superjScial. Mommsen, on the other 
 hand, is by far the most effective as a teacher. A 
 third, if one may so say, in the intellectual triumvirate, 
 with Bismarck and Von Moltke, he hurls upon his 
 readers a greater mass of knowledge with a greater 
 momentum than any of his rivals. Yet through the 
 garb of the historian is sometimes visible the pamph- 
 leteer; and the unimpassioned Gibbon would scarcely 
 have repudiated Eenan's Jesus so decisively as Momm- 
 sen's Csesar. The chameleon sympathies of M. Eenan, 
 his criticsil finesse, his ready emotion, again have both 
 advantages and dangers of their own. On the one 
 hand, they enable him to see more of truth than 
 ordinary men ; for insight requires imagination, and 
 the data of history cannot always, like the data of 
 physical science, be best investigated in a " dry light." 
 Eather may we say — if it be allowed to specialise the 
 metaphor — that they often need to fall upon some 
 mind which, like a fluorescent liquid, can give lumi- 
 nosity to rays which were dark before, and extend by 
 its own intimate structure the many-tinted spectrum 
 of the past. On the other hand, he who attempts to 
 descend so deeply into the springs of human thought 
 and feeling cannot but unconsciously lay open also the 
 limitations of his own being. Gibbon may dismiss all 
 
204 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 events alike with majestic indifference or a contented 
 sneer. The definite and straightforward judgments of 
 Mommsen give little grasp on their author's idiosyn- 
 cracy. But M. Eenan, — explaining his characters 
 from within, indicating their subtler interrelations and 
 intimate desires, — attempts much that is usually left to 
 the poet or dramatist ; and, like the poet or dramatist, 
 whatever else he is depicting depicts himself. And 
 thus it is that one defect in him — a defect, it is fair 
 to say, in which he does not stand alone among his 
 countrymen — has appeared so conspicuously, and has 
 been so readily seized on by opponents, that it has 
 come to colour the popular conception of him to a 
 quite unjust extent. This is his want — one cannot 
 exactly say of dignity , for the master of a style so 
 flexible and so urbane cannot but be dignified when- 
 ever he pleases — but of the quality to which the 
 Eomans gave the name of gravitas, the temper of 
 mind which looks at great matters with a stern sim- 
 plicity, and which, in describing them, disdains to 
 introduce any intermixture of less noble emotion. 
 Such, at least, has undoubtedly been our English 
 verdict. Yet it is so hard to say in what manner a 
 history which many centuries have held for sacred is 
 to be retold in the language of historical science, that 
 it is only just to intpiire whether otliers have been 
 more successful, and in what points precisely M. 
 llenan's deficiency lies. 
 
 We may admit then — it is impossible to deny it 
 
IV.] ERNEST RENAN. 205 
 
 — that a great part of the so-called orthodox scheme 
 of Bible interpretation is a tradition of the least trust- 
 worthy kind, a tradition of mistakes and misrepresent- 
 ations, which have come down to us from an uncritical 
 and unscrupulous age. We may admit that the Ger- 
 man school of theology — more persuasively represented 
 by M. Kenan than by any one among their own num- 
 ber — have performed a task of urgent necessity, and 
 have left Biblical exegesis no longer one of the oppro- 
 bria of historical science. But along with these large 
 admissions large reservations also must be made. The 
 student, whatever his speculative opinions, who is 
 really imbued with the spirit of the New Testament, 
 will assuredly deny — will be tempted to deny even 
 with a touch of indignant scorn — that this recent 
 school of criticism has reproduced that essential spirit 
 with anything like the potency and profundity which 
 may often be found in the comments of an equivo- 
 cating father or an ill -educated saint. Around the 
 productions of Leyden or Tubingen there hangs the 
 rawness of a revolutionary scheme of things ; one feels 
 at every turn that to treat these matters aright there 
 needs not only patience, accuracy, ingenuity, which 
 these men give us, but depth of feeling and width of 
 experience, which they have not got to give. We are 
 impressed, for instance, by Strauss's air of laborious 
 thoroughness as he explains away the wonder and 
 beauty of the Christian story with an arid logic which 
 its very aridity seems to make more convincing. But 
 
206 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 our regard for his opinion drops rather suddenly when, 
 as at the close of his Old and New Faith, he takes a 
 constructive, an edifying tone. One feels, at least, 
 tliat it takes a very thorough -going Germanism to 
 enable him to indicate Goethe's Elective Affinities, or 
 the libretto of the Magic Flute, " wliich no less a man 
 than Hegel has long ago demonstrated to be a very 
 good text," ^ as a sample of the consolations to which 
 mankind, disabused of ancient errors, will always be 
 enabled to cling. 
 
 Et^ tiXJieX' 'Apyov<i fMrj hiaTrrdcrOai (TKa.(f>os 
 KoA^wv €<s aTav Kvaveas ^vfi7rXt]ydSa<s — 
 
 Would that the band of adventurous critics had never 
 sailed between the clashing rocks of Tradition and 
 Authority in quest of truth, if the golden treasure is 
 to be set forth for worship by hands like these ! 
 
 In F. C. Baur, again, the combination of sagacity 
 and naivete is German in a more agreeable way. 
 Much of his work commands our adhesion, all of it 
 deserves our respect. Never was there a more ingeni- 
 ous professor. But his outlook on life has not en- 
 abled him to imagine any early Christian writer less 
 ingenious or professorial than himself. To keep well 
 informed of each other's favourite doctrines, and tlien 
 promptly to issue TcTidcnz- Schriften, or academical 
 programmes, designed, beneath an appearance of amity, 
 to put those doctrines down — such, it seems, was the 
 
 ^ TIlc Old Faith and tlic Nnr, j). 118, Eii«ilisli tninshition. 
 
IV.] EENEST RENAN. 207 
 
 leading preoccupation of these holy men. Nay, to such 
 a pitch of subtlety did they push, in Baur's view, their 
 damning insinuations, that surely the worst fate which 
 pseudo-Paul could have wished for pseudo-Peter, or 
 pseudo-Peter for pseudo-Paul, would have been that 
 he should be called on to explain his own sons-entendus 
 to the satisfaction of the Tiibingen school. 
 
 M. Eenan's danger certainly does not lie in the 
 direction of narrowness or pedantry. And indeed 
 French tact, French elegance, French propriety of 
 thought and expression, are so often and so justly 
 proposed as models to our English bluffness and 
 crudity, that there seems some presumption in taking 
 to task, for faults of taste, the greatest living master 
 of French prose. Yet it is surely no insular coldness 
 that makes us shrink, for instance, from the phrase 
 " Toulant d'extases en extases," as descriptive of the 
 ideally religious man, or dislike the constant repeti- 
 tion of such words as ravissant and ddicieux in con- 
 nection with the person and teachings of Christ. 
 And when we find M. Eenan suggesting that Jesus 
 at Gethsemane may have looked back with a sigh on 
 the young girls of Galilee who, under other circum- 
 stances, might have made his bliss, we feel that from 
 the point of view of art alone — supposing that he were 
 telling a tale like that of Prometheus on Caucasus or 
 Hercules on (Eta — the expression is a blunder worse 
 than a blasphemy. A mistake like this brings its own 
 retribution with it, and it would be almost unkind to 
 
208 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 wish M. Renan to be fully aware of the extremity of 
 bad taste which almost all his readers find in tliis un- 
 lucky passage. ^// his readers, I was going to say, but 
 I remembered hearing of a sympathetic lady who laid 
 down the Vie de Jesus with a sigh, exclaiming, " Quel 
 dommage que tout 9a ne finit pas par un mariage ! " 
 
 A few excisions would remove this sentimental 
 taint, which indeed seldom appeal's except in the Vie 
 de Jesus, as an element in the quasi-poetical tone in 
 which that volume is written ; a tone which, to Eng- 
 lish taste at least, is on M. Renan's lips entirely mis- 
 taken and disadvantageous — a gratuitous divergence 
 into a realm which is beyond his mastery. 
 
 Another element in M. Eenan's " personal equation" 
 may be noticed as sometimes modifying his historical 
 views. I mean his exclusively contemplative life, 
 and the mood of gentle irony which such a life has 
 begotten. In dealing with almost all subjects this 
 disengagement of temper is an unmixed advantage. 
 When the theme is one of the heroes of philosophy — 
 a Marcus Aurelius or a Spinoza — the reader reaps the 
 full benefit of this similarity between author and 
 subject ; their kinship in wise elevation and disen- 
 chanted calm. r>ut M. Renan's favourite subjects are 
 chosen from a race of men of nature, as he has himself 
 remarked, as different as possible from his own. It is 
 the founders of religions whose career he loves to trace; 
 and it is always perceptible how fur his spontaneous 
 sympathy carries him with them, and where his ad- 
 
IV.] ERNEST EENAN. 209 
 
 miration for them becomes almost pity in that they 
 had so little conception of the relativity of truth, 
 the limitations of virtue, the vanity of all things be- 
 neath the sun. The Book of Job is the theme of the 
 finest of his Old Testament expositions ; the mournful 
 Preacher is in his eyes " the most inspired of the 
 sacred writers." < 
 
 In a well-known passage he has given a half hum- 
 orous expression to the kind of provocation excited in 
 his mind by St. Paul's confident self-assurance and 
 dominating force of faith : 
 
 " Certes, une mort obscure pour le fougueux apotre a 
 quelque chose qui nous sourit. Nous aimerions a rever 
 Paul sceptique, naufrag6, abandonn6, trahi par les siens, 
 seul, atteint du d6senchanteinent de la vieillesse ; il nous 
 plairait que les ^cailles lui fussent tombees une seconde fois 
 des yeux, et notre incredulity douce aurait sa petite revanche 
 si le plus dogmatique des hommes 6tait mort triste, d6ses- 
 p6r6 (disons mieux, tranquille), sus quelque rivage ou quel- 
 que route de I'Espagne, en disant lui aussi, * Ergo erravi ! ' " 
 
 It would, however, be grossly unfair to speak as 
 if M. Eenan's peculiar temperament — emotional at 
 once and philosophic — were productive, in his historical 
 pictures, only of distortion and melodrama. So far is 
 this from being the case that there is hardly a page of 
 his history where there may not be found some touch 
 of feeling which has real beauty, some connection 
 of deep significance between early Christian faith and 
 practice and the meditations of other times and men. 
 VOL. IL p 
 
210 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 In his account of the resurrection, for instance, amidst 
 much which may well seem to us merely futile, he has 
 brought out, as few before him had ever done, what is 
 in one sense the profoundest lesson which the life of 
 Jesus has to teach. He has described, that is to say, 
 the absorbing power with which one high affection 
 may possess the soul ; and most of all where wrongs 
 nobly borne have added to reverence a solemn com- 
 passion, and given its last intensity to love. The 
 object of that affection fades from our bodily sight, but 
 stands forth more plainly revealed in its essential 
 beauty ; succeeding life is guided and glorified by the 
 transcendent memory, and love is transfigured into 
 worship in the deep of the heart. M. Eenan has had 
 the skill to make us feel how glorious a lot was theirs, 
 who through all perils carried in their bosoms this 
 ineffaceable joy ; how true were the words which said 
 that " kings have desired to see the things which ye 
 see, and have not seen them." 
 
 Again, a kindred spirit of unworldhness has enabled 
 M. Eenan to interpret with wise conviction the beati- 
 tude of the poor. He has dwelt on the tie which 
 unites all those whose aim it is to subserve the spirit- 
 ual welfare of men, and who turn with indiHerence or 
 distaste from the rewards which the workl bestows on 
 its material benefactors. Speaking of the sect of tliose 
 who took this evangelic poverty in its strictest sense 
 he says : — 
 
 " Lion que vitu drpassc et oubhe, I'dibionisine laissa dans 
 
IV.] ERNEST REN AN. 211 
 
 toute I'histoire des institutions chr^tiennes un levain qui ne 
 se perdit pas. . . . Le grand mouvement ombrien du 
 XIIP siecle, qui est, entre tous les essais de fondation re- 
 ligieuse, celui qui ressemblait le plus au mouvement galil^en, 
 se fit tout entier au nom de la pauvret6. Frangois d' Assise, 
 riiomme du monde qui, par son exquise bont6, sa commun- 
 ion delicate, fine et tendre avec la vie universelle, a le plus 
 ressembl6 k Jesus, fut un pauvre. . . . L'liumanit6, pour 
 porter son fardeau, a besoin de croire qu'elle n'est pas 
 completement pay6e par son salaire. Le plus grand ser- 
 vice qu'on puisse lui rendre est de lui r6p6ter souvent 
 qu'elle ne vit pas seulement de pain." 
 
 And again : — 
 
 " La noblesse et le bonbeur de la pauvret^, — c'etait peut- 
 etre la plus grande v6rit6 du christianisme, celle par la- 
 quelle il a r6ussi et par laquelle il se survivra. En un sens, 
 tous, tant que nous sommes, savants, artistes, pr^tres, ouv- 
 riers des ceuvres d6sint6ress6es, nous avons encore le droit de 
 nous appeler des 6bionim. L'ami du vrai, du beau et du 
 bien n'admet jamais qu'il touche une retribution. Les 
 choses de I'ame n'ont pas de prix ; au savant qui I'^claire, 
 au pretre qui la moralise, au poete et k I'artiste qui la char- 
 ment, rhumanit6 ne donnera jamais qu'une aumdne, totale- 
 ment disproportionn^e avec ce qu'elle regoit." 
 
 It is thus indeed. The evangelic poverty is not so 
 much a deliberate as an unconscious abstinence from 
 that which most men desire ; or if conscious, then 
 conscious not with self-applauding effort, but with the 
 glad indifference of one who has liis treasure other- 
 where. 
 
212 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 It is needless to multiply instances to show that in 
 M. Kenan's case, as in all others, the law prevails that 
 to eyes which read aright the book reveals the author, 
 so that the recounters of a history which holds a place 
 for all of greatness and goodness to which man's soul 
 can reach may give, indeed, artistic expression to much 
 which is beyond their ken, but convincing reality to 
 such things only as they themselves have known. 
 
 A more perplexing topic remains behind, a topic 
 which it is difficult to discuss briefly, but which cannot 
 be passed over in silence in any serious attempt to 
 estimate the value of M. Eenan's work : I mean his 
 treatment of the miraculous element in the Gospel 
 history. I must begin by saying that I do not think 
 that it can be maintained that he is ever consciously 
 unfair. He is not animated, as so many free-thinkers 
 have been, by a spirit of malignity against the Chris- 
 tian faith. On the contrary, his expressed sympathies 
 are always with that faith ; and those who cannot 
 understand so vigorous a criticism conducted in so mild 
 a spirit are apt to think him hypocritically enthusiastic 
 and offensively patronising. The fact is that the whole 
 gist of his controversy is included in a single frank 
 assumption. He begins his history by avowedly exclud- 
 ing all that is miraculous or m/pcniatural from the 
 domain of the scientific historian. Wlien a story is 
 told, he says, which includes such elements as these, 
 we simply know that it is told incorrectly. We may 
 not always be able to give a plausible account uf our 
 
IV.] EENEST RENAN. 213 
 
 own of the events in question. But if we cannot 
 explain the miraculous story we may simply let it 
 alone, and feel certain that there is some explanation 
 to it which it is now impossible to recover. 
 
 It is obvious that a wholesale assumption of this 
 kind relieves the sceptical historian from much polemic 
 in detail. He takes, once for all, the full advantage 
 which the present commanding attitude of Science 
 gives him, and he is not obliged, as Voltaire or Gibbon 
 were obliged, to meet each miracle separately with 
 argument or sarcasm. He is not therefore tempted, as 
 they were tempted, to minimise the importance of his 
 theme, or to emphasise its less dignified aspects. On 
 the contrary, he will be disposed to bring out all its 
 meaning, and to show, if he can, that the story possesses 
 a truer grandeur and impressiveness when narrated in 
 the scientific rather than in the theological temper. 
 
 To this line of argument we shall best reply, not 
 by controverting his treatment of individual points, 
 but by some such careful definition of the disputed 
 field as may (if this be possible) reduce the conflict 
 between science and orthodoxy from the shape which 
 it too often assumes of a sheer and barren contradic- 
 tion to some form in which an ultimate reconcilement 
 may be at least conceivable. Let us attempt, therefore, 
 to give the view of each party in its most moderate and 
 non-polemical form. And first let us reject all question- 
 begging terms — all phrases such as " violation of the 
 order of Nature," or " direct interposition of tlie Deity," 
 
214 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 which are not mere descriptions of recorded facts, but 
 descriptions coloured, the first by anti-theological, the 
 second by theological feeling. Phrases such as these 
 have often been felt as repugnant both by the deeply 
 religious and by the calmly scientific mind. " God," 
 says St. Augustine in a well-known passage,^ " does 
 nothing against Nature. When we say that He does 
 so we mean that He does something against Nature 
 as we know it — in its familiar and ordinary way — but 
 against the hidiest laws of Nature He no more acts 
 than He acts against Himself." 
 
 Following this weighty hint, let us altogether dis- 
 pense with unproved assumptions and merely polemical 
 antitheses. Let us not oppose law and miracle, for 
 whatever abnormal phenomena may have occun^ed 
 must (as we shall all now feel with St. Augusthie) 
 have occurred consistently with eternal law. Let us 
 not oppose the natural and the supernatural, for " God 
 does nothing against Nature," and all that these two 
 terms can mean is " what we expect to see in nature," 
 and " what we do not expect to see." 
 
 Avoiding, then, these verbal fallacies, let us con- 
 sider with what various prepossessions the study of the 
 Gospel records is usually approached. On each side 
 of the controversy we find a reasonable prepossession 
 pushed too often to an unreasonable extreme. The 
 
 1 Contra Famtum, xxvi. 3. On this passage see (for instance) 
 Archbishop Trcncli in tlio preface to liis treatise On tfic Miracles, as an 
 example of modern ortliodoxy enforcing St. Augustine's view. 
 
IV.] ERNEST REN AN. 215 
 
 Christian begins by saying : " Many facts point to the 
 existence of a beneficent Kuler of the Universe. If 
 there be such a Euler, it is probable that he would 
 wish to make some revelation of himself ; and such a 
 revelation would probably be accompanied with un- 
 usual phenomena." This may well be thought reason- 
 able ; but it is not reasonable to go on to affirm : 
 *' This revelation is in fact contained solely in a certain 
 set of men, called the Church, or a certain set of books, 
 called the Bible ; these teach absolute truth, and all 
 soi-disant revelations elsewhere are absolutely untrust- 
 worthy." There is no basis admissible by historical 
 science on which such assertions as these can rest. 
 
 On the other hand, the savant begins by saying : 
 " Unusual events, alleged to have happened in un- 
 critical times, and not observed to recur in critical 
 and scientific times, are unworthy of credence." This 
 may well be thought reasonable ; but it is not reason- 
 able to go on to affirm : " Alleged phenomena, which 
 cannot be repeated at pleasure, nor explained by the 
 known laws of nature, must be referred to illusion or 
 imposture." There is no scientific basis on which such 
 an assertion as this can rest. For our knowledge of 
 the laws of nature is in its infancy ; many observed 
 phenomena are admittedly as yet inexplicable, and 
 among explicable phenomena there are a countless 
 number which we cannot repeat at will. 
 
 Dismissing, then, the extravagances of either side, 
 our position seems to be this. It is not unreasonable 
 
216 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 to suppose that such a life and work as Christ's upon 
 earth was accompanied by some abnormal phenomena. 
 But the age in which these occurred, if they did occur, 
 was so uncritical, and the accounts which have reached 
 us are so surprising, that we are bound to suspend our 
 acceptance of the wonders until some confirmatory 
 evidence can be adduced from later times as to the 
 possibility of such occurrences. And we find that 
 substantially this is the position of the Catholic and 
 the Orthodox Cliurches, which corroborate evangelical 
 by ecclesiastical miracles, alleged by Eome especially 
 to have continued in unbroken series down to the pre- 
 sent day. Protestants, disgusted by the fraud and 
 folly which they discern in connection with some of 
 these ecclesiastical miracles, reject them in toto, but 
 since the evidence for some among them is, according 
 to ordinary historical canons, much stronger than for 
 some of the evangelical ones, the Protestant position is 
 maintained with difficulty against Catholic assaults. 
 
 Science, on the other hand, classes all such abnor- 
 mal events, whetlier recorded in the Gospels, in the 
 " Acta Sanctorum," or elsewhere, in the same category 
 of error. She points to the fact that the tendency to 
 credit them diminishes with the spread of enlighten- 
 ment, and she shows a marked reluctance to enter on 
 their discussion in detail. It is easy to see that this 
 reluctance is natural, and up to a certain point salu- 
 tary, but also that there are transient circumstances in 
 the position of science wliich dispose lier at j)resent to 
 
IV.] ERNEST EENAN. 217 
 
 push to an unphilosophical extent her aversion to such 
 forms of inquiry. Her reluctance is natural : for the 
 subject is beset with difficulties of a baffling and dis- 
 tasteful kind. The observer, like Franklin waiting for 
 his thunderstorms, must catch his abnormal phenomena 
 when and where he can. Like an ethnologist classi- 
 fying savage religions on the strength of the reports of 
 traders or of missionaries, he must often depend on the 
 accounts of witnesses who are wholly unaccustomed to 
 observe, or who are accustomed to observe in precisely 
 the wrong way. Like the registrar of hysterical cases, 
 he will have to extract his history of symptoms from 
 persons whose whole energies are devoted to deceiving 
 him. He will be tempted to pronounce Simon Magus 
 the only wonder-worker who has left successors, and 
 to retire in disgust from the task of discriminating the 
 shades of fraud and systematising the stages of folly. 
 
 These causes of scientific repulsion, moreover, are 
 reinforced (as above intimated) by another, which 
 belongs to a less philosophical side of the savanfs 
 nature. Science, like all strong forces which have been 
 too long repressed and are now asserting themselves in 
 triumph, must necessarily be at first intolerant of the 
 power which persecuted her. In the disdainful dis- 
 missal of all such evidence in favour (for instance) of 
 aj)paritions after death as might be supposed to hang 
 together in some sense with the Gospel narrative, there 
 is more to be seen than a mere cool scientific scepti- 
 cism. There is a requital of decaying tyranny with 
 
218 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 strengthening scorn ; tliere is a tacit rejoinder to the 
 sentence on Galileo. 
 
 But from whatever source it has arisen, this reluc- 
 tance of science to examine into these alleged abnor- 
 malities has probably been thus far of advantage to 
 mankind. It was primarily essential that the idea of 
 unvar3dng law should get possession of men's minds ; 
 that Malebranche's doctrine, " Dieu n'agit pas par des 
 volont^s particulieres," should descend from the lecture- 
 room into the street. And in order to establish or to 
 popularise a great generalisation it may be desirable to 
 keep out of sight for a time some few apparent excep- 
 tions, which will be better dealt with when the general 
 principles of the subject shall have become familiar 
 and easy to handle. 
 
 It may be said, I think, that this is now the case 
 with the doctrine of the fixity of natural laws. That 
 this doctrine has fairly taken possession of the pubKc 
 mind is proved — and it is the only thing which is 
 proved — by the rapid decline in the general belief in 
 the reality of such phenomena as have been popularly 
 held to be violations of law, to be miracles. In times 
 when miracles were thought to be probable things, 
 abnormalities were readily credited, and set down as 
 miraculous. But now that miracles are looked on as 
 impossible things, abnormalities, if they occur, will find 
 no disposition in the popular mind to accept them in 
 spite of their abnormality. The report of them will 
 die away in its battle with the resisting medium, — the 
 
IV.] ERNEST RENAN. 219 
 
 belief that Nature is uniform, and that her laws are 
 mostly known. 
 
 " Phenomena of this kind," it is sometimes said, 
 " need not now be disproved, for they are disbelieved 
 without formal disproof." Precisely so ; they are dis- 
 believed because they are traditionally supposed to be 
 violations of natural law, and we know now that 
 natural laws are never violated. But this argument 
 has a flaw in it. Por until such phenomena are not 
 only disbelieved, but weighed and sifted, we cannot tell 
 whether they are in truth violations of natural law 
 or not. 
 
 Moreover, as soon as these abnormalities are con- 
 ceived as possibly reducible to law, it is seen how un- 
 philosophical it is to mass them all together. When 
 they were looked upon as violations of law, there was 
 certainly a kind of absurdity in claiming " moderation " 
 for the Gospel miracles. But if the Gospels be taken 
 as a humanly inaccurate record of unusual but strictly 
 natural phenomena, it is but reasonable to sift these 
 phenomena among themselves. All the causes alleged 
 as working for the distortion of the history may in fact 
 have worked, and may have had their share in shaping 
 the account ; and yet there may be a residuum highly 
 important both to science and to religion. Historical 
 criticism shows us that some of these phenomena are 
 supported by better evidence than others. Scientific 
 criticism tells us that some of them come nearer than 
 others to known analogy. The scientific way of deal- 
 
220 MODERN ESSAYS. [nr. 
 
 ing with them, then, will be — not to ignore all of them 
 equally — but to begin with those which are most 
 strongly affirmed, and for whose subsequent repetition 
 there is also most evidence, and to examine in detail 
 what that evidence is worth. For instance ; none of 
 these wonders are more strongly affirmed than that 
 Christ healed the sick with his touch, and appeared to 
 his disciples after death. Can it be said, or rather 
 would it be said, if no professional pedantry intervened, 
 that the action of one human organism on another is 
 thoroughly understood ? that the phenomena called 
 hypnotism or mesmerism have been explained? that 
 the physiological doctrine as regards what is styled 
 the influence of mind on body is settled or complete ? 
 Can it be said, or rather would it be said, if no polemi- 
 cal passion were involved, that the widely - spread 
 accounts of apparitions seen at the moment of death, 
 or soon after death, have been collected and scrutinised 
 as they would have been had the testimony related to 
 any other class of facts ? Notoriously they have not 
 been so collected and so weighed. And the reason for 
 this is perhaps to be sought in a want rather than an 
 excess of confidence felt by men of science in the 
 strength of their own central position, — the immutable 
 regularity of the course of Nature. They have shunned 
 all mention of such phenomena from a vague fear that 
 if they were established the spiritual world would be 
 found to be intruding on the material world; that, as 
 they have sometimes naively expressed it, " iin incal- 
 
IV.] ERNEST REN AN. 221 
 
 culable element would be introduced which would 
 interfere with the certainty of all experiments." The 
 scientific answer to this of course is, that whatever 
 worlds, whatever phenomena exist, are governed by 
 rigid law, and that all elements in all problems are 
 incalculable only till they are calculated. The true 
 disciple of science should desire to bring all regions, 
 however strange and remote, under her sway. They 
 may be productive in ways which he can little imagine. 
 Some of the outlying facts whose production Aristotle 
 tranquilly ascribed to " chance and spontaneity " have 
 proved the corner-stones of later discovery. And the 
 bizarre but obstinately recurring phenomena which thus 
 far have been inadequately attested and incompletely 
 disproved, which have been left as the nucleus of 
 legend and the nidus of charlatanerie, may in their 
 turn form the starting-point for wider generalisations, 
 for unexpected confirmations of universal law. A his- 
 tory of primitive Christianity which sets them altogether 
 aside may be the clearest and most consistent history 
 of which existing knowledge admits, but it can only 
 be a provisional one. It can hardly be expected, for 
 instance, that the common sense of the public will 
 permanently accept any of the present critical explana- 
 tions of the alleged appearances of Christ after death. 
 It will not accept the view of Strauss, according to 
 which the " mythopoeic faculty " creates a legend 
 without an author and without a beginning ; so that 
 when St. Paul says " He was seen of Ce^Dhas, then of 
 
222 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 the twelve," he is repeating about acquaintances of liis 
 own an extraordinary assertion, which was never origin- 
 ated by any definite person on any definite grounds, 
 but which somehow proved so persuasive to the very 
 men who were best able to contradict it that they were 
 willing to suffer death for its truth. Nor will the 
 world be contented with the theory according to which 
 Christ was never really killed at all, but was smuggled 
 by some unknown disciples into the room where the 
 Twelve sat at meat, and then disappeared unaccount- 
 ably from the historic scene, after crowning a divine 
 life with a bogus resurrection. Nor will men continue 
 to believe — if anybody besides M. Kenan believes it 
 now — that the faithful were indeed again and acjain 
 convinced that their risen Master was standing visibly 
 among them, but thought this because there was an 
 accidental noise, or a puff of air, or even an Hrangc 
 miroitement, an atmospheric effect. An Strange miroitc- 
 ment ! l*aley's Evidences is not a subtle book nor a 
 spiritual book. But one wishes that the robust Paley 
 with his " twelve men of known probity " were alive 
 again to deal with hypotlieses like this. The Apostles 
 were not so much like a British jury as Paley im- 
 agined them. But they were more like a British jury 
 than like a parcel of hysterical monomaniacs. 
 
 And if, as we must hold, the common sense of 
 mankind will insist on feeling that the marvels of the 
 New Testament history have as yet neither been ex- 
 plained away nor explained, so also will it assuredly 
 
IV.] ERNEST RENAN. 223 
 
 refuse to concur with the view, often expressed both 
 in the scientific and the theological camps, according 
 to which these marvels are after all unimportant, the 
 spiritual content of the Gospels is everything, and 
 religion and science alike may be glad to get rid of 
 the miracles as soon as possible. According to the 
 cruder view of the Gospel wonders, indeed, this would 
 be reasonable enough. To wish to convert men by 
 magic, to prove theological dogmas by upsetting the 
 sequence of things, this is neither truly religious nor 
 truly scientific. But if these Gospel signs and wonders 
 are considered as indications of laws which embrace, 
 and in a sense unite, the seen and the unseen worlds, 
 then surely it is of immense importance to science 
 that they should occur anywhere, and of immense 
 importance to Christianity that they should occur in 
 connection with the foundation of that faith. 
 
 It is indeed true that Christianity — understood in 
 our days, it may perhaps be asserted, more profoundly 
 than ever before — has brought to us inestimable bless- 
 ings which no possible view of the wonders narrated 
 in the Gospels could now take away. It has given us 
 a conception of the universe which most minds accept 
 as at once the loftiest and the most intelligible to 
 which the spirit of man has attained ; it has taught us 
 a temper — the temper as of a child towards an unseen 
 Father — which alone, as we now feel, can bring peace 
 to the heart. It is true, moreover, that the best men 
 of all schools of thought are ever uniting more closely 
 
224 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 in the resolve to be practically Christian — to look on 
 the labouring universe with this high affiance, to shape 
 life after this pattern of self-sacrificing love, whatever 
 the universe and life may really be — though the uni- 
 verse be a lonely waste of ether and atoms, and life a 
 momentary consciousness which perishes with the brain's 
 decay. So far will philosophy carry good and wise 
 men. But even the best and the wisest men would 
 prefer to rest their practical philosophy upon a basis of 
 ascertained facts. And for the " hard-headed artisan," 
 " the sceptical inquirer," the myriads of stubborn souls 
 to which Christianity has a message to bring — for 
 such men facts are everything, and philosophy without 
 facts is a sentimental dream. They will never cease 
 to desire actual evidence of another world which may 
 develop the faculties, prolong the affections, redress 
 the injustices of this. And they will feel more and 
 more strongly, as the scientific spirit spreads, that such 
 evidence cannot come to us conclusively, either through 
 lofty ideas generated within our own minds, or through 
 traditions which reach us faintly from an ever-receding 
 Past. Science rests not on intuition, nor on tradition, 
 but on patiently accumulated observations which on a 
 sudden flash into a law. 
 
 One of the most interesting of M. Eenan's essays ^ 
 
 treats of the religious future of the civilised world. He 
 
 indicates therein, witli a delicacy wliich it would be 
 
 unfair to epitomise, which parts of existing religion are 
 
 1 VAvcnir liclitjicux dcs SocieUs Modcrncs. 
 
IV.] ERNEST RENAN. 225 
 
 destined to survive and which to disappear. Tie pre- 
 dicts on the whole an increase of reKgious sentiment, 
 expressing itself in a " free Christianity," whose pliant 
 dogmas, selected by each mind as its need may prompt 
 it, will leave room for the development of man's spirit- 
 ual nature in many different ways. But he allows for 
 the growth of no new element, the foundation of no 
 surer faith. He assumes rather that mankind will 
 resign themselves to the long uncertainty, and will 
 confront at last the eternal problems with scarce an 
 effort for their solution. 
 
 Even such was the spirit in which Socrates, — the 
 genuine, the characteristic Socrates, shrewdest of mortal 
 men, — looked out on the various theories of the 
 constitution of the visible universe which he found in 
 favour around him. Convinced of the arbitrariness of 
 the explanations, of the inaccessibility of the pheno- 
 mena, he insisted that nothing more could be known, 
 or should be inquired, concerning the visible universe 
 save that its substance and operations were august and 
 divine; and he summoned the attention of men to 
 matters where improvement was urgent and knowledge 
 possible, the conduct and the laws of their moral being. 
 
 The parallel is an instructive one. For we shall 
 find, perhaps, on examination, that the old philosopher's 
 despair of discovering the truth about the physical 
 world, and the modern savant's despair of discovering 
 the truth about the spiritual world, are the reactions 
 against precisely the same form of error on the part 
 
 VOL. II. Q 
 
226 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 of those who have taken in hand to expound the 
 mysteries of tlie visible universe or of that which is 
 unseen. For the founders of religions have hitherto 
 dealt in the same way with the invisible world as 
 Tliales or Anaximander dealt with the visible. They 
 have attempted to begin at once with the highest 
 generalisations. Starting from the existence of a God, 
 — the highest of all possible truths, and the least 
 capable of being accurately conceived or defined, — 
 they have proceeded downwards to explain or justify 
 his dealings with man. They have assumed that the 
 things which are of most importance to us are there- 
 fore the things which we are most likely to be enabled 
 to know. Some inquirers have boldly avowed them- 
 selves unable to believe anything inconsistent with 
 their notions of absolute right. Others have accepted 
 with resignation some mysterious message of wrath 
 and doom. But all alike have agreed in disdaining 
 any knowledge of things unseen save such as is of a 
 lofty character, and capable of throwing direct light on 
 the destinies of man. 
 
 It is possible that in all this mankind have begun 
 at the wrong end. The analogy of physical discovery, 
 at any rate, suggests that the truths which we learn 
 first are not the liighest truths, nor the most attractive 
 truths, nor the truths which most concern ourselves. 
 The chemist begins witli tlie production of fetid gases 
 and not of gold ; the physiologist must deal with bone 
 and cartilage before he gets to nerve and brain. Tlie 
 
IV.] ERNEST RENAN. 227 
 
 more interesting to us anything is, the less, and not the 
 more, are we likely to know about it. We must learn 
 first not what we are most eager to learn, but what fits 
 on best to what we know already. 
 
 Let us apply this analogy to the spiritual world. 
 Let us consider how along that strange road also 
 we may proceed systematically from the most complex 
 of the things which we have learnt already to the 
 simplest of those which we have yet to learn. And 
 here we must first reflect that although it is possible, 
 indeed, that any number of worlds, or of states of 
 being, may exist, differing from our world or from each 
 other in inconceivable ways, yet the only difference 
 which we can take account of, — the only line of de- 
 marcation which science can draw, — is between things 
 which can, or which cannot, be cognised by our existing 
 faculties ; or, to speak more accurately, between things 
 which have become a part of our common knowledge, 
 and things which as yet can only be imagined or 
 supposed ; — though this imagination may indeed sus- 
 tain the intensest faith and hope. And this line of 
 demarcation is not a permanent and immovable one : 
 experience shows us no broad gulf between the 
 sensible and the super-sensible, the seen and the un- 
 seen. On the contrary, it is the continual work of 
 science to render that which is incognisable cognisable, 
 that which is unperceived perceptible, that which is 
 fitfully seen and uncontrollable habitually manifest 
 and controlled. In this process she is constantly 
 
228 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 encroaching on the domain of old religions, and bring- 
 ing things which once seemed so unearthly that they 
 must needs be divine into her ordinary categories of 
 observation and experiment. A subtler ether than 
 ever hung round the windless Olympus is now the sub- 
 ject of differential equations. And man — Kepawov 
 Kpelaaov €vpr]Kco<; ^\6ya — has tamed for his use and 
 fixed for his illumination the very flash and bolt of 
 Jove. There is no need to multiply instances. Science, 
 while perpetually denying an unseen world, is per- 
 petually revealing it. Meantime we are unavoidably 
 subject to the same illusion as our fathers. We 
 too fancy that a great gulf surrounds our field of 
 vision ; there must be void or mystery where we cease 
 to see. Aristotle, having done more than any one 
 before or since to explain the affairs of this planet, 
 relcG^ated liis unknowable to the fixed stars. The nature 
 of the stars, he says, is eternal, and the first essences 
 which they represent divine.^ Our standpoint now is 
 not the same as Aristotle's. But we have no more 
 reason than he had to take our mental horizon for an 
 objective line. 
 
 If, then (apart from the inspirations of the in- 
 dividual soul), we are asked in what manner we can 
 hope to obtain definite knowledge about spiritual 
 things, the answer which we shall be forced to give 
 will seem, like the prophet's saying, Wash in Jordan 
 and he clcari, at once a disappointing platitude and a 
 
 ^ Mcluph. xii. 8. 
 
IT.] ERNEST RENAN. 229 
 
 wild chimera. For we can reply only : In the same 
 way as we have obtained definite knowledge about 
 physical things. The things which we now call sensible 
 or natural we have learnt by following scientific 
 methods up to a certain point. The things which we 
 still call supra-sensible or supernatural we shall learn 
 by following those methods farther still. But while 
 we thus commit ourselves to science with loyal con- 
 fidence, we shall call on her to assume the tone of 
 an unquestioned monarch rather than of a successful 
 usurper. All phenomena are her undoubted subjects ; 
 let her press all into her service, and not ignore or 
 proscribe any because ignorance may have misrepre- 
 sented them, or theology misused. Let her find her 
 profit where she may, without contempt and without 
 prepossession, in the superstitions of the savage as 
 in the speculations of the sage. 
 
 But this has yet to be. And even if, more 
 doggedly persistent herein than M. Eenan, we cannot 
 bring ourselves to allow that religious aspiration and 
 emotion are all that can be ours, and that the effort 
 after a systematic knowledge of the unseen world must 
 be abandoned in despair, we may nevertheless feel a 
 strong sympathy with the attitude in which he con- 
 fronts the deep spiritual unsettlement which divides 
 the modern world. 
 
 " ' La plus rude des peincs/ he says,^ ' par lesquelles 
 
 1 Etudes d^Histoire Jlcligiezcsc (preface). 
 
230 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 rhomme arrive a la vie r6fl^chie expie sa position excep- 
 tionnelle est sans doute de se voir ainsi isol6 de la grande 
 famille religieuse, oti sont les meilleures ames du monde, 
 et de songer que les personnes avec lesquelles il aimerait 
 le mieux etre en communion morale doivent forc6ment le 
 regarder comme pervers. II faut etre bien stir de soi pour 
 ne point se troubler quand les femmes et les enfants 
 joignent leurs mains pour vous dire, Croyez comme nous ! 
 On se console en songeant que cette scission entre les 
 parties simples et les parties cultiv^es de I'humanit^ est 
 une loi fatale de I'^tat que nous traversons, et qu'il est une 
 region sup6rieure des ames 61ev6es, dans laquelle se recon- 
 trent souvent sans s'en douter, ceux qui s'anath^matisent ; 
 cit6 id6ale que contempla le Voyant de I'Apocalypse, oh se 
 pressait une foule que nul ne pouvait compter, de toute 
 tribu, de toute nation, de toute langue, proclamant d'une 
 seule voix le symbole dans lequel tous se rt^imissent : 
 ' Saint, saint, saint, celui qui est, qui a 6t6, et qui sera ! " " 
 
 Again he says ^ (and the few lines that I quote 
 contain the upshot of almost all his teaching) : — 
 
 " Ja'i cru servir la religion en essayant de la transporter 
 dans la region de I'inattaquable, au-deL\ des dogmes 
 particuliers et des croyances sumaturelles. Si celles-ci 
 viennent k crouler il ne faut pas que la religion croule, et 
 un jour viendra peut-etre oh ceux qui me reprochent 
 comme un crime cette distinction entre le fond imj^^rissable 
 de la religion et ses formes passag^res seront lieureux de 
 chercher un refuge contre des attaques brutales derri^re 
 I'abri qu'il s ont d6daign6." 
 
 Passages of this kind may surely be welcomed even 
 
 * Essais de Morale ct dc Critique (profaco). 
 
IV.] ERNEST REN AN. 231 
 
 by those who feel the fullest confidence in the ultimate 
 victory of a more definite form of faith. They show, 
 at least, the nobler aspect of an age of transition, the 
 real advantage which times of doubt and hesitancy 
 may bring to many men in calling out, as it were, the 
 reserve forces of their nature, in compelling them to 
 confront the great problems and to realise what it is 
 that they hold most dear. One might too often be 
 led to think, by the tone of its defenders, that the 
 Christian religion was a kind of transcendental insur- 
 ance company ; that its object was merely to enable 
 men to enjoy this temporal life without anxiety as 
 to the eternal. But this is not so. The object of 
 all true religion is not the tranquillity, but the life of 
 the spirit ; and our modern days have seen this life 
 grow strong and vigorous in regions where it has re- 
 ceived no conscious sustenance from an environing 
 Power. It would be rash to turn aside from fellow- 
 ship with such men because their language jars on 
 orthodox tradition. " Le blaspheme des grands esprits," 
 as M. Eenan has said in words that recall the deepest 
 thoughts of Pascal — 
 
 " le blaspheme des grands esprits est plus agr6able k Dieu 
 que la pri^re int6ress6e de rhomme vulgaire ; car, bien que 
 le blaspheme r6ponde k une vue incomplete des choses, il 
 renferme une part de protestation juste, tandis que I'^goisme 
 ne contient aucune parcelle de v6rit6." 
 
 I must draw to a conclusion. Yet lest, amid 
 criticism and controversy, I may seem to have rendered 
 
232 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv 
 
 imperfectly the substantive character and lessons of 
 one above whose voice, for width and wisdom, it were 
 hard to place the voice of any living teacher. I must 
 yet find room for two passages which represent him at 
 his best. The first was written at a crisis of private 
 sorrow and public contention, and spoke out, in answer 
 to a swift emergency, the inward habit of his soul. 
 
 " 'J'ai vu la mort,' ^ he said, * de tres-pr^s. J'ai perdu 
 le gotit de ces jeux frivoles oil ron peut prendre plaisir 
 quand on n'a pas encore souflfert. Les soucis de pygmies, 
 dans lesquels s'use la vie, n'ont plus beaucoup de sens pour 
 moi. J'ai, au contraire, rapport6 du seuil de I'infini une 
 foi plus vive que jamais dans la r^alit6 superieure du 
 monde id6al. C'est lui qui est, et le monde physique qui 
 parait etre. Fort de cette conviction, j 'attends I'avenir 
 avec calme. La conscience de bien fair sufiit k mon repos, 
 Dieu m'ayant donn6 pour tout ce qui est stranger a ma vie 
 morale une parf aite indifi'^rence. ' " 
 
 The last passage which I shall quote is one written 
 in calmness, not in exaltation." It seems to me to 
 contain thoughts as lofty, in language as clear and 
 noble, as any meditation on these eternal things wliicli 
 our age has known. 
 
 " 8i hi religion n'6tait que le fruit du calcul naif par 
 loquel rhommc veut retrouvcr au dela de la tonibo le fruit 
 dcs placements vertucux qu'il a faits ici-bas rhomme y 
 serait siirtout portc dans ses moments d'egoismc. Or, c'est 
 dans ses muilleiirs moments quo I'homme est ruligieux, 
 
 1 La Chairc iVlUhrcu au ColUgc de France. 
 2 From VAvcnir Jieligicux dcs SocUtis Modcmcs. 
 
IV.] ERNEST RENAN. 233 
 
 c'est quand il est bon qu'il veut que la vertu corresponde a 
 im ordre 6ternel, c'est quand il contemple les choses d'une 
 maniere d6sint6ress6e qu'il trouve la mort r6voltante et 
 absurde. Disons done hardiment que la religion est un 
 produit de rhomme normal, que riiomme est le plus dans 
 le vrai quand il est le plus religieux et le plus assur6 d'une 
 destinee infinie; mais ^cartons toute confiance absolue dans 
 les images qui servent k exprimer cette destinee, et croyons 
 seulement que la r6alit6 doit etre fort sup6rieure k ce qu'il 
 est permis au sentiment de d6sirer et a la fantaisie 
 d'imaginer. On crut que la science allait diminuer le 
 monde. En r^alit^ elle I'a infiniment agrandi. La terre 
 semblable k un disque, le soleil gros comme le P6loponese, 
 les 6toiles roulant a quelques lieues de hauteur sur les 
 rainures d'une votite solide, un univers ferm6, entoure de 
 iiiurailles, cintre comme un cofFre, voila le systeme du 
 monde le plus splendide que Ton eut pu concevoir. . . . 
 Croyons hardiment que le systeme du monde moral est de 
 meme superieur a nos symboles. . . . Qui sait si la meta- 
 physique et la th^ologie du pass6 ne seront pas a celles que 
 le progres de la speculation r6v61era un jour ce que le 
 cosmos d'Anaximene ou d'Indicopleust6s est au cosmos de 
 Laplace et de Humboldt 1 " 
 
 And now, perhaps, enougli indication has been 
 given of the temper in which this subtlest of seekers 
 after God approaches the mystery on whose skirts we 
 dwell. The value of his reflections it must be left in 
 great part for the succeeding age to determine. All 
 that can be claimed for him, — that must be claimed 
 now and ever by honest men for honest men, — is that 
 disagreement should carry with it no detraction ; that 
 
234 MODERN ESSAYS. [iv. 
 
 there should never be anything but honour paid to the 
 search for truth. 
 
 " Things are what they are," said Bishop Butler, 
 " and their consequences will be what they will be ; 
 why, then, should we wish to be deceived ? " EI? 
 o'lwvo<; apiaro^ — the one best of omens is that we our- 
 selves be brave and true. " Light ! though thou slay 
 us in the light !" is the aspiration of all noble souls. 
 Nor was it in vain that that prayer of Ajax was 
 uttered beside Scamander's shore. The cloud-veil was 
 withdrawn at his bidding, and light was given indeed ; 
 but it was not destruction which it pleased Zeus to 
 send for the sons of the Achaeans, but entry into sacred 
 Ilium, and a return to their immemorial home. 
 
ARCHBISHOP TRENCH'S POEMS. 
 
 6\j3los oaTLS Idibv eKeiva Kol\av 
 
 elcTLV viro xQova.' olSeu fiev ^iov Kelpos Tekevrav, 
 
 oWev 5k 5l6(x8otov dpxdu. 
 
 Even in these days of eager appreciation, of ready eulogy, 
 one living Englishman who may fairly lay claim to the 
 title of poet seems as yet to have received but inade- 
 quate recognition. Yet he is of all English poets the 
 one whose position in the world is the most conspicu- 
 ous and considerable. But Dr. Trench's poems have 
 in no wise depended upon his status as an ecclesiastic ; 
 they have appealed to no party in the Church ; they 
 have made their way by no organised praise or factiti- 
 ous diffusion, but by slow pervasive contact with earnest 
 and lonely minds. His public has been gradually won, 
 and is gradually increasing ; there are many for whom 
 his words have mingled themselves with Tennyson's in 
 hours of bereavement, with Wordsworth's in hours of 
 meditative calm. 
 
 For there are many who have found in these poems 
 the fit expression of a spirit by nature mournful, by 
 conviction and courage serene ; dwelling, as it were. 
 
236 l^IODERN ESSAYS. [v. 
 
 beneath the pressure, but in the light, of Eternity ; a 
 spirit stirred, indeed, by romance, and alive to martial 
 adventure, but occupied chiefly with the profounder 
 symbolism and occult significance of the world, and 
 finding its congenial nourishment wheresoever Greek, 
 or Persian, or Arabian, German or Spaniard, Jewish 
 rabbi or mediaeval saint, has set wisdom in hidden 
 apologues and has mingled mystery with song ; a spirit 
 whose own utterances come rarely and with effort, and 
 express for the most part only a massive wisdom, a 
 jjnomic and sententious calm : but which under the 
 stimulus of strong poetic sympathy, or of desolating 
 bereavement, or merely of the more closely realised 
 imminence of the unseen, will sometimes become as it 
 were slowly enkindled from within, and for a while find 
 grace and power to mix with those who through the 
 weight and confusion of earthly things have fought 
 upwards into the spiritual universe " their practicable 
 way." 
 
 I have mentioned poetic sympathy as one of the 
 impulses which have most powerfully stimulated Dr. 
 Trench's powers. The strongest instance of this is the 
 influence of Pindar. And it is strange to reflect how 
 subtle must that connection be between verbal melody 
 and deep-seated emotion which enables not merely the 
 thoughts and imaginations, but the very mood and 
 temper of IMndar on some given day to reproduce 
 themselves with such awakening intensity in the breast 
 of a man so remote in language, nation, and faith. It 
 
v.] AEOHBISHOP TRENCH'S POEMS. 237 
 
 is strange to think that when Pindar had written down 
 the words beginning 
 
 Toy 81 TrajXTreiOrj yXvKvv r^^iOeoKTiv ttoOov TrpoaSauv "Upa — 
 
 he had made it practically certain that whatever might 
 befall Greece or her gods, in every generation of men 
 who should thereafter be born there should be some at 
 least to whom those words should carry a shock and 
 exaltation hardly to be equalled by any personal de- 
 light ; to whom they should sound as the very charter 
 of heroism, the trumpet-call of honour and of joy. 
 " Hidden are the keys," to use his own words, of the 
 art which so wrought the fourth Pythian ode as that it 
 should outlast the Parthenon : — 
 
 " Seeing it was built 
 To music, therefore never built at all, 
 And therefore built for ever." 
 
 In his Orpheus and the Sirens Dr. Trench gives us the 
 peculiar pleasure which is afforded by a poem which 
 is not a translation but a transmutation of some great 
 remembered song ; melted afresh in the crucible of an 
 understanding heart, and poured into a new shape which 
 recalls without imitating the old : — 
 
 • 
 
 " High on the poop, with many a godlike peer, 
 
 With heroes and with kings, the flower of Greece, 
 That gathered at his word from far and near, 
 To snatch the guarded fleece, 
 
 " Great Jason stood, nor ever from the soil 
 The anchor's brazen tooth unfastened, 
 
238 MODERN ESSAYS. [v. 
 
 Till, auspicating so his glorious toil, 
 From golden cup he shed 
 
 " Libations to the gods, to highest Jove, 
 
 To Waves, and prospering Winds, to Night and Day, 
 To all by whom befriended he might prove 
 A favourable way." 
 
 There is something in this stately opening, in the 
 " ample pinion " of tliis high and manly strain, which 
 recalls at a distance the sailing glory of the great 
 original : — 
 
 dpxos Iv Trpv/iva Trare/s' OvpavLSav lyyiiKipavvov Z-tjva^ KaC 
 
 OiKVTTOpOVs 
 
 Ki'/xarwv fUTTas dvefxo)v r cKaAet, vvKTas re nal ttuvtov KcXevOovs 
 tt/xara t' ev(f)pova Kal (^iikiav vocttoio fioipav. 
 
 But as the poem proceeds Dr. Trench quits the track 
 of Pindar, and describes the encounter of the returning 
 Argonauts with the Sirens in a passage which should 
 be compared with Mr. Morris' beautiful treatment of 
 the same situation in the Life and Death of Jason. 
 
 " The winds, suspended by the charmed song, 
 Shed treacherous calm about that fatal isle ; 
 The waves, as though the halcyon o'er its young 
 Were always brooding, smile ; 
 
 " And every one that listens, presently 
 
 Forgetteth home, and wife, and children dear, 
 All noble enterprise and purpose high. 
 And turns his pinnace here, — 
 
v.] ARCHBISHOP TRENCH'S POEMS. 239 
 
 " He turns his pinnace, warning taking none 
 From the plain doom of all that went before, 
 Whose bones lie bleaching in the wind and sun, 
 And whiten all the shore. 
 
 ".The heroes and the kings, the wise, the strong, 
 That won the fleece with cunning and with might, 
 They too are taken in the net of song. 
 Snared in that false delight ; 
 
 " Till ever loathlier seemed all toil to be. 
 
 And that small space they yet must travel o'er 
 Stretched, an immeasurable breadth of sea, 
 Their fainting hearts before. 
 
 " ' Let us turn hitherward our bark,' they cried, 
 ' And, bathed in blisses of this happy isle, 
 Past toil forgetting and to come, abide 
 In joyfulness awhile ; 
 
 " ' And then, refreshed, our tasks resume again, 
 If other tasks we yet are bound unto. 
 Combing the hoary tresses of the main 
 With sharp swift keel anew.' " 
 
 They are on the point of yielding to the charm when 
 Orpheus sings : — 
 
 " He singing (for mere words were now in vain. 
 That melody so led all souls at will). 
 Singing he played, and matched that earthborn strain 
 With music sweeter still. 
 
 " Of holier joy he sang, more true delight. 
 In other happier isles for them reserved. 
 
240 MODERN ESSAYS. 
 
 Who, faithful here, from constancy and right 
 And tnith have never swerved ; 
 
 * ' How evermore the tempered ocean gales 
 
 Breathe round those hidden islands of the blest, 
 Steeped in the glory spread, when daylight fails 
 Far in the sacred West ; 
 
 *' How unto them, beyond our mortal night. 
 
 Shines evermore in strength the golden day ; 
 And meadows with purpureal roses bright 
 Bloom round their feet alway ; 
 
 " And plants of gold — some burn beneath the sea. 
 And some, for garlands apt, the land doth bear. 
 And lacks not many an incense-breathing tree, 
 Enriching all that air. 
 
 " Nor need is more, with sullen strength of hand, 
 To vex the stubborn earth, or plough the main : 
 They dwell apart, a calm heroic band, 
 Not tasting toil or pain. 
 
 " Nor sang he only of unfading bowers, 
 
 Where they a tearless, painless age fulfil, 
 In fields Elysian spending blissful hours, 
 Remote from every ill ; 
 
 " But of pure gladness found in temperance high. 
 In duty owned, and reverenced with awi', 
 Of man's true freedom, that may only lie 
 In servitude to law ; 
 
 " And how 'twas given through virtue to aspire 
 To golden seats in ever-calm abodes ; — 
 Of mortal men admitted to the choir 
 Of lii'di imnioital (Jods." 
 
v.] ARCHBISHOP TEENCH'S POEMS. 241 
 
 It will be seen that Pindar's second Olympian Ode 
 has furnished much of the inspiration of these noble 
 stanzas. And it is a noticeable fact that Dr. Trench, 
 himself the very type and norm of Christian and 
 Anglican orthodoxy, has yet by the intensity of his 
 pondering on the things unseen been led to feel the 
 profound afi&nity which has existed between the hopes 
 and creeds of such men in all times and countries as 
 have set themselves to seek after God, and has thus 
 been upheld in one of his highest moments by the 
 Vision of the Pindaric Apocalypse, the tale told in the 
 Mysteries of the blessedness of the just, Kelvav irapa 
 hiairav, " in the life that is to be." The Poems from 
 Eastern Sources afford many illustrations of this ten- 
 dency of an inward and meditative faith to identify 
 itself with the diverse but convergent imaginations of 
 remote and ancient men. And in the Monk and Bird 
 we may see how strongly this brooding spirit has been 
 drawn towards that element in European life which 
 has most resembled the monotony of the East, — the 
 life of monks and hermits in the middle ages, — a life 
 closed about with narrowing cloister-walls, yet having 
 as it were a single opening on the infinite, like the 
 chink which serves for the astronomer's outlook upon 
 the abysses of heaven. 
 
 In the Monk and Bird Dr. Trench has treated one 
 of the profoundest of mediseval parables, — an apologue 
 which deals with a real difficulty and suggests a real, 
 though not a novel, solution. The difficulty lies in 
 
 VOL. II. R 
 
242 MODERN ESSAYS. [v. 
 
 conceiving that our Unite faculties can be capable 
 without weariness of infinite delight; the answer is 
 the Platonic one, that the limitations of our faculties 
 can even now by an occasional insight be discerned 
 to be accidental and temporary, and not inherent in 
 the percipient soul itself. Such insight, as Plato has 
 urged, comes to us mainly through the passion of 
 Love, which in its highest form refuses to conceive of 
 its own satisfaction in less than infinite time. The 
 author of this legend, if such legends have an author, 
 has chosen a simpler experience through which to in- 
 timate the spirit's essential power, and has imagined 
 his Paradise in the unwonted prolongation of a single 
 and elementary joy. 
 
 The story is of " a cloistered solitary man," vowed 
 to poverty and celibacy, and debarred from the ordinary 
 interests and pleasures of mankind. 
 
 " Yet we should err to deem that he was left 
 To bear alone our being's lonely weight, 
 Or that his soul was vacant and bereft 
 Of pomp and inward state. 
 
 " Morn, when before the sun his orb unshrouds, 
 Swift as a beacon torcli the liglit has sped, 
 Kindling the dusky summits of the clouds 
 Each to a fiery red ; — 
 
 "The slanted columns of tlie noon-day light, 
 Let down into the bosom of the hills, 
 Or sunset, that with golden vapour luight 
 Tile piii'ple mountains lills, — 
 
v.] ARCHBISHOP TRENCH'S POEMS. 243 
 
 " These made him say : ' If God has so arrayed 
 A fading world that quickly passes by, 
 Such rich provision of delight has made 
 For every human eye, 
 
 '■ ' What shall the eyes that wait for Him survey, 
 AVhere His own presence gloriously appears 
 In worlds that were not founded for a day. 
 But for eternal years T " 
 
 But gradually a spiritual anxiety undermined this 
 spiritual calm : — 
 
 " For still the doubt came back, ' Can God provide 
 For the large heart of man what shall not pall, 
 Nor thro' eternal ages' endless tide 
 On tired spirits fall? 
 
 " ' Here but one look toward heaven will oft repress 
 The crushing weight of undelightful care ; 
 But what were there beyond, if weariness 
 Should ever enter there V" 
 
 How in this mood of mind he wanders in the woods, 
 how he hears a bird singing and listens with rapt 
 attention, and turns homeward with a dim sense of 
 strangeness when the song is done, I must leave the 
 reader to learn from the poem itself. I can only 
 quote the concluding stanzas : — 
 
 " Yet was it long ere he received the whole 
 
 Of that strange wonder — how, while he had stood 
 Lost in deep gladness of his inmost soul 
 Far hidden in that wood. 
 
244 ]^[ODERN ESSAYS. [v. 
 
 " Three generations had gone down unseen 
 Under the thin partition that is spread — 
 The thin partition of thin earth — between 
 The living and the dead. 
 
 " Nor did he many days to earth belong, 
 
 For like a pent-up stream, released again, 
 The years arrested by the strength of song 
 Came down on him amain ; 
 
 " Sudden as a dissolving thaw in spring ; 
 Gentle as when upon the first warm day 
 Which sunny April in its train may bring 
 The snow melts all away. 
 
 " They placed him in his former cell, and there 
 
 Watched him departing ; what few words he said 
 Were of calm peace and gladness, with one care 
 Mingled — one only dread — 
 
 " Lest an eternity should not suffice 
 
 To take the measure and the breadth and height 
 Of what there is reserved in Paradise — 
 Its ever-new deliirht." 
 
 These stanzas will give an idea of Dr. Trench's 
 characteristic style ; equally remote from convention 
 and from extravagance, keeping as it were in the 
 main track of the English language, and giving to 
 simple and natural forms of speech a grave distinction 
 and a melodious power. 
 
 From the poems which derive their motive from 
 external sources I pass on to the more purely subjec- 
 
v.] AECHBISHOP TRENCH'S POEMS. 245 
 
 tive pieces. The keynote of these is given in two 
 weighty stanzas : — 
 
 " Ufe, death, world, O time, 
 grave, where all things flow, 
 'Tis yours to make our lot sublime 
 With your great weight of woe. 
 
 " Though sharpest anguish hearts may wring, 
 Though bosoms torn may be. 
 Yet suffering is a holy thing ; 
 Without it what were we T' 
 
 Elevation through sorrow is as distinctly the lesson 
 which Dr. Trench has to teach as elevation throudi 
 spiritual oneness with Nature is Wordsworth's lesson. 
 And the sorrow with which this poet deals, which he 
 so wholly vanquishes in the triumphant joy of the 
 lines which he has called " The kingdom of God," is 
 not merely such isolated grief as may fall upon an 
 alert a^nd buoyant spirit, to be shaken off with a quick 
 rush of hope, or with the life-bringing recurrence of 
 the years. Eather it is that inbred and heavy gloom, 
 that sense of oppression and of exile, of punishment 
 and fall, which may be said to form the darker side of 
 our " intimations of immortality," and which has made 
 the lives, not of monks or recluses only, but of some 
 of the best and most active men whose fates history 
 records, one long struggle between the indomitable 
 effort of courage and the paralysing relapse of pain. 
 The Ode to Sleep, of which I quote the two last 
 
24f5 MODERN ESSAYS. [v. 
 
 stanzas, will illustrate this temper of mind ; and 
 will show that the confident and deliberate hope 
 which is the sum and outcome of this volume is 
 something more than the easy optimism of tempem- 
 ment or convention. 
 
 " And therefore am I seeking to entwine 
 A coronal of poppies for my head, 
 Or wreathe it with a wreath engarlanded 
 By Lethe's slumberous waters. Oh ! that mine 
 Were some dim chamber turning to the north, 
 With latticed casement, bedded deep in leaves, 
 That opening with sweet murmur might look forth 
 On quiet fields from broad o'erhanging eaves. 
 And ever when the Spring her garland weaves 
 Were darkened with encroaching ivy-trail 
 And jagged vine-leaves' shade ; 
 And all its pavement starred with blossoms pale 
 Of jasmine, when the wind's least stir was made; 
 Where the sunbeam were verdurous-cool, before 
 It wound into that quiet nook, to paint 
 With interspace of light and colour faint 
 That tesselated floor. 
 
 " How pleasant were it there in dim recess, 
 In some close-curtained haunt of quietness, 
 To hear no tones of human pain or care, 
 Our own or others', little heeding there 
 If morn or noon or night 
 Pursued their weary flight. 
 But musing what an easy thing it wcro 
 To mix our opiates in a larger cup. 
 And drink, and not perceive 
 
v.] ARCHBISHOP TRENCH'S POEMS. 247 
 
 Sleep deepening lead his truer kinsman up, 
 
 Like undistinguished Night darkening the skirts of Eve." 
 
 Surely there can be no question as to the profound 
 charm of these lines, the charm of the slowly-falling 
 syllables, the strong and lingering rhythm, which paint 
 the gradual eclipse of the last faint joy in light and 
 form and colour, and the whole soul's abeyance in an 
 unstirred and unawakening gloom. 
 
 One more quotation shall illustrate the contrasting 
 form of self-abandonment ; a dissolution which is not 
 into the night but into the day ; the last renunciation 
 of egoism, the absorption of individual effort and 
 rebellion in the Infinite Home of men. 
 
 " Tf there had anywhere appeared in space 
 Another place of refuge, where to flee, 
 Our souls had taken refuge in that place, 
 And not with Thee. 
 
 " For we against creation's bars had beat 
 
 Like prisoned eagles, through great worlds had sought 
 Though but a foot of ground to plant our feet 
 Where Thou wert not. 
 
 " And only when we found in earth and air, 
 
 In heaven or hell, that such might nowhere be, — 
 That we could not flee from Thee anywhere, — 
 We fled to Thee." 
 
 But it is by his Elegiac Poems that Dr. Trench 
 has won his almost unique position in many hearts. 
 For it is the especial privilege of Poetry that by her 
 
248 MODERN ESSAYS. [v. 
 
 close intermingling of ethical and artistic sentiment 
 she can bring definite consolation to some of the 
 deepest sorrows of men. Painting can fill our minds 
 with ennobling images, but in the hour of our tribula- 
 tion these are apt to look coldly at us, like dead gods. 
 Music can exalt us into an unearthly and illimitable 
 world, but the treasures which we have grasped there 
 melt away when we descend from that remote 
 empyrean. Poetry can meet our sorrows face to face, 
 can show us that she also knows them, and can trans- 
 form them into " something rich and strange " by the 
 suggestive magic of her song. And since there does 
 without doubt exist a kind of transference and meta- 
 stasis of the emotions, since the force of any strong 
 feeling can to some extent be led off into other 
 channels, the work of Art in the moral world, like the 
 work of Science in the material world, is to transform 
 the painful into the useful, the lower into the higher 
 forms of force ; to change scorn and anger into a 
 generous fervency, and love that is mixed with sorrow 
 into a sacred and impersonal flame. And of all sor- 
 rows the sorrow of bereavement needs this aid the 
 most. For to some troubles a man may become 
 indifferent by philosophy, and from some he may 
 become through virtue free, but this one sorrow grows 
 deeper as the character rises and tlie lieart expands ; 
 and an object more unique and loveable is mourned 
 with a more inconsolable desire. And to such mourn- 
 ers those who trust in an ultimate reunion may often 
 
v.] AECHBISHOP TRENCH'S POEMS. 249 
 
 speak with an effective power. For on whatever 
 evidence or revelation men may base this faith for 
 themselves, it does yet unconsciously in great part 
 rest for each man upon the faith of those around him, 
 upon the desire of great hearts and the consenting 
 expectation of the just. It is a belief which only in 
 a certain moral atmosphere finds strength to grow ; it 
 is chiefly when the conviction of spiritual progress 
 through sorrow is dominant and clear that men are 
 irresistibly led to believe that in this crowning sorrow 
 also courage must conquer, and constancy must be 
 rewarded, and love which as yet has known no bar or 
 limit shall find no limit in the grave. Be this per- 
 suasion well founded or not, to those " who have 
 intelligence of love " human life without such hope 
 would be itself a chaos or a hell. A nature like Dr. 
 Trench's, full of clinging affections, profound religious 
 faith, and constitutional sadness, was likely to feel in 
 extreme measure both these bereavements and these 
 consolations. The loss of beloved children taught him 
 the lessons of sorrow and of hope, and the words in 
 which that sorrow and that hope found utterance have 
 led many a mourner in his most desolate hour to feel 
 that this grave writer is his closest and most consoling 
 friend. 
 
 For although these poems deal so largely with the 
 poet's sorrow and yearning, it is not compassion only, 
 nor compassion chiefly, which they inspire in our 
 hearts. Eather we feel that for one whose hopes are 
 
250 MODERN ESSAYS. [v 
 
 based so firmly and raised so high we can desire 
 notliing but what he already possesses ; no " treasures," 
 no " friends," as another poet has told us, except such 
 treasures as are his indefeasibly, and those 
 
 " Three firm friends, more sure than Day or Night, 
 Himself, his Maker, and the Angel Death." 
 
GEOEGE ELIOT. 
 
 " Homo lioraini deus est, si suum officium sciat." — C^ecilius. 
 
 It is no easy task to write for the public eye an 
 account of a deeply-venerated friend whom death has 
 newly taken. It is a task on wliich one might well 
 shrink from entering, save at the wish of those whose 
 desire in such a matter carries the force of a command. 
 He who makes the attempt can scarcely avoid two 
 opposite perils. Strangers will be apt to think his 
 admiration excessive. Friends more intimate than 
 himself, on the other hand, will find a disappointing 
 incompleteness in any estimate formed by one less 
 close than they, — one who, seeing only what his own 
 nature allowed him to see, must needs leave so much 
 unseen, untold. Between these conflicting dangers the 
 only tenable course is one of absolute candour. To 
 fail in candour, indeed, would be to fail in respect. 
 " Obedience is the courtesy due to kings," and to the 
 sovereigns of the world of mind the courtesy due is 
 truth. 
 
 The world has already been made acquainted with 
 
252 MODERN ESSAYS. [vi. 
 
 most of the external facts of George Eliot's life. Mary 
 Ann Evans, youngest child of Robert Evans, land 
 agent, was born at Arbury, near Nuneaton, in War- 
 wickshire, on November 22, 1820. Her birthplace 
 was thus only some twenty miles from Shakspeare's, 
 and the " rookery elms " of her childish memories, 
 survivors of the Forest of Arden, may have cast their 
 shadow also on the poet of Jaqiics and Rosalind. 
 Arbury Hall, the seat of Sir Eoger Newdigate, her 
 father's principal employer, is reproduced as the 
 Cheverel Manor of Mr. GilfiVs Love-Story. So, also, 
 does Chilvers Coton Church appear as Shepperton, 
 Astley Church — Tlie Lantliorn of Arden — as Knebley, 
 and Nuneaton as Milby, while many of the inliabitants 
 of that quiet region are painted in Scenes of Clerical 
 Life, as they were, or as they might have been. 
 
 Her education was mainly self-acquired. For a 
 short time — before she was ten years old — she was at 
 school in Nuneaton, afterwards at the Miss Franklins' 
 in Coventry. " I began at sixteen," she says, in a 
 letter which lies before me, " to be acquainted with 
 the imspeakable grief of a last parting, in the death of 
 my mother." After this loss, and the marriage of her 
 brothers and sisters, she lived alone with her father, 
 and in 1841 they removed from Griff House to Foles- 
 hill, near Coventry. 
 
 During all these early years, as, indeed, during all 
 the years whicli followed them, religious and moral 
 ponderings made the basis of George Eliot's life. To 
 
VI.] GEORGE ELIOT. 253 
 
 her, as to most of the more serious spirits of her 
 generation, religion came first after the Evangelical — 
 for a time even after the Calvinistic — pattern. The 
 figure of Dinah Morris is partially taken from her 
 aunt, Elizabeth Evans, whose simple goodness had 
 much attraction for the earnest, self-questioning girl. 
 And in other well-known characters she has shown 
 her deep realisation of those forms of faith and piety 
 which rest, not on outward ceremonies, but on the 
 direct communion of the heart with God. The story 
 of the spiritual growth of Maggie Tulliver — in great 
 part, no doubt, autobiographical — has been felt by 
 many readers to be almost unique in its delineation, of 
 passionate search, of an eager, self-renouncing soul. 
 But there are those who seek and cannot find, who 
 knock and to whom it is not opened. There are 
 those, the very intensity of whose gaze seems to dim 
 the great hope on which it rests ; who, while the 
 kingdom of heaven fulfils itself within them, cease to 
 discern it before them and afar. 
 
 Such was the case with George Eliot. After a few 
 years spent at Foleshill m close study, aided by the 
 Charles Brays and other intelligent friends at Coventry, 
 we find her coming first before the world, though 
 anonymously, in 1846, with a translation of Strauss' 
 Life of Jesus. This was followed by a translation of 
 Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, and a translation, 
 as yet unpublished, of Spinoza's Ethics. Her mind 
 had taken its ply, and while her nature, eminently 
 
254 MODERN ESSAYS. [vi. 
 
 constant and conservative, retained always a deep 
 reverence and affection for whatever names itself by 
 the name of Christ, she never sought again the old 
 means of grace, nor felt the old hope of glory. 
 
 Her father died in 1849, and for some time before 
 his death she was mainly absorbed in attendance on 
 him. She told me once that for the last year of his 
 life she had read Scott's novels aloud to him for many 
 hours almost daily ; and thus, we may suppose, amid 
 her severer studies, she was imbibing something of the 
 method of one to whom she always looked up as a 
 master. After her father's death she went abroad with 
 the Brays, and remained for some eight months en 
 pension near Geneva, and afterwards at M. d' Albert's 
 house in the town. This was to her a time of intense 
 delight in the external world. The shock of bereave- 
 ment had left her spirit open to those consolations 
 with which Nature is ever ready tb soothe a generous 
 pain. 
 
 She returned to England in 1850, and in 1851 
 she became sub-editor of the Westminster Review, a 
 periodical which has often been the first to welcome 
 the contributions of writers who have afterwards risen 
 to fame. She lodged with the editor, Dr. Chapman, 
 and liis wife, in a large house in the Strand, which was 
 the centre of a literary group, penetrated for the most 
 part witli strongly scientific tendencies, and esi)ecially 
 witli the philosophy of the Comtist school. Among 
 the articles in the Review wliicli have since been 
 
VI.] GEORGE ELIOT. 255 
 
 pointed out as hers, that on " Worldliness and Other- 
 Worldliness " (Jan. 1857), is especially characteristic 
 and noteworthy. 
 
 This course of placid self-culture was interrupted 
 by personal events which increased the perplexity, deep- 
 ened the significance, of life. A long tragedy unrolled 
 itself before her ; her pity, affection, gratitude, were 
 subjected to a strong appeal ; a path was chosen over 
 which, amidst much of happiness, a certain shadow 
 hung. It is enough to say here that if ever her intimate 
 history is made more fully known to the world it will 
 be found to contain nothing at variance with her own 
 unselfish teaching ; no postponement of principle to 
 passion ; no personal happiness based upon others' pain. 
 
 In 1854 Mr. and Mrs. Lewes went to Germany, 
 and spent a year mainly at Weimar and Berlin. 
 They saw much of the most intellectual society of 
 Germany, and it was, perhaps, in this stimulating 
 companionship that the earnest student first became 
 strongly conscious of original power. It was, at any 
 rate, soon afterwards that she discovered the means of 
 self-expression by which she was best able to move 
 mankind, in a form of literature whose freedom of 
 plan renders it specially fitted to reflect the complexity 
 of modern life and thought. She preluded with one 
 or two short tales, which indicate that her power was 
 only just ripening. Then Scenes of Clerical Life ap- 
 peared in 1857, Adam Bcde in 1859, and TJie Mill 
 on the Floss in 18 GO. 
 
256 MODERN ESSAYS. [vi. 
 
 The author's identity was soon discovered under 
 her nom de plume of " George Eliot," and the publica- 
 tion of these first books made a sudden change in her 
 life and surroundings. She awoke and found herself 
 famous. From an obscure sub-editor of an unfashion- 
 able review, she rose at a bound to the first place 
 among the imaginative prose writers of her time. 
 
 Her remaining twenty years of life were such as 
 the spirit conscious of a message to deliver might most 
 desire. Her mind was fed by strenuous and constant 
 study, — scientific, linguistic, literary, — by frequent 
 travel in those historic lands whose air quickens 
 spirit as well as body, and by habitual intercourse 
 with many of the foremost minds of the age. She 
 never had much connection with the political — still 
 less, of course, with the merely fashionable — world, 
 but nearly all who were most eminent in art, science, 
 literature, philanthropy, might be met from time to 
 time at her Sunday afternoon receptions. There were 
 many women, too, drawn often from among very differ- 
 ent traditions of thought and belief by the unfeigned 
 goodness which they recognised in Mrs. Lewes' look 
 and speech, and sometimes illumining with some fair 
 young face a salon whose grave talk needed the grace 
 which they could bestow. And there was sure to be 
 a considerable admixture of men not as yet famous — 
 probably never to be so — but whom some indication 
 of studies earnestly pursued, of sincere eflbrt for the 
 good of their felluw-nien, had recommended to " that 
 
VI.] GEORGE ELIOT. 257 
 
 hopeful interest which " — I quote the generous words 
 of a letter which lies before me — " the elder mind, dis- 
 satisfied with itself, delights to entertain with regard 
 to the younger, whose years and powers hold a larger 
 measure of unspoiled life." 
 
 It was Mr. Lewes who, on these occasions, contri- 
 buted the cheerful bonhomie, the observant readiness, 
 which are necessary for the fusing together of any 
 social group. Mrs. Lewes' manner had a grave sim- 
 plicity whicli rose in closer converse into an almost 
 pathetic anxiety to give of her best — to establish a 
 genuine human relation between herself and her inter- 
 locutor — to utter words which should remain as an 
 active influence for good in the hearts of those who 
 heard them. To some of her literary admirers this 
 serious tone was distasteful ; they were incKned to 
 resent, as many critics in print have resented, the 
 prominence given to moral ideas in a quarter from 
 which they preferred to look merely for intellectual 
 refreshment. 
 
 Mrs. Lewes' humour, though fed from a deep per- 
 ception of the incongruities of human fates, had not, 
 except in intimate moments, any buoyant or contagious 
 quality, and in all her talk, — full of matter and wis- 
 dom and exquisitely worded as it was, — there was the 
 same pervading air of strenuous seriousness which was 
 more welcome to those whose object was distinctly to 
 learn from her than to those who merely wished to 
 pass an idle and brilliant hour. To her these mixed, 
 
 VOL. II. S j^ 
 
258 MODERN ESSAYS. [vi. 
 
 receptions were a great effort. Her mind did not 
 move easily from one individuality to another, and 
 when she afterwards thought that she had failed to 
 understand some difficulty which had been laid before 
 her, — had spoken the wrong word to some expectant 
 heart, — she would suffer from almost morbid accesses 
 of self-reproach. Perhaps to no imaginative writer — 
 to no writer, at any rate, of what is commonly called 
 " light literature " — has fame ever presented itself so 
 unmixedly as responsibility. Each step that she gained 
 in popular favour drove her into a more sedulous con- 
 scientiousness, — a conscientiousness which probably 
 injured her later books, by the over-elaboration to 
 which it Led. Aware of this danger of a too sensitive 
 care, she abstained almost wholly from reading reviews 
 of her works. She had no appetite for indiscriminate 
 eulogy. " Vague praise," she writes to a friend, " or 
 praise with false notes in its singing, is something to 
 be endured with difficult resignation." And censure, 
 or criticism which called on her for what she could 
 not give, would, she felt, only serve to embarrass 
 and depress her. In this matter, as in all, Mr. Lewes 
 stood between her and the world without, with tlie 
 loyal care with which he repaid tlie priceless benefit 
 which his character drew from hers. 
 
 Thus passed a score of years. Then came his 
 sudden death ; her heavy sorrow ; her faithful effort to 
 preserve for ever tlie memory which she held so dear. 
 She edited his last book with scrupulous care, and 
 
VI.] GEORGE ELIOT. 259 
 
 founded the " George Henry Lewes Studentship " in 
 Physiology ; providing, with a loving minuteness, that 
 his full name should be for ever associated with a wisely- 
 planned scheme for the fostering of his chosen study. 
 And then, beyond expectation, it came about that fate 
 reserved for her yet seven months of a new happiness ; 
 and she reached unawares the term of earthly life in 
 the midst of unslackening intellectual activities, of 
 ever-deepening loves. 
 
 Nothing, indeed, was more remarkable in this last 
 period of her life than her intense mental vitality, 
 which failing health did not seem in the least to im- 
 pair. She possessed in an eminent degree that power 
 which has led to success in so many directions — which 
 is ascribed both to Newton and to Napoleon — of 
 keeping her mind unceasingly at the stretch without 
 conscious fatigue. She would cease to read or to 
 ponder when other duties called her, but never (as it 
 seemed) because she herself felt tired. Even in so 
 complex an effort as a visit to a picture-gallery implies, 
 she could continue for hours at the same pitch of 
 earnest interest, and outweary strong men. Nor was 
 this a mere habit of passive receptivity. In the 
 intervals between her successive compositions her 
 mind was always fusing and combining its fresh stores, 
 and had her life been prolonged, it is probable that she 
 would have produced work at least equal in merit to 
 anything which she had already achieved. I may 
 perhaps be allowed to illustrate what has here been 
 
260 MODERN ESSAYS. [vr. 
 
 said by a few words as to the occupations of her last 
 days on earth. 
 
 On the Friday night before her death Mrs. Cross 
 witnessed a representation of the " Agamemnon," in 
 Greek, by Oxford undergraduates, and came back fired 
 with the old words, thus heard anew, and planning 
 to read through the Greek dramatists again with her 
 husband. On Saturday she went as usual to the 
 concert of classical music, and there, as it seems, she 
 caught the fatal chill. That evening she played 
 through on the piano much of the music which had 
 been performed in the afternoon ; for she was an 
 admirable executant, and rendered especially her 
 favourite Schubert with rare delicacy of touch and 
 feeling. And thus, as her malady deepened, her mind 
 could still respond to the old trains of thought and 
 emotion, till, all unexpectedly to herself and those who 
 loved her, she passed into the state of unconsciousness 
 from which she woke on earth no more. 
 
 The story of George Eliot's life, it will be seen, is a 
 simple and unsuggestive one. It is merely the record 
 of the steady development of a strong and serious 
 mind. There is not much in her which we can trace 
 as inherited ; not much which we can ascribe to the 
 inlluence of any unusual circumstances in her journey 
 through life. Yet from her father, — the carjienter 
 who rose to be forester, the forester who rose to be 
 land-agent, — whose modified portrait appears both in 
 Caleb Gartli and in Adam Bede, — she derived, nu 
 
VI.] GEORGE ELIOT. 261 
 
 doubt, that spirit of thoroughness, that disdain of all 
 pretentious or dishonest work, that respect for con- 
 scientious effort, however mistaken and clumsy, which 
 were so distinctive of her in later life. And it must 
 also be considered as a most fortunate thing, — more 
 important, perhaps, for a female novelist in England 
 than for an author of any other type, — that the posi- 
 tion of her family, while sufficiently comfortable to 
 allow of her being liberally educated, was humble 
 enough to bring her into close and natural contact with 
 the quaint types of rural life, — as much superior in 
 picturesqueness to the habitues of literary drawing- 
 rooms as Mrs. Poyser is to Theophrastus Such. At 
 the time when impressions sink deepest, it was among 
 the TuUivers, the Silas Marners, the Bartle Masseys of 
 this world that George Eliot's lot was cast. And thus 
 in the shy and quaint, but affectionate and observant 
 child, grew up the habit of discerning worth and 
 wisdom beneath rugged envelopes, of feeling that 
 "keen experience with pity blent" of which she 
 speaks in one of her poems — 
 
 " The pathos exquisite of lovely minds 
 Hid in harsh forms — not penetrating them 
 Like fire divine within a common bush 
 Which glows transfigured by the heavenly guest 
 So that men put their shoes off ; but encaged 
 Like a sweet child within some thick-wallcd cell, 
 Who leaps and fails to hold the window-bars, 
 But having shown a little dimpled hand, 
 
262 MODERN ESSAYS. [vi. 
 
 Is visited thenceforth by tender hearts, 
 
 AAHiose eyes keep watch about the prison walls." 
 
 This sympathy with imperfection, this skill in 
 interpreting the signs by which dumb and baffled 
 creatures seek to show their love and need, was at the 
 root of much both of her humour and of her pathos. 
 Her gaze did not invest the world around her with 
 " the light that never was on sea or land," but seeing 
 men and women without idealisation, she still could 
 love them as they were. This gave to her sympathy 
 a peculiar quality which made it less flattering to the 
 recipient, though in one sense of greater value. It 
 was full and penetrating, but it seemed rather to be 
 bestowed on principle, and as to a human being in 
 difficulty or distress, than to be prompted by any such 
 momentary glow as could induce her to forget what 
 she calls 
 
 " The twists and cracks in our poor earthenware, 
 That touch me to more conscious fellowship 
 (I am not myself the finest Parian) 
 With my coevals." 
 
 She contemplated, indeed, her own powers and 
 character with a gaze of the same impartial scrutiny. 
 Her natural candour of self-judgment had perhaps been 
 fostered by the tardiness of her success, which liad 
 worked in her the best effect which long obscurity can 
 produce on strong and humble natures. It had 
 accustomed her to conceive of herself as of one who 
 
VI.] GEORGE ELIOT. 263 
 
 must still strive, who sees Ms work before him, whose 
 ideal is not yet attained. And it was noticeable that 
 in any casual allusion to her own faulty tendencies she 
 seemed to have felt less need to guard against those 
 which go with success than against those which go 
 with failure. 
 
 Mr. Lewes and she were one day good-humouredly 
 recounting the mistaken effusiveness of a too-sym- 
 pathising friend, who insisted on assuming that Mr- 
 Casaubon was a portrait of Mr. Lewes, and on condol- 
 ing with the sad experience which had taught the 
 gifted authoress of Middlemarch to depict that gloomy 
 man. And there was indeed something ludicrous in 
 the contrast between the dreary pedant of the novel 
 and the gay self-content of the living savant who stood 
 acting his vivid anecdotes before our eyes. " But from 
 whom, then," said a friend, turning to Mrs. Lewes, 
 " did you draw Casaubon ? " With a humorous 
 solemnity, which was quite in earnest, nevertheless, 
 she pointed to her own heart. She went on to say — 
 and this one could well believe — that there was one 
 other character — that of Eosamond Vincy — which she 
 had found it hard to sustain ; such complacency of 
 egoism being alien to her own habits of mind. But 
 she laid no claim to any such natural magnanimity as 
 could avert Casaubon's temptations of jealous vanity, 
 of bitter resentment. No trace of these faults was 
 ever manifest in her conversation. But much of her 
 moral weight was derived from the impression which 
 
264 MODERN ESSAYS. [vi. 
 
 her friends received that she had not been l)y any 
 means without her full share of faulty tendencies to 
 begin witli, but that she had upbuilt with strenuous 
 pains a resolute virtue, — what Plato calls an iron sense 
 of truth and right, — to which others, also, however 
 faulty, by effort might attain. 
 
 A few months since there were still living in 
 England three prophets : for by what other name, as 
 distinguished from our poets and statesmen, can we so 
 fitly call them ? Two have passed away ; the third 
 still lives to complete his mission. Carlyle's was the 
 most awakening personality. To Euskin is given the 
 most of revelation. But for the lessons most impera- 
 tively needed by the mass of men, the lessons of 
 deliberate kindness, of careful truth, of unwavering 
 endeavour, — for these plain themes one could not ask 
 a more convincing teacher than she whom we are com- 
 memorating now. Everything in her aspect and 
 presence was in keeping with the bent of her soul. 
 The deeply -lined face, the too marked and massive 
 features, were united with an air of delicate refine- 
 ment, which in one way was the more impressive 
 because it seemed to proceed so entirely from within. 
 Nay, the inward beauty would sometimes quite trans- 
 form the external harshness ; there would be moments 
 when the thin hands that entwined themselves in their 
 eagerness, tlie earnest figure that bowed forward to 
 speak and hear, the deep gaze moving from one i'ace 
 to another with a grave ai)peal, — all these seemed tlie 
 
VI, 
 
 ] GEORGE ELIOT. 265 
 
 transparent symbols that showed the presence of a 
 wise, benignant soul. But it was the voice which best 
 revealed her; — a voice whose subdued intensity and 
 tremulous richness seemed to environ her uttered 
 words with the mystery of a world of feeling that 
 must remain untold. "Speech," says her Don Silva 
 to Fedalma, in The SjMnish Gypsy, 
 
 " Speech is but broken light upon the depth 
 Of the unspoken : even your loved words 
 Float in the larger meaning of your voice 
 As somethinor dimmer." 
 
 And then again, when in moments of more intimate 
 converse some current of emotion would set strongly 
 through her soul, when she would raise her head in 
 unconscious absorption and look out into the unseen, 
 her expression was not one to be soon forgotten. It 
 had not, indeed, the serene felicity of souls to whose 
 child -like confidence all heaven and earth are fair. 
 Eather it was the look (if I may use a Platonic phrase) 
 of a strenuous Demiurge, of a soul on which high tasks 
 are laid, and which finds in their accomplishment its 
 only imagination of joy. 
 
 " It was her thought she saw : the presence fair 
 Of unachieved achievement, the high task, 
 The mighty unborn spirit that doth ask 
 With irresistible cry for blood and breath 
 Till feeding its great life we sink in death." 
 
 I do not wish to exaggerate. The subject of these 
 
266 MODERN ESSAYS. [vi. 
 
 pages would not tolerate any words which seemed to 
 present her as an ideal type. For, as her aspect had 
 greatness but not beauty, so, too, her spirit had moral 
 dignity but not saintly holiness. A loftier potency 
 may sometunes have been given to some highly- 
 favoured woman in whom the graces of heaven and 
 earth have met ; moving througli all life's seasons 
 with a majesty which can feel no decay ; affording by 
 her very presence and benediction an earnest of the 
 supernal world. And so, too, on that thought-worn 
 brow there was visible the authority of sorrow, but 
 scarcely its consecration. A deeper pathos may some- 
 times have breathed from the unconscious heroism of 
 some child-like soul. 
 
 It is perhaps by thus dwelling on the last touches 
 which this high nature was dimly felt to lack — some 
 aroma of hope, some felicity of virtue — that we can 
 best recognise the greatness of her actual acliievement, 
 of her practical working-out of the fundamental dogma 
 of the so-called Eeligion of Humanity — the expansion, 
 namely, of the sense of human fellowship into an 
 impulse strong enough to compel us to live for others, 
 even though it be beneath the on-coming shadow of an 
 endless niiilit. For she held that there was so little 
 chance of man's immortality that it was a grievous 
 error to Hatter him with such a belief; a grievous 
 error at least to distract him by promises of future 
 recompense from the urgent and obvious motives of 
 well-doing, — our love and pity for our fellowmen. 
 
VI.] GEORGE ELIOT. 267 
 
 She repelled " that impiety toward the present and the 
 visible, which flies for its motives, its sanctities, and 
 its religion to the remote, the vague, and the unknown," 
 as contrasted with " that genuine love which cherishes 
 things in proportion to their nearness, and feels its 
 reverence grow in proportion to the intimacy of its 
 knowledge." These words are from the essay on 
 "Worldliness and Other- Worldliness," which has been 
 alluded to, and which contains a forcible condemnation 
 of the view — advanced by the poet Young in its utmost 
 crudity — according to which the reason for virtue is 
 simply the prospect of being rewarded for it hereafter. 
 So far as moral action is dependent on that belief, so 
 far, she urges, " the emotion which prompts it is not 
 truly moral — is still in the stage of egoism, and has 
 not yet attained the higher development of sympathy." 
 And she adds to this a moving argument, which in 
 after life was often on her lips and in her heart. "It 
 is conceivable," she says, " that in some minds the deep 
 pathos lying in the thought of human mortality — that 
 we are here for a little while and then vanish away, 
 that this earthly life is all that is given to our loved 
 ones and to our many suffering fellowmen — lies nearer 
 the fountains of moral emotion than the conception of 
 extended existence." 
 
 It was, indeed, above all things, this sadness with 
 which she contemplated the lot of dying men which 
 gave to her convictions an air of reality far more 
 impressive than the rhetorical satisfaction which is 
 
268 MODERN ESSAYS. [vi. 
 
 sometimes expressed at the prospect of individual 
 annihilation. George Eliot recognised the terrible 
 probability that, for creatures with no future to look 
 to, advance in spirituality may oftenest be but advance 
 in pain ; she saw the sombre reasonableness of that 
 grim plan which suggests that the world's life -long 
 struggle might best be ended — not, indeed, by indi- 
 vidual desertions, but by the moving off of the whole 
 great army from the field of its unequal war — by the 
 simultaneous suicide of all the race of man. But since 
 this could not be; since that race was a united army 
 only in metaphor — was, in truth, a never-ending host 
 
 " Whose rear lay wrapt in night, while breaking dawn 
 Roused the broad front, and called the battle on," 
 
 she held that it befits us neither to praise the sum of 
 things nor to rebel in vain, but to take care only that 
 our brothers' lot may be less grievous to them in that 
 we have lived. Even so, to borrow a simile from M. 
 Eenan, the emperor who summed up his view of life in 
 the words Nil cxpedit, gave none the less to his legions 
 as his last night's watchword, Lahorcmus. 
 
 This stoic lesson she would enforce in tones which 
 covered a wide range of feeling, from the grave exhor- 
 tation which disdained to a])peal to aught save an 
 answering sense of right, to the tender words wliicli 
 offered tlie blessedness of self- forgetting fellowshii) as 
 the guerdon won by the mourner's pain. 
 
 I remember how, at Cambridge, I walked willi lier 
 
VI.] GEORGE ELIOT. 269 
 
 once in the Fellows' Garden of Trinity, on an evening 
 of rainy May ; and she, stirred somewhat beyond her 
 wont, and taking as her text the three words which 
 have been used so often as the inspiring trumpet-calls 
 of men, — the words God, Immortality, Duty, — pro- 
 nounced, with terrible earnestness, how inconceivable 
 was the first, how unbelievable the second, and yet how 
 peremptory and absolute the third. Never, perhaps, 
 have sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of im- 
 personal and unrecompensing Law. I listened, and 
 night fell ; her grave, majestic countenance turned 
 toward me like a Sibyl's in the gloom ; it was as 
 though she withdrew from my grasp, one by one, the 
 two scrolls of promise, and left me the third scroll 
 only, awful with inevitable fates. And when we 
 stood at length and parted, amid that columnar circuit 
 of the forest-trees, beneath the last twilight of starless 
 skies, I seemed to be gazing, like Titus at Jerusalem, on 
 vacant seats and empty halls, — on a sanctuary with no 
 Presence to hallow it, and heaven left lonely of a God. 
 This was the severer aspect of her teaching. How 
 gentle, how inspiring a tone it could assume when it 
 was called upon to convey not impulse only but con- 
 solation, I must quote a few words to show. Writing 
 to a friend who was feeling the first anguish of bereave- 
 ment, she approaches with tender delicacy the themes 
 with which she would sustain his spirit. " For the 
 first sharp pangs," she says, " there is no comfort ; — 
 whatever goodness may sun-ound us, darkness and 
 
270 MODERN ESSAYS. [vi. 
 
 silence still hang about our pain. But slowly the 
 clinging companionship with the dead is linked witli 
 our living affections and duties, and we begin to feel 
 our sorrow as a solemn initiation preparing us for that 
 sense of loving, pitying fellowship with the fullest 
 human lot which, I must think, no one who has tasted 
 it will deny to be the chief blessedness of our life. 
 And especially to know what the last parting is seems 
 needful to give the utmost sanctity of tenderness to 
 our relations with each other. It is that above all 
 which gives us new sensibilities to ' the web of human 
 things. Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.' 
 And by that path we come to find for ourselves the 
 truth of the old declaration, that there is a difference 
 l)etween the ease of pleasure and blessedness, or the 
 fullest good possible to us wondrously mixed mortals. 
 . . . All the experience that makes my communion 
 with your grief is summed up in a ' God bless you,' which 
 represents the swelling of my heart now as I wiite, 
 thinking of you and your sense of what was and is not." 
 It is on reading words like these that one's thoughts 
 recall the apophthegm of old Ca3cilius prefixed as a 
 motto to this paper — 
 
 "If each for each be all he can, 
 A very God is man to man." 
 
 Every one of George Eliot's works might be road as 
 a commentary on that text. In each there is a moral 
 crisis, which depends on some strong elllux of the 
 
VL] GEORGE ELIOT. 271 
 
 feeling of human fellowship — sometimes pouring forth 
 unchecked, but with unwonted energy, and sometimes 
 overcoming the counter impulses of egoistic pleasure or 
 pain, — some selfish craving, some angered pride, some 
 wounded and bleeding love. I need not recall each 
 individual instance. Throughout the earlier novels, 
 where there is less of visible purpose and more of 
 mere humorous portraiture than in the later ones, this 
 lesson nevertheless is always recurring. Romola, the 
 most laboriously executed of all her works, — the book 
 which, as she said, " she began a young woman and 
 ended an old one," — is almost from first to last one 
 strain of grave insistence on the human bond. Or 
 consider especially her poems ; for these, though often 
 failing in that instinctive melody which is the indis- 
 pensable birth-gift of poets, are yet the most concen- 
 trated expression of herself which she has left behind 
 her. The poems move through more ideal scenes, but 
 they enforce the self-same lesson; they teach that as 
 the mounting spirit becomes more conscious of its own 
 being, it becomes more conscious also of the bonds 
 which unite it to its kin ; that thus the higher a man 
 is, the closer he is drawn to the lowest, and greatness 
 is not an exemption, but a debt the more. 
 
 Tlie Legend of Jiibal is, as it were, the sublima- 
 tion of all she had to say. It is in that mytliic tale 
 that the benefit conferred is most far-reaching, the 
 self-effacement most absolute, the absorption into the 
 universal good most satisfying and sacred. 
 
272 MODERN ESSAYS. [vl 
 
 " Would'st thou have asked aught else from any god — 
 Whether with gleaming feet on earth he trod, 
 Or thundered through the skies — aught else for share 
 Of mortal good, than in thy soul to bear 
 The growth of song, and feel the sweet unrest 
 Of the world's spring-tide in thy conscious breast ? 
 No, thou hadst grasped thy lot ^vith all its pain, 
 Nor loosed it any painless lot to gain 
 Where music's voice was silent ; for thy fate 
 Was human music's self incorporate : 
 Thy senses' keenness and thy passionate strife 
 Were flesh of her flesh and her womb of life." 
 
 Few passages could so completely lift us into the 
 region where Art melts into Virtue ; where they are 
 discerned as twin aspects of the spirit's unselfish earnest- 
 ness, which would fain lose itself in a larger joy. The 
 visible Jubal perishes forsaken and alone, but he lives 
 on in the life of Music, his deathless gift to mankind. 
 
 In the well-known lines which begin, " may I 
 join the choir invisible," the ardent ^vriter has given 
 voice to her own aspirations. This poem received its 
 fittest commentary when it was read above her grave : 
 
 " May I reach 
 That purest heaven, be to other souls 
 The cup of strength in some great agony, 
 Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love, 
 Beget the smiles that have no cruelty." 
 
 To tliose who knew her these words are her very self 
 Language has never expressed with more directness 
 the innermost of a noble soul. 
 
VI.] GEOEGE ELIOT. 273 
 
 Yet, in this realm of high speculation, to admire 
 is not necessarily to feel complete agreement. There 
 were some to whom these consolations seemed all too 
 shadowy, this resignation premature ; some whose im- 
 pulsion to a personal life beyond the grave was so 
 preoccupying and dominant that they could not readily 
 acquiesce in her negations, nor range themselves un- 
 reservedly as the fellow-workers of her brave despair. 
 Those, especially, to whom life's most impressive ex- 
 perience had been the spectacle of some tragedy without 
 an issue, of some unmerited anguish driven in storms 
 upon an innocent soul, — such men might well have 
 scarcely heart enough to work for the future, with 
 thoughts for ever turning to an irredeemable injustice 
 in the past. Eather they would still recur to the 
 ancient hopes of men ; they would urge that great 
 discoveries follow on great needs ; that problems which 
 have resisted a hundred keys may yield to yet one key 
 more : that in some field of knowledge there may yet 
 be that to know which shall not, indeed, diminish life's 
 effort, but shall establish its felicity, — shall not relax 
 duty but add hope. To one who thus, amid great 
 sorrow, could not abandon this anchor of the soul, she 
 used words some of which I quote, since they may 
 serve to bring her nearer to some minds which may 
 have shrunk at times from the despondency discernible 
 beneath her bravest speech. She wrote : — 
 
 " I have no controversy with the faith that cries out and 
 clings from the depths of man's need. I only long, if it 
 VOL. II. T 
 
274 MODERN ESSAYS. [vi. 
 
 were possible to me, to help in satisfying the need of those 
 who want a reason for living in the absence of what has 
 been called consolatory belief. But all the while I gather 
 a sort of strength from the certainty that there must be 
 limits or negations in my own moral powers and life- 
 experience which may screen from me many possibilities 
 of blessedness for our suffering human nature. The most 
 melancholy thought surely would be that we in our own 
 persons had measured and exhausted the sources of spiritual 
 good. But we know how the poor help the poor." 
 
 Those whose own faith is most assured can, I think, 
 " have no controversy " with such a temper as this. 
 The faithful servant, — we may reverently suppose, — 
 will not be met with condemnation because, like her 
 own Fedalma, she vjotdd not count on aught hut heing 
 faithful Nor can it be ours to blame her because, 
 in the presence of solemn issues, she was resolved to 
 keep within the limits of what she did certainly feel 
 and know, and — a sterner Prometheus — at least to 
 omit " vain hopes " from the gifts which she brought 
 to men. She gave us of her best ; she gave us all her 
 best ; she had no wish, no pleasure, but to give. 
 
 "This was thy lot, to feel, create, bestow, 
 And that immcasureable life to know 
 From -wliich the fleshly self falls shrivelled, dead ; 
 A seed primeval that has forests bred. 
 
 Thy gifts to give was thine of men alono: 
 'Twas but in giving that thou could'st atono 
 Fur too much wealth amid their poverty" 
 
VI.] GEORGE ELIOT. 275 
 
 For what she gave to the world the world has not 
 been slow to thank her. But what she gave of private 
 amity ; — of companionship which never knew that it 
 was condescending, of sympathy the more salutary for 
 its sternness, of encouragement which pointed to duty 
 only as the goal : — the thought of these things can 
 come to few without some self-condemning tinge in 
 their res^ret. Who is there that has drawn from an 
 ennobling friendship all the blessing which he might 
 have won ? Wisdom is everlasting ; early or late we 
 apprehend her still the same. But " Wisdom herself," 
 as Plato says, " we cannot see ; — or terrilDle had been 
 the loves she had inspired." And the living forms in 
 which she is in some wise embodied, the eyes through 
 which there looks some parcel of her eternal fire, — 
 these pass suddenly from our sight, and we have hardly 
 recognised them, hardly known. For those who thus 
 lament there is a stern consolation. Let them draw 
 near by faith ; what they missed in presence let them 
 recover by contemplation ; what is wanting to memory 
 let them reserve for hope.^ 
 
 1 See Note B, p. 335. 
 
AETHUE PENEHYN STANLEY. 
 
 A MAN of many gifts and graces has passed away ; a 
 man so singularly central in English society and amid 
 English schools of thought, so individual and yet so 
 multiform, that among the wreaths which bestrewed 
 his tomb in Henry VII.'s chapel, — the offering of all 
 nations, from Ireland to Armenia, of men of all opinions, 
 from dignitaries of the Church to scientific materialists, 
 of all classes of society, from the Queen of England to 
 the poor children of Westminster, — it would be hard 
 to say which tokens were the most natural, the most 
 appropriate, the most sincere. 
 
 A man so many-sided should be described by many 
 men ; a man of such wide and active sympathies should 
 be commemorated not by his intimates alone, but by 
 others who have looked up to him as to a source of 
 life and light ; who have enjoyed, perhaps, some amities 
 of a hereditary friendship, some encouragement of his 
 cordial smile. Without repeating what has been already 
 said, or anticipating what may be more fitly said by 
 others, there is room for some such reflections on his 
 work and character as will be suggested here. 
 
VII.] ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY. 277 
 
 The outward life of Arthur Stanley was so ordered 
 from childhood upward as to enable him to mature and 
 exercise his powers in the most favourable way, and to 
 lead his receptive nature through scene after scene of 
 sterling virtue or of old renown. The happy Eectory- 
 home at Alderley gave to his after years the inestim- 
 able background of childish memories of unmingled 
 brightness and peace. His intercourse with Dr. Arnold 
 at Rugby showed the relation of teacher and pupil in 
 its ideal form. At Oxford the three great colleges of 
 Balliol, University, Christ Church, welcomed him in 
 turn, and each upbuilt some part of the fabric of his 
 being. The ancient shrine of Canterbury fostered at 
 once his historic instincts and his deep sense of the 
 greatness of the English Church. And finally West- 
 minster received him to an office so congenial to every 
 aspiration of his heart that all else seemed to have 
 been but a prolusion to those stately duties and an 
 antechamber to that famous home. He was blessed, 
 too, in father and mother, in family and friends ; blessed 
 most of all in the wife whose presence doubled both 
 his usefulness and his felicity, and whose loss gave to 
 his latest years the crowning dignity of sorrow. 
 
 One incongruity alone was sometimes felt in this 
 harmonious career, — a certain discrepancy between 
 Stanley's habits of thought and those of the clerical 
 world around him. Scruples of this kind had led him 
 to hesitate as to taking orders, but they had then been 
 brushed aside vnih rough vigour by Arnold's friendly 
 
278 MODERN ESSAYS. [vii. 
 
 hand. But as Stanley rose into prominence his sup- 
 posed laxity of dogmatic view gave umbrage to many 
 members of his profession ; he experienced " that diffi- 
 culty " which, in his own words, " is occasioned not so 
 much by the actual divergence of opinion amongst 
 educated, or amongst uneducated men, as by the com- 
 bination in the same religious and the same social 
 community of different levels of education," — and it 
 may be added of original temperaments so diverse, that 
 their professors, however educated, must needs construe 
 tliis perplexing universe in many varying ways. Dean 
 Stanley's view of his own position in the Church is 
 given in a striking passage in the preface to his Essays 
 on Church and State : — 
 
 " The choice is between absolute individual separation 
 from every conceivable outward form of organisation, and 
 continuance in one or other of those which exist, in the 
 hope of modifying or improving it. There are, doubtless, 
 advantages in the former alternative. The path of a tlieo- 
 logian or ecclesiastic, who in any existing system loves 
 truth and seeks charity, is indeed difficult at tlic best. 
 Many a time would such a one gladly exchange tlie thank- 
 less labour, the bitter taunts, " the law's delay," the " in- 
 solence of office," the waste of energy, that belong to the 
 friction of pul)lic duties, for the hope of a few tranquil 
 years of independent research or studious leisure, wliere 
 he need consult no scruples, contend with no prejudices, 
 entangle himself with no party, travel far and wide over 
 the earth, with nothing to check the constant increase of 
 knowledge which such exi)eriencc alone can iully give. 
 But there is a counterbalancing attraction, which may well 
 
vil] ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY. 279 
 
 be felt by those who shrink from sacrificing their love of 
 country to a sense of momentary relief, or thiB hopes of the 
 future to the pressure of the present. To serve a great 
 institution, and by serving it to endeavour to promote 
 within it a vitality which shall secure it as the shelter for 
 such as will have to continue the same struggle after they 
 are gone, is an object for which much may be, and ought 
 to be, endured which otherwise would be intolerable." 
 
 This passage is interesting, moreover, as distinctly 
 indicating Stanley's conception of the functions of a 
 National Church. A National Church may be regarded 
 as aimino; at either of two somewhat different ends. 
 We may say that it is meant to promulgate that body 
 of spiritual truth which has, at a given historical epoch, 
 approved itself to a given nation. Or we may say that 
 it is meant to promulgate such spiritual truth as may 
 from time to time approve itself to that nation as it 
 lives and grows. On the first theory, the Church must 
 represent a fixed code in the midst of a changing world, 
 as the Greek and Eoman Churches profess to do. On 
 the second theory, it must modify its teaching, as the 
 Eeformed Churches actually did, when the great mass 
 of thinking men in a nation are seen to have modified 
 their belief. Such changes can have no finality ; and 
 if a violent wrench like the English Eeformation w^as 
 justifiable, it must be still more justifiable, in those 
 who now wish to maintain the National Church, to in- 
 troduce as gently as possible such changes as may keep 
 her in sympathy with the advancing knowledge of the 
 
280 MODERN ESSAYS. [vii. 
 
 time. And these changes, thougli initiated by laymen, 
 must be adopted by Church dignitaries if they are to 
 become a part of the established creed of the nation. 
 It is noticeable, indeed, that in past centuries the same 
 men have often been first denounced as heretics, and 
 afterwards accepted as pillars of the Church, having 
 carried through at their own risk some reform which 
 was ultimately felt by all to be beneficial. It is need- 
 less to say that the recent rise of science, physical and 
 historical, has effected an even greater alteration in 
 men's mental outlook than was effected by the revival 
 of learning, which led almost necessarily to the Eefor- 
 mation. If, then, the English Church is to maintain 
 her position as national, she must be prepared to modify 
 her teaching with little delay, and such modification 
 can best be carried through by men of Stanley's com- 
 prehensive sympathies and strong common sense. 
 
 There remains, however, the question whether reli- 
 gious unity is really strongly desired by many men ; 
 whether the different sections of the English Church 
 or the English nation are disposed to make much effort 
 to preserve the idea of a National Church. And the 
 answer commonly given is that such union is not 
 strongly desired, that, on the other hand, men tend to 
 liold views more divergent, and to express them with 
 more distinctness, than ever before. It might, ])er- 
 haps, have been expected that as the conclusions of 
 science become more definite, as it grows easier to 
 make men understand the same demonstrations and 
 
VII.] ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY. 281 
 
 obey the same laws, it would also grow easier to unite 
 them in the same religion. But this is not so ; for 
 religion is a matter of tastes and emotions, as well as 
 of reason. Along with what is deepest and most uni- 
 versal its sphere includes all that is most individual 
 and variable in man. It includes points on which classes 
 of men at different mental levels — nay, even differ- 
 ent individuals on the same level — cannot possibly be 
 expected to agree. On the one hand, as fresh bodies of 
 men wake up to religion they inevitably pass through 
 stages of thought and feeling which many of their con- 
 temporaries have already outgrown. And, on the other 
 hand, learning and intellect, so far from securing uni- 
 formity, will, when combined with certain tempera- 
 ments, only serve to make the cases of reversion to an 
 older type, or of divergence into an individual type, 
 more marked and impressive. 
 
 So long, in short, as the evidence as to an unseen 
 world remains much where it is, that evidence will 
 probably be interpreted as variously as heretofore. An 
 accession of new evidence might, no doubt, lead to a 
 greater unity of creed; but the possibility of such an 
 accession of evidence is just what all sects unite to 
 deny. 
 
 From the theological point of view, therefore, it 
 may seem neither possible nor very important to 
 maintain the Church of England. On the other hand, 
 the political and the philanthropical arguments for a 
 National Church are strong. It is, or it may be made. 
 
282 MODERN ESSAYS. [ 
 
 VII. 
 
 the safest bulwark against sectarian bigotry, the most 
 efficient macliinery for supplying the moral needs of 
 the community. And there is also a historical point 
 of view of which Stanley was tlie best representative. 
 It seemed to him a childish, almost an impious thing, 
 that our disagreements on questions which, for the 
 most part, we can neither solve nor comprehend, should 
 lead us rashly to destroy that august institution which 
 so many names have adorned, so many memories hal- 
 lowed, which has spread wide arms from pole to pole, 
 and has embodied for centuries tlie spiritual life of 
 a mighty people. How premature were such a dis- 
 solution ! For no one knows what direction opinion 
 will ultimately take; and the Church of England, 
 which is committed to so much less than the Church 
 of Itome, and which, with her allied churches in both 
 hemispheres, stands already second in importance to 
 the Church of Eome alone — the Church of England, it 
 may well be said, has a better chance than any other 
 religious corporation of finding herself erect after the 
 general reconstruction, and constituting, in some sense 
 or other, the Churcli of the Future. Should such a 
 fate be hers, she will be grateful to those whose his- 
 torical instinct saved her from disruption, who did not 
 despair of the spiritual republic in times of inward 
 conflict and dismay. 
 
 Descending from general principles to details we 
 iind tlie j)eculiar type of Stanley's historical instinct, — 
 liis deliglit in striking anecdote, in u]il()()k(Ml-lor ]iaral- 
 
VII.] ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY. 283 
 
 lels. in tlie picturesqueness of the past, — well illustrated 
 by his treatment, in his latest book, of the rites and 
 symbols of the early Church. To the mystic these 
 symbols seem still instinct with spiritual truth. To 
 the philosopher they suggest a field of unexhausted 
 inquiry ; they lead back the mind to the Seven Kivers 
 of the Indus valley, to the worships of our Aryan ances- 
 tors in Persia or Babylon, to the remote and essential 
 unity of the creeds of men. Stanley is not attracted 
 in either of these ways. He does not deal with thought 
 and emotion in their subterranean currents, but rather 
 in their dramatic manifestation on the great theatres 
 of the world. And he is never better pleased than 
 when by some quaint juxtaposition he can show the 
 irony of men's pretensions to dogmatic infallibility, or 
 to the authority of immemorial tradition. In Chris- 
 tian Institutions it delights him to point out that 
 the only true Sabbatarians are to be found in Abys- 
 sinia ; that the kiss of peace was " one of the most 
 indispensable of primitive practices," but is now pre- 
 served only by " the Glassites, or Sandemanians " ; 
 that although the Coptic Church alone retains the 
 original form of the Lord's Supper, some vestige of the 
 true position is retained by the Presbyterians and the 
 Pope. The Pope, in fact, is for Dean Stanley a perfect 
 museum of paradoxes. While reflecting with regret 
 that " Augustine would have condemned him as an 
 unbaptised heretic," he is pleased to find, in the peculi- 
 arities which surround liim, " a mass of latent Primi- 
 
284 MODERN ESSAYS. [vii. 
 
 tive Protestantism." He traces with interest the origin 
 of his white gown, his red shoes, his peacock fans ; 
 while he is careful to remind us that the only ecclesi- 
 astical vestment recognised by the early Fathers con- 
 sisted of trousers. 
 
 The breadth, and also the limitations of Stanley's 
 view, are well exemplified by his essay on the pictures 
 in tlie catacombs of Kome. He draws out admirably 
 from these figures the ayaWlao-L^ and d(f)e\6Tr]<;, the 
 joy and simplicity of the primitive Church. There is 
 found there no crucifix, no cypress, no death's-head, 
 no dance of skeletons, no martyrdom of saints, but the 
 young shepherd carrying the lamb amid green pastures, 
 and dove-like souls that soar to heaven, and the 
 mysterious gladness of the vine. All this he sees in 
 that ancient imagery, but he does not attempt to ex- 
 plain its strange anomalies by any reference to a yet 
 remoter past. He has no word of comment (for 
 instance) on the view of those in whose eyes an occult 
 tradition mingles here with the new-risen faith ; who 
 see in the ci^ux ansata, with its recurved extremities, 
 the cross of wood from whose central hollow our Aryan 
 forefathers made spring the friction-fire ; who discern 
 in Aynus the mystic Agni, and in the lamb's luminous 
 aureole the transmuted symbol of that Vedic flame. 
 
 We can, indeed, hardly claim for Stanley the title 
 of an original investigator on any subject, save only 
 the very diiticult and interesting one of the geograi)hy 
 of Sinai and I'alcstine. Ihit it would be equally unfair 
 
VII.] ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY. 285 
 
 to speak of such popularisations as his Jewish Church 
 as though they were slight or easy productions. Crude 
 knowledge must be digested and re-digested before it 
 can enter vitally into the intellectual system of man- 
 kind, and rightly to assimilate such nutriment may 
 often be as difficult as to collect it. The Englishman, 
 especially, writing, as Stanley did, for two hemispheres 
 and some half-dozen nations, must needs feel that the 
 form in which he gives his results to this enormous 
 public is a matter of no slight concern. 
 
 Of this Dean Stanley, with his keen interest in 
 America, his vivid sense that " westward the course of 
 empire takes its way," was certain to be fully conscious. 
 And he remembered it most of all when he dealt with 
 that subject whose world-wide diffusion has given to it 
 its chief importance. For the history and literature 
 of England may be said to have had greatness thrust 
 upon them. They have not been selected for universal 
 study on account of their intrinsic interest and per- 
 fection, as have been the history and literature of 
 Greece. But they belong to a race which happens to 
 have just those qualities which enable it to overrun 
 the earth. Whatever the history of such a race may 
 be, the world must know it ; whatever its literature, 
 the world must study it. And in recounting the 
 English Past no tone could be fitter than Dean Stan- 
 ley's, — a tone indicating at once a glowing sense of 
 the dignity of the story, and an honest conscious- 
 ness of its many blots and imperfections. Long 
 
286 MODERN ESSAYS. [vii. 
 
 before Stanley was made Dean of Westminster it was 
 felt that the memories which hallow English ground 
 appealed to no man more vividly than to him. And 
 when he was placed, as it were, in official connection 
 with English history, — when he was made the guardian 
 of that pile of buildings which is to the British Em- 
 pire, — nay, to all English-speaking lands, — almost 
 what the Capitol was to Kome, — then indeed the thought 
 of him became so inseparable from the thought of the 
 Abbey that one knew not whether the man magnified 
 the office, or the office the man. 
 
 It is there, in some part of that vast irregular pile, 
 that the memory of all who knew him will choose to 
 imacjine him stilL Some will best recall him as he 
 dispensed hospitality in the Deanery, or stood in that 
 long library which seems immersed in silence and 
 antiquity within a bow -shot of earth's busiest roar. 
 These will remember his talk, its vivacity and simpli- 
 city, its tone as of a man accustomed to feel tliat his 
 words carried weight, yet never grasping at an undue 
 share in the conversation, nor failing to recognise tlie 
 least contribution which those who spoke with him 
 might bring. To those who recall such scenes he may 
 well appear as the very type of civilisation, of the 
 manners to which birth and breeding, mind and char- 
 acter, add each their charm ; which can show feeling 
 without extravagance, and power without pride ; wliich 
 can convince men by comprehending them, and control 
 with a smile. 
 
VII.] ARTHUR TENRHYN STANLEY. 287 
 
 To some, again, his image will present itself as lie 
 stood in Ms pulpit in the nave of Westminster, or hj 
 the tomb of some great man departed, or before the 
 altar on the rare occasions v^hen the solemn Abbey 
 opened its portals to a scene of marriage joy. These 
 will recall the voice of delicate resonance, the look of 
 force and dignity enhanced by the contrast with a body 
 so small and frail ; and, above all, that efflux of vivid 
 human fellowship which all men felt when he was 
 near, the sense of the responsive presence of a living 
 soul. 
 
 He lies where he had most truly lived. Beside 
 him, in the niche of Henry VII. 's chapel, is laid the 
 wife to whom, in his own solemn words, the earthly 
 union was but designed to link him " till death us join " 
 in some bond more sacred still. Above him float the 
 banners of his knightly Order of the Bath, whose ideal 
 chivalry and purity have never found an earthly em- 
 bodiment more chivalrous or more pure. The chapel 
 opens into the mighty Abbey, solemn and noble as 
 work of men's hands can be, yet iilled with tombs and 
 tablets miscellaneous as life, incongruous as history. 
 Many a strange shape is there : Eodney's captains, and 
 Admiral Tyrrell rising from the sea, and the monstrous 
 image of Watt ; but, in the midst still stands the shrine 
 of the Confessor, and the fifth Henry's hebn, with the 
 dints of Agincourt, hangs in the dusky air. 
 
 It may be that, in ages to come, tliose who tell the 
 roll of England's worthies in the aisles of Westminster 
 
288 MODERN ESSAYS. [vii. 
 
 may think that Stanley's name stood higher with his 
 contemporaries than any definite achievement of his 
 could warrant. We cannot correct the judgments of 
 posterity ; but we may feel assured that if it had been 
 allowed us to prolong, from generation to generation, 
 some one man's earthly days, we could hardly have 
 sent any pilgrim across the centuries more wholly wel- 
 come than Arthur Stanley to whatever times are yet 
 to be. For they, like us, would have recognised in 
 him a spectator whose vivid interest seemed to give to 
 this world's spectacle an added zest ; an influence of 
 such a nature as humanity, howsoever it may be per- 
 fected, will only prize the more ; a life bound up and 
 incorporated with the advance and weal of men; a 
 presence never to be forgotten, and irreplaceable, and 
 beloved. 
 
A NEW EIEENICOK 
 
 Some sixteen years ago the English-speaking world 
 was startled by a treatise which discussed the well- 
 worn theme of the mission of Christ in a tone of such 
 freshness and originality that it threw into confusion 
 the ranks of established party ; and w^hile one great 
 orthodox statesman denounced the book as " vomited 
 from the jaws of hell," another, greater still and equally 
 orthodox, did not disdain to call attention to that same 
 work in a subsidiary volume of his own, full of sym- 
 pathy, exposition, and eulogy. 
 
 The distinguished author of Ecce Homo, whose thin 
 veil of anonymity criticism is still bound to respect, 
 has now published a part of the promised sequel to 
 his earlier speculations in a volume which may not, 
 perhaps, prove so widely popular as its predecessor, 
 but which undoubtedly indicates a marked advance in 
 power, and which ought to exercise a strong and salu- 
 tary influence on the conduct of the great controversies 
 of our day. Yet Natural Eeligioii is not (it may be 
 said at once) a book which attempts to deal with the 
 speculative points at issue among the schools or the 
 VOL. II. U 
 
290 MODERN ESSAYS. [viii. 
 
 churclies. Still less does it profess to cast any fresh 
 light on the old problems of whence and whither, or to 
 supply to morality that independent standing-point for 
 which she still is vainly feeling in the void. The 
 task which it attempts is a lesser one, but great 
 nevertheless, and within the power of man. It is to 
 prove to the earnest but divergent schools of modern 
 thought, to the artist, the Positivist, the man of science, 
 the orthodox Christian, that their agreement lies 
 deeper than their differences, that the enemy of all is 
 the same ; that for the most part they are but looking 
 at different sides of the shield, whether they worship 
 the Unity of the Universe by the cold silver light of 
 His power and reality, or in the golden radiance of 
 His love. And thus the author claims for all forms 
 of enthusiastic admiration of truth, beauty, goodness, 
 the title of religion, which he deems theirs by right 
 both of logic and of history, and urges all parties to 
 march side by side, so far at least as they may, in the 
 self-elevating culture which is itself a worship — in the 
 actively beneficent civilisation which is the missionary 
 aspect of the higher life. 
 
 The treatise is too full of matter to be easily 
 summarised. Perhaps we may get the clearest idea of 
 our author's position in respect to the various schools 
 around him if we transpose abstract terms into concrete 
 in some homely apologue. Starting, then, from the 
 metaphor which compares religion to " hid treasure," 
 let us compare mankind, with tlieir varied efforts to 
 
VIII.] A NEW EIRENICON. 291 
 
 grasp the lueaning of the world around them, to a body 
 of shareholders originally established as a " General 
 Mining Company," and working a large estate with 
 mixed success. Suddenly a charter is presented to 
 them conferring a title to an enormous gold-mine in 
 Central Africa ; the Gospel, to wit, with its promise 
 of eternal life. For a time nothing else is thought of ; 
 but gradually the samples of gold sent home are lost, 
 and the validity of the charter, and the real existence 
 of the mine, begin to be disputed. The Company, 
 however, has traded largely on the credit of this gold- 
 field, and when its existence is denied, some share- 
 holders (the Pessimists) urge that the Company is 
 bankrupt, and had better be dissolved as soon as may 
 be. Others (Positivists and Stoics) maintain that the 
 old mines can still be made to give returns sufficient 
 to satisfy reasonable men. And many shareholders do 
 actually continue mining on their own account. But 
 the directors (the rulers of the existing Churches) have 
 already changed the Company's title to that of the "Gold 
 Mining Company of Central Africa," and now stand 
 resolutely on their charter, ignore all operations on 
 their old estates, and prohibit the use of the Com- 
 pany's funds and appliances (Church organisation) in 
 any mining except for gold. They engage in constant 
 law-suits, in which the old testimony as to the value 
 of the samples of gold now lost, and as to the existence 
 of a potentate capable of granting their charter, is 
 thrashed out with little visible progress. Some of the 
 
292 MODERN ESSAYS. [viii. 
 
 directors, indeed, assert that they still possess some 
 specimens of ore (the modern Eoman Catholic miracles), 
 but these specimens are discredited by other members 
 of the board. 
 
 Here our author intervenes. He does not abandon 
 hope in the disputed charter. He even doubts whether 
 the concern can be kept permanently going unless it 
 somehow gets hold of gold. But he reminds the 
 directors that the Company was originally formed for 
 mining of every description before gold was hoped for ; 
 for religion, even religion as lofty as Isaiah's, did exist 
 without definite hope of immortality. And he points 
 out the rich results actually obtained by those ener- 
 getic shareholders who are digging for other metals, 
 who are worshipping God by science. Nature by art, 
 Humanity by civilisation. These men are using the 
 very machinery with which the Company started; the 
 instincts, namely, of unselfish reverence, admiration, 
 fellowship, which seem innate in man. And they are 
 finding (he insists) in unlooked-for abundance the very 
 ores which the Company was first incorporated to 
 supply ; for most religions begin as rude attemj)ts to 
 explain and unify the natural phenomena which science 
 now fits with more exactness into that very concep- 
 tion of a unity in Nature, which is the essence botli of 
 all science and of all Monotheistic systems. He urges 
 on the directors to recognise and incorporate these 
 independent efforts, and advises the leaders of the 
 opposition not to separate from the Company, but 
 
viij.] A NEW EIRENICON. 293 
 
 to get themselves gradually put on its direction, 
 and to utilise its existing rights and good-will for 
 their own purposes, which were comprised, at any 
 rate by implication, in its original scheme of under- 
 takings. 
 
 This rude sketch may help to show the drift of 
 arguments which must now be considered rather more 
 in detail. Our author begins by dwelling on the points 
 of similarity between the attitude of science and that 
 of religion towards the secular world. Both sides 
 alike " agree in denouncing that pride of the human 
 intellect which supposes it knows everything, which 
 is not passive enough in the presence of reality, but 
 deceives itself with pompous words instead of things, 
 and with flattering eloquence instead of sober truth." 
 Still more bitter is the contempt which both feel for 
 that torpid conventionalism whose thoughts cannot rise 
 to great generalisations, but are embedded in the petty 
 cares and pleasures of the day. And he maintains 
 that Atheism does not consist in the denial either of the 
 absolute benevolence or of the miraculous interferences 
 of the Being held supreme (since many religions have 
 existed in which these beliefs were absent), nay, nor 
 even in the refusal to acknowledge a personality in 
 that ultimate power ; since personality is, after all, a 
 metaphysical conception difficult to define in our own 
 world, and still harder to realise with any distinct- 
 ness when the imagined personality has no boundary 
 or limit of being. In some respects the God of science 
 
294 MODERN ESSAYS. [vrii. 
 
 is more omnipresent, more pervading, more mighty, 
 than God has ever yet appeared to men. 
 
 " ' In Him,' may the worshipper of this Deity say with 
 intimate conviction, ' in Him we live and move and have 
 our being.' When men whose minds are possessed with a 
 thouglit Uke this, and whose lives are devoted to such a 
 contemplation, say, ' As for God, we know nothing of Him ; 
 science knows nothing of Him ; it is a name belonging to 
 an extinct system of philosophy ; ' I think they are pla}dng 
 with words. By what name they call the object of their 
 contemplation is in itself a matter of little importance — 
 whether they say God, or prefer to say Nature, the import- 
 ant thing is that their minds are filled with the sense of a 
 power to all appearance infinite and eternal, a power to 
 which their own being is inseparably connected, in the 
 knowledge of whose ways alone is safety and well-being, 
 in the contemplation of which they find a beatific vision." 
 
 Atheism, then, is not the belief in such a God as 
 this, but the denial of Him ; it is to be without a 
 practical belief in the Order of the Universe, to dash 
 one's self wildly against its laws in wilful revolt, or to 
 shut one's self up with cautious feebleness in a paltry 
 and sensual peace. To have a theology, on the other 
 hand, is to know something of the relation in which 
 human life stands to the Universe ; of the degree of 
 possibility which the laws of that Universe have 
 accorded to our best ideals. The man who has no 
 ideals, or who believes that the Universe has forbidden 
 their realisation, sinks into baseness or despair ; but 
 he whose imagination has assimilated some noble ideal, 
 
viil] a new eirenicon. 295 
 
 whose activity urges him to its realisation, this, man 
 has begun to possess not a theology only, but a 
 religion. 
 
 " The words religion and worship are commonly and 
 conveniently appropriated to the feelings with which we 
 regard God. But those feelings — love, awe, admiration, 
 which together make up worship — are felt in various com- 
 binations for human beings, and even for inanimate objects. 
 It is not exclusively, but only par excellence, that religion is 
 directed towards God. When feelings of admiration are 
 very strong they find vent in some act ; when they are 
 strong and at the same time serious and permanent, they 
 express themselves in recurring acts, and hence arise ritual, 
 liturgy, and whatever the multitude identifies with religion. 
 But without ritual religion may exist in its elementary 
 state, and this elementary state of religion is what may be 
 described as habitual and ^permanent admiration." 
 
 And, apart from Christianity, this admiration still 
 may be, and still is, directed towards other objects 
 which have made the essence of many of the religions 
 of the past. Some men are returning to a higher 
 Paganism — to the religion of the world's childhood, 
 the worship of natural forms — purified now and 
 rationalised, and capable of elevating such a spirit as 
 Wordsworth's into a sacred and untroubled peace. 
 And some men, approaching Nature from a different 
 side, can hardly tell whether to call themselves Theists 
 or Pantheists, as not knowing whether the Unity 
 which they reverence be immanent in, or distinct from, 
 the sum of things. They worship they laiow not 
 
296 MODERN ESSAYS. [viii. 
 
 what ; and yet the word Nature is too narrow to 
 formulate the power which such men revere. 
 
 "Nature, as the word has hitherto been used by scien- 
 tific men, excludes the whole domain of human feeling, 
 will, and morality. Nevertheless, in contemplating the 
 relation of the Universe to ourselves and to our destiny, 
 or again in contemplating it as a subject of admiration 
 and worship, the human side of the Universe is the more 
 important side to us. Our destiny is affected by the 
 society in which we live more than by the natural con- 
 ditions which surround us, and the moral virtues are 
 higher objects of worship than natural beauty and glory. 
 Accordingly the word Nature suggests but a part, and the 
 less important part, of the idea for which we are seeking 
 an expression. Nature presents itself to us as a goddess 
 of unweariable vigour and unclouded happiness, but with- 
 out any trouble or any compunction in her eye, without a 
 conscience or a heart. But God, as the word is used by 
 ancient prophets and modern poets, God, if the word have 
 not lost in our ears some of its meaning through the 
 feebleness of the preachers who have undertaken to inter- 
 pret it, conveys all this beauty and greatness and glory, 
 and conveys besides whatever more awful forces stir within 
 the human heart, whatever binds men in families, and 
 orders them in states. He is the Inspirer of kings, the 
 Kevealer of laws, the Reconciler of nations, the Redeemer of 
 labour, the Queller of tyrants, the Reformer of churches, 
 the Guide of the human race towards an unknown goal." 
 
 But let us ask ourselves wliat tlic piactical efficacy 
 of a religion like this will be ? What front will it be 
 able to offer to secularity ? To what extent can it 
 
vm.] A NEW EIRENICON. 297 
 
 inspire an active life, an independent virtue ? The 
 first instance that suggests itself is not wholly re- 
 assuring. The central maxim of this comprehensive 
 faith, the injunction " to live resolutely in the whole, 
 the good, the beautiful," is offered to us by Goethe 
 imbedded in a kind of amorous drinking-song ; and 
 although the great German poet may, no doubt, have 
 " felt the whole six days' work go within him," yet 
 (as our author frankly admits) " morality itself, as it 
 is commonly understood, was not much favoured in his 
 writings, nor perhaps in his life." 
 
 To objections of this kind our author replies with 
 an eloquent re-statement of that cardinal truth of morals 
 whose proclamation has given to every moral reformer, 
 from Jesus Christ downwards, something of the air of 
 an antinomian : — the subordination, namely, of works 
 to faith, of letter to spirit, of law to grace. 
 
 " According to the view here taken too much is said 
 by modern rationalists of morality, and too little of art 
 and science, since these are related no less closely to 
 religion, and must be taken with morality to make up the 
 higher life. This view, indeed, regards the very word 
 morality, and the way of thinking which leads to a fre- 
 quent use of the word, with the same sort of impatience 
 which the Pauline writings show towards the law. In 
 any description of an ideal community which might be 
 given in accordance with this view not much stress would 
 be laid on its moral purity. This woukl rather be taken 
 for granted as the natural result of the healtliy working of 
 the higher life. The pecuHarity most strongly marked would 
 
298 MODERN ESSAYS. [viii. 
 
 be rather that what we call genius would be of ordinary 
 occurrence in such a community. Every one there would 
 be alive. The cares of livelihood would not absorb the 
 mind, taming all impulse, clogging all flight, depressing 
 the spirit with a base anxiety, smothering all social inter- 
 course with languid fatigue, destroying men's interest in 
 each other and making friendship impossible. Every one 
 would worship, that is, every one would have some object 
 of habitual contemplation, which would make life rich and 
 bright to him, and of which he would think and speak 
 with ardour. Every one would have some supreme in- 
 terest, to which he would be proud to sacrifice every kind 
 of help, and by which he would be bound in the highest 
 kind of friendship to those who shared it. The higher 
 life in all hearts would be a soil out of which many fair 
 growths would spring ; morality would be one of these ; 
 but it would appear in a form so fresh that no such name 
 would seem appropriate to it." 
 
 The inhabitants of this ideal commonwealth, as it 
 appears, would not be inclined to look on morality 
 either as a direct supernatural law, or as the outcome 
 of laborious philosophical inquiry. They would look 
 rather to the religion which underlies morality ; to 
 the Natural Christianity which, as the thing in the 
 known universe most manifestly worshipful, chooses the 
 goodness and nobleness of men. " As virtue can 
 oidy show itself in our relations to our fellowmen, the 
 religion that leads to virtue must be a religion that 
 worships men. If in God Himself we did not believe 
 qualities analogous to the human to exist, the worship 
 of Him would not lead to virtue." And this strenuous 
 
viil] a new eirenicon. 290 
 
 admiration, carrying with it the desire to imitate and 
 to associate with the thing admired, while in private 
 relations it is private virtue, becomes patriotism when 
 it is directed towards a united community of men. It 
 is a common view of the universe, a common ideal of 
 conduct, which collects tribes into nationalities, and 
 ripens nationalities into states. " Eeligions are com- 
 monly what may be called nationalities in an idealised 
 form," an idealisation which is apt to start into con- 
 trolling reality at the shock of danger, or even in the 
 throes of what might well seem death. Thus it was 
 "by the waters of Babylon that Jewish nationality 
 was transformed into Judaism ; " and Eome became 
 the religion of Eegulus, and Italy of Mazzini, and 
 Sparta of those who bade the passer-by bear news of 
 how they lay at Thermopylae " in obedience to her 
 precepts." And as the great nations of the world 
 emerge gradually from their isolation and enmity into 
 the consciousness of a deep community of ideals and 
 aims, so also, says our author, should the Churches 
 broaden too ; till the several National Churches, being 
 each of them no narrower than the whole spiritual 
 aspect or content of each individual State, unite and 
 gather in a Church more Catholic than was ever the 
 Eoman, even in the Universal Church, which is uni- 
 versal civilisation. 
 
 With its united influence this Church will teach to 
 the barbarous races all that the civilised have learnt — 
 science, humanity, delight and confidence in nature. 
 
300 MODERN ESSAYS. [viii. 
 
 And to each several nation her National Church will 
 hold up the higher aspect, the inner meaning, the 
 renowned exemplars of her own character and cor- 
 porate life ; demanding of her preachers nothing more 
 than intelligence and sincerity, and shrinking above 
 all- things from binding them to fixed historical con- 
 ceptions which the very march of history itself is 
 certain in some sort to overthrow. 
 
 " Suppose," says our author, in one of his most brilliant 
 passages, " suppose we had formulated in the sixteenth 
 century the principles or beliefs which we supposed to lie 
 at the basis of our national Constitution. Suppose we had 
 made a political creed. Perhaps the doctrine of divine 
 right and the power of kings to cure disease, perhaps the 
 whole legend of Brute and the derivation of our State 
 from Troy, would have appeared in this creed. Once 
 formulated, it would have come to be regarded as the 
 dogmatic basis upon which our society rested. Then in 
 time criticism would have begun its work. Philosophy 
 would have set aside divine right, science would have 
 exploded the belief about the king's evil, historical criti- 
 cism would have shaken the traditionary history, and each 
 innovation would have been regarded as a blow dealt at 
 the Constitution of the country. At last it would have 
 come to be generally thought that the Constitution was 
 undermined, that it had been found unable to bear the 
 light of modern science. Men would begin publicly to 
 renounce it ; officials would win great applause by resign- 
 ing tlieir posts from conscientious doubts about the person- 
 ality of King Arthur. It would be generally agreed that 
 the honest and manly course was to press the controversy 
 
VIII.] A NEW EIRENICON. 301 
 
 firmly to a conclusion, to resist all attempts to confuse the 
 issue, and to keep the public steadily to the fundamental 
 points. Has the sovereign, or has he not, a divine right 'i 
 Can he, or can he not, cure disease by his touch ? Was 
 the country, or vras it not, colonised by fugitives from 
 Troy 1 And if at last the public should come by general 
 consent to decide these questions in the negative, then it 
 would be felt that no weak sentiment ought to be listened 
 to, no idle gratitude to the Constitution for having, 
 perhaps, in past times saved the country from Spanish or 
 French invasion ; that all such considerations ought sternly 
 to be put aside as irrelevant ; that as honest men we are 
 bound to consider, not whether our Constitution was use- 
 ful or interesting, or the like, but whether it was true, and 
 if we could not any longer say, with our hands on our 
 hearts, that it was so, then, in the name of eternal truth, 
 renounce it and bid it farewell ! " 
 
 Hell certainly could have " vomited from its jaws " 
 few passages better calculated than this to undermine 
 the orthodoxy of established churches. This is the in- 
 vitation, of which we spoke, to the leaders of reaction 
 against the Christian Church to become the leaders of 
 progress within it ; it is the appeal addressed (in the 
 terms of our homely simile) to the shareholders who 
 are mining independently of the Company to try to 
 get elected among its directors. The invitation seems 
 so persuasive that there must be strong arguments on 
 the other side, or the coalition would have been already 
 effected. And in fact we can imagine some plain men 
 among the shareholders who might think that only 
 philosophers or renegades could enter on such an 
 
302 MODERN ESSAYS. [vm. 
 
 amalgamation as this. " The advice," they might say, 
 " is precisely such as might have been expected from 
 an eminent counsel who considers our past discussions 
 as mere fruitless folly, and thinks only of what course 
 of conduct will increase the dividends of the Company. 
 But the difference has gone too far. The directors 
 have borrowed too largely on the strength of their 
 ofold-field, and are far too sure of it still to be able to 
 unite with men who have pronounced it a sheer illusion. 
 They will not alter their prospectus, in which that 
 famous charter fills the leading place. And if the 
 opposition leaders, with their known views, were to 
 sign that prospectus, it would be the destruction of all 
 confidence among business men." 
 
 Nay, even after these projects of practical union 
 have been dismissed as too probably chimerical, there 
 remain two theoretical objections to our author's defini- 
 tion of religion which many men will find it hard to 
 get over. In the first place, can that be called religion 
 which offers nothing of personal, of spiritual intercourse 
 between the soul and God ? Our author's reply to 
 this is the hint that personality in an Infinite Being 
 can be little more than a metaphor, that when we are 
 dealing with the eternal, the all-embracing, then in- 
 deed, — 
 
 " dextrae juiigerc dcxtram 
 Non datur, ac vcras audirc et rcddere voces." 
 
 Our spiritual intercourse must lie in the evocation of 
 the memory of our great predecessors, as when we ask 
 
VIII.] A NEW EIRENICON. 303 
 
 ourselves, would Socrates, would Marcus Aurelius, have 
 approved what I am doing now ? 
 
 It is needless to say that the Christian, however 
 undogmatic, will never be satisfied with this. He will 
 never call it religion to keep, like Septimius Severus, 
 a bust of Christ in his private chapel, " along with 
 Virgil, Orpheus, Abraham, and other persons of the 
 same kind." He claims to address himself to a Being: 
 made human enough to give our love a place to cling, 
 but remaining divine in His perfection, in His illumi- 
 nating and responsive power. 
 
 Nor is this intense impulse towards a sj)iritual 
 union with something that is at once above and within 
 us confined to Christians alone, or necessarily associated 
 with any form of traditional belief whatever. For 
 while it may be the fact that the belief in any definite 
 superhuman personality becomes harder to maintain 
 as men's minds become subtler and their scrutiny of 
 evidence more exacting, yet, on the other hand, we see 
 the craving for divine communion, divine forgiveness 
 and blessing, satisfying itself with a spiritual answer 
 which it shrinks from defining, and growing (as in 
 Plotinus) the more absorbing as its object grows more 
 incognisable to man. Not science alone, but mysticism, 
 has shown itself ready to become the heir of all 
 religions ; and the churches of Christendom may be 
 destined to dissolve away, not into civilisation only, 
 but into ecstasy. 
 
 If, then, man's spiritual nature should not wither 
 
304 MODERN ESSAYS. [viir. 
 
 before the growth of his intellectual nature, but grow 
 witli it to tlie end, it is likely tliat the distinction 
 between pliilosophy and religion will not be obliterated, 
 and that it will continue to be only by a stretch of 
 language that science, patriotism, culture, can be in- 
 cluded under the latter and more sacred name. 
 
 And, in the second place, even apart from such 
 speculations as these, there is, for plain men, here and 
 now, an inadequacy in the very idea of natural religion, 
 as defined in this book, wdiich our author has not 
 indeed concealed, to which he has given earnest and 
 forcible expression, but which to minds less philosophic 
 or less hopeful than his own will present itself like 
 the Sphinx's riddle, which palsied all inquiry into things 
 remote or speculative with the urgency of an instant 
 fear. 
 
 y^ TTOtKtAwSoS ^<fily^ TO, TT/OOS TTOtrt O^KOTeil/ 
 
 /xe^evras ry/xa? rdcfiavrj TrpocryjyeTO. 
 
 "When the supernatural," says our autli or, "does not 
 come in to overwhelm the natural and turn Hfe upside 
 down, when it is admitted that religion deals, in the fii-st 
 instance, with the known and the natural, then we may 
 well begin to doubt whether tlie known and the natui-al 
 can suffice for human life. No sooner do we try to tliiiik 
 so than pessimism raises its head. The more our tlioughts 
 widen and deepen, as the universe grows ni)()n us and we 
 liccome accustomed to boundless space and time, the more 
 p(;trifying is the contrast of our own insignificance, tlie 
 more conteni[)tible become the pettiness, shortness, fragility 
 of the individual life. A moral paralysis creeps upon us. 
 
VIII.] A NEW EIRENICON. 305 
 
 For awhile we comfort ourselves with the notion of self- 
 sacrifice ; we say, What matter if I pass, let me think of 
 others ! But the other has become contemptible no less than 
 the self; all human griefs alike seem little worth assuaging, 
 human happiness too paltry at the best to be worth in- 
 creasing. The whole moral world is reduced to a point ; 
 the spiritual city, ' the goal of all the saints,' dwindles to 
 the ' least of little stars ' ; good and evil, right and wrong, 
 become infinitesimal, ephemeral matters, while eternity and 
 infinity remain attributes of that only which is outside the 
 sphere of morality. Life becomes more intolerable the 
 more we know and discover, so long as everything widens 
 and deepens except our own duration, and that remains as 
 pitiful as ever. The afi'ections die away in a world where 
 everything great and enduring is cold ; they die of their 
 own conscious feebleness and bootlessness." 
 
 This passage falls upon the reader with a shock of 
 disenchantment. " What, then," he exclaims, " did our 
 author mean by so confident, so encouraging a tone ? 
 Has he not been masterfully persuading us that at 
 bottom we are all agreed, and that the inward satisfac- 
 tion which belongs to the foi du charbonnier may 
 somehow be shared also by the severest sage ? And 
 now the hand which raised the fabric dashes it to the 
 ground — the digestive energy which dissolved away 
 so many a stubborn morsel ends by dissolving away 
 the organism itself." Alas ! this book is no exception 
 to the rule which bids the writer of every Theodicy 
 break off his demonstration with some abruptness when 
 he reaches the question whose answer it concerns us 
 VOL. II. X 
 
306 MODERN ESSAYS. [viii. 
 
 most to know. We may be carried beyond ourselves 
 by our teacher's eloquence and enthusiasm, yet we are 
 always dimly conscious that eloquence and enthusiasm 
 will after all leave us where we were, with everything 
 depending on a single point which neither our teacher 
 nor we have the data to determine. 
 
 But here let us make an end of controversy. 
 Wliether we call our author's utterances by the name 
 of religion or of philosophy, they contain, at any rate, 
 sublime ideas, vast generalisations, far-reaching hopes. 
 As a mere model of simple and noble style tliis work 
 is likely to be widely studied and to be remembered 
 long. Nowhere, perhaps, could we find a more signal 
 example of the characteristic excellences of the English 
 prose of the present era, of its mingled subtlety and 
 trenchancy, of its flashes of impassioned feeling seen 
 through an atmosphere of steady self-control. It is 
 instructive to compare our author's style with M. 
 lienan's. The Frenchman seems like the very spirit 
 of the age whispering in our ear. We gradually 
 get to think all other voices partial or foolish, and 
 though we may never once feel in cordial agreement 
 with him, we end by admitting to ourselves that we 
 cannot get nearer to the truth than he. The English- 
 man, on the other hand, does not shrink from startling, 
 almost offending us. His arguments often seem one- 
 sided, his aims impracticable. But even his paradoxes 
 have a kind of combative cogency, and when some 
 veritable truth " swims into his ken," then, indeed, he 
 
VIII.] A NEW EIRENICON. 307 
 
 speaks like a captain calling to the onset, and declares 
 in tones of trumpet clearness the chief concerns of 
 man. 
 
 And whatever may be the event and upshot of our 
 present perplexities, there must at any rate be need 
 of this spirit of earnest catholicity which strives to 
 raise all the elements of our spiritual being to a heat 
 so glowing that they may fuse and combine themselves 
 in one. If we are always to remain uncertain as to 
 any life save that of earth, then it will be to these 
 eager and dominating spirits that we shall have to 
 look for much of the impulse that is to keep us from 
 stagnating in despair. And even if some clearer con- 
 viction of immortality be yet reserved for men, such 
 exhortations as these should keep us from the com- 
 placent quietism which thinks that it is enough to be 
 "saved." They should remind us that the Natural 
 Eeligion of this life may continue to be the Natural 
 Eeligion of another, and that " the Eternal and the 
 Infinite and the All-embracing " may need to be 
 approached by many pathways which priestly tradition 
 has never known. 
 
 And surely the more we are persuaded that a 
 belief in a life to come may be the most potent of all 
 agencies in repressing vice and stimulating virtue, the 
 more must we recognise that this belief, as presented 
 in the popular theology, has crystallised into a shape 
 which much needs some salutary concussion. We do 
 not want a languid belief in the reversion of a sinecure 
 
308 MODERN ESSAYS. [vin. 
 
 acquirable by conformity to a test; we want a con- 
 viction sucli as may make death even welcome, that 
 death is but the entrance to a career of more joyful, 
 because more strenuous, virtue. We need a widened 
 and invigorated ideal of the spiritual universe through 
 which we may one day wander. We need prophets, bold 
 as the Hebrew, to secularise a conception of eternity 
 wliich has become too exclusively hieratic ; to illustrate 
 with cogent vividness the solidarity of all attainable 
 fragments of truth, to prepare that ultimate syncretism 
 of all genuine faiths toward which, if we hope at all, 
 we must hope that the world is tending. 
 
 Even those who still hold to Paul's watchword 
 of " Christ and Eesurrection " may feel, perhaps, that 
 this process of expansion is a gain to all forms of 
 religion alike, — and yet that it would scarcely have 
 been urged forward so earnestly had not the faith in 
 Christ and Eesurrection been for a time impau-ed. 
 They may admit that this also may be in the Provi- 
 dence of God, and that a temporary doubt as to the 
 everlasting arms upholding us may be needed to teach 
 us to put forth all the strength which is our own. 
 Virgil compares the human race and its destiny to a 
 rower struggling hopelessly against an opposing stream. 
 Those who believe that the boat which carries man 
 and his fortunes is in reality towed onwards by an 
 unseen Power should listen, not with resentment, but 
 with attentive interest, to their comrades who maintain 
 that the tow-rupe is swaying idly in the water, ])iit 
 
viii.] A NEW EIRENICON. 309 
 
 who yet feel confident that they can themselves propel 
 the vessel. Perhaps that confidence is vain, but at least 
 we should note how they apply their force, and unite 
 in the strenuousness of their endeavour. 
 
 And how large a part of the most deeply-religious 
 thought of recent years has been directed toward some 
 such endeavour as this ! How often will it be needful 
 to seek the characteristic, the vital points of the theo- 
 logy of this century (as of many that have preceded 
 it) in the writings of men who formed in their lifetime 
 the standing targets of orthodox zeal ! What future 
 history of man's higher life can ignore that revival 
 and systematisation of the instinct of human brother- 
 hood which we owe to Comte and his disciples? 
 What theory of man's duty to his Maker can forget 
 Mill's noble conception of a Divinity whoUy good, 
 completely wise, but who nevertheless, as being not 
 all-powerful, does actually need and rejoice in the help 
 of His creatures towards the attainment of His glorious 
 ends ? What religious poetry of our century will sway 
 men more profoundly than George Eliot's hymn of the 
 Choir Invisible, whose impassioned expression of the 
 absorption of personal in universal hope is not alien 
 assuredly from the spirit of the apostle who was 
 almost willing, for his converts' sake, himself to become 
 a castaway ? The list might easily be prolonged. 
 But it could contain few voices better adapted to 
 present needs than that of the author of Natural 
 Mcligion, proclaiming that whether our eternal hope 
 
310 MODERN ESSAYS. [viii. 
 
 is to subsist or fail, we must at any rate absorb as 
 culture, reproduce as worship, the truths of science, 
 the ideals of art, the sum of slowly- won and ever-spread- 
 ing humanities which make for each nation severally 
 its national and corporate soul and being, and con- 
 stitute in the world at large the world-wide Church of 
 civilisation. 
 
 It is true that those who cling to immortality as 
 the world's one hope may naturally find something 
 depressing in the visible spread of these efforts to con- 
 duct human life without it. Like Adam, at the first 
 approach of night, they well may " tremble for this 
 lovely frame," and cry aloud with terror at the advanc- 
 ing veil of shade. But to Adam, as we know, the dark- 
 ness became revelation. 
 
 " Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame 
 Hesperus with the host of heaven came, 
 
 And lo ! creation widened in man's view." 
 
 The lights that rule the night may bestow no warmth 
 with their illumination. Art, perhaps, may seem to 
 us but a moonlight halo ; Science and Stoicism — the 
 resolve to learn and to endure — may be but as noctis 
 signa severa — night's austere constellations, enthroned 
 in a frozen heaven. And yet that nocturnal outlook 
 is the pre-requisite of almost all we know ; nor with- 
 out the sun's witlidrawal and obscuration could men 
 truly have conceived the sun. 
 
 if the belief iu a life to come should ever regain as 
 
VIII.] A NEW EIRENICON. 311 
 
 firm possession of men's mind as of old, that belief 
 will surely be held in a nobler fashion. That life 
 will be conceived not as a devotional exercise nor as a 
 passive felicity, but as the prolongation of all generous 
 energies, and the unison of all high desires. It may 
 be that till we can thus apprehend it its glory must 
 be hid from our eyes. Only, perhaps, when men have 
 learnt that virtue is its own reward may they safely 
 learn also that that reward is eternal. 
 
EOSSETTI AND THE EELIGION 
 OF BEAUTY. 
 
 Among those picturesque aspects of life which the 
 advance of civilisation is tending to reduce to smooth- 
 ness and uniformity we may include that huhbub and 
 conflict w^hich in rougher days used to salute the 
 appearance of any markedly new influence in science, 
 literature, or art. Prejudice — not long since so for- 
 midable and ubiquitous a giant — now shows some- 
 times little more vitality than Bunyan's Pope or 
 Pajran ; and the men who stone one of our modern 
 prophets do it hurriedly, feeling that tliey may be 
 interrupted at any moment by liaving to make arrange- 
 ments for his interment in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 Now, while it would be absurd not to rejoice in 
 this increasing receptivity of cultivated men — absurd 
 to wish the struggle of genius sharper, or its recogni- 
 tion longer deferred — we may yet note one incidental 
 advantage which belonged to the older r^gwu. While 
 victory was kept longer in doubt, and while the 
 conflict was rougher, the advocates of a new cause felt 
 a stronger obligation to master it in all its aspects, 
 
IX.] ROSSETTI AND THE RELIGION OF BEAUTY. 313 
 
 and to set it forth with such exposition as mi^lit 
 best prepare a place for it in ordinary minds. The 
 merits of Wordsworth (to take an obvious instance) 
 were long ignored by the public ; but in the meantime 
 his admirers had explained them so often and so fully 
 that the recomition which was at last accorded to 
 them was given on those merits, and not in mere 
 deference to the authority of any esoteric circle. 
 
 The exhibition of Dante Eossetti's pictures which 
 now (February 1883) covers the walls of Burlington 
 House is the visible sign of the admission of a new 
 strain of thought and emotion within the pale of our 
 artistic orthodoxy. And since Eossetti's poetry ex- 
 presses with singular exactness the same range of ideas 
 as his painting, and is at any rate not inferior to his 
 painting in technical skill, we may fairly say that his 
 poetry also has attained hereby some sort of general 
 recognition, and that the enthusiastic notices whicli 
 appeared on his decease embodied a view of him to 
 which the public is willing to some extent to defer. 
 
 Yet it hardly seems that enough has been done to 
 make that deference spontaneous or intelligent. The 
 students of Eossetti's poems — taking their tone from 
 Mr. Swinburne's magnificent eulogy — have for the 
 most part rather set forth their artistic excellence than 
 endeavoured to explain their contents, or to indicate 
 the relation of the poet's habit of thought and feeling 
 to the ideas which Englishmen are accustomed to trust 
 or admire. And consequently many critics, whose 
 
314 MODERN ESSAYS. [ix. 
 
 ethical point of view demands respect, continue to 
 find in Eossetti's works an enigma not worth the 
 pains of solution, and to decry them as obscure, fan- 
 tastic, or even as grossly immoral iu tendency. 
 
 It will be the object of this essay — written from a 
 point of view of by no means exclusive sympathy 
 with the movement which Eossetti led — to show, in 
 the first place, the great practical importance of that 
 movement for good or evil ; and, further, to trace such 
 relations between this Eeligion of Art, this Worship 
 of Beauty, and the older and more accredited mani- 
 festations of the Higher Life, as may indicate to the 
 moralist on what points he should concentrate his 
 efforts if, hopeless of withstanding the rising stream, 
 he seeks at least to retain some power of deepening 
 or modifying its channel. 
 
 From the aesthetic side such an attempt will be 
 regarded with indifference, and from the ethical side 
 with little hope. Even so bold a peacemaker as the 
 author of Natural Religion has shrunk from this task ; 
 for the art wliich he admits as an element in his 
 Church of Civilisation is an art very different from 
 Eossetti's. It is an art manifestly untainted by 
 sensuousness, manifestly akin to virtue ; an art which, 
 like Wordsworth's, finds its revelation in sea and sky 
 and mountain rather than in " eyes wliich the sun- 
 gate of the soul unbar," or in 
 
 "Such fire as Lovo's soul-winnowing hands distil, 
 Even from his inmost ark of light and dew." 
 
IX.] ROSSETTI AND THE RELIGION OF BEAUTY. 315 
 
 Yet, however slight the points of contact between the 
 ethical and the sesthetic theories of life may be, it is 
 important that they should be noted and dwelt upon. 
 For assuredly the " aesthetic movement " is not a mere 
 fashion of the day — the modish pastime of nincom- 
 poops and charlatans. The imitators who surround 
 its leaders, and whose jargon almost disgusts us with 
 the very mysteries of art, the very vocabulary of 
 emotion — these men are but the straws that mark the 
 current, the inevitable parasites of a rapidly -rising 
 cause. We have, indeed, only to look around us to 
 perceive that — whether or not the conditions of the 
 modern world are favourable to artistic excellence — all 
 the main forces of civilisation are tending towards 
 artistic actimty. The increase of wealth, the diffusion 
 of education, the gradual decline of the military, the 
 hieratic, the aristocratic ideals — each of these causes 
 removes some obstacle from the artist's patt or offers 
 some fresh prize to his endeavours. Art has outlived 
 both the Puritans and the Inquisition; she is no 
 longer deadened by the spirit of self-mortification, nor 
 enslaved by a jealous orthodoxy. The increased 
 wealth of the world makes the artist's life stable and 
 secure, while it sets free a surplus income so large 
 that an increasing share of it must almost necessarily 
 be diverted to some form of aesthetic expenditure. 
 
 And more than this. It is evident, especially in 
 new countries, that a need is felt of some kind of 
 social distinction — some new aristocracy — based on 
 
316 MODERN ESSAYS. [ix. 
 
 differences other than those of birth and wealtli. Not, 
 indeed, that rank and family are likely to cease to be 
 held in honour ; but, as power is gradually dissociated 
 from them, they lose their exclusive predominance, 
 and take their place on the same footing as other 
 cjraces and dimities of life. Still less need we assume 
 any slackening in the pursuit of riches ; the fact 
 being rather that this pursuit is so widely successful 
 that in civilised capitals even immense opulence can 
 now scarcely confer on its possessor all the distinction 
 which he desires. In America, accordingly, where 
 modern instincts find their freest field, we have before 
 our eyes the process of the gradual distribution of the 
 old prerogatives of birth amongst wealth, culture, and 
 the proletariat. In Europe a class privileged by birth 
 used to supply at once the rulers and the ideals of 
 other men. In America the rule has passed to the 
 multitude; largely swayed in subordinate matters by 
 organised wealth, but in the last resort supreme. 
 The ideal of the new community at first was Wealth ; 
 but, as its best literature and its best society plainly 
 show, that ideal is shifting in the direction of Culture. 
 The younger cities, the coarser classes, still bow down 
 undisguisedly to the god Dollar ; but when this 
 Pliilistine deity is rejected as shaming liis worshippers, 
 (fisLlietic Culture seems somehow the only Power ready 
 to iiistal itself in the vacant sln-ine. 
 
 And all over the world the spread of Science, the 
 diffusion of Morality, tend in this same direction. 
 
IX ] EOSSETTI AND THE RELIGION OF BEAUTY. 317 
 
 For the net result of Science and Morality for the 
 mass of men is simply to give them comfort and 
 leisure, to leave them cheerful, peaceful, and anxious 
 for occupation. Nay, even the sexual instinct, as men 
 become less vehement and unbridled, merges in larger 
 and larger measure into the mere aesthetic enjoyment 
 of beauty ; till Stesichorus might now maintain with 
 more truth than of old that our modern Helen is not 
 herself fought for by two continents, but rather her 
 etScoXov or image is blamelessly diffused over the 
 albums of two hemispheres. 
 
 It is by no means clear that these modern condi- 
 tions are favourable to the development either of the 
 highest art or of the highest virtue. It is not certain 
 even that they are permanent — that this aesthetic 
 paradise of the well-to-do may not sometime be con- 
 vulsed by an invasion from the rough world without. 
 Meantime, however, it exists and spreads, and its 
 leading figures exert an influence which few men of 
 science, and fewer theologians, can surpass. And 
 alike to savant^ to theologian, and to moralist, it 
 must be important to trace the workings of a 
 powerful mind, concerned with interests which are so 
 different from theirs, but which for a large section 
 of society are becoming daily more paramount and 
 engrossing. 
 
 " Under the arch of Life," says Eossetti in a sonnet 
 whose Platonism is the more impressive because prob- 
 ably unconscious — 
 
318 MODERN ESSAYS. [ix. 
 
 " Under the arch of Life, where love and death, 
 Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw- 
 Beauty enthroned ; and though her gaze struck awe, 
 I drew it in as simply as my breath." 
 
 Eossetti was ignorant of Greek, and it seems doubt- 
 ful whetlier he knew Plato even by translations. 
 But his idealising spirit has reproduced the myth of 
 the Phccdrus — even to the Tpe(f)6TaL koX eviradel — the 
 words that affirm the repose and well-being of the 
 soul when she perceives beneath the arch of heaven 
 the pure Idea which is at once her sustenance and 
 her lord : — 
 
 " Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath. 
 
 The sky and sea bend on thee ; which can draw, 
 By sea or sky or woman, to one law, 
 The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath." 
 
 For Beauty, as Plato has told us, is of all the divine 
 ideas at once most manifest and most loveable to men. 
 When " Justice and Wisdom and all other things that 
 are held in honour of souls " are hidden from the 
 worshipper's gaze, as finding no avenue of sense by 
 which to reach him through the veil of llesh, Beauty 
 •has still some passage and entrance from mortal eyes 
 to eyes, "and he that gazed so earnestly on what 
 things in that holy place were to be seen, he when he 
 discerns on earth some godlike countenance or fashion 
 of body, tliat counterfeits lieauty well, first of all lie 
 trembles, and there comes over him something of the 
 
IX.] ROSSETTI AND THE RELIGION OF BEAUTY. 319 
 
 fear which erst he knew ; but then, looking on tliat 
 earthly beauty, he worships it as divine, and if he did 
 not fear the reproach of utter madness he would 
 sacrifice to his heart's idol as to the image and 
 presence of a god." 
 
 " This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise 
 
 Thy voice and hand shake still — long known to thee 
 By flying hair and flattering hem — the beat 
 Following her daily of thy heart and feet, 
 How passionately and irretrievably, 
 In what fond flight, how many ways and days ! " 
 
 There are some few hearts, no doubt, in which 
 " sky and sea " and the face of Nature are able to 
 inspire this yearning passion. But with this newer 
 school — with Eossetti especially — we feel at once 
 that Nature is no more than an accessory. The most 
 direct appeals, the most penetrating reminiscences, 
 come to the worshipper of Beauty from a woman's 
 eyes. The steady rise in the status of women ; that 
 constant deepening and complication of the commerce 
 between the sexes which is one of the signs of pro- 
 gressive civilisation ; all this is perpetually teaching 
 and preaching (if I may say so) the cluirnis of woman- 
 hood to all sections of the community. What a 
 difference in this respect has the century since 
 Turner's birth made in England ! If another Turner 
 were born now — an eye which gazed, as it were, on a 
 new-created planet from the very bedchamber and 
 outgoing of the sun — can we suppose tliat such an 
 
320 MODERN ESSAYS. [ix. 
 
 eye would still find its most attractive feminine type 
 in the biimboats of Wapping ? The anomaly, strange 
 enough in Turner's day, is now inconceivable. Our 
 present danger lies in just the opposite dh-ection. We 
 are in danger of losing that direct and straightforward 
 outlook on human loveliness (of which Mr. Millais 
 may serve as a modern example) which notes and 
 represents the object with a frank enjoyment, and 
 seeks for no further insight into the secret of its 
 charm. All the arts, in fact, are returning now to the 
 spirit of Leonardo, to the sense that of all visible 
 objects known to us the human face and form are 
 the most complex and mysterious, to the desire to 
 extract the utmost secret, the occult message, from all 
 the phenomena of Life and Being. 
 
 Now there is at any rate one obvious explanation 
 of the sense of mystery which attaches to the female 
 form. We may interpret it all as in some way a 
 transformation of the sexual passion. This essentially 
 materialistic view is surrounded with a kind of glamour 
 by such writers as Gautier and Baudelaire. The tone 
 of sentiment thus generated is repugnant — is some- 
 times even nauseating — to English feeling ; but this 
 tone of sentiment is certainly not Kossetti's. There is 
 no trace in him of this deliberate worship of Baal and 
 Aslitoreth ; no touch of the cruelty which is the char- 
 acteristic note of natures in which the sexual instincts 
 have become liaunting and dominant. 
 
 It is, indeed, at the opposite end of the scale — 
 
IX.] ROSSETTI AND THE RELIGION OF BEAUTY. S21 
 
 among those who meet the mysteries of love and 
 womanhood with a very different interpretation — that 
 Eossetti's nearest affinities are to be found. It must 
 not be forgotten that one of his most exquisite literary 
 achievements consists in a translation of the Vita 
 Nuova of Dante. Now, the Vita Nuova, to the vulgar 
 reader a childish or meaningless tale, is to those who 
 rightly apprehend it the very gospel and charter of 
 mystical passion. When the child Dante trembles at 
 the first sight of the child Beatrice ; when the voice 
 within him cries Ecce dens fortior mc, qui veniens 
 dominabitur mihi ; when that majestic spirit passes, at 
 a look of the beloved one, through all the upward or 
 downward trajectory between heaven and hell; this, 
 indeed, is a love which appertains to the category of 
 reasoned affections no more ; its place is with the 
 visions of saints, the intuitions of philosophers, in 
 Plato's ideal world. It is recognised as a secret which 
 none can hope to fathom till we can discern from some 
 mount of unearthly vision what those eternal things 
 were indeed to which ^ somewhat in human nature 
 blindly perceived itself akin. 
 
 The parallel between Eossetti and Dante must not 
 be pushed too far. Eossetti is but as a Dante still 
 in the selva oscura ; he has not sounded hell so pro- 
 foundly, nor mounted into heaven so high. He is not 
 a prophet but an artist ; yet an artist who, both by the 
 very intensity of his artistic vision, and by some inborn 
 bent towards symbol and mysticism, stands on the 
 
 VOL. II. Y 
 
322 MODERN ESSAYS. [ix. 
 
 side of those who see in material things a spiritual 
 significance, and ntters words of universal meaning 
 from the fulness of his own heart. Yet he is, it must 
 be repeated, neither prophet, philosopher, nor saint. 
 The basis of his love is the normal emotion — " the 
 delight in beauty alloyed with appetite, and strength- 
 ened by the alloy;" — and although that love has 
 indeed learned, in George Eliot's words, to " acknow- 
 ledge an effect from the imagined light of unproven 
 firmaments, and have its scale set to the grander orbit 
 of what hath been and shall be," this transfiguration is 
 effected not so much by any elevation of ethical feel- 
 ing, as by the mere might and potency of an ardent 
 spirit w^hich projects itself with passionate intensity 
 among things unreachable and unknown. To him his 
 beloved one seems not as herself alone, " but as the 
 meaning of all things that are ; " her voice recalls a 
 prenatal memory, and her eyes " dream against a dis- 
 tant goal." We hear little of the intellectual aspects 
 of passion, of tlie subtle interaction of one character 
 on another, of the modes in which Love possesses liim- 
 self of the eager or the reluctant heart. In these 
 poems the lovers have lost their idiosyncrasies ; they 
 are made at one for ever ; the two streams have mingled 
 only to become conscious that they are being drawn 
 together into a boundless sea. Nay, the very passion 
 which serves to unite them, and which is sometimes 
 dwelt on with an Italian emphasis of sensuousness 
 which our English reserve condemns, tends oftencr to 
 
IX.] EOSSETTl AND THE RELIGION OF BEAUTV. 323 
 
 merge itself in the mystic companionship which holds 
 the two souls together in their enchanted land. 
 
 " One flame-winged brought a white- winged harp-player 
 Even where my lady and I lay all alone ; 
 Saying : ' Behold, this minstrel is unknown ; 
 
 Bid him depart, for I am minstrel here ; 
 
 Only my strains are to Love's dear ones dear.' 
 
 Then said I : ' Through thine haut-boy's rapturous tone 
 Unto my lady still this harp makes moan, 
 
 And still she deems the cadence deep and clear.' 
 
 "Then said my lady : ' Thou art Passion of Love, 
 And this Love's Worship ; both he plights to me 
 Thy mastering music walks the sunlit sea ; 
 But where wan water trembles in the grove. 
 And the wan moon is all the light thereof, 
 
 This harp still makes my name its Voluntary.' " 
 
 The voluntaries of the white- winged harp-player do 
 not linger long among the accidents of earth ; they 
 link with the beloved name all " the soul's sphere of 
 infinite images," all that she finds of benign or won- 
 drous " amid the bitterness of things occult." And as 
 the lover moves amid these mysteries it appears to 
 him that Love is the key which may unlock them all. 
 For the need is not so much of an intellectual insight 
 as of an elevation of the whole being — a rarefaction, 
 as it were, of man's spirit which Love's pure fire effects, 
 and which enables it to penetrate more deeply into the 
 ideal world. 
 
 In that thin air Love undergoes a yet further 
 
324 MODERN ESSAYS. [ix. 
 
 tiaiisformation. The personal element, already sub- 
 limed into a mystic companionship, retires into the 
 background. The lover is now, in Plato's words, eVt to 
 TToXif 7re\ayo<; TeTpafJifievof; rov koXov ; he has set 
 sail upon the ocean of Beauty, and Love becomes the 
 epfivvevov koI ScaTropOfjuevov, the " interpreter and 
 mediator between God and man," through whom the 
 true prayer passes and the true revelation is made. 
 
 *' Not I myself know all my love for thee : 
 
 How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh 
 To-morrow's dower by gage of yesterday ? 
 Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be 
 As doors and windows bared to some loud sea, 
 
 Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray ; 
 And shall my sense pierce love — the last relay 
 And ultimate outpost of eternity 1 " 
 
 For thus, indeed, is Love discerned to be something 
 which lies beyond the region of this world's wisdom or 
 desire — something out of proportion to earthly needs 
 and to causes that we know. Here is the point where 
 tlie lover's personality seems to be exalted to its 
 V highest, and at the same moment to disappear ; as he 
 perceives that his individual emotion is merged in the 
 flood and tideway of a cosmic law : — 
 
 " Lo ! what am I to Love, the lord of all 1 
 
 One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand — 
 One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand. 
 
 Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest cull 
 
 And veriest touch of powers primordial 
 That any hour-girt life may understand." 
 
IX.] ROSSETTI AND THE RELIGION OF BEAUTY. 325 
 
 Alas ! this call, by its very nature, is heard in one 
 heart alone ; this " touch of powers primordial " is 
 intransferable to other souls. The eyes which, to the 
 
 lover's vision, 
 
 " The sun-gate of the soul unbar, 
 Being of its furthest fires oracular," 
 
 jan send this message to the world only through sign 
 and symbol ; the " bower of unimagined flower and 
 tree " is fashioned by Love in such hearts only as he 
 has already made his own. 
 
 And thus it is that so much of Eossetti's art, in 
 speech or colour, spends itself in the effort to com- 
 municate the incommunicable. It is toward "the 
 vale of magical dark mysteries " that those grave low- 
 hanging brows are bent, and " vanished hours and 
 hours eventual " brood in the remorseful gaze of 
 Pandora, the yearning gaze of Proserpine. The pictures 
 that perplex us with their obvious incompleteness, 
 their new and haunting beauty, are not the mere 
 caprices of a richly - dowered but wandering spirit. 
 Eather they may be called (and none the less so for 
 their shortcomings) the sacred pictures of a new reli- 
 gion ; forms and faces which bear the same relation to 
 that mystical worship of Beauty on which we have 
 dwelt so long, as the forms and faces of a Francia or a 
 Leonardo bear to the mediaeval mysteries of the wor- 
 ship of Mary or of Christ. And here it is that in 
 Eossetti's pictures we find ourselves in the midst of a 
 novel symbolism — a symbolism genume and deeply 
 
1/ 
 
 326 MODERN ESSAYS. [ix. 
 
 felt as that of the fifteenth century, and using once 
 more birds and flowers and stars, colours and lights of 
 the evening or the dawn, to tell of beauties impalpable, 
 spaces unfathomed, the setting and resurrection of no 
 measurable or earthly day. 
 
 It is chiefly in a series of women's faces that these 
 ideas seek expression. All these have something in 
 common, some union of strange and puissant physical 
 loveliness with depth and remoteness of gaze. They 
 range from demon to angel — as such names may be 
 interpreted in a Eeligion of Beauty — from Lilith, 
 whose beauty is destruction, and Astarte, throned 
 between the Sun and Moon in her sinister splendour, 
 to the Blessed Damozel and the " maiden pre-elect," type 
 of the love whose look regenerates and whose assump- 
 tion lifts to heaven. But all have the look — charac- 
 teristic of Kossetti's faces as the mystic smile of 
 Leonardo's — the look which bids the spectator 
 murmur — 
 
 " What netherworkl gulf-whispers doth she hear, 
 In answering echoes from what planisphere, 
 Along the wind, along the estuary ? " 
 
 And since these primal impulses, at any rate, will 
 remain to mankind, since Love's patliway will be re- 
 trodden by many a generation, and all of faith or 
 knowledge to wliich that patliway leads will cnduri', 
 it is no small part of the poet's function to show in 
 how great a measure Love does actually pre-'iuppose 
 
IX.] ROSSETTI AND THE RELIGION OF BEAUTY. 327 
 
 and consist of this exaltation of the mystic element in 
 man ; and liow the sense of unearthly destinies may 
 give dignity to Love's invasion, and steadfastness to 
 his continuance, and surround his vanishing with the 
 mingled e(sstasy of anguish and of hope. Let us trace, 
 with Eossetti, some stages of his onward way. 
 
 The inexplicable suddenness with which Love will 
 sometimes possess himself of two several hearts — find- 
 ing a secret kinship which, like a common aroma, 
 permeates the whole being of each — has often sug- 
 gested the thought that such companionship is not in 
 reality now first begun ; that it is founded in a pre- 
 natal affection, and is the unconscious prolongation of 
 the emotions of an ideal world — 
 
 " Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love, 
 That among souls allied to mine was yet 
 
 One nearer kindred then life hinted of. 
 
 born with me somewhere that men forget, 
 And though in years of sight and sound unmet, 
 
 Known for my soul's birth-partner well enough ! " 
 
 It is thus that Eossetti traces backward the kind- 
 ling of the earthly flame. And he feels. also that if 
 love be so pervading, so fateful a thing, the man who 
 takes it upon him has much to fear. He moves 
 among great risks ; " the moon-track of the journeyiug 
 face of Fate " is subject for him to strange perturba- 
 tion^, to terrible eclipse. What if his love be a mis- 
 take ? — if he feels against his will a disenchantment 
 stealing over the enchanted garden, and his new self 
 
328 MODERN ESSAYS. [ix. 
 
 walking, a ghastly intruder, among scenes vainly con- 
 secrated by an illusive past ? 
 
 " Whence came his feet into my field, and why 1 
 How is it that he finds it all so drear ? 
 How do I see his seeing, and how hear * 
 The name his bitter silence knows it by 'i " 
 
 Or what of him for whom some unforgotten hour has 
 marred his life's best felicity, ct inquinavit aerc tempns 
 aureum ? What of the recollection that chills his freest 
 moments with an inward and icy breath ? 
 
 " Look in my face, my name is Might-have-been ; 
 I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell." 
 
 There is no need to invite attention to the lines 
 which thus begin. They will summon their own 
 auditors ; they will not die till that inward Presence 
 dies also, and there sits not at the heart of any man a 
 memory deeper than his joy. 
 
 But over all lovers, however wisely they may love, 
 and well, there hangs one shadow which no wisdom 
 can avert. To one or other the shock must come, 
 the separation which will make the survivor's after- 
 life seem something posthumous, and its events like 
 the changes in a dream. 
 
 Without intruding into the private story of a life 
 which has not yet been authoritatively recounted to 
 us, we may recognise that on Kossetti the shock of 
 severance, of bereavement, must have fallen with deso- 
 lating force. In several of his most pregnant poems, — 
 
IX.] ROSSETTI AND THE RELIGION OF BEAUTY. 329 
 
 in the sonnets entitled Willoiu-wood most of all, — 
 those who know the utmost anguish of yearning have 
 listened to a voice speaking as though from their own 
 hearts. The state of tension, indeed, which finds utter- 
 ance in these sonnets is by its very nature transitory. 
 There comes a time when most men forget. But in 
 some hearts the change which comes over the passion 
 of love is not decay, but transfiguration. That passion 
 is generalised, as Plato desired that it should be gen- 
 eralised, though in a somewhat different way. The 
 Platonic enthusiasm of admiration was to extend itself 
 " from one fair form to all fair forms," and from fair 
 forms to noble and beautiful ideas and actions, and all 
 that is likest God. And something not unlike this 
 takes place when the lover feels that the object of his 
 earthly worship, now removed from his sight, is be- 
 coming identified for him with all else that he has 
 been wont to revere — representative to him, to use 
 Plato's words again, " of those things, by dwelling on 
 which it is that even a god is divine." It is not, 
 indeed, the bereaved lover only who finds in a female 
 figure the ideal recipient of his impulses of adoring 
 love. Of how many creeds has this been the inspiring 
 element ! — from the painter who invokes upon his 
 canvas a Virgin revealed in sleep, to the philosopher 
 who preaches the worship of Humanity in a woman's 
 likeness, to be at once the Mother and the Beloved of 
 all. Yet this ideal will operate most actively in hearts 
 which can give to that celestial vision a remembered 
 
330 MODERN ESSAYS. [ix. 
 
 reality, whose " memorial threshold " seems visibly to 
 bridge the passage between the transitory and the 
 supernal world. 
 
 " City, of thine a single simple door, 
 
 By some new Power reduplicate, must be 
 Even yet my life-porch in eternity, 
 Even with one presence filled, as once of yore ; 
 Or mockiniir winds whirl round a chaff-strewn floor 
 Thee and thy years and these my words and me." 
 
 And if sometimes this transmuted passion — this re- 
 ligion of beauty spiritualised into a beatific dream — 
 should prompt to quietism rather than to vigorous 
 action, — if sometimes we hear in the mourner's utter- 
 ance a tone as of a man too weak for his destiny — 
 this has its pathos too. For it is a part of the lot of 
 man that the fires which purify should also consume 
 him, and that as the lower things become distasteful 
 the energy which seeks the higher things should fade 
 too often into a sad repose. 
 
 *' Here with her face doth Memory sit, 
 Meanwhile, and wait the day's decline, 
 
 Till other eyes shall look from it — 
 Eyes of the spirit's Palestine, 
 
 Even than the old gaze tenderer ; 
 
 While ho])es and aims, long lost with her, 
 Stand round her image side by siilc, 
 Like tombs of pilgrims that have died 
 
 About the Holy Sepulchre." 
 
 And when the dreani and the legend which inspired 
 
IX.] ROSSETTI AND TilE RELIGION OF BEAUTY. 331 
 
 Rossetti's boyhood with the vision of the Blessed 
 Damozel — which kindled his early manhood into the 
 sweetest Ave that ever saluted " Mary Virgin, full of 
 grace " — had transformed themselves in his heart into 
 the reality and the recollection ; wlien Love had been 
 made known to him by life itself and death — then he 
 had at least gained power to show how the vaguer 
 worship may become a concentrated expectancy : how 
 one vanished hand may seem to offer the endless wel- 
 come, one name to sjmibolise all heaven, and to be in 
 itself the single hope. 
 
 " Ah ! when the wan soul in that golden air 
 Between the scriptured petals softly blown 
 Peers breathless for the gift of grace unknown, — 
 Ah ! let none other alien spell soe'er, 
 But only the one Hope's one name be there, — 
 Not less nor more, but e'en that word alone." 
 
 Enough, perhaps, has been said to indicate not only 
 how superficial is the view which represents Rossetti 
 as a dangerous sensualist, but also how inadequately 
 we shall understand him if we think to find in him 
 only the commonplaces of passion dressed out in 
 fantastic language and Italianised allegory. There is 
 more to be learnt from him than this, though it be too 
 soon, as yet, to discern with exactness his place in the 
 history of our time. Yet we may note that his sensi- 
 tive and reserved individuality ; his life, absorbed in 
 Art, and aloof from — without being below — tlie circles 
 of politics or fashion ; his refinement, created as it 
 
332 MODERN ESSAYS. [ix 
 
 were from within, and independent of conventional 
 models, point him out as a member of that new aristo- 
 cracy of which we have already spoken, that oi^timcicy 
 of passion and genius (if we may re^dve an obsolete 
 word to express a new shade of meaning) which is 
 coming into existence as a cosmopolitan gentility 
 among the confused and fading class -distinctions of 
 the past. And, further, we may observe in him the 
 reaction of Art against Materialism, which becomes 
 more marked as the dominant tone of science grows 
 more soulless and severe. The instincts which make 
 other men Catholics, Eitualists, Hegelians, have com- 
 pelled him, too, to seek " the meaning of all things 
 that are" elsewhere than in the behaviour of ether and 
 atoms, though we can track his revelation to no source 
 more explicit than the look in a woman's eyes. 
 
 But if we ask — and it was one of the questions 
 with which we started — what encouragement the 
 moralist can 11 nd in this counter -wave of art and 
 mysticism which meets the materialistic tide, there is 
 no certain or easy answer. The one view of life seems 
 as powerless as the other to sui)ply that antique and 
 manly virtue which civilisation tends to undermine by 
 the lessening effort tliat it exacts of men, the increas- 
 ing enjoyment that it offers to them. " Time has 
 run back and fetched the age of gold," in tlie sense 
 th.'it tlu; opulent can now take life as easily as it was 
 taken in L'aiiidise ; and llossetti's poems, placed beside* 
 Sidney's or Lovelace's, seem the expression of a century 
 
IX.] ROSSETTI AND THE RELIGION OF BEAUTY. 333 
 
 which is refining itself into quietism and mellowing 
 into decay. 
 
 Yet thus much we may safely affirm, that if we 
 contrast sestheticism with pure hedonism — the pursuit 
 of pleasure through art with the pursuit of pleasure 
 simply as pleasure — the one has a tendency to quicken 
 and exalt, as the other to deaden and vulgarise, 
 the emotions and appetencies of man. If only the 
 artist can keep clear of the sensual selfishness which 
 will, in its turn, degrade the art which yields to it ; if 
 only he can worship beauty with a strong and single 
 heart, his emotional nature will acquire a grace and 
 elevation which are not, indeed, identical with the 
 elevation of virtue, the grace of holiness, but which 
 are none the less a priceless enrichment of the com- 
 plex life of man. Eossetti could never have summoned 
 us to the clear heights of Wordsworth's Laodamia. 
 Yet who can read the House of Life and not feel that 
 the poet has known Love as Love can be — not an 
 enjoyment only or a triumph, but a worship and a 
 regeneration ; Love not fleeting nor changeful, but 
 " far above all passionate winds of welcome and fare- 
 well;" Love offering to the soul no mere excitation and 
 by -play, but "a heavenly solstice, hushed and halcyon;" 
 Love whose " hours elect in choral consonancy " bear 
 with them nothing that is vain or vulgar, common or 
 unclean. He must have felt as no passing tragedy 
 the long ache of parted pain, " the ground-whirl of the 
 perished leaves of hope," " the sunset's desolate dis- 
 
334 MODERN ESSAYS. fix 
 
 array," the fruitless striving "to wrest a bond from night's 
 inveteracy," to behold " for once, for once alone," the 
 unforgotten eyes re-risen from the dark of deatli. 
 
 Love, as Plato said, is the kpfiijvevov kcll hiairop- 
 6fjL6vov, " the interpreter and mediator " between things 
 human and things divine ; and it may be to Love that 
 we must look to teach the worshipper of Beauty that 
 the highest things are also the loveliest, and that the 
 strongest of moral agencies is also the most pervading 
 and keenest joy. Art and Eeligion, which no compres- 
 sion could amalgamate, may by Love be expanded and 
 interfused ; and thus the poet may not err so wholly 
 who seeks in a woman's eyes " the meaning of all 
 things that are ;" and " the soul's sphere of infinite 
 images " may not be a mere prismatic fringe to reality, 
 but rather those images may be as dark rays made 
 visible by passing through the medium of a mind 
 which is fitted to refract and reflect them. 
 
 A faint, a fitful reflex ! Whether it be from light of 
 sun or of moon, sole rej^eratssuiii met radiantis iviagitie 
 Innae, — the glimmer of a vivifying or of a phantom 
 day — may scarcely be for us to know. ]>ut never 
 yet has the universe been proved smaller than the con- 
 ceptions of man, whose farthest, deepest speculation 
 has only found within him yet pro founder abysses, — 
 without, a more unfathomable heaven. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 Note A. 
 
 Since the publication of the first edition of these Essays, an 
 admirable study of French versification has appeared from the 
 pen of M. Guyau, in the Revue Philosophique for 1884, under 
 the title of ' L'Esthetic[ue du vers Moderne.' This paper, far 
 more philosophical than any French writings on the subject 
 which I had previously seen, suggests much which might be 
 added to my discussion, did space permit. Fortunately, however, 
 so far as my own remarks go, they are thoroughly in accordance 
 with M. Guyau's more authoritative opinion. 
 
 1885. 
 
 Note B. 
 
 The letters of George Eliot which have recently been given 
 to the world confirm the view above expressed as to the pre- 
 dominance in her of the ethical impulse. Not even the one 
 grave moral mistake into which a wave of theoretical opinion 
 rather than of personal jjassion carried her, can seriously interfere 
 with the impression which the records of her whole life produce, 
 — the picture of untiring self-improvement, of strenuous well- 
 doing. The letters are as far removed as possible from either 
 the recklessness or the self-absorption which sometimes accom- 
 pany imaginative genius, leather we find a temper as of one 
 resolved to treat the whole of life scientifically, and not m 
 amateur, — a voice whose stern self-communings seem overheard 
 in the heart's secret chamber, and bid us to redeem the time 
 because the days are evil. 
 
 1886. 
 
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