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MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM MATHEWS, LLD. 
 
 N 
 
 LITERARY STYLE, AND OTHER ESSAYS," ETC. ETC. 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. 
 
 1887. 
 
Copyright, 1887, 
 BY S. C. GBIGGS AND COMPANY. 
 
 53ntbfrsit0 
 JOHN WILSON AND Sox, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 HHHE papers in this volume have been written at 
 intervals of time considerably apart, most of 
 them for the present work, the rest for other publi- 
 cations. The paper on William Wirt was written in 
 answer to an invitation given to the author by the 
 New York Biographical and Genealogical Society to 
 address it on that subject ; after having been read be- 
 fore which Society it was read before the Rhode Island 
 Historical Society at Providence. For his knowledge 
 of Mr. Wirt the author is indebted in no small degree 
 to the elaborate and interesting biography by J. P. 
 Kennedy. In the paper on " The London Pulpit " no 
 account is given of Mr. Spurgeon, for the reason that 
 the author has already tried to portray him and his 
 manner in the pulpit in a previous work, " Hours with 
 Men and Books," pp. 80-96. 
 
 W. M. 
 BOSTON, October, 1887. 
 
 196 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON 1 1 
 
 WILLIAM WIRT 20 
 
 BULWER 53 
 
 ALEXANDRA DUMAS 67 
 
 THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN 80 
 
 THE GREATNESS OF LONDON 140 
 
 THE LONDON PULPIT : 
 
 ARCHDEACON FARRAR 150 
 
 CANON LIDDON 160 
 
 JOSEPH PARKER, D.D 170 
 
 REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M.A 179 
 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 189 
 
 THE QUEEN OF WATERING-PLACES 218 
 
 DIARIES 231 
 
 THE ADVANTAGES OF UGLINESS 237 
 
 WORRY 247 
 
 COURAGE 253 
 
 OYSTERS . 261 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE- 
 CYNICS AND CYNICISM 283 
 
 THE EXTREMES OF DRESS 289 
 
 THE TRICKS OF TYPES 295 
 
 CAUSES OF DIVORCE 305 
 
 ILLUSIONS ABOUT THE PAST 313 
 
 IMMORAL NOVELS 327 
 
 WHAT SHALL WE READ? 335 
 
 LITERARY QUOTATION 345 
 
 THE VALUE OF FAME 355 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HANDWRITING 366 
 
 INDEX 377 
 
MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON I. 
 
 PROBABLY no great man ever lived whose character 
 has been the subject of more vehement dispute than 
 that of Napoleon. Though sixty-five years have rolled by 
 since he found a grave " amidst the immensity of the 
 seas " at St. Helena, yet the discussion still goes on. That 
 there has been a revolution in American sentiment concern- 
 ing him, we think cannot be doubted. So long as a feeling 
 of antipathy to England, the most unrelenting and success- 
 ful foe of Napoleon, prevailed among us, a feeling which 
 was the unhappy legacy of two wars between the United 
 States and the mother-country, it was impossible for us 
 to judge him dispassionately. The difficulty was enhanced 
 by the dazzling effect of his then recent victories. But 
 now that a more kindly feeling prevails toward the mother- 
 country, Americans can look at the hero of Austerlitz 
 through other media than the mists of prejudice ; and the 
 result is that he is regarded by three fourths or more of 
 the men of thought and culture in this country, not as the 
 liberator of enslaved nations, but as a selfish and unprin- 
 cipled despot. This verdict may be attributed in part to the 
 masterly works of Colonel Charms and M. Lanfrey, one of 
 
 1 
 
2: ..' ': :..:iErf, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 whom has exposed the popular illusions concerning the dis- 
 aster at Waterloo, such as that it was owing to the blunders 
 or treaeheiy of Grouch}', etc. ; and the other, having had 
 access to a vast amount of new historic material, in me- 
 moirs, letters, and despatches, has torn away the mask that 
 has so long hidden Napoleon's real character. 
 
 Among the writers who have tried to reverse this verdict, 
 is Mr. John C. Ropes, of Boston, who has given his esti- 
 mate of Napoleon in a course of lectures delivered before 
 the Lowell Institute in that city, and since republished. 
 The lectures are written in a vigorous, fluent, and lucid 
 style, and form, on the whole, one of the most ingenious 
 and plausible apologies for Napoleon's career and character 
 that we have read. The author, though a warm admirer of 
 Napoleon, is not bitten so badly with the mania as Headley 
 and Abbott, but stands between Thiers, on the one hand, 
 and Lanfrey, on the other ; though far nearer to the former 
 than to the latter. While he justifies Napoleon's invasion 
 of other countries, and their annexation to France, and 
 even apologizes for the cold-blooded execution of the Due 
 d'Enghien, which sent a thrill of horror through Europe, 
 he, on the other hand, denounces the dethronement of the 
 Spanish Bourbons, and admits the Emperor's folly in not 
 securing Austria's neutrality in 1814 by yielding the Ilh rian 
 provinces, and also in giving to the final struggle of 1815 
 the character of a military and political experiment, instead 
 of identifying his cause with that of France. 
 
 In justifying Napoleon's seizure upon supreme power and 
 establishment of a despotism, Mr. Ropes makes a distinc- 
 tion between the extension of personal liberty and the ex- 
 tension of political power. He contends that the Emperor 
 recognized and maintained the personal rights and liberties 
 
CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON I. 3 
 
 of the people, which the}' had won by the Revolution, while 
 he denied them only the exercise of political powers which 
 their previous political experience had not fitted them to 
 use. The bitterest enemy of Napoleon will admit that it 
 was a blessed thing for the peoples of Continental Europe 
 to be delivered from the grinding oppression of feudal 
 burdens and exactions. But what if this advantage was 
 purchased at the cost of political servitude? What if, 
 while giving the same legal rights to the bourgeois and the 
 peasant as to the noble, the Empire robbed the people of all 
 spontaneity, of all freedom of thought and speech, and ex- 
 tinguished kt all the sentiments which make the individual 
 live out of himself, whether in the past or the future"? 
 Usurping supreme authority in all branches of the admin- 
 istration, Napoleon crushed out every form of liberty, 
 not only that of the tribune and that of the press, but even 
 the libert}* of the saloti, the dearest of all to the French. 
 The reason of this doubtless was that, as one of his his- 
 torians tells us, he could not endure Wit, '" that eternal 
 sceptic, the born enemy of false grandeur, the foe of char- 
 latanism." There was not a man or woman of influence in 
 the community who was not dogged and watched 03- his 
 argus-eyed police. So keen-eyed and far-reaching was this 
 espionage, that Madame de Stae'l complained that Europe 
 had become "a great net, which entangles you at every 
 step." In April, 1805, Napoleon directed Fouche to warn 
 the editors of the " Debats" and the " Publiciste" that he 
 "would never permit newspapers to sa}* or do anything 
 contraiy to his interests." How different this from the con- 
 duct of Frederic the Great, who, confident in his strength, 
 ordered his attendants to put lower a placard against him- 
 self, which had been posted too high np to be read easily ! 
 
4 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 " My people," said he, u are to say what they please, and 
 I am to do what I please." Not only was the population 
 of France dwarfed and diminished by a conscription that 
 forced tender youth into the ranks, but the French intellect 
 suffered from the clamps and fetters by which it was 
 shackled. The sources of mental power were dried up or 
 poisoned. The civil functionaries of France were stunted 
 in their growth, morally and mentally, and every depart- 
 ment of the State was depressed to a dead level of medioc- 
 rit} r . " Nothing," says Taine, u could be more satisfying 
 to superficial judgment or more acceptable to vulgar good 
 sense than this system, nothing better adapted to narrow 
 egoism, nothing better ' set up ' or more prim, or fitter to 
 discipline and control the meaner and lower qualities of 
 human nature, but also to starve and spoil all its higher 
 qualities." 
 
 It is frequently urged in defence of Napoleon that 
 "his task in his domestic administration was to carry out 
 the work of the Revolution and establish it on a secure 
 basis ; " yet who does not know that the whole drift of his 
 despotic system was in flat contradiction to the principles 
 of the Revolution? Allied with Russia and the Pope, 
 married to an archduchess, the founder of a new dynasty, 
 the restorer of titles of nobilit} 7 and of the alliance between 
 Catholicism and despotism, the head of an ultra-medieval 
 court, with its antiquated ceremom 7 and etiquette, what 
 principles had Napoleon in common with those doctrines of 
 equality on which the Revolution was based? Justly did 
 the republican soldier General Delmas characterize the 
 Napoleonic policy in his bitterly sarcastic reply, when, after 
 high mass had been celebrated for the first time with pomp 
 in the cathedral of Notre Dame, Napoleon asked him, as 
 
CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON I. 5 
 
 they left the church together, what he had thought of the 
 ceremon}*. "Oh!" replied the General, " the mummery 
 (capucinade) was well enough, and only wanted the pres- 
 ence of the couple of million Frenchmen who got them- 
 selves killed to abolish what }*ou are restoring." Let us 
 not forget, when we are pointed to the boasted "Code," 
 that while the despot provided for the administration of 
 justice between man and man, he made no provision for 
 that between the citizen and the ruler. Political offences 
 of all offences the ones which should be tried by a 
 jury were denied that kind of trial. These were "ar- 
 raigned before ' special tribunals, invested with a half 
 military character,' the ready ministers of nefarious prose- 
 cutions, and only intended to cloak by legal forms the mur- 
 derous purpose of the tyrant." It is said that during 
 Napoleon's reign nine prisons were erected in place of the 
 single Bastile destroyed by the popular rage, and they were 
 filled with prisoners for political offences. 
 
 Again, it is contended that it was as philanthropists 
 that the French overran Italy and other countries of 
 Europe. " The advent of the French meant to these 
 populations escape from the misgovernment under which 
 they labored, and a participation in the grand movement 
 toward equal rights and privileges inaugurated by France." 
 It is a little singular that, in executing their mission, these 
 apostles of benevolence should have plundered and pillaged 
 every country they came to liberate. As at home the Ja- 
 cobins had contrived to connect the ideas of fraternity and 
 the guillotine, so abroad they with equal ingenuity inter- 
 preted national brotherhood into war and plunder. Who 
 that is familiar with the Italian campaigns has forgotten 
 ,the heavy exactions made by Napoleon on the Dukes of 
 
G MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 Parma and Modena, in spite of their neutrality; how, 
 without provocation, he seized on Leghorn and ruined the 
 once flourishing commerce of Tuscany ; and how he levied 
 on Lombardy, which he professedly came to liberate, a 
 contribution of twenty millions of mone}', besides a million 
 in pictures and objects of art? Though Bonaparte had 
 entered Milan amid the enthusiastic acclamations of the 
 citizens, yet a week sufficed to change a friendly people into 
 a suspicious, hostile, and angry population. The peasants 
 who rose against their plunderers were shot down or sabred 
 like dogs. And }*et this same Bonaparte afterward, in 
 1814, when France was invaded by the Allies, called upon 
 the foresters of the Vosges to " hunt the Allied soldiers to 
 death, even as they would hunt so many wolves," that is, 
 to do the ver3 T deeds for which he had butchered the peas- 
 ants of Lombardy. Mr. Ropes would have us believe that 
 it was the bigoted priests who instigated the peasants to 
 this insurrection. It was, on the contrary, an uprising 
 of the hard-working, industrious part of the population. 
 Who, again, has forgotten the plunder of the Vatican, the 
 Sistine, and other chapels, the Quirinal, the Capitol, and 
 the man} 1 " private palaces in Rome ; and how in Venice the 
 Doge's palace, a museum of all that was beautiful and 
 precious in works of Greek, Roman, or Italian genius, was 
 stripped to the bare walls ? Since the capture of Corinth by 
 the Romans, such spoliation as this had been unknown in 
 the world's histoiy. During all the centuries in which Italy 
 had been the battle-field of the nations, and had been 
 ruled successive!}- by them, the right of conquest had 
 never, till Bonaparte's time, been exercised at the expense 
 of Italian genius. Not only the palaces of Italy, but the 
 galleries of Antwerp, Brussels, Dresden, Munich, Madrid, 
 
CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON I. 7 
 
 and Seville, were plundered to swell the spoils that 
 enriched the Louvre. The city of Berne, in Switzerland, 
 was plundered of over sixteen million francs in specie, 
 seven millions in arms and ammunition, and eighteen 
 millions in stores and supplies. 
 
 In a letter to the Directory in 1797 Bonaparte wrote: 
 4 'Venice is more worthy to enjoy liberty than any other 
 city of Italy." Who after reading this sentiment would 
 dream that its author, defying the instructions of the 
 French Government, could shortly afterward deliver the 
 Kepublic of Venice, bound hand and foot, into the clutches 
 of Austria? Yet this is what this " liberator of oppressed 
 nations " actually did by the treaty of Campo Formio, 
 a treaty which destroyed all that was left of the generous 
 enthusiasm which had animated the French troops, and 
 substituted appeals to arms for the nobler sentiments of 
 patriotism and honor. Yet for this shameful transaction, 
 which even Villitard, the representative of France in Ven- 
 ice, could not communicate to the Venetian Government 
 without breaking down in his speech and bursting into 
 sobs, Mr. Ropes has not a word of condemnation, but 
 naively says: "The city of Venice and its adjoining 
 possessions he [Bonaparte] was compelled to resign to 
 Austria as a necessary condition of peace " ! A few 
 months before the treat} 7 , Bonaparte wrote to the munici- 
 pality of Venice: " In all circumstances I will do all in 
 my power to give you proofs of my desire to consolidate 
 your liberty, and to see unhappy Italy . . . resume among 
 great nations the rank to which she is called," etc. Will 
 it be believed that on the very next day after this hypo- 
 critical letter he wrote to the French Directory : " Venice 
 can hardly survive the shock we have given her. . . . 
 
8 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 We shall take all the vessels, we shall strip the arsenal, 
 we shall carry off all the cannon, we shall destroy the 
 forts, we shall keep Corfu and Ancona for ourselves " ? 
 The pretext for this wholesale robbery adds, if possible, 
 to its shamelessness. He instructs Generals Perree and 
 D'Hilliers to go with the French minister to the provi- 
 sional Government of Venice, and say that the conformity 
 of principles which exists between the French Republic 
 and that of Venice demands that she shall immediately 
 put her naval force on a respectable footing, to unite with 
 France in protecting their commerce. " Seize everything" 
 he adds, " under this pretext; but take care to call it 
 always the Venetian navy, and have constantly on your 
 lips the unity of the two Republics" 
 
 When in 1870 victorious Prussia exacted from France 
 a small portion of her territory, the demand was denounced 
 by the French as a great outrage ; but by the treaty of 
 Tilsit, in 1807, Napoleon despoiled Prussia of more than 
 half her entire territory. Besides this, his exactions 
 in money were over five hundred millions of francs. 
 Again, in 1808 she had. to pay one hundred and twentj" 
 millions of francs, to obtain a withdrawal of the French 
 troops from her cities. Nor was this all. Every insult that 
 could add to the humiliation of a fallen foe was inflicted 
 upon the Prussian monarch. The war-bulletins sent to 
 France abounded in contemptuous and sarcastic references 
 to him, and in one of these papers the chastity of the 
 Queen was assailed, a beautiful and excellent woman, 
 whose untimely death was believed by the Prussian people 
 to have been hastened b3' her grief at her country's mis- 
 fortunes. In 1810 Napoleon annexed Holland to France, 
 declaring that the country which the Dutch had laboriously 
 
CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON I. 9 
 
 wrested from the sea had been formed by the alluvial 
 deposits of French rivers ! 
 
 Mr. Ropes vainly tries to screen Napoleon from the 
 just indignation of mankind for the murder of the Due 
 d'Enghien, though, in Mr. Ropes's own words, Napoleon 
 " preferred to assume the responsibility for the act." He 
 (Mr. Ropes) holds that Bonaparte was not responsible for 
 the trial of the Duke having taken place on the night it 
 did, or "for the execution of the sentence before it had 
 been sent to the proper authorities for revision and appro- 
 val ; " and this notwithstanding Bonaparte had ordered 
 that the sentence should be executed immediately, and 
 that if the prisoner should ask permission to see him, no 
 attention should be paid to his request, and though 
 when the Due d'Enghien arrived at Vincennes to be tried, 
 his grave was already dug ! The truth is, Napoleon 
 wanted to strike the Bourbons personally, in order to 
 terrify both them and their partisans ; and it was simply 
 because the Due d'Enghien was within reach that he 
 became the victim. As to the "trial," the very choice of 
 the nocturnal hour, with its darkness, silence, and isola- 
 tion ; the absence of the public, of witnesses, of a counsel 
 that is not denied even to murderers, of all the forms for 
 protecting the accused ; the stealthy alacrity with which 
 the work was hurried through by the men whom the First 
 Consul had chosen for his tools, all show that the whole 
 affair was a mockery of justice, and that the condemnation 
 and execution of the unhapp} T prince were foregone con- 
 clusions. " We were obliged to condemn," wrote Hullin, 
 president of the Council that pretended to try the unhappy 
 Duke, " under pain of being condemned ourselves." In 
 spite of falsifications and lies, in spite of the mean, 
 
10 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 cowardly attempt to throw the odium of the deed upon 
 "that wretch of a Talleyrand," Napoleon cannot escape 
 the responsibilit}' of this heartless crime, which was planned 
 and executed with the utmost deliberation, and which Dr. 
 Channing justly denounced as " the act of a bandit and 
 a savage." Nobly did Chateaubriand refuse, in the presence 
 of the murderer and at the peril of his life, to serve the 
 power that could so misuse authority, and "sully the very 
 name of man." It is honorable to Coulaincourt, one 
 of the most high-minded of the officers surrounding Napo- 
 leon, that he indignantly resented the way in which the 
 Emperor had sought to use him in this affair. In 1813, 
 when he showed his personal devotion to Napoleon by 
 spurring his horse between him and a burning shell, 
 Coulaincourt is said, nevertheless, to have exclaimed, 
 referring to the D'Enghien murder: "I can't believe 
 there's a God in heaven, if that man dies upon his 
 throne ! " 
 
 To all that the admirers of Napoleon say in praise of 
 his unique and dazzling militaiy talents, we fully assent. 
 He had the genius of a great captain, calculating and pre- 
 cise, yet imaginative to the highest degree. He had the 
 art of striking men's imaginations, an eye of marvellous 
 penetration, a swift logic, a decisive will, the subtlet}* of 
 the Italian, the indomitable and rugged energy of the Cor- 
 sican. Thiers, whose praise of the great captain is usually 
 to be taken with much qualification, sa3*s justly that in 
 him to conceive, will, execute, were a single indivisible act, 
 of an incredible rapidity, so that between the action and 
 the thought there was not an instant lost for reflection or 
 resolve. One of his most remarkable traits was a peculiar 
 aptitude for discerning and seizing in the views of others 
 
CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON I. 11 
 
 whatever could serve his own plans. M. Lanfrey observes 
 that he had in this respect a power and rapidity of intui- 
 tion which can be compared only to the sure eye of a bird 
 of prey. Another faculty which he had in a remarkable 
 degree was the power of detecting and eliciting ability in 
 other men, so that he was served by his lieutenants, civil 
 and military, with a marvellous efficiency that seemed an 
 infinite multiplication of himself. With great powers of 
 endurance, capable of sitting on horseback for sixteen or 
 seventeen hours at a stretch, and of doing without rest 
 or food, except by snatches, for days together, with the 
 spring and speed of the tiger in action, he won his battles 
 as much by the celerity of his movement b}' his rapid 
 marching and counter-marching, first at the rear, then at 
 the flank, and again at the front, bewildering and confound- 
 ing his enemies ; by those night-marches, as rapid as 
 lightning, which were among his favorite stratagems as 
 b}* the vigor and fury of his attacks, and by the concentra- 
 tion of a superior force on the point where he attacked or 
 was attacked. He said truly that he won his victories as 
 much by the legs of his soldiers as b}' their arms. 
 
 Nothing can be more foolish than attempts like those of 
 Colonel J. Mitchell, in his " Downfall of Napoleon," to 
 underrate the great captain's military genius, by ascribing 
 his victories to the terror his arms inspired, as if it was 
 not to his marvellous victories that that very terror was 
 due ! When we hear such explanations of his successes, 
 we feel as did De Maistre when in 1814 he heard men in 
 the salons of St. Petersburg talk of Napoleon's faults and 
 the superiority of the Allied generals: " Je me sens le 
 gosier serre par je ne sais quel rire convulsif aimable comme 
 la cravate d'un pendu." A man who raised himself from 
 
12 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 obscurity to a throne ; who possessed at one time three 
 fourths of Europe ; who took more capitals in fifteen years 
 than the greatest other captains have taken cities in a life- 
 time ; whose will was feared as destiny ; who gave crowns 
 to his favorites, and whose antechamber was thronged by 
 submissive princes, such a man, as De Maistre says, 
 " steps out of the ranks." Inferior to Caesar in good 
 sense and practical wisdom, he yet had in a far higher 
 degree the faculty of seizing and striking the imaginations 
 of men. Rising far above those great masters of the art 
 of war, Turenne and Marlborough, who fought battles as 
 cooll}' as they played a game of chess, he, on the other 
 hand, fell below him whom the Corsican confessed to 
 have been the world's greatest captain, " who sprang like 
 a bulldog at the throat of the Roman power, and who held 
 his grasp till it was loosened in death," the fier} 7 , one- 
 eyed Carthaginian, Hannibal. The march of Bonaparte 
 across the Alps has been celebrated in history, eulogy, and 
 painting ; but compared with Hannibal's, it was child's 
 play. Backed by all the resources of France ; travelling 
 over good roads, aided by able engineers and all the helps 
 of modern science ; guided by abundant maps, plans, and 
 topographical surve\*s, the French general had a compar- 
 atively easy task. The Carthaginian, on the other hand, 
 while thwarted by the Hanno faction at home, had not only 
 to fight his way, for eight hundred miles, with a motley 
 army against hostile tribes and nations, but also, without 
 the advantages of modern engineering science, frequently to 
 construct the roads by which his troops were to pass, and 
 to collect all his necessaiy information from treacherous 
 barbarians. Napoleon's feat of crossing the Great St. 
 Bernard in winter was utterly dwarfed a few 3~ears after- 
 
CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON I. 13 
 
 ward by Macdonald, who commanded the army of the 
 Grisons. In 1800 he crossed the Spliigen in the middle 
 of December, leading fifteen thousand men across moun- 
 tains of ice, where avalanches carried off whole squadrons. 
 
 Intellectually a giant, Napoleon was a moral pygmy. Of 
 all generous and exalted sentiments he was strangely desti- 
 tute. What could be baser than his treatment of the brave 
 Villeneuve? Though the latter had fought the English at 
 Trafalgar against his judgment, and after repeated remon- 
 strances, at Napoleon's peremptory command, yet, after 
 the fleet was destroyed, the despot denounced his valiant 
 captain as a coward and a traitor. According to M. Lan- 
 frey, Napoleon was capable of anger, but was as utter a 
 stranger to hatred as to sympathy ; he was governed only 
 by calculation. No one could better feign indignation and 
 rage when he had a purpose to serve ; there were times 
 when he appeared to hold his passions in command by the 
 turning of a peg, like the Tartar horse of the fairy tale, 
 which at one moment dashed through the air at the rate of 
 a thousand furlongs an hour, and the next stood motionless 
 as the Caucasus. His very heroism was more the result of 
 calculation than of fervent impulse ; and when he most 
 startled the world into fearful admiration, he was but work- 
 ing out an answer to some studiously considered problem 
 of personal aggrandizement. War to him had none of that 
 " pomp and circumstance," those dazzling attractions, which 
 fascinate men in general. It was one of the ordinary 
 conditions of human life, a sentiment striking!}-, though 
 unconsciously, expressed in a question he once put to an 
 English traveller, who, having observed that the Loo-Choo 
 Islanders had no warlike weapons, was interrupted by the 
 incredulous and mocking exclamation: " No weapons! 
 
14 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 How do they fight, then? " He could not conceive of an 
 anomaly so ridiculous as a nation that never waged war. 
 Of political government, except by force, he could form no 
 idea. In a conversation at St. Helena, in spite of " that 
 corned}' of converted despot which he was then playing in 
 sight of posterity," he said, with emphasis: " After all, it 
 comes to this at bottom, that a man must be a soldier to 
 govern. You can only govern in boots and spurs" 
 " Conquest," said he, after the coup tfetat of the 18th Bru- 
 maire, "made me what I am; conquest alone can main- 
 tain me in my position." 
 
 In self-knowledge Napoleon was strangely lacking. 
 Nothing, he declared, that he had ever thought or done, 
 was wrong in motive or act ; and he boasted that he should 
 appear before his Maker without a fear. At St. Helena he 
 speaks of his past life as if it had been consecrated to acts 
 of duty and beneficence ; while in the same breath, though 
 he had been treacherous to Sardinia, Tuscan}', Venice, and 
 other States, as well as to men, he is perpetually complain- 
 ing of the faithlessness of men and nations. A conscience 
 he apparently had not. Writing to the Directory from Itaty, 
 he suggests that if they wish to revolutionize Piedmont 
 and unite it to the Cisalpine Republic, "the way to effect 
 this without a collision, and without violating the treaty, 
 would be to join a corps of ten thousand Piedmontese to 
 our troops, and let them share our victories. Six months 
 later, the King of Piedmont would be dethroned. It is a 
 giant embracing a pygmy, and clasping it in his arms ; he 
 stifles it without anybody being able to accuse him of the 
 crime" Egotistic, selfish, treacherous, Napoleon was utterly 
 unscrupulous, both as to his aims and the means of their 
 attainment. In his first campaign he began to practise 
 
CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON I. 15 
 
 what he called the art of u cajoling the priests." In public 
 he showed an exaggerated deference to " the Very Holy 
 Father" and "the venerable prelates," as he styled the Pope 
 and the clergy ; while to his familiars in private he spoke 
 of them in the most contemptuous terms, such as " the old 
 fox," and "the black-coats," or "imbecile dotards." Deplor- 
 ing to ecclesiastics the encroachments of the Directory 
 upon the spiritual domain, he at the same time wrote 
 to the Directory his opinion that " Rome, once deprived 
 of Bologna, Ferrara, and the thirt\* millions we take from 
 her, cannot exist ; the old machine will fall to pieces when 
 left all alone." Sending Augereau to the Director}* as the 
 fittest man to execute a coup de main, he at the same time 
 writes to Lavalette at Paris : u Don't trust Augereau ; he 
 is a seditious man." He read with an ecstasy of rage 
 Kleber's report of his evacuation of Eg} - pt, and in a letter 
 to the consuls denounced it as " infamous ; " yet replied to 
 Klcber with the most flattering compliments. When in 
 May, 1805, the treaty of alliance between England and 
 Russia was proclaimed by public report, Napoleon was 
 exasperated, and wrote to Fouche, directing him to " get 
 several letters published in the papers as coming from St. 
 Petersburg, and asserting that the French are better treated 
 there ; . . . that the English are looked on coldly ; that the 
 plan of the Coalition has failed," etc. 
 
 In Egypt, to deceive the Turks and Arabs, he did not 
 scruple to declare that he and his arm}' were apostates 
 from Christianity, "true Mussulmans." He boasted be- 
 fore muftis and ulemas that he had u destroyed the Pope 
 and overthrown the Cross ; " yet a few years afterward re- 
 established the Catholic religion in France as a prop to his 
 power, though, in an address to the Directory and other 
 
16 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 bodies of State, he had previously ranked religion with 
 ro}*alty and feudalism, as among the prejiidices which the 
 French people had to conquer, and though eveiy man, 
 woman, and child knew that he had not a tittle of regard 
 for religion, and was playing the part of a juggler. To 
 overcome Count Louis de Frotte, the brilliant, daring, and 
 energetic leader of the insurrection in Lower Normandy, he 
 offered a thousand louis to any one who would kill or cap- 
 ture him. That there was anything barbarous in such a 
 procedure, long ago proscribed by all civilized nations, 
 never entered his brain. It was worthy of the man who 
 in his last will left a legacy of ten thousand francs to the 
 miscreant who, not long before, had attempted to assassin- 
 ate the Duke of Wellington. 
 
 One of the best expositions of Napoleon's moral code is 
 furnished by his counsels to the King of Holland : " Never 
 forget that, in the situation to which my political s^ystem 
 and the interests of my Empire have called 3*011, }*our first 
 duty is toward me, }*our second toward France. All }'our 
 other duties, even those toward the people whom I have 
 called you to govern, rank after these." When the mem- 
 bers of his family whom Napoleon had placed on foreign 
 thrones strove to lessen the burdens of their subjects, 
 they drew down upon themselves his heavy displeasure. 
 u La France, c'est un homme, et cet homme, c'est moi" 
 he said, a declaration never matched in arrogance, except 
 by the assumption of Louis XIV., " L'etat, c'est moi" 
 In the art of lying, Napoleon had no superior. He did all 
 in his power to mystify the battle of Marengo, which, but 
 for Dessaix's sudden appearance and the inspired charge 
 of Kellermann, would have been lost. After writing three 
 conflicting false accounts of it, he ordered all the original 
 
CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON I. 17 
 
 reports of it to be destroyed. At St. Helena he spent his 
 days in trying to falsify history, and in draping his own 
 figure for posteritj*. 
 
 No other man ever filled so large a place in the world's 
 eye who was so vulgar in his manners and instincts. 
 Destitute of refinement, delicacy, and self-respect, he was 
 44 in his inmost soul, and to the very tips of his fingers, a 
 parvenu" What could be more brutal than his insult to 
 his brother Jerome? " Jerome, they sa} r the majesty of 
 kings is stamped on the brow. You may travel incognito 
 till doomsday without being recognized." What, again, 
 could be coarser than his bearing toward Talleyrand, 
 when in a crowded State assemblage, because the prince 
 had crossed him in a State matter, Napoleon assailed him 
 with the most violent language and furious gesticulations 
 and flourishes of the fist, so that, to avoid being struck, he 
 was forced to retreat step by step before the angry mon- 
 arch, until the wall prevented further recession? What 
 more vulgar than his studied attack on Lord Whitworth, 
 which was carried so far that a shudder ran through the 
 circle lest he should finish by a blow! What a contrast 
 between his coarse language and bullying manner, and the 
 calm, dignified bearing of Metternich, in their interview in 
 June, 1813 ! It was during this interview that Napoleon 
 made, without a blush, the cold-blooded avowal: " You 
 are not a soldier. You have not learned to despise the 
 lives of others and your own. What are two hundred 
 thousand men to me f " When he could not bend and 
 mould to his will the Prussian minister, Hardenberg, he 
 insulted him in the " Moniteur." He called him a traitor 
 and a perjurer, and accused him of " selling himself to the 
 eternal enemies of the Continent." To justify his language, 
 
 2 
 
18 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 he published a falsified copy of a letter which the Prussian 
 minister had written to Lord Harrowby. But of all his 
 coarse and violent acts, his insulting language to the magis- 
 trate Lecourbe, who, as one of Moreau's judges at the trial 
 of that general, had dared to vote for his acquittal, was the 
 crowning one. When Lecourbe presented himself after- 
 ward at an audience at the Tuileries, with the members of 
 the court of Paris, Napoleon advanced quickly toward him, 
 and in a violent tone said : " How can you dare to pollute 
 my palace with your presence ? Awa} T , prevaricating judge, 
 away ! " At one of the fetes given to Napoleon in Paris, 
 the words of Scripture, "I am that I am," were placed 
 over the throne in letters of gold. It is well known that 
 he 3'awned all through the ceremonies of his coronation, 
 and that when the Pope approached to place the crown 
 upon his brow, Napoleon snatched it from his hands and 
 crowned himself. 
 
 If Mr. Ropes can persuade the men of this countiy to 
 admire such a despot, we trust that, for the honor of the 
 sex, no woman will become a convert to his views. That 
 Napoleon held an essentially Oriental opinion of women is 
 shown by his treatment of Mesdames de Stael, Recamier, 
 de Balbi, de Damas, de Chevreuse, d'Avaux, and others 
 famous for wit, beauty, or virtue. To ally himself with a 
 royal house, he cast off the devoted Josephine and married 
 Maria Louisa of Austria, a mesalliance under which the 
 House of Hapsburg alwa} T s writhed, and which did not 
 even secure the neutrality of Austria in his struggles with 
 the Allies. 
 
 In spite of all the special pleading of Napoleon's wor- 
 shippers, it is evident that his ruling purpose was self- 
 agorandizeinent, and that he was utterly unscrupulous 
 
CHARACTP:R OF NAPOLEON i. 19 
 
 about the means for its attainment. Power was his 
 supreme object, not a power which should awaken calm 
 admiration, but power which should dazzle, electrify, and 
 overwhelm. His greatest crime was not that he murdered 
 D'Enghien ; not that, contrary to the faith of a solemn 
 treat}', he shut up Toussaint 1'Ouverture in the freezing 
 dungeons of the Fort of Joux, there to perish ; riot that he 
 ordered Frotte to be shot, though he had surrendered him- 
 self on Bonaparte's announcement that, if he did so, he 
 might count on the generosity of the government ; not that 
 he shot Palm for selling a book on the degradation of Ger- 
 man} T , of whose contents the man was probably ignorant ; 
 not that he massacred twenty-five hundred prisoners at 
 Jaffa, though they had surrendered on condition that their 
 lives should be spared, a condition solemnly accepted and 
 ratified "on the faith of a Christian:" but that he aggra- 
 vated to a disease the traditional bias of the French nation 
 to war, and therefore to despotism : that he corrupted its 
 morality by a successful course of spoliation ; that he vio- 
 lently perverted education to serve the cause of tyranny, 
 and converted religion into an engine of despotism ; that he 
 persecuted and silenced genius ; that he deprived the par- 
 liamentary assembly of all representative character; that 
 he established a monarchy as absolute as that of Louis 
 XIV. ; and finally, that he turned Europe into a camp, and 
 made societ}' retrace its steps to those ages of calamity and 
 darkness when the only law was the sword. 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 
 
 all the attractive forms of literature, there is no one 
 that combines fascination and profit in a greater 
 degree than biography. The charm of history itself, 
 which only can vie with it in instructiveness and interest, 
 is due mainly to the fact that it is the essence of many 
 biographies. Yet all memoirs are not equally valuable ; 
 and as a means of inspiration, as a subject for imitative 
 study, the biography of a man of genius is, we think, 
 less helpful than that of a common mortal who is endowed 
 with good, but not seraphic abilities. The mass of men, it 
 must be remembered, belong to the latter class. They are 
 not great wits, but mortals with mediocre gifts ; and to all 
 such and especially to every youthful aspirant who is 
 himself no winged soul it is far less important to know 
 how the eagle on his strong and swift pinion can reach 
 the mountain crest, than to learn the way in which, more 
 slowly and laboriously, but not the less surely, a pedestrian 
 may plant his foot on the summit. The examples most 
 men need are such as will show them, not how to soar, but 
 how to climb. The study of the lives of men of genius acts 
 disastrously on the young reader in two ways. On the one 
 hand, he may be cheated into the delusion that the same 
 fire burns within himself, and thus waste his time and 
 energ3 r in striving after the unattainable ; or, on the other, 
 conscious that he lacks the vivida vis animi of the prodigy 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 21 
 
 portrayed, he ma}' wonder and admire, but will be rather 
 discouraged than stimulated to action. Contrasting his 
 own pygnw powers with those of the giant of the biog- 
 raphy, he will shut the book with the feeling that the lessons 
 of such a life are suited to the aristocracy only, not to the 
 democracy, of intellect. It is because William Wirt, begin- 
 ning life an orphan, climbed rather than flew to the heights 
 of honor ; because he was, in the best sense of a much- 
 abused term, a self-made man rather than one of extraor- 
 dinary natural endowments, a man \\\\o fought his waj r to 
 eminence step by step against difficulties, temptations, and 
 trials, yet preserved the whiteness of his soul amid all the 
 sullying influences of his calling, that we deem his career 
 eminently worthy of description, praise, and imitation. 
 
 William Wirt, the son of Jacob Wirt, was born in 
 Bladensburg, Maryland, Nov. 8, 1772. His father was a 
 Swiss, his mother a German. The father, who was a tavern- 
 keeper in comfortable circumstances, died when William 
 was less than two years old ; Henrietta, his mother, died 
 before he had attained his eighth year, and he passed into 
 the family and under the guardianship of his uncle, Jasper 
 Wirt, who was also a Swiss and resided near the village of 
 his nativit}'. This village, since famous in our annals as a 
 battle and duelling ground, but now a drowsy and stagnant 
 hamlet, was then the most active and bustling place of 
 trade in Mainland. There was a large tobacco inspection 
 there ; and several rich merchants, together with some 
 Scotch and other foreign factors with large capitals, gave 
 by their manner of living a show of opulence to the town. 
 Between his seventh and his eleventh }*ear the bo} T was sent 
 to several classical schools, and finallj', at eleven, was trans- 
 ferred to a very flourishing one, kept by the Rev. James 
 
22 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 Hunt, a Presbyterian clergyman in Montgomery Count}*. 
 Here he remained till the school was broken up, that is, 
 till 1787, and here, under an accomplished and sympa- 
 thetic teacher, he received during four years the chief part 
 of his education, being carried through all the Greek and 
 Latin classics then usually taught in grammar-schools, and 
 instructed in geography and some branches of mathematics, 
 including arithmetic, trigonometry, surveying, and the first 
 six books of Euclid. During two years he boarded with 
 Mr. Hunt, whose most valuable possession was a good 
 general libraiy, in which young Wirt, now a lad of twelve or 
 thirteen, browsed with a keen and indiscriminate appetite. 
 His love for reading was first kindled by " Guy, Earl of 
 Warwick," borrowed from a carpenter emplo}*ed by Mr. 
 Hunt, and then fanned by an odd volume of " Peregrine 
 Pickle." The British dramatists were next devoured with 
 insatiable appetite ; and then, from sheer exhaustion of 
 such pabulum, he was driven to Pope, Addison, and 
 Home's " Elements of Criticism." 
 
 In after life Mr. Wirt was accustomed to speak with 
 regret of this habit of promiscuous reading, which, acquired 
 thus earl}', had, he thought, diverted his mind from sys- 
 tematic study. In this sentiment we cannot but think that 
 he erred. The truth is, that this voracious and indis- 
 criminate appetite of boys for books, this disposition to 
 flit about, bee-like, among the roses and honeysuckles of 
 literature, and ride -them of their sweets, is Nature's own 
 prompting. The instincts of genius, its natural cravings, 
 arc the best guide to its proper nutriment. Not till it 
 has explored its own world, and tried all the tempting 
 fruits within its reach, can it tell what are its affinities, or 
 what congenial and nutritious things Nature has provided 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 23 
 
 for it. Many an eminent man has owed the inspiration of 
 a life to a book which chance threw in his way when he 
 was a boy. Franklin traced his entire career to Cotton 
 Mather's " Essays to do good," which fell into his hands 
 when he was in his teens. Cobbett, at eleven, bought 
 Swift's "Tale of a Tub," and it proved to him a kind of 
 "birth of intellect." The current of Jeremy Bentham's 
 thoughts was directed for life by a single phrase caught at 
 the end of a pamphlet. The genius of Faraday was fired 
 by the volumes which he read as a bookseller's apprentice : 
 and it was an odd volume of Racine, picked up at a stall 
 on the qua}*, that made the poet of Toulon. 
 
 Mr. Hunt used to give his boys one da}' during the court- 
 week at Montgomery Court-house to go and hear the 
 lawyers plead. Headed by the dominie, the whole troop 
 walked four miles to the hall of justice and took seats in 
 the unoccupied jury-box. This sport the boys enjoyed 
 with such zest that they determined to have a court of their 
 own. Young Wirt was appointed to draw up a constitu- 
 tion, which he speedily reported, with a letter of apology for 
 its imperfections. When Mr. Hunt's school was broken up, 
 his pupil was but fifteen, and, his patrimony being nearly 
 exhausted, had no means of continuing his education. 
 From this strait the " constitution" and letter of apology 
 were, fortunately, instrumental in delivering him. Among 
 the boys at school when these juvenile trifles were pro- 
 duced was Ninian Edwards, afterward governor of Illinois, 
 son of Benjamin Edwards, who resided in Montgomery 
 Count}', and subsequently represented that district in Con- 
 gress. On his return home, young Edwards took with him 
 the constitution and letter for the amusement of his father, 
 who fancied he saw in them signs of more than ordinary 
 
24 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 talents. On the strength of these essays, for he had never 
 seen their author, and upon the favorable report, perhaps, 
 of his schoolmates, Mr. Edwards kindly wrote to young 
 Wirt, inviting him to reside in his family as private tutor 
 to Ninian and two nephews. He offered him, at the same 
 time, the use of his library for the prosecution of his 
 own studies. The invitation was joyfully accepted ; and to 
 this gentleman's happy cast of character, to his conver- 
 sation, precepts, and example, Mr. Wirt ever afterward 
 attributed all that was best or happiest in the bias of his 
 own mind and character. 
 
 The 3*oung tutor had now chosen the Bar for his pro- 
 fession. Possessing many qualities that were prophetic 
 of success, he had also some marked disqualifications. Not 
 only was he shy and timid when appearing in public, but 
 he had a nervous rapidity of utterance. To overcome 
 these defects, Mr. Edwards kindly advised him, reminding 
 him of his natural advantages, and assuring him that almost 
 every man who had risen to distinction had fought against 
 obstacles as great as his own. Under Mr. Edwards's roof 
 he stayed twenty months, spending his time in teaching, 
 in classical and historical studies, in writing, and in prepa- 
 ration for the calling to which he was to devote his life. 
 Being threatened with consumption, he rode on horse- 
 back to Georgia, spent a winter there, and, returning North, 
 was at his majority licensed to practise law. With the 
 advantages of a vigorous constitution, a good person and 
 carriage, and a prepossessing appearance, but with the 
 drawbacks of a meagre legal equipment and a great deal 
 of constitutional timidit}', he began his professional career 
 at Culpepper Court-house. Virginia. With a cop}' of Black- 
 stone, two volumes of "Don Quixote," and a volume of 
 
WILLIAM W1RT. 25 
 
 u Tristram Shand}*," his entire stock of legal and literary 
 artillery, he was ready to exasperate the bickerings of 
 Doe and Roe according to the most approved precedents. 
 The urbanity which naturally characterized him was then 
 alloyed by some brusqueness and impetuosity of manner, 
 a fault due, probabty, to diffidence, which gives an air 
 of vehemence to what is only hurry. His utterance was 
 still faultj-. A person who knew him not long after this 
 period says that when heated in argument his ideas 
 seemed to outstrip his powers of expression ; his tongue 
 appeared too large ; he clipped some of his words badly ; 
 his voice, sweet and musical in conversation, or when 
 undisturbed by that timidity which prevented his control 
 of it, grew loud and harsh ; his articulation rapid, indistinct, 
 and imperfect. In his first case he was more successful 
 than his friends had expected. Luckily his temper was 
 roused by an incident in the trial, so that he forgot the 
 alarms natural to the occasion, and pressed his points with 
 recollection and firmness. 
 
 In 1795 he married Mildred, the eldest daughter of Dr. 
 George Gilmer, and took up his residence at Pen Park, 
 the seat of that gentleman, near Charlottesville. A person 
 who knew him well at that time says that he had never 
 known any other man so highly engaging and prepossessing. 
 41 His figure was strikingly elegant and commanding; his 
 face of the first order of masculine beauty, animated, and 
 expressing high intellect. His manners took the tone of 
 his heart : they were frank, open, and cordial ; and his con- 
 versation, to which his reading and early pursuits had 
 given a classic tinge, was polished, gay, and witty. Alto- 
 gether, he was a most fascinating companion, and to 
 persons of his own age irresistibly and universally win- 
 
26 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 ning." Unfortunately, these ver}' fascinations have their 
 perils, which are by no means easily avoided. The fashion 
 of the time increased the danger. A boundless hospitality 
 among the gentlemen of the country, his biographer tells 
 us, opened every door to the indulgence of convivial habits. 
 Every dinner-party was a revel, every visit a temptation. 
 The members of the Bar especially indulged in a license 
 of free living, which, alwa}'s hovering on the verge of 
 excess, often overstepped it. It is not strange that Wirt, 
 so susceptible to the influences of good fellowship, some- 
 times in these S3 T mposia forgot the dictates of prudence, 
 and passed the bounds of temperance. Nor is it strange, 
 under these circumstances, that his aspirations and aims 
 were misunderstood. There is little doubt that in these 
 days he was generally regarded rather as a gay and fasci- 
 nating companion, a bon vivant full of animal spirits, 
 wit, and humor, than as an ambitious law\-er who had 
 placed before himself a lofty ideal, and who to attain it 
 was willing 4t to scorn delights, and live laborious days." 
 But these surface indications, which concealed the deeps 
 of his nature, were misleading. 
 
 No doubt he wasted many hours, which, rightly used, 
 would have given him a greater mastery of the law ; no 
 doubt, too, we discover, even when he did apply him- 
 self to his profession, a painful want of system in his 
 studies. But we must remember that great ability tramples 
 upon ordinaiy rules, and is a rule unto itself. The syste- 
 matic stud}' which is good for nineteen minds out of twentj', 
 may be bad for the twentieth, which maj* reject it with 
 instinctive distaste. Certain it is that no two minds above 
 the common level ever acquired their knowledge in the 
 same order, or fixed it by the same methods in the memoiy. 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 27 
 
 One man reads a book carefully through, page by page ; 
 another dives into the middle of it, seizes its leading idea, 
 plucks out the heart of its mystery, and throws it by. 
 One man likes to begin with the elements of a science, 
 and clear away each difficult}' as he goes along ; another 
 prefers plunging into a mass of heterogeneous matter, for 
 the pleasure of seeing new lights breaking upon him, confi- 
 dent that he will emerge somGwhere, and that he will be 
 abundantly rewarded in the end. Either of these systems 
 may be good for the individual, though not for all. We 
 know from his subsequent success that Wirt must have 
 studied, if not methodically, \*et after a way of his own ; 
 and we are told that besides the law, he studied the fathers 
 of English literature, Bacon, Hooker, Barrow, South, Locke, 
 and Milton, with whose writings the library of Dr. Gilmer 
 abounded. From these old "wells of English undefiled" 
 he drank deep draughts, and acquired that wealth and vigor 
 of thought and that masteiy of language which characterized 
 his subsequent speeches and conversation. 
 
 In the midst of these studies, while enjoying what may 
 be considered as the golden days of his youth, Mr. Wirt 
 was suddenly bowed down by a severe affliction. In the 
 fifth year of his married life the wife upon whom he had 
 doted was snatched from him by disease. An aching 
 memor}' drove him to Richmond, and soon after he became 
 clerk to the House of Delegates. He held this place for 
 three sessions of the Legislature, when he was elected by 
 that body Chancellor of the Eastern District of Virginia. 
 This appointment, considering that Mr. Wirt was but 
 twent}'-nine 3'ears old, was a remarkable testimony to his 
 abilities. The duties of his new office required him to live 
 at Williamsburg ; and iu a letter to his friend Gamble he 
 
28 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 gives the following reason for accepting the appointment: 
 "I wished to leave Richmond on many accounts. I 
 dropped into a circle dear to me for the amiable and bril- 
 liant traits which belonged to it, but in which I had found 
 that during several months I was dissipating my health, 
 my time, my mone}', and 1113' reputation. This conviction 
 dwelt so strongly, so incessantly on my mind, that all my 
 cheerfulness forsook me, and I awoke many a morning with 
 the feelings of a madman." Tn the same year (1801), he 
 married Elizabeth, daughter of Colonel Gamble, of Rich- 
 mond, a lad} r for whom he continued to feel, all his life, 
 the most romantic attachment. 
 
 Six months later he resigned the chancellorship and 
 returned to Richmond. He now wrote for the " Richmond 
 Argus "the noted " Letters of the British Spy," which, 
 though rarely read to-day, were once in- every library. 
 These letters, written in a vivid and luxuriant style, are 
 chiefly studies of eloquence and eloquent public men, and 
 may be regarded, in spite of the exceptional excellence 
 of " The Blind Preacher," as rather a prophecy of literary 
 skill than the fulfilment, an earnest of some future 
 achievement, rather than the achievement itself. They were 
 thrown off, with little care, in the intervals of severe pro- 
 fessional toil, and with scarcely a dream of the popularity 
 they won. Their success was due partly to the. lack of 
 criticism at that time in this country, and partly to the 
 eagerness of the public, in the dearth of indigenous litera- 
 ture, to welcome an}^ clever effort to increase its stock. 
 
 A fortunate occasion for Mr. Wirt's fame occurred the 
 next year, when the celebrated trial of Aaron Burr for 
 treason took place in Richmond. This trial, to which 
 we shall refer again, began in the winter of 1807, and Mr. 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 29 
 
 Wirt, by order of President Jefferson, was retained to 
 aid the United States attorney in the prosecution. In 
 the brilliant array of counsel on the occasion, no one shone 
 more conspicuously than he. In 1808 Mr. Wirt was 
 elected to the House of Delegates in Virginia, the only 
 time he could be prevailed upon to sit in a legislative bodj'. 
 In 1804 he wrote for the " Richmond Enquirer" a series of 
 essays entitled "The Rainbow," and in 1810 the series 
 of didactic and ethical essays entitled " The Old Bachelor," 
 which, collected into a volume, passed through several 
 editions. The essays were modelled after those of the 
 " Spectator," and treat of female education, Virginian 
 manners, the criticism of Americans b}' foreign travellers, 
 the fine arts, and especially oratory (of the Bar, the Pulpit, 
 and the Senate), a theme on which he never tired of writ- 
 ing. The best of these papers is that on the "Eloquence 
 of the Pulpit." It is a powerful and passionate protest, 
 worth}' of a Bautain or a Fenelon, against the coldness that 
 so often reigns there. 
 
 In 1816 Mr. Wirt was appointed a District-Attorney of 
 the United States, and in the next year Attorney-General, 
 an office which he held with signal honor for twelve years. 
 Though in the causes which it became his official duty to 
 prosecute or defend he was often pitted against the most 
 eminent legal graybeards in the land, he proved himself 
 a match for all the acuteness and learning that could 
 be arrayed against him. In 1826 he was offered, but 
 declined to accept, the presidency of the University of 
 Virginia. 
 
 In June, 1829, Mr. Wirt went to Boston, for the first 
 time, to argue a cause against Daniel Webster. The 
 attentions that were showered upon him by the citizens 
 
30 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 strongly affected him, and he wrote to his friend Judge 
 Carr that he thought the people of Boston were the most 
 agreeable in the United States. "I expected," he sa}~s, 
 " to find them cold, slry, and suspicious. I found them, 
 on the contraiy, open, playful, and generous. Would to 
 Heaven the people of Virginia and Massachusetts knew 
 each other better ! What a host of absurd and repulsive 
 prejudices would that knowledge put to flight!" Again: 
 " Webster receives and treats me with a kindness and cor- 
 diality that cannot be exceeded. 4 Our people thought 
 highly of }"ou,' he told me, ; but had no idea of your 
 strength. You will carry back a higher reputation than 
 you brought with .you.' All this was so warmly and so 
 earnestly said that it made me love him." Mr. Wirt 
 visited President Quinc}^ of 'Harvard College, and was 
 greatl}' pleased with the dexterity with which the latter 
 extricated himself in conversation from an embarrassing 
 situation. The President asked his visitor in what college 
 he graduated. "I was obliged to admit," says Mr. Wirt, 
 44 that I had never been a student of any college. A shade 
 of embarrassment, scarcely perceptible, just flitted across 
 his countenance ; but he recovered in an instant, and added 
 most gracefully /' Upon my word, you furnish a very strong 
 argument against the utility of a college education.' / 
 
 At the close of Mr. Adams's administration Mr. Wirt re- 
 moved to Baltimore, where in 1832 he was nominated by 
 the Anti-Masonic party as a candidate for the Presidency 
 of the United States, a nomination which he, most un- 
 wisely, we think, accepted. In Januaiy, 1834, he went 
 to Washington to attend the usual term of the Supreme 
 Court, before which he had some cases of great magnitude, 
 and discharged his duties till the 8th of February. On the 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 31 
 
 evening of that da}', which was Saturda}*, he was playful, 
 and sanguine of success in an argument which he was to 
 make on Mondaj'. On Sunda}' he went to church at the 
 Capitol, a mile from his lodgings, and in walking home in a 
 damp, chilly atmosphere, took cold. That evening he felt 
 indisposed ; on Monday was confined to his room ; on 
 the succeeding days grew worse and worse ; and finally, 
 on Tuesday, the 18th, died of erysipelas at the age of 
 sixty-two. 
 
 Mr. Wirt was conspicuous for his personal beauty, both 
 in his youth and in his prime. His face was one in which 
 a physiognomist would have delighted. The massive out- 
 line of his countenance ; the clear, dark-blue eyes looking 
 out beneath arching eyebrows and a broad, majestic fore- 
 head ; the large Roman nose, thin and well-formed lips, 
 ample chin, and light hair clustering in crisp and luxuriant 
 curls upon his brow ? suggested, according to his biogra- 
 pher, Mr. Kennedy, a resemblance to Goethe. His height, 
 which was above six feet, his broad shoulders, ample chest, 
 and general fulness of development, with the erectness of 
 his carriage, added much to the dignity and stateliness of his 
 appearance. The general gravit}* of his look was relieved 
 by the ever-changing expression of his 63*6, which, if it was 
 usually pensive with thought, yet frequently sparkled with 
 a quiet, lurking humor, that continually welled up from the 
 depths of his soul, and provoked a laugh before a word was 
 uttered. 
 
 The most striking characteristic of Mr. Wirt was devo- 
 tion to his profession. From the day it was chosen, he 
 kept before him a lofty ideal, to which, except for a few 
 brief intervals of time, he strained every nerve to attain. 
 To this main end, as to a focal point, all other studies 
 
32 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 his literary, historical, and scientific, as well as his legal 
 acquisitions, were made to converge. While he was, as 
 truly as any rnan ever was, the architect of his own fortune, 
 yet he was greatly facilitated in his achievements by the 
 valuable acquaintances he made at different stages of his 
 career. As he entered upon life it was his happy fortune 
 to be knit to some of the noblest hearts about him in a 
 friendship which gilded with an almost romantic light the 
 whole of his earthly pilgrimage. In his profession he rose 
 rapidly and honorably, step by step, to the summit, unas- 
 sailed by emy, while political honors again and again were 
 pressed upon him, which he promptly declined to accept. 
 Few men who have won so many prizes in life's lottery 
 have maintained such a modesty of demeanor. Never for 
 a moment does he seem to have been intoxicated by suc- 
 cess ; never does his affection for his earlj' friends seem to 
 have been shaken, or his relish for the joys of home to have 
 been less keen or pure ; never, even when ranking with 
 Webster, Martin, and Pinkne}', does he betray the faintest 
 symptom of arrogance or conceit. On the contraiy, noth- 
 ing is more marked in his correspondence than the un- 
 feigned opinion which he again and again expresses, that 
 his success was utterly disproportionate to his merits. In 
 a letter written to a young lawyer in 1818 he says : " I lost 
 the best part of my life indulging the frolics of fancy ; and 
 the consequence is, that it will take all the rest of it to con- 
 vince the world that I have common-sense." In another 
 letter to the same person we find him giving this advice : 
 4 'Be not in haste to raise the superstructure ofyourora- 
 toiy. This was my fault. For want of better advice, I 
 began my building at the top / and it will remain a castle 
 in the air to the end of time." 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 33 
 
 Incredible as these confessions may seem to us who 
 think of its author as one of the most powerful advocates of 
 his time, there is no doubt that at the start he made the 
 mistake he so frankly acknowledges. Gifted with a rare 
 fluency, a brilliant wit, and a vivid imagination, he was 
 tempted in his addresses to aim less at argumentative 
 strength than at the qualities which captivate the crowd. 
 The reputation which he thus acquired for excelling in the 
 ornate rather than in the severer qualities of oratory, ad- 
 hered to him even after it had ceased to be well founded. 
 The public estimate was confirmed by the specimens of his 
 eloquence that appeared in popular works, all of which 
 were of a florid rather than of a classic character. The 
 consciousness of this' defect seems to have haunted him 
 long after he came upon the broader theatre of his fame ; 
 for we find him not onty perpetually denouncing " the florid 
 and Asiatic style " of oratorj* in his letters, characterizing 
 wit and fancy as " dangerous allies," and emphasizing 
 u strength, cogency, and comprehension " as the qualities 
 demanded in modern oratoiy, but laboring with indefati- 
 gable perseverance to obtain a better reputation in the 
 courts of justice. The truth is that he and Everett were 
 the last of the classical speakers of the old school ; and 
 because he felt that this school had had its day, and that a 
 more direct, terse, and pungent style of oratory would be 
 demanded by our fiery and impatient age, he urges upon 
 novices the cultivation of vigor and force rather than the 
 graces of speech. Writing to F. W. Gilmer in 1818, he 
 says: "In your arguments at the Bar let argument 
 strongly predominate. Sacrifice 3*011 r flowers, and let 
 3*our columns be Doric rather than composite ; the better 
 medium is Ionic. Avoid, as you would the gates of Death, 
 
 3 
 
34 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 the reputation for floridity. Small though your bod}*, let 
 the march of your mind be the stride of a seven-leagued 
 giant." Fifteen years later, in a letter to another young 
 lawyer, he presses the same point home with equal force : 
 4 - The age of ornament is over ; that of utility has suc- 
 ceeded. The pugnae quam pompae aptius is the order of 
 the day, and men fight now with the clenched fist, not with 
 the open hand, with logic, not with rhetoric. It is the 
 rough, abrupt strength of Webster which has given him his 
 fame." 
 
 Again, in his address to the Literary Societies of Rutgers 
 College, in 1830, he says: "It is to the cultivation of a 
 sound judgment that 3*011 must direct your chief mental 
 efforts. Young gentlemen are exceedingly apt to make a 
 sad mistake on this subject. Hand inexpertus loquor. 
 There is a pleasure in the indulgence of the lighter fac- 
 ulties, fane}*, imagination, wit, and there is an admira- 
 tion which follows their successful display, which youthful 
 vanity can with difficulty resist. But throw this brilliant 
 youth into the same arena with an antagonist who has 
 gone for strength of mind, and whose reason and judg- 
 ment have been the chief objects of discipline, and you will 
 see the sparkling diamond reduced to carbon and pounded 
 to dust." Finally, in the most brilliant and eloquent let- 
 ter he ever wrote, a masterpiece of powerful and im- 
 pressive writing, the letter to H. W. Miller, of Chapel 
 Hill College, North Carolina, in 1833, the impression made 
 by which, when published in the same 3*ear, we distinctly 
 remember, Mr. Wirt says : "Direct 3*0111* intellectual 
 efforts principally to the cultivation of the strong, mascu- 
 line qualities of the mind. Learn (I repeat it) to think, 
 to think deeply, comprehensively, powerfully, and 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 35 
 
 learn the simple, nervous language which is appropriate to 
 that kind of thinking. Read the legal and political argu- 
 ments of Chief-Justice Marshall, and those of Alexander 
 Hamilton, which are coming out. Read them, study them ; 
 and see with what an omnipotent sweep of thought they 
 range over the whole field of any subject they take in hand, 
 and that with a scythe so keen that not a straw is left 
 standing behind them. Brace yourself up to these great 
 efforts. Strike for the giant character of mind, and leave 
 prettiness and frivolity to triflers. ... In what style of 
 eloquence 3*011 are best fitted to excel, you yourself, if 
 destined to excellence, are the best judge. I can only 
 tell 3"ou that the florid and Asiatic st3'le is not the taste 
 of the age. The strong, and even the rugged and ab- 
 rupt, are far more successful. Bold propositions boldly 
 and briefly expressed ; pithy sentences ; nervous common- 
 sense ; strong phrases ; the feliciter audax both in lan- 
 guage and conception ; well-compacted periods ; sudden 
 and strong masses of light; an apt adage, in English or 
 Latin ; a keen sarcasm, a merciless personality, a mortal 
 thrust, these are the beauties and deformities that now 
 make a speaker the most interesting. A gentleman and a 
 Christian will conform to the reigning taste so far only as 
 his principles and habits of decorum will permit." 
 
 That Mr. Wirt succeeded at last, b3' dint of incessant 
 painstaking, in changing his own st3*le of oratoiy, in accor- 
 dance with these hints to others, is known to all who have 
 read his speeches. While he never ceased to relieve the 
 stress and weariness of argument with playful sallies of 
 wit and humor, yet it was in argumentative ability the 
 power of close, cogent, logical reasoning that he mainly 
 excelled. In the words of one of his favorite quotations, 
 
36 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 he came into the forum, " not decorated for pomp, but 
 armed for battle." His power of analysis was remarkable, 
 and his discrimination keen. He excelled in clearness 
 of statement, in discernment of vital points, and in the 
 vigorous presentation of principles. Bestowing great labor 
 upon his cases, he often swept the whole field of discussion, 
 so as to leave little for his associates to glean ; and some- 
 times, it is said, he even anticipated and answered all his 
 opponent's arguments so perfectly as " to leave him nothing 
 to say which had not been better said already." In meeting 
 the unforeseen points that come up suddenly for discussion, 
 where the argument of counsel must be instant and off-hand, 
 he was remarkably prompt and effective. Yet he required 
 preparation, and would not speak without it. Dinner- table 
 oratory and stump-speaking he despised. Among his 
 most powerful legal arguments were those which he 
 delivered on the trial of Burr, in the case of McCulloch 
 vs. The State of Maryland, in the Dartmouth College case, 
 in the great New York steamboat case of Gibbons vs. Og- 
 den, in the Cherokee case, and in the defence of Judge Peck 
 before the Senate of the United States. The first of these 
 speeches, that against Burr, was a masterpiece of its class, 
 replete throughout with eloquent appeal, polished wit, keen 
 repartee, and cogent reasoning. In the famous passage on 
 Blennerhasset we see how eagerly he escaped from the 
 thraldom of a purely technical discussion and sported in 
 the field of rhetorical display, where he could soar without 
 a rival. The passage in which he speaks of the wife of 
 Blennerhasset, the beautiful and tender partner of his 
 bosom, whom he lately " permitted not the winds of sum- 
 mer 'to visit too roughly/" as ''shivering at midnight on 
 the wintry banks of the Ohio, and mingling her tears with the 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 37 
 
 torrents that froze as they fell," has been a favorite piece 
 for schoolboy declamation ever since it fell from the lips 
 of its author ; and the fact that, though worn to shreds 
 by continual repetition, it still has power to charm, is proof 
 of its rare, though somewhat florid, beauty. 
 
 The argument made by Mr. Wirt in behalf of the 
 Cherokee Indians against the tyrannical encroachments of 
 the State of Georgia, did equal honor to his head and heart. 
 Regarding the storm of abuse which his espousal of the 
 cause brought upon him, he wrote to a friend: "If I had 
 declined this engagement from a cowardly fear of the 
 consequences, I should never have been able to hold up 
 my head again. The curse of Kehatna would have been 
 a benediction, compared with the conscious self-abasement 
 that would have preyed upon me." 
 
 Mr. Wirt's argument in defence of Judge Peck, of St. 
 Louis, impeached before the United States Senate for the 
 alleged abuse of his judicial authority, was in many respects 
 the most masterly he ever pronounced. In its union of 
 logical analysis with rhetorical power and beauty, it has 
 rarely been surpassed. The best proof of its cogency and 
 force is that, though at the opening of the trial the tide 
 of popular feeling set strongl\ r against Mr. Wirt's client, 
 it gradually grew weaker, and when the defence was closed, 
 turned in his favor. When the vote was taken, it stood 
 twenty-one for conviction, twentj'-two against ; and the 
 judge was acquitted. 
 
 At the beginning of his career Mr. Wirt was troubled, as 
 we have seen, with bashfulness and timidity" ; but as he 
 advanced in j^ears he rioted in the consciousness of his 
 strength, and loved nothing better than to meet with a foe- 
 man worthy of his steel. For a long time he had desired 
 
38 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 to break a lance with the colossus of the Maryland Bar, Mr. 
 Pinkney; and in 1816 he had the opportunity. Probably 
 no practitioner in the United States courts cast at that time 
 a larger shadow over the land than this great lawyer. His 
 manner was haught}', alert, and guarded ; his brow severe ; 
 his civilities short and measured. The haughtiness of his 
 temper was manifested in his carriage, of which it has been 
 said that it was more than erect, it was perpendicular. 
 His port at the bar towards his equals was antagonistic 
 and defiant; he asked no favors, and he granted none. 
 When about to argue a case he was nervous and restless, 
 burning with a kind of impatient rage for the fray. Pro- 
 fessor Ticknor, who saw him once on such an occasion, 
 says that he showed, by frequently moving in his seat, and 
 by the convulsive twitches of his face, how anxious he 
 was to come to the conflict. "At last the judges ceased 
 to read, and he sprang into the arena like a lion that had 
 been loosed by his keepers on the gladiator who awaited 
 him." Few lawyers of equal ability have manifested such 
 a care about their toilet ; his dress suggested a Beau Brum- 
 mel rather than the giant of the American Bar. In spite 
 of all this foppishness and many affectations, he was a 
 great legal logician, with " as fine a legal head," Rufus 
 Choate used to say, u as ever was grown in America." 
 Both Clay and Webster pronounced him the greatest orator 
 they had ever heard. 
 
 Artemas Ward, being once asked to speak in public, 
 said: "I have the gift of oratory, but I haven't it with 
 me." How many eloquent men there are who find them- 
 selves, at times, in this predicament ! ' ' What a scathing 
 reply I might have made to my adversary," is the regret- 
 ful reflection that occurs to many a lawyer and politician 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 39 
 
 as he retires, heated and discomfited, from a contest in 
 which his memory proved treacherous to him. While he 
 is on his legs, his ideas seem to desert him ; but the mo- 
 ment he sits down, he invents the happiest retorts, his 
 knowledge of the subject comes upon him like a flood, the 
 most unanswerable arguments flash upon him without an 
 effort. Mr. Wirt was one of the readiest of men; yet 
 something like this was his experience in his first encounter 
 with Pinkney, in 1816, who was then at the zenith of his 
 fame. Having argued the cause before, and being en- 
 grossed with other cares, he relied upon his notes for 
 recalling the different topics to his mind ; but at the last 
 moment found that they were lost. Being interrupted in- 
 cessantly by callers while trying to study the case, he was 
 obliged, in this hopeless condition, to go to the court-room 
 and contend with Pinknej*. Writing afterward to Judge 
 Carr, he says: " Had I been prepared, how should I have 
 gloried in that theatre, that concourse, and that adversary ! 
 . . -. I gave, indeed, some hits which produced a visible 
 and animating effect ; but my courage sank, and I suppose 
 my manner fett^ under the conscious imbecility of my argu- 
 ment. I was comforted, however, b} T finding that Pinkney 
 mended the matter very little, if at all. . . . Had the cause 
 been to argue over again on the next da}', I could have 
 shivered him ; for his discussion revived all my forgotten 
 topics, and, as I lay in bed on the following morning, argu- 
 ments poured themselves before me as from a cornucopia. 
 I should have wept at the consideration of what I had lost, 
 if I had not prevented it by leaping out of bed, and be- 
 ginning to sing and dance like a maniac. ... I must 
 contrive, somehow or other, to get another cause in that 
 court, that I may show them I can do better. . . . With 
 
40 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 full preparation, I should not be afraid of a comparison 
 with Pirikney at any point, before genuine judges of correct 
 debate." 
 
 Wirt's first impression of Pinkney, derived from this 
 struggle, was not favorable. Two years later he writes to 
 a friend : "I expect to go to Baltimore again, early next 
 month, and to have another grapple with Glendower Pink- 
 ney. ; The blood more stirs,' you know, ' to rouse the 
 lion than to start the hare.' A debate with Pinkney is 
 exercise and health. With all his fame, I have en- 
 countered men who have hit harder. I find much pleasure 
 in meeting him. . . . To foil him in a fair fight, and in 
 the face of the United States, on his own theatre, 
 would be a crown so imperishable that I feel a kind of 
 youthful pleasure in preparing for the combat." In 1822 
 Mr. Pinkney, having overtaxed his strength in a case be- 
 fore the Supreme Court, died of an inflammation of the 
 brain ; and we find Mr. Wirt, who had now had many dia- 
 lectic contests with this Titan of the Bar, doing full justice 
 to his powers. "He was a great man," writes Wirt to a 
 friend. "No man dared to grapple with him without the 
 most perfect preparation and the full possession of all his 
 strength. In the last two encounters with him I was well sat- 
 isfied, and should never have been otherwise when entirely 
 ready. To draw his supremacy into question anywhere, 
 was honor enough for ambition as moderate as mine." 
 
 Few public speakers have combined so many physical 
 qualifications of the orator as William Wirt. His manly 
 and striking figure, his intellectual face, his clear, musical 
 voice, his graceful gesture, won the favor of his hearer in 
 advance. In manner he was calm, self-possessed, and de- 
 liberate, rarely soaring to lofty heights of oratory, and still 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 41 
 
 more rarely sinking to tameness. His gestures were pre- 
 studied, but the art with which he concealed his art is said 
 to have been consummate. He was not, in the highest 
 sense, a natural orator ; we mean that he did not come 
 into the world, like Henry Clay or Patrick Henry, with an 
 imperative commission to speak written in his blood and on 
 his brain. He spoke easily, and often eloquently ; but was 
 not urged to it irresistibly by the trumpet-call of his spon- 
 taneous enthusiasms, as the war-horse snuffs the battle 
 from afar. His usual key, his biographer sa3*s, was that of 
 earnest and animated argument, alternated with that of a 
 playful and sprightly humor. Though he was not wanting 
 in force or fire, and could denounce wickedness, in high 
 places or low, with great vehemence and energy, }*et as a 
 rule his oratory was not of that fervid, bold, and impetuous 
 kind which sways all classes of men with absolute do- 
 minion, rousing and calming their passions at the speaker's 
 will. Except on rare occasions, it was graceful, polished, 
 and scholar-like, sparkling with pleasant fancies, and 
 cheating the spell-bound listener out of all sense of the 
 lapse of time. Hence he was a favorite of the ladies, who 
 flocked to hear him, and, to his surprise, however dry or 
 abstruse the theme, listened with apparent delight to his 
 longest and most argumentative speeches. In early life, as 
 we have seen, there was more impetuosity in his manner, 
 and his articulation was rapid, thick, and indistinct. By 
 dint of incessant self-schooling he conquered all these de- 
 fects ; and adopting a lofty ideal of excellence, which he 
 strove unceasingty to reach, he gradually developed and 
 perfected his natural powers to a degree that made him the 
 rival in eloquence of Emmett and Pinkney, and the compeer 
 in argument of Hopkinson, Pinkney, and Webster. 
 
42 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 A well-known writer, who heard many of Mr. Wirt's 
 forensic addresses, thinks that the power of ridiculing his 
 adversary was Mr. Wirt's forte. " After he had demon- 
 strated the absurdity of his opponent's arguments with a 
 clearness which the most critical logician would have ad- 
 mired ; . . . after he had called up the truths of philos- 
 ophy, the experience of histoiy, and the beauties of poetr}', 
 all coming like spirits thronging to his call ; he would, if 
 the opposite part}' deserved the infliction, pour forth upon 
 him a lava-like ridicule, which flamed while it burned, and 
 which was at once terrible and beautiful, terrible from its 
 severity and truth, and beautiful from the chaste language 
 in which it was conve3'ed." * 
 
 It is said that when Mr. Pinkney began to write out his 
 great speech in the kt Nereid" case, he was so disappointed 
 in the effect when he saw it on paper that he threw down 
 his pen ; he saw at once the enormous difference in power 
 there is between a speech written and a speech delivered. 
 " How apt are we," says Mr. Wirt, "to forget this differ- 
 ence in making our estimate of Demosthenes and Cicero ! 
 We measure them only by the speeches they have left us, 
 forgetting that the speech itself is only the hundredth part 
 of the orator's power." In reading Mr. Wirt's own 
 speeches, this caution, if we would avoid disappointment, 
 needs emphatically to be heeded. It is a sad truth, that 
 of all the great products of creative art, eloquence is the 
 only one that does not survive the creator. The words of 
 a masterpiece of oratorical genius may be caught and jotted 
 down with literal exactness ; but the attitude and the look, 
 the voice and the gesture, are lost forever. The aroma, 
 
 1 F. W. Thomas, author of "Clinton Bradshaw," etc. 
 
WILLIAM WIKT. 43 
 
 the finer essences, have vanished ; only the dead husk 
 remains. 
 
 We have thus far, for convenience, omitted to speak 
 of Mr. Wirt's biographical work, the well-known Life of 
 Patrick Henry. The task of writing this book he found the 
 toughest that had ever engaged his pen. After years of toil 
 he was half tempted to abandon it altogether. The necessity 
 of stating facts with scrupulous precision, when, as he ex- 
 pressed it, " his pen wanted perpetually to career and frolic 
 it awa}', " was like a stone tied to the wings of his fancy. 
 To write under such a restraint was like trying to run, tied 
 up in a bag. In a letter to a friend he thus complains : 
 "My pen wants perpetually to career and frolic it away. 
 But it must not be. I must move like Sterne's mule over 
 the plains of Languedoc, 4 as slow as foot can fall,' and 
 that, too, without one vintage frolic with Nanette on the 
 green, or even the relief of a mulberry-tree to stop and take 
 a pinch of snuff at. I was very sensible, when I began, that 
 1 was not in the narrative gait. I tried it ever and over 
 again, almost as often as Gibbon did, to hit the ke3'-note, 
 and without his success. I determined, therefore, to move 
 forward, in hopes that my palfrey would get broke by de- 
 grees, and learn, by and by, to obey the slightest touch of 
 the snaffle. But I am now in my hundred and seventh 
 page, . . . and yet I am as far to seek as ever, for the light- 
 some, lucid, simple graces of composition. You may think 
 this affectation, if 3*011 please, or }'ou may think it a jest ; 
 but the dying confession of a felon under the gallows . . . 
 is not more true, nor much more mortifying." 
 
 The difficulty here so pathetically portrayed was not half 
 so disheartening as the dearth of facts, which compelled the 
 biographer to evolve his hero, in the German fashion, out of 
 
44 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 the depths of his moral consciousness. At every step he 
 was obliged to stop and let fly a volley of letters over the 
 State ; and when the answers came, their statements were 
 so contradictory that it was impossible to reconcile them. 
 The truth is, that Patrick Hemy was hardly more than a 
 name. His vast fame rested upon a tradition which gave 
 only the A r aguest and most shadowy outlines of an intellect- 
 ual colossus. Like the bones of an antediluvian giant, only 
 a few fragments of his speeches remain to testify to his 
 moral stature. Will's portraiture of the man is brilliant, 
 but the coloring is too deep. The work burns and glows 
 with the Southern heart of the writer, and, while exhibiting 
 much dramatic power and insight into character, has too 
 much of the charm of a romance. Occasionally, though 
 not often, as one of his critics has said, the rapid march of 
 the narrative u breaks into the canter of the jury-haranguing 
 Iaw3*er or the stump-speaking politician." The popular 
 feeling regarding the work is well illustrated by an anecdote 
 told of Mr. Wirt and the Hon. Thomas Corwin, of Ohio. 
 Mr. Wirt was once opposed to Mr. Corwin as counsel in a 
 law case, and tried in a somewhat novel way to discredit 
 the testimony of Mr. Corwin's chief witness, on whose dis- 
 crimination and accuracy everything hinged, by showing 
 that he was a person of egregious credulity. "Have you 
 ever read Gulliver's Travels?" said Wirt to the witness. 
 " Yes." " Do you believe it all? " " W-a-11, }*es, Square, 
 I don't know but I do." The same answer was returned 
 to questions about the "Life of Sinbad the Sailor," the 
 " Adventures of Baron Munchausen," and other like works ; 
 Corwin all the while fidgeting and turning nervously in 
 his seat. Having thus utterly discredited the witness, Mr. 
 Wirt, with a triumphant gesture and a bland smile, said : 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 45 
 
 " You can have the witness, Brother Corwin." "I have 
 but one question more," said Corwin: "have you ever 
 read Will's Life of Patrick Henry?" "Yes." "Do you 
 believe it all?" " Wh}', no, Square, I can't quite swallow 
 that." 
 
 Mr. Wirt's memory was exceedingly retentive, and in 
 readiness and felicity of quotation he was rarely surpassed. 
 He was familiar with the Latin classics, and had marked in 
 his copies of Horace, Seneca, Quintilian, etc., nearly every 
 striking thought and sentiment. A pocket edition of Horace 
 was often thumbed during his journeys ; but Seneca, with 
 his brilliant and pointed antitheses, was his favorite. In his 
 legal arguments he often cited an illustration from the 
 classics with telling effect. In the peroration of his argu- 
 ment in the great New York steamboat case of Gibbons vs. 
 Ogden, he retorted on Mr. Emmett a quotation of his from 
 Virgil with signal skill. The chief question in the case 
 was whether the laws of New York, which conferred upon 
 Fulton and Livingston the exclusive right to navigate its 
 waters with steamboats, were or were not a violation of the 
 Constitution of the United States. Mr. Emmett, at the 
 close of his speech, eloquently personified the great State of 
 New York as casting her eyes over the ocean, beholding 
 everywhere the triumphs of her genius, and exultingly 
 asking, 
 
 " Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ? " 
 
 Mr. Wirt saw with an eagle eye the error his antagonist 
 had committed ; and giving the true translation of laboris, 
 which here means, we hardly need to say, not " labor," but 
 "suffering," or "misfortune," turned the tables upon him 
 as follows : 
 
46 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 " Sir, it was not in the moment of triumph, nor with the feelings 
 of triumph, that ^Eneas uttered that exclamation. It was when, 
 with his faithful Achates by his side, he was surveying the works 
 of art with which the palace of Carthage was adorned, and his 
 attention had been caught by a representation of the battles of 
 Troy. There he saw the sons of Atreus, and Priam, and the fierce 
 Achilles. The whole extent of his misfortunes, the loss and desola- 
 tion of his friends, the fall of his beloved country, rushed upon his 
 recollection : 
 
 'Constitit, et lacrimans, Quis jam locus, inquit, Achate, 
 Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ? ' ' 
 
 Mr. Wirt then vividly depicted the disastrous results of 
 the policy of New York ; showing that three States were 
 already on the eve of conflict, and that unless the Court 
 should interpose, the war of legislation would become a war 
 of blows. "Your republican institutions will perish in the 
 conflict ; 3'our Constitution will fall ; the last hope of na- 
 tions will be gone. . . . Then, sir, when New York shall 
 look upon this scene of ruin, if she have the generous feel- 
 ings which I believe her to have, it will not be with her 
 head aloft, in the pride of conscious triumph, 4 her rapt 
 soul sitting in her e3*es.' No, sir, no ! Dejected, with 
 shame and confusion, drooping under the weight of her 
 sorrow, with a voice suffocated with despair, well may she 
 
 exclaim, 
 
 ' . . . Quis jam locus, . . . 
 Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?' " 
 
 Mr. Wirt was very happy in his occasional literary ad- 
 dresses, as in his eulogy on Adams and Jefferson, deliv- 
 ered before Congress in 1829, which Abraham Hay ward, 
 in the London " Quarterl}* Review" for March, 1841, pro- 
 nounced " the best which this remarkable coincidence l has 
 
 1 The deaths of Adams and Jefferson on the same clay. 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 47 
 
 called forth ;" and in his address at Rutger's College, in 1830, 
 a spirit-stirring discourse to the students, which must 
 have roused them like the sound of a trumpet. The latter 
 production, which was published in pamphlet form by the 
 literary societies to which it was addressed, passed rapidly 
 through three editions, and was republished in England. 
 It was also translated into the French language and the 
 German, and published in Paris and in a leading German 
 city. A fourth American edition was issued in 1852. We 
 can give but one extract from this eloquent and high-toned 
 address, in which, portraying the man of decisive integrit}', 
 the author unconsciously paints one of his own most salient 
 moral features : 
 
 DECISIVE INTEGRITY. 
 
 The man who is so conscious of the rectitude of his intentions 
 as to be willing to open his bosom to the inspection of the world, 
 is in possession of one of the strongest pillars of a decided character. 
 The course of such a man will be firm and steady, because he has 
 nothing to fear from the world, and is sure of the approbation and 
 support of Heaven ; while the man who is conscious of secret and 
 dark designs, which, if known, would blast him, is perpetually shrink- 
 ing and dodging from public observation, and is afraid of all around, 
 and much more of all above, him. 
 
 Such a man may, indeed, pursue his iniquitous plans steadily; 
 he may waste himself to a skeleton in the guilty pursuit ; but it is 
 impossible that he can pursue them with the same health-inspiring 
 confidence and exulting alacrity with him who feels at every step 
 that he is in the pursuit of honest ends by honest means. The 
 clear, unclouded brow, the open countenance, the brilliant eye which 
 can look an honest man steadfastly yet courteously in the face, the 
 healthfully beating heart, and the firm, elastic step, belong to him 
 only whose bosom is free from guile, and who knows that all his 
 motives and purposes are pure and right. Why should such a 
 
48 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 man falter in his course? He may be slandered, he may be de-. 
 serted by the world ; but he has that within which will keep him 
 erect, and enable him to move onward in his course, with his eyes 
 fixed on Heaven, which he knows will not desert him. 
 
 Let your first step, then, in that discipline which is to give you 
 decision of character, be the heroic determination to be honest 
 men, and to preserve this character through every vicissitude of 
 fortune, and in every relation which connects you with society. I 
 do not use this phrase "honest men " in the narrow sense, merely, 
 of meeting your pecuniary engagements and paying your debts ; 
 for this the common pride of gentlemen will constrain you to do. 
 I use it in its larger sense of discharging all your duties, both public 
 and private, both open and secret, with the most scrupulous, Heaven- 
 attesting integrity : in that sense, further, which drives from the 
 bosom all little, dark, crooked, sordid, debasing considerations of 
 self, and substitutes in their place a bolder, loftier, and nobler 
 spirit : one that will dispose you to consider yourselves as born 
 not so much for yourselves as for your country and your fellow- 
 creatures, and which will lead you to act on every occasion sincerely, 
 justly, generously, magnanimously. 
 
 There is a morality on a larger scale, perfectly consistent with a 
 just attention to your own affairs, which it would be the height of 
 folly to neglect : a generous expansion, a proud elevation and con- 
 scious greatness of character, which is the best preparation for a 
 decided course in every situation into which you can be thrown ; 
 and it is to this high and noble tone of character that I would have 
 you to aspire. I would not have you to resemble those weak and 
 meagre streamlets, which lose their direction at every petty impe- 
 diment that presents itself, and stop, and turn back, and creep 
 around, and search out every little channel through which they 
 may wind their feeble and sickly course. Nor yet would I have 
 you resemble the headlong torrent that carries havoc in its mad 
 career. But I would have you like the ocean, that noblest emblem 
 of majestic decision, which in the calmest hour still heaves its re- 
 sistless might of waters to the shore, filling the heavens, day and 
 night, with the echoes of its sublime declaration of independence, 
 and tossing and sporting on its bed with an imperial consciousness 
 of strength that laughs at opposition. It is this depth and weight 
 
WILLIAM WIKT. 49 
 
 and power and purity of character that I would have you to re- 
 semble ; and I would have you, like the waters of the ocean, to 
 become the purer by your own action. 
 
 It is amusing to contrast Mr. Wirt's fees for legal ser- 
 vices with the sums charged by lawyers to-day. We have 
 in our possession an elaborate autograph letter of his, con- 
 sisting of six large quarto pages, giving his opinion in a 
 knotty case. At the close he says, in substance, that as 
 he has spent a great deal of thought and trouble on the 
 case, involving a laborious search of the record and decree 
 in it, and a sketch of a course of defence, he hopes that he 
 will not be deemed unreasonable in asking his correspondent 
 to send him twenty dollars. 
 
 Few men ever had a keener sense of the ludicrous than 
 Mr. Wirt. Referring to some drollery in one of his letters, 
 he says: "I have always found a little nonsense a capital 
 preparative for a dry and close argument." He then tells 
 of a pun which, he sa}*s, made him laugh vociferously. 
 
 " There is a gentleman in who is otherwise very 
 
 handsome, but with the misfortune of having a nose with- 
 out a bridge, a mere abortive proboscis. C was re- 
 marking in compain- one da}- the noble expression of his 
 countenance. ' Oh ! but that unfortunate nose/ said a 
 
 lacly. 4 Nose ! ' replied C ; 4 if it had a bridge, it would 
 
 be very passable' " Of all humorous writers Sterne was 
 Mr. Wirt's favorite. To the exquisite drolleries that lie in 
 ambush on every page of "Tristram Shandy" he was never 
 tired of referring. 
 
 Though usually buoyant and hopeful, Mr. Wirt was some- 
 times exceedingly despondent ; and in his self-criticisms he 
 was more keen and unsparing than his worst enemj 7 . In a 
 letter to a friend he complains of the lack of concentration 
 
 4 
 
50 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 in his legal addresses. "Though I see the track plainly 
 before me, yet, like an ill-disciplined race-horse, I am per- 
 petually bolting or flying the way, and this, too, perhaps, 
 in the very crisis of the argument. . . . On the other hand, 
 here is John Marshall, whose mind seems to be little else 
 than a mountain of barren and stupendous rocks, an in- 
 exhaustible quarry, from which he draws his materials and 
 builds his fabrics, rude and Gothic, but of such strength 
 that neither time nor force can beat them down ; a fellow 
 who would not turn off from the right line of his argument, 
 though a Paradise should rise to tempt him." Again, in 
 1810, he writes to the same person : " I can never cease to 
 deplore the years of my youth that I have murdered in 
 idleness and folly. ... I now think that I know all the flaws 
 and weak places of my mind. I know which of the muscles 
 want tone and vigor, and which are braced bej'ond the 
 point of health. . . . But now the character of my mind is 
 fixed ; and as to any beneficial change, one might as well 
 call upon a tailor, who has sat upon his shopboard till the 
 calves of his legs are shrivelled, to carry the burdens of a 
 porter, or upon a man whose hand is violently shaken with 
 palsy, to split hairs with a razor." 
 
 Mr. Wirt wrote verse, and sang, and played upon several 
 musical instruments. He even wrote a play, entitled " The 
 Path of Pleasure," for the Richmond stage ; but we cannot 
 say whether it was performed or not. In private life 
 he was held in the highest esteem. His conversation 
 was full of interest and charm. Enriched, as it was, with 
 the results, always at command, of his multifarious read- 
 ing, it was suggestive and thought provoking, yet easy, 
 playful, and sparkling with wit and humor. His manner 
 was always dignified, yet courteous and winning, and his 
 
WILLIAM WIRT. 51 
 
 voice modulated with the nicest taste and skill. He was 
 not an ambitious talker, striving constantly to say smart 
 things ; he had no elaborated impromptus, no cut-and-dried 
 repartees ; he never drew the conversation into an ambush, 
 that he might give play to his sharpshooters when he had 
 tricked men within their reach. 
 
 The strong religious cast of Mr. Wirt's mind was visible 
 to all who knew him. Even in the most thoughtless daj's 
 of his youth he was keenly susceptible to religious impres- 
 sions. After the death of his youngest daughter, in 1831, 
 the religious reverence which had been a sentiment of his 
 heart became a pervading passion. The buoyancy of 
 spirit which before, even in his gravest moments, broke 
 forth in sudden and irrepressible sallies, was lost forever. 
 He gave up many of his pet and long-cherished schemes 
 and fancies, read the Scriptures daily, studied theology, 
 cultivated habits of prayer and meditation, and wrote much 
 on religious themes. He took great interest in missionaiy 
 and Bible societies, in Sundaj'-schools, and became pres- 
 ident of the State Bible Society of Maryland. He read 
 Hooker, Baxter, Faber, Flavel, Hall, Doddridge, and Jay. 
 Of Baxter he writes to his daughter: " I took up the 
 ' Saints' Rest ' lately, and found it like an old sandal-wood 
 box, as fresh and fragrant as if it had just been made, al- 
 though it has been exhaling its odor for a hundred and 
 eighty years." 
 
 Such, in conclusion, were the life and character of Wil- 
 liam Wirt. Is it too much to say, that in the whole circle 
 of eminent advocates who have adorned the American Bar, 
 there is no one whose career is more worthy of imitation ? 
 Beginning life with a lofty ideal ; keeping ever before his 
 eyes that aliquid vastum et immenswn of which he so 
 
52 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 often' speaks, he won the highest honors of a profession 
 in which, perhaps, more than in any other, eminence is a 
 test of ability and acquirement. Scorning the low and 
 disingenuous arts of his profession ; despising the cheap 
 successes of those " gowned vultures," or, as Milton terms 
 them, those tk hired masters of tongue-fence," who seek 
 only for pelf and popular applause, he sought by hard 
 thinking and by broad and comprehensive studies, by the 
 mastery of philosophy, history, literature, and science, to 
 build up his reputation upon a solid base. Using his pen 
 habitually as a means of self-improvement, he became a 
 read}' and polished writer, and won b}~ his books, orations, 
 and addresses, literary laurels worthy of a professional 
 author. Stainless in his professional integrity, conscien- 
 tious in the discharge of his duties, keenly sensitive to 
 praise, yet the severest of self-critics, patient of labor, and 
 opulent in the mental stores which only patient labor can 
 suppl}*, warm in his affections, faithful in his friendships, 
 a powerful advocate, a polished orator, a fervid patriot, a 
 sincere Christian, and a noble man, he has left an example 
 which, in the words of Daniel Webster, " those who seek 
 to raise themselves to great heights of professional emi- 
 nence will emulously study. Fortunate indeed will be the 
 few who shall imitate it successful!}' ! " 
 
BULWER. 
 
 life of Edward George Earle Lytton is a vivid 
 illustration of the marvels tbat may be performed by 
 a man of mere talent, toiling with indefatigable energy 
 through a long series of years. We say " talent;" for 
 that he had that only, though in the very highest degree, 
 and was not, though he narrowly escaped being, a genius, 
 we think is very clear. Had he been such, he would not, 
 probably, have scattered his forces over so large a field. 
 Instead of lighting up the whole horizon of thought, he 
 would have condensed his sheet-lightning into a few lumi- 
 nous points or a single powerful bolt. As it was, neither 
 intellectually nor morally was his mind determined with 
 overwhelming force in any one direction, upon no one sub- 
 ject did his affections centre ; and the result was, that while 
 he astonished the world by his breadth of sympathy and 
 variety of mental faculty, he never reached the pinnacle 
 of excellence and fame, the topmost peak of the literary 
 Alps, but only a lofty summit. That he was a tireless 
 worker, the scores of books which he spun from his brain 
 bear witness. Poet, dramatist, novelist, essayist, orator, 
 historian, and pamphleteer, he "swung round the entire 
 circle " of literary effort, and won high success in every- 
 thing he attempted. Possessing rank and ample fortune, 
 he regarded these accidents, in the words of his own Mel- 
 notte, " as the incentives to exertion, not the title-deeds of 
 
54 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 sloth," and worked, to the ver}* end of his da}-s, as hard as 
 any bookseller's hack in Great Britain. That he should 
 have toiled so hard, even after having overcome his early 
 disadvantages and won riches and position, is a still 
 greater marvel, and compels the admiration of those who 
 would otherwise find it hard to forget his foibles. It is 
 hard to write books when one is clothed in rags and labor- 
 ing to make the pot boil ; but it is harder still when one 
 is clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously 
 every day. Many a spiritual giant lies buried under a 
 mountain of gold. To hunt and shoot and live in clover ; 
 to frequent clubs and operas and Almack's, enjoying the 
 variety of London sight-seeing, morning calls, and Par- 
 liamentary small-talk, during the season, and then off to 
 the country mansion, with its well-stocked preserves and 
 its thousand delightful pleasures, alternated with a few 
 months on the Scotch moors, or a run across the Continent 
 to Venice or Rome, all this, it has been truly said, is ex- 
 ceedingly attractive, but it is by no means calculated to 
 make a man " scorn delights, and live laborious days." 
 
 It was to his mother, a woman of great energy and rare 
 accomplishments, that Bulwer was indebted for the forma- 
 tion and guidance of his literary tastes. Her father was a 
 profound scholar, and the first Hebraist of his day. A 
 favorite book of her son in his childhood was Percy's 
 " Reliques," which was the match that fired his genius ; for 
 he wrote some ballads in imitation of it when onl}* five or 
 six years old. He went to no public school, but graduated 
 at Cambridge, where he competed successful!}' for the prize 
 poem of his 3'ear. Better in man}' respects than the uni- 
 versity education was " the life-education," to use one of 
 his own terms, which he got in part by wandering over 
 
BULWER. 55 
 
 England and Scotland on foot during the Long Vacation, 
 and afterward by travelling through France on horse- 
 back. He began to publish at the age of two and twent}*. 
 44 Weeds and Wild Flowers," his first book, was followed 
 by u O'Neil, or the Rebel," a BjTonic poem minus the 
 Byron. "Falkland," his first novel, appeared next year, 
 but fell dead from the press, being too sentimental even for 
 the Laura Matildas of the circulating-libraries. It was a 
 history and anatysis of illicit passion, which, though full of 
 faults, had yet so much promise of better things that Col- 
 burn, the publisher, offered 500 for a three-volume novel 
 from the same pen. " I will give you one that shall be 
 sure to succeed," was the answer. The first volume of 
 44 Pelham " was already written, and the manuscript of the 
 whole was soon in Colburn's hands. Colburn's chief reader 
 condemned it as " utterly worthless." His second reader's 
 report was more favorable. Three or four days afterward 
 Colburn called the two critics to his room and said : " I 
 have read Mr. Bulwcr's novel, and it is my decided opinion 
 that it will be the book of the year." The publisher judged 
 rightly; it was in "Pelham" that Bulwer first fairly 
 caught the world's ear. For two months the work seemed 
 likely to be doomed to oblivion. Critics, not seeing its 
 purpose, and taking its satire literally, treated it with cen- 
 sure or indifference. But suddenly it won an immense pop- 
 ularity ; it was a sensation, a novelty in English romance; 
 and it caused a permanent change in masculine costume. 
 44 One, at least, of the changes which the book effected in 
 matters of dress," says Bulwer's son, in his biography of 
 his father, " has kept its ground to this day. Lady Fran- 
 ces Pelham sa}'s, in a letter to her son : ' Apropos of the 
 complexion : I did not like that blue coat you wore when I 
 
56 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 last saw 3'ou. You look best in black, which is a great 
 compliment ; for people must be very distinguished in ap- 
 pearance to do so.' Till then the coats worn for evening 
 dress were of different colors, brown, green, or blue, ac- 
 cording to the fane}* of the wearer ; and Lord Orford tells 
 me that the adoption of the now invariable black dates 
 from the publication of * Pelham.' All the contemporaries 
 of Pelham would appear to have been simultaneously 
 possessed with the idea that they were entitled to take to 
 themselves the ' great compliment ' paid by Ladj' Frances 
 to her son." In "Pelham" the author gave what many 
 thought a sympathetic portraiture of a gentleman, a 
 dand3 T of a superior order, something more than what Cow- 
 per calls " a fine-puss gentleman, that's all perfume," but 
 still a worshipper at the shrine of fashion, and more care- 
 ful about the cut of his coat and the style of his whiskers 
 than about the furnishing of his brains. The book has 
 many clever epigrams and some powerful passages, a 
 few, such as Tyrrel's death-scene, that are artistically fin- 
 ished, and, though shallow as a whole, showed that there 
 was power in the author. 
 
 For his next novel, "The Disowned," Bulwer received 
 800, and for "Devereux," which soon followed it, 1,500. 
 In 1830 he became editor of Colburn's " New Monthly 
 Magazine." In "Paul Clifford," with its skilfully woven 
 plot, a novel which was fiercely lashed by the moralists, 
 Bulwer took a somewhat higher flight; but even yet his 
 wings were not fairly fledged. It was in " Eugene Aram" 
 that he first showed the mettle that was in him ; it was 
 the first distinct print of the lion's foot. Being early 
 interested in the story of his hero, he set to work to col- 
 lect the particulars of his life ; and these he wove into 
 
BULWER. 57 
 
 a powerful and fascinating romance. In this story he has 
 aimed to show what strange influences sometimes checker 
 the web of life ; how a mind essentially noble, by deviating 
 by an almost imperceptible angle from the path of virtue, 
 may be gradually lured on till it is hopelessly entangled in 
 the meshes of sin. Obsta principiis, " Resist begin- 
 nings," is the moral which he preaches with fearful emphasis 
 in every page. Do not dally with sin, or listen to the 
 faintest suggestions of the tempter ; and rely upon it that, 
 with whatever secrecy one may commit a crime, there is an 
 avenging Fury tracking the blood-stained, which, sooner or 
 later, will drag him and his sin to the light. Some critics 
 have objected to the psychological truthfulness of Eugene 
 Aram's portrait. Is it possible, they have asked, for a 
 man to be betrayed into a dreadful crime at the very mo- 
 ment when he is full of ardor for truth and virtue? Can a 
 man harbor in his bosom a household devil in the shape of 
 a consciousness of being a murderer without the whole 
 mental atmosphere being made foul and poisonous? Those 
 who ask these questions forget that Eugene Aram did not 
 strike the blow which caused the death, and found, doubt- 
 less, in this a plausible reason for his own self-justifica- 
 tion. They forget that, morally as well as physically, we 
 are "fearfully and wonderfully made;" that when man 
 trusts to his reason alone, and suffers his instincts to 
 be overmastered by his intellect, his better feelings to 
 be cheated by the casuistries of the brain, there is 
 no inconsistency of which he may not be guilty, no 
 deed of horror which he ma}' not commit. The female 
 characters in this work, especially Madeline and Ellinor, 
 are regarded by Bulwer's admirers as masterpieces of 
 portraiture. 
 
58 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 Ill " Ernest Maltravers" and "Alice" we have some 
 exquisite portraitures of character, especially of female 
 loveliness ; and we well remember the almost breathless 
 interest with which the inveterate novel-readers of our 
 younger days hung over the pages of the former novel. 
 Just before these appeared "The Last Days of Pompeii" 
 and " Rienzi," two of Bulwer's most powerful historical 
 romances ; and, some seven years later, " The Last of the 
 Barons," which some critics have pronounced intolerably 
 tedious and heavy, others, one of the most brilliant works 
 of its class that ever was written. " Zanoni" and " Night 
 and Morning," two of his purest and most imaginative 
 fictions, added to his fame ; but it is in " My Novel" and 
 "The Caxtons" that his genius takes its grandest flight, 
 winging its way almost to the highest heaven of invention. 
 In these productions the author puts forth all his strength ; 
 they are the final development of his powers, the "bright, 
 consummate flower" of all his faculties, the product of 
 his genius in its happiest mood. They are marked through- 
 out by that calmness which indicates the greatest strength, 
 that simplicit}- and repose which are always found in a per- 
 fect style. If they dazzle and astonish less than some of 
 the author's other efforts, they are infinitely more pleasing; 
 and if they do not abound in rapid adventures, or quicken 
 the pulse with thrilling situations, culminating points ot 
 passion, and romantic interest, they nevertheless idealize 
 common life, transfigure lowl}' persons and objects, and 
 show the poetic beauty as well as the soul of goodness 
 which are to be found in the humbler classes of society. 
 Among the most striking passages in " The Caxtons " are 
 those relating to Robert Hall and to the benign influence 
 of Christianitj' in soothing the sorrows of mankind, allu- 
 
BULWER. 59 
 
 sions which have opened to Bulwer's genius the door 
 of many a heart that had been obstinately closed to it 
 before. 
 
 Of Bulwer as a novelist it must be said that, on the 
 whole, he hardly ranks in the ve^ first class. Minute and 
 acute in observation, possessing the rarest powers of descrip- 
 tion and characterization, and exhibiting a versatility that 
 is aUsolutely marvellous, he has talent rather than genius ; 
 and rarely, even when he works his most potent spells, 
 affects us like Scott or Dickens. He rarely takes our 
 breath away as we follow his eagle flights, or makes the 
 cordage of our heart to crack, like the great necromancers 
 of English fiction. He is analytical rather than impulsive ; 
 elaborate and circuitous rather than direct and concentrating. 
 He has more fancy than imagination, more head that heart, 
 and works by rule rather than from instinct. In reading 
 even his happiest works, we feel that he is a novelist more 
 by an effort of intellectual determination than by the pos- 
 session of a gift that will not rest unexercised. A con- 
 summate artist, he produces his effects by repeated touches, 
 never by a few masterty strokes of the pencil ; and the 
 constant succession of minute details at last wearies the 
 eye, and palls on the mind. In one part of the novelist's 
 art he is, indeed, a master; namel}', in the construction 
 of a plot. His characters glide through the intricacies of 
 his story without a suspicion by the reader of the denoue- 
 ment, till the clew of his skill extricates them from the laby- 
 rinth in which they are involved ; but they are generally 
 pale phantoms, that leave no impression of reality upon 
 the reader's mind, no feeling that they are men and women 
 whom we have loved or hated or laughed at in the flesh. 
 Everywhere the workmanship excels the stuff; it is rather 
 
60 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 mechanical work than creation ; and the reader feels that 
 there is more power and true philosophy of life in one 
 fresh, vigorous, and strongly drawn scene of Fielding or 
 Scott than in whole libraries of Pelhams and Paul Cliffords, 
 where the art, however great, is not subtle enough to con- 
 ceal the artist. 
 
 "Was Bulwer a poet? His verse unquestionably has 
 man}' poetical qualities, grace, inelod}', striking imagery, 
 picturesqueness, but lacks that i3'sterious something, 
 that divine afflatus, which we call poetr}'. The vigor, 
 polish, and terseness of " St. Stephen's" would not dis- 
 honor the masculine genius of Dryden ; " The Lost Tales 
 of Miletus" have charmed scholars with their playful 
 fancy ; and the translations from Schiller have been pro- 
 nounced by Carlyle the ones from which an English reader 
 will get the most vivid idea of the German poet. In satir- 
 ical verse he is sometimes very happy. What could be 
 better of its kind than the following? 
 
 " He seemed to turn to you his willing cheek, 
 
 And beg you not to smite too hard the other ; 
 He seized his victim with a smile so meek, 
 
 And wept so fondly o'er his erring brother, 
 No wolf more righteous on a lamb could sup : 
 You vexed his stream, he grieved and ate you up." 
 
 Had Bulwer dramatic genius? Only in a moderate 
 degree, if we have correctly analyzed his mental qualities. 
 Besides the disqualifications already hinted at, he is too 
 aristocratic in his tastes, has too little sympathy with 
 humanity when rough and unpolished, to excel in dramatic 
 writing. The men and women he loves to paint are ideal, 
 not the flesh-and-blood men and women we brush against 
 in the streets. Yet "Richelieu," in which Macready used 
 
BULWER. 61 
 
 to personate the Cardinal, is full of plot, fire, and en- 
 erg}' ; and it will be long before "The Lady of Lyons," 
 with all its absurdities, will lose its hold on the stage. It 
 is said that there is not an actress there who does not 
 prefer the part of Pauline to any other. A writer in 
 the London " Pall Mall Gazette" tells an interesting anec- 
 dote regarding this last play. Like man}' other literary 
 men, Bulwer was anxious to test by anonymous publication ' 
 the value of public opinion regarding this work, and there- 
 fore "The Lady of Lyons" was brought out anonymously 
 on the first night it was played. Excepting Macready, who 
 was to personate Claude Melnotte, nobody had been al- 
 lowed to know the secret of the authorship of the play. Be- 
 tween the acts Dickens, who had been one of a delighted 
 audience, went behind the scenes to talk over the play with 
 Macready and Bulwer, congratulating Macready on his won- 
 derful impersonation of Claude Melnotte. Dickens was in 
 raptures with the whole thing, and asked Bulwer what he 
 thought of it. Bulwer affected to find some fault with the 
 plot, and suggested improvements here and there in the 
 various situations. " Come, now," said Dickens, " it is not 
 like you, Bulwer, to cavil at such small things as those. 
 The man who wrote the play ma}* have imitated your work 
 here and there, perhaps, but he is a deuced clever fellow for 
 all that. To hear you speak so unfairly is almost enough 
 to make one think that you are jealous." The papers the 
 next morning lauded the play to the skies, even going so 
 far as to suggest that it would be well for Mr. Bulwer 
 to take pattern by this unknown writer, and try to improve 
 himself in those particular points in which the anonymous 
 author of "The Lady of Lyons "had been so brilliantly 
 successful. About a fortnight later Bulwer's authorship of 
 
62 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 the play was made known, to the mingled consternation 
 and amusement of the critics and the general public. 
 
 Was Bulwer an orator ? That depends upon our defini- 
 tion of oratoiy. If by it is meant that rapturous enthusiasm, 
 that burning passion, that " furious pride and joy of the 
 soul " which calls up all the imagination of the speaker, 
 and makes his rhetoric become a whirlwind, and his logic 
 fire, then Bulwer was not an orator. Of the inspiration 
 that prompted Chatham's indignant burst in reply to the 
 Duke of Richmond, Thurlow's scathing answer to the Duke 
 of Grafton, G rattan's overwhelming denunciation of Flood, 
 or Erskine's sublime apostrophe on the trial of Stockdale, 
 when he spoke of the " savage " in terms so startling and 
 triumphant, Bulwer has hardly a spark. But if by 
 oratory is meant simply the power of making an earnest, 
 lively, polished, and interesting speech, full of ingenious 
 turns and shrewd sense, then Bulwer was an orator, as 
 his well-known speeches before the Edinburgh University 
 and at Leeds abundantly show. Entering Parliament 
 early, he speedily got the ear of the House, in spite of 
 a weak voice, a rather florid stj'le, and a certain appearance 
 of fastidious nicety in dress which by no means accords 
 with the notions of that assembly. He did not often rise 
 to speak ; but when he did, his speeches were carefully 
 prepared, and had the dubious merit of reading well. On 
 one occasion his speech on Lord Derby's Reform Bill 
 in 1859 he rose to an unwonted pitch of eloquence; 
 veterans in the House declared that it equalled anything 
 they had ever heard at Westminster. But, generally, the 
 chief fault of his speeches was their artificial'^. Not only 
 was his voice most studiously modulated, and his excessive 
 action carefully pre-studied, but his hair, his mustache, his 
 
BULWER. 63 
 
 dress and deportment, had an equally elaborate air. In 
 spite of all this, his appearance on the platform was, on 
 the whole, in his favor. Tall, spare, and attenuated, he 
 presented a fine head and face, of which a long, aquiline 
 nose, and a broad, retreating forehead were the most 
 marked characteristics. The former feature was truly 
 Dantean in length and shape, such a sign-post as Napo- 
 leon would have gloried in. If, as some men think, extra- 
 ordinary strength and persistence of effort are indicated by 
 an elephantine proboscis, then Bulwer must have been a 
 remarkable man. 
 
 For lack of space, we have said nothing of Bulwer's his- 
 tories. The startling vraisemblance with which he has re- 
 produced the ancient Roman times, and breathed life into 
 the skeletons of Herculaneum and Pompeii, as well as his 
 vivid, scholarl}-, and well-studied " Athens: its Rise and 
 Fall," show that had he concentrated his powers on some 
 great period of history, he might have produced a master- 
 piece worth}- to rank with the polished productions of Hume 
 and Macau la} r . 
 
 Had he concentrated his powers ! Here we have the 
 secret of Bulwer's failure to attain the highest renown as 
 a writer. Many-sidedness is fatal to fame. Had Bulwer 
 written his novels only, or only " My Novel " and " The 
 Caxtons," he would have excited less jealousy and de- 
 traction, and his reputation as an author would have been 
 greater. " It was said of Edouard Fournier : ' Get homme- 
 la sait tout ; il ne sait que cela, inais il le sait bien ; ' yet 
 Fournier remains an obscure litterateur." We live in an age 
 of specialism. Universality of knowledge, encyclopedic 
 culture, is held incompatible with solidity and depth ; and 
 the man who, scorning the principle of the division of labor, 
 
64 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 excels in a great variet}' of pursuits, must expect to hold 
 only a secondaiy place in the estimation of his fellow-men. 
 
 That Bulwer was aristocratic in his opinions and tastes, 
 is known to every reader of his works. In two of his latest 
 novels, the "Coming Race" and the "Parisians," which 
 abound in keen, rapier-like thrusts at the vices, follies, and 
 foibles of the times, he depicts the rottenness of French so- 
 ciet}', and tries to show that health and salvation can come 
 to it only through its aristocracy. But though "he ab- 
 horred the politics of destruction and disintegration," his son 
 declares that he was an ardent reformer wherever he rec- 
 ognized a rational promise of practical improvement. The 
 same tendency, we are told, induced in early life the dan- 
 dyism which made him scrupulously careful of the cut of his 
 coat and the fashion of his waistcoat. 
 
 It has long been the fashion in some circles to sneer at 
 Bulwer Lytton as a bundle of affectations, a mere dilet- 
 tante. " His soul," says an enemy, " is not brave enough 
 for truth." The fact probably is, that, as an apologist has 
 suggested, he was brave enough to face any truth, but his 
 policy held check upon his soul. He knew what a strong, 
 bull-headed thing the world is, and he loved popularity too 
 well to risk having it trampled down by hoofs. N. P. 
 Willis, in his " Pencillings," says of him : " I liked his man- 
 ners extremely. He ran up to Lady Blessington with the 
 joyous heartiness of a boy let out of school ; and the ' How 
 d' ye, Bulwer?' went round, as he shook hands with every- 
 body, in the style of welcome usually given to the 'best 
 fellow in the world.' ... I can imagine no st3*le of con- 
 versation calculated to be more agreeable than Bulwer's, 
 gay, quick, various, half-satirical, and always fresh and 
 different from even-body else." At the farewell dinner 
 
BULWER. 65 
 
 given to Macready upon his leaving the stage, at which 
 Bulwer was chairman, Charles Dickens thus spoke of the 
 author of the " Caxtons : " "In the path we both tread, I 
 have uniformly found him to be, from the first, the most 
 generous of men, quick to encourage, slow to disparage, 
 and ever anxious to assert the dignity of the order of which 
 he is so great an ornament, ... a man entirely without 
 the little grudging jealousies that so often disparage its 
 brightness " (that is, of literature) . There must have been 
 much that was noble in a man who could elicit such tributes 
 as these. They are the more creditable to him, because his 
 temperament was naturally sensitive and irritable, an ir- 
 ritability which the constant overtasking of his faculties and 
 his enforced confinement rendered morbid!}' acute. 
 
 Like Milton, Goethe, and many other authors, Bulwer 
 strangely mistook his strongest points, and set the highest 
 value upon his poorest works. He often declared that he 
 was content to rest his fame upon his " King Arthur," 
 which few of his warmest admirers have read ; and he was 
 greed}' of praise for his tyrical poetry, which won him little 
 credit in the Old World or the New. u I have alwa}-s 
 found," he sa3~s, " that one is never so successful as when 
 one is least sanguine. I fell into the deepest despondency 
 about ; Pompeii ' and * Eugene Aram,' and was certain, 
 nay, presumptuous, about c Devereux,' which is the least 
 generally popular of my writings." 
 
 The great lesson to be learned from this glance at Bul- 
 wer's life and writings is the precious value of persistency 
 of effort, the only lever by which genius or talent can 
 move the world. He teaches, as few men have taught, -the 
 might and worth that lie in determined struggle and in- 
 vincible perseverance. He did not carry the temple of 
 
 5 
 
66 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 fame by a coup de main, like Byron and others who 
 "woke up one morning and found themselves famous," 
 but by slow sap and siege, pursued, against many tempta- 
 tions to self-indulgent ease, through man} 7 weary years. 
 Bulwer worked his way to distinction, worked it, though 
 long tortured by ill-health ; worked it through failure, 
 sneers, and ridicule. That nimbleness of the pen which 
 enabled him to dash off a volume every year, was acquired 
 only by long and arduous effort and stud3 r . Writing 
 at first slowly and with great difficulty, he resolved, we 
 are told, to master the stubborn instrument of thought, and 
 mastered it. Some of his essays and what can be more 
 exquisite than those of " Caxtoniana " ? were rewritten at 
 least nine or ten times. Behold the results of his industr}', 
 over seventy volumes, or more than one for ever}* 3'ear 
 of his life ; and many of these upon subjects exacting long 
 and careful research ! And how many hours, think 3*ou, 
 he devoted to study, to reading and writing, to accomplish 
 these prodigious results ? Not more, he tells us, than three 
 hours a day ; and when Parliament was sitting, less than that. 
 " But then," he adds, and this is the lesson, perhaps, which 
 his life sounds in the ears of all literary laborers, " dur- 
 ing those hours I have given my whole attention to what I 
 icas about." 
 
ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 
 
 the famous men who have died in Europe during the 
 last quarter of a century, the great quadroon must 
 be considered one of the most remarkable. He was cer- 
 tainly, regarding his career from his own stand-point, one 
 of the luckiest men that ever lived. Excepting his death, 
 his life, to speak Hibernice, was one unbroken series of for- 
 tunate events from the cradle to the grave. Blessed with 
 an iron frame that could bear any strain of toil or dissipa- 
 tion, and a brain of lignum-vitae toughness as well as in- 
 exhaustible fertility, he went on coining his thoughts and 
 feelings into napoleons to an extent that lias scarcely a 
 parallel in modern literature, and reminds one of the feats 
 of magicians in the Arabian tales. Indeed, there was 
 something Oriental in the whole constitution of the man, 
 not only in the necromancy with which he conjured fabulous 
 sums from his inkstand, but in his gigantesque ph}*sique, 
 his tropical imagination, his superhuman bodily and mental 
 feats, his vast expenses, his profuse liberality, and his dar- 
 ing profligacies. That he did not break down under labors 
 at which Lope de Vega would have stood appalled, and to 
 the very verge of threescore and ten could snap his finger 
 at a ten-volume romance as a bagatelle, is a physiological 
 enigma which may challenge the genius of a Dalton for its 
 solution. 
 
 From his earliest childhood Dumas exhibited the natural 
 instincts of his African blood, an intense love of physical 
 
68 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 display, an extraordinary aptitude for bodily exercise, and 
 the love of an East Indian for everything that might be 
 viewed as a feat. The feeling was purely hereditary, his 
 father, the Republican General, having been notorious for 
 the same passion. In his Memoirs Dumas tells us that his 
 father had great physical strength, but though he was five 
 feet nine inches (French) high, had the hand and foot of a 
 woman. <; His foot, in particular, was the despair of his 
 mistresses, whose slippers he was rarely unable to wear. 
 At the epoch of his marriage his calf was exactly the size 
 of my mother's waist. His wild mode of living had devel- 
 oped his address and his strength in an extraordinary man- 
 ner. As to his muscular force, it had become proverbial in 
 the arm}'. More than once he amused himself in the riding- 
 school, while passing under a beam, by taking this beam 
 between his arms and lifting his horse off the ground be- 
 tween his legs." We are further told that if he found a 
 sergeant cheating the bivouac of its ennui by holding be- 
 fore his admiring inferiors a musket by the barrel, at full 
 stretch, the exhibition would rouse at once the lurking devil 
 of display in the dark-skinned General, who would proceed 
 at once to demonstrate his own superiority. Not content 
 to rival the subordinate, he would dwarf him into insignifi- 
 cance, quadrupling the difficulty b}~ a new and overwhelm- 
 ing combination, wherein a series of muskets were seen 
 to protrude in a direct and undeviating line of rigidity 
 from the iron fingers of the performer ! Martial feats were 
 achieved by this African Ajax which make the story of 
 Horatius Codes insipid. In a chance encounter with a troop 
 of Austrian cavalry in a narrow pass, General Dumas, 
 alone, threw his giant bulk " full man}' a rood" across the 
 path ; fired his duelling-pistols with the rapidity and death- 
 
ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 69 
 
 like accuracy of modern revolvers ; and, one horseman 
 still remaining unscathed, while, unfortunately, our hero 
 missed his sword at this critical moment, he thanks to 
 a fertile brain most dexterouslj' terminated the struggle 
 by whisking his adversary from his saddle, transferring him 
 crosswise to his own, backing out of the melee, and return- 
 ing triumphant and unmolested to his own outposts ! 
 At another time, commanding as a brigadier a look-out 
 party of four dragoons, he fell in unexpectedly with an 
 enemy's patrol composed of thirteen Tyrolese chasseurs 
 and a corporal. He instantly charged them, and pursued 
 them as they retreated into a small meadow surrounded by 
 a ditch wide enough to stop cavalry. Clearing the ditch on 
 his spirited horse, he found himself in an instant in the 
 midst of the thirteen chasseurs, who, stupefied by such har- 
 dihood, presented their arms and surrendered ! The con- 
 queror collected the thirteen rifles into a single bundle, 
 placed them on his saddle-bow, compelled the thirteen pris- 
 oners to move up to his four dragoons on the other side of 
 the ditch, and, having repassed the ditch with the last man, 
 brought his prisoners to headquarters. Credat Judceus 
 Apella! will be the exclamation of the American reader 
 at this exploit, which, as a British reviewer says, has no 
 parallel except that of the Irishman who, single-handed, 
 took four Frenchmen prisoners by surrounding them ! 
 
 Thus descended and thus organized, Dumas the son 
 began his giant labors, performing feats of literary execu- 
 tion that almost stagger credulity. Had he husbanded his 
 strength, instead of burning the candle at both ends, he 
 might have continued dashing off plays, novels, and his- 
 tories even into the nineties, and rivalled in the number of 
 his works the Roman author whose body was burned on a 
 
70 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 funeral-pile of his own productions. As it was, however, 
 he died at a good time, except that Paris was too deeply 
 absorbed in matters of graver and more pressing interest to 
 think of the dying romancer who had exhausted his ener- 
 gies in ministering to her amusement. Amid the shock of 
 arms, his death failed to create that sensation the prospect 
 of which would have been to him its chief compensation. 
 Yet he had the happiness to preserve his illusions almost to 
 the last ; and when he had sucked out of life all its sweet- 
 ness, and the crowd was already beginning to turn to other 
 idols, he passed awa}*, fancying that publishers and direct- 
 ors were still thronging his antechamber as in the good old 
 time, and that new romances from his pen were coveted as 
 greedily as when his genius was in its prime. 
 
 Of all the romancers of the nineteenth century, Dumas 
 will certainly rank in future histories of literature as the 
 most prolific, if not as the most charming. Since Lope de 
 Vega there has been no one who could compare with him 
 in rabbit-like fecundity ; Scott and Balzac were barren in 
 comparison, and " solitary horseman " James utterly dis- 
 tanced in the race of the pen. Writing at all hours, by 
 night and by day ; thinking always of to-morrow, never of 
 3*esterda}' or to-day ; reading nothing which he had written ; 
 with a thousand literary projects fermenting in his brain, 
 he reminds one of those blast-furnaces which have but one 
 day of repose in a year. While dashing off one novel, plans 
 of a dozen new ones were revolving in his brain ; as soon 
 as one romance or vaudeville had burst the shell, another 
 was hatched, and clamorous for disclosure. It is rarely that 
 even in France one meets with so great a writer espe- 
 cialty so consummate an artist as Dumas confessedly was 
 whose parturition is so easy. Generally, men of genius 
 
ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 71 
 
 are slow and laborious in composition, for the very reason 
 that the fertility of their minds supplies a superabundance 
 of thought, and their high standard of taste renders them 
 fastidious in the choice and perfection of their materials. 
 But Dumas, with all his marvellous fertility of invention, 
 was never troubled with the "embarrassment of riches;" 
 gestation followed instantly upon conception, and no envi- 
 ous Juno, to use Milton's phrase, "sat cross-legged over 
 the nativity of his intellectual offspring." Writing, some 
 years ago, to a Belgian journal to excuse himself for his 
 delay in furnishing the second of a promised series of ar- 
 ticles, he coolly sa}'s: "In that eight months I have 
 written something like thirty volumes." On reckoning 
 them up, however, he finds that he has understated the 
 number. " Bon ! " he exclaims, with exquisite sang- 
 froid ; "you see that it turns out there are thirty-seven 
 volumes instead of thirty : fespere queje suis beaujouer!" 
 Only Dumas could have written those volumes in that 
 time ; only Dumas could have spoken of the feat in that 
 tone of superb carelessness. " I have written something 
 like thirty volumes, and, on reckoning, it turns out that 
 I forgot seven, a mere bagatelle ; the affair of a couple of 
 idle mornings ! " 
 
 This fierce haste, this agile skimming of the streams of 
 fiction, the enemies of Dumas declare, argue but little for 
 depth. It is a marvellous exhibition of speed, but it is the 
 speed of the swallow : sixteen hours on the wing, a pro- 
 digious exertion of muscular power, but unfortunately dis- 
 played in the pursuit and capture of flies ! Doubtless this 
 is true of the great majority of Dumas' feats. Oblivion 
 will devour ninety-nine hundredths of his works ; but who 
 can doubt that the rest will escape the jaws of Time ? If all 
 
72 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 the others are melted in Time's crucible, we believe that 
 " Les Trois Mousquetaires," " Vingt Ans Apres," and 
 "Monte Christo" will come out of the melting-pot un- 
 scathed ; indeed, it may be doubted whether they will not 
 be read as long as any other fictions in the French lan- 
 guage. "In point of plot," says a competent English 
 critic, "these romances are on a par with 4 Don Quixote ' 
 and 4 Gil Bias ; ' in point of incident, situation, character, 
 animated narrative, and dialogue, the} 7 will rarely lose by 
 comparison with the author of l Waverle}*.' Compare, for 
 example, the scene in ' Les Trois Mousquetaires' be- 
 tween Buckingham and Anne of Austria, with the strik- 
 ingly analogous scene between Leicester and Elizabeth in 
 fc Kemlworth.' " 
 
 Many anecdotes are told illustrating the fearless self- 
 reliance, the prodigious activity, and the almost incredible 
 power of sustained exertion, of Dumas. One of his many 
 astonishing tours de force was the composition of a 
 complete five-act drama within eight daj's ; another, the 
 editorship of a daily journal, " Le Mousquetaire," with an 
 understanding with his subscribers that the contents should 
 be supplied wholly by his pen. Lamartine, who was one 
 of the subscribers, being asked, after this task had been 
 faithfully performed for two months, what he thought of 
 Dumas' journal, replied : "I have an opinion of human 
 things ; I have none on miracles : you are superhuman. 
 M}' opinion of 3*011 ? It is a note of exclamation ! People 
 have tried to discover perpetual motion. You have done 
 better ; j'ou have created perpetual astonishment." The 
 truth is, Dumas was an improvisator e. Nature, along 
 with a herculean frame and the other gifts which she lav- 
 ished so profusely on this enfant gdte^ had endowed him 
 
ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 73 
 
 with a prodigious memory and a power of assimilation 
 almost beyond belief. A striking instance of this latter 
 faculty is given by one of his secretaries, Albert AVolff, in 
 a recent number of the Independance Bdge. 1 4 One morning, 
 at breakfast," says the writer, "I spoke to him of Hum- 
 bold t's 4 Cosmos,' which had just appeared. He took the 
 book, and ran over it for ten minutes; some days after 
 there appeared in ' Monte Christo ' a scientific conversation, 
 in which Dumas spoke of science as if he had never been 
 occupied with anything else ! " It was this marvellous 
 faculty of entering into the skin of another man which was 
 the secret of his love for collaboration. A word dropped 
 accidentally in a conversation, a hint of a play or novel 
 given him b}' a vulgar workman, sufficed to fire his imagi- 
 nation ; his brain was a vast furnace which absorbed the 
 most useless materials, and transformed the coarse mineral 
 into fine metal. Every one brought to him whatever he 
 had found in his path, whether a pebble or a handful of 
 dirt, this one lead, that one iron or copper ; all went into 
 the furnace, which swallowed all, and returned in exchange 
 a romance, a drama, or a comed3'. From the merest 
 chance-mcdle3 r of dates, from the most insignificant fact, 
 the most unmeaning character, the artist could extract 
 colors for his palette, matter for his page, and amusement 
 for his reader. 
 
 The rapidity with which a dramatic seed-thought germi- 
 nated in his volcanic brain is well illustrated by an incident 
 related by M. Wolff. " One day after dinner," says the 
 writer, "I gave Dumas a hint of a piece in one act. It 
 was the merest hint, and a very poor one at that. The 
 next morning, after breakfast, the master said to me : c I 
 am going to read to you a little piece which I have written 
 
74 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 in the night.' And he read to me, in fact, one of his most 
 charming comedies in one act : it was the idea I had sug- 
 gested ; but how transformed and embellished by his mag- 
 ical genius ! He had preserved but the starting-point, the 
 little nothing, the match that served to set ablaze the 
 furnace whence came forth, at dawn, one of the most 
 spirituelle little plays of Dumas' repertory." 
 
 It was, of course, physically impossible that Dumas 
 should pen all his eight hundred volumes with his own 
 hand ; and hence the reports that he robbed his assistants 
 of the credit which belonged to them, that they were the 
 real authors of most of his publications, he having only 
 contributed a masterly touch here and there, with the 
 name on the title-page. One of these collaborateurs, M. 
 Maquet, claimed that he had had a large share in composing 
 the best of Dumas' works, and even convinced some critics 
 of the justness of this pretension. M. Wolff' flatly contra- 
 dicts all these charges, and shows that all the works of the 
 great quadroon are distinguished b}' an unmistakable in- 
 dividuality. It was Dumas who gave to their unfinished 
 pieces " the life and the movement which made their for- 
 tune ; ' and one has only to compare the works written 
 conjointly with him, with those which his co-laborers pro- 
 duced unaided, to see that, though the}' might have 
 moulded the limbs of his statues, he onty could breathe 
 into them a living soul. " Maquet," sa}-s a writer in the 
 4t Quarterly Review," " was avowedly employed by Dumas 
 for twentj r }*ears to hunt up subjects, supply accessories, or 
 to do for him what eminent portrait-painters are wont to 
 leave to pupils ; namel}', the preparation of the canvas, the 
 mixing of the colors, the rough outline of the figures, or the 
 drapery. That Maquet was capable of nothing better or 
 
ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 75 
 
 higher, was proved by his utter failure as a novelist when- 
 ever, both before and after the alleged partnership, he set 
 up for himself." 
 
 The charge of plagiarism is one that is brought against 
 authors upon pretexts so silty, that upon intelligent men it 
 makes little impression. It is perfectly understood by all 
 persons who are familiar with literary biography that orig- 
 inality, as some critics define it, is an impossibilitj-. The 
 greatest and most imperishable authors are not pure in- 
 ventors, but have all borrowed from their predecessors. 
 Shakspeare, Virgil, and Dante are debtors, to an incalcu- 
 lable extent, to the thoughts and verses of not only the 
 great poets, but also of the army of obscure and unknown 
 poets who preceded them. Homer could never have 
 written the Iliad but for the nameless crowd of rhapsodists, 
 who had wrought out a poetic language and depicted the 
 deeds of the heroes in rough popular songs. If any Greek 
 thinker was absolutel}' original, it was Socrates ; }'et his 
 great dialectical " elenchus," the conception of negative 
 argument, or the reducing of an opponent ad absurdum, 
 has been traced to Parmenides and Zeno. As Newton could 
 not have been Newton without the labors of Kepler ; as 
 Watt could not have invented the steam-engine if it had 
 not been half invented by numerous predecessors ; so the 
 poet is not a creator, but a simper of the thoughts and 
 emotions that delight us in his works, thoughts and emo- 
 tions derived from innumerable sources. Sir Joshua Rey- 
 nolds says, and says truly, that it is by being conversant 
 with the thoughts of others that we learn to invent, as by 
 reading the thoughts of others we learn to think. The 
 water which is poured into a dry pump brings up the deeper 
 water of the well. Virgil borrowed from Homer, Ennius, 
 
76 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 Lucretius, Catullus, Attius, Lucilius, Naevius, and many 
 other poets. The most striking incidents of the second 
 book of the JEneid the story of Sinon, the legend of the 
 wooden horse, the death of Priam, the untimely fate of 
 Ast3'anax, the loss of Creusa, and the subsequent fortunes 
 of Helen were derived from two Cyclic poems, the Sack 
 of Troy, and the little Iliad of Arctinus. The legend of 
 Laocoon was taken from the Alexandrian poet Euphorion. 
 Horace profoundly studied the epic, dramatic, and lyric 
 poets of Greece, and imitated, adapted, and paraphrased 
 their sentiments, epithets, and phrases, borrowing ideas and 
 inspiration from Homer, JEschyltis, Euripides, Sophocles, 
 and especiallj' from Pindar, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Sappho, 
 and Tyrtaeus. Pope Gregory the Great is said to have 
 burned the works of Varro, a writer of prodigious erudi- 
 tion, that Saint Augustine might escape from the charge 
 of plagiarism, the saint, who was a great admirer of his 
 learning, being deeply indebted to Varro's " Antiquitates 
 Divinarum Rerum " for much of his (Augustine's) great 
 work, " The City of God." Coleridge took the inspiration 
 and the framework of his noble " Hymn to Chamouni" from 
 Frederica Brun. Paley borrowed the well-known illustration 
 of the watch, with which he begins his "Natural Theology," 
 together with the plan and all the leading arguments of 
 that work, from Nieuwent3*t, a Dutch philosopher, whose 
 work, designed " to prove the existence and wisdom of 
 God from the works of creation," was published in Amster- 
 dam in 1700, and translated into English in 1718-1719. 
 The watch has even been traced to Matthew Hale. Milton 
 is now accused of borrowing much of his epic from another 
 Dutchman. Goldsmith's " Threnodia Augustalis," in mem- 
 ory of the mother of George III., informs the reader that 
 
ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 77 
 
 " Faith shall come, a pilgrim gray, 
 To bless the turf that wraps her clay ; 
 And calm Religion shall repair, 
 To dwell, a weeping hermit, there." 
 
 With the exception of a few words, these lines are copied 
 literally from a well-known ode of Collins. " Glory should 
 follow, not be run after," says Pliny the Younger. The 
 same thought appears in a well-known speech of Lord 
 Mansfield. Voltaire's " L'Ermite" in " Zadig" is a para- 
 phrase of Parnell's poem. Balzac incorporates into one 
 of his novels an entire chapter from Bulwer's " The Dis- 
 owned." Bulwer, again, took the germ of many of the 
 thoughts in "The Student" from Hazlitt, and " conveyed" 
 one of the finest scenes in "Paul Clifford" (that of the 
 trial, where the judge is the criminal's father) from Mrs. 
 Inchbald. In " Zanoni" he has gathered so many ideas 
 and sentiments from Plato, Schiller, Richter, and Goethe, 
 that some critics have called the work a compilation, and 
 almost intimated that if he were stripped of his pilferings, 
 he would " stand before the world like our first parents, 
 naked, but not ashamed." Nearly all the thought in Chal- 
 mers's famous "Astronomical Discourses" is said to have 
 been borrowed from Andrew Fuller's " The Gospel its own 
 Witness." Dr. Johnson's " London," written in imitation of 
 the Third Satire of Juvenal, owes some of its best passages 
 to a previous version by Oldham. Sheridan was indebted 
 to Farquhar for his "Trip to Scarborough," and Fielding's 
 Tom Jones and Blifil unconsciously suggested the Charles 
 Surface and Joseph Surface of the " School for Scandal." 
 Burgoyne, in " The Heiress," borrowed an image of Ari- 
 osto's and Rousseau's, and Byron, an unhesitating thief of 
 ideas, used it in his Monody on Sheridan : 
 
78 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 " Sighing that Nature formed but one such man, 
 And broke the die, in moulding Sheridan." 
 
 Scott copied a scene in " Kenilworth " from the "Egmont" 
 of Goethe. A writer in the "Atlantic Monthly" accuses 
 Owen Meredith of u conveying" in his "Lncile" not only 
 the situations, but whole pages of the most animated 
 epigrammatic dialogue, word for word (except where the 
 exigencies of rh\'me or metre exact a deviation from the 
 original), from " Lavinia," an old and half-forgotten tale by 
 George Sand. 
 
 In view of these facts it is useless to accuse Dumas of 
 borrowing his materials from a hundred originals ; the 
 question is, Did he borrow in forma pauperis, or did he 
 repay what he borrowed with compound interest? Did he 
 return the grain which went into his mental mill as corn, or 
 did his powerful and active mind grind it into flour? Does 
 what he appropriates from others become so mingled with his 
 own creations as to form with them a homogeneous whole, 
 or does it lie " like lumps of marl upon a barren moor, en- 
 cumbering what they cannot fertilize " ? In spite of all the 
 defences of Dumas, ingenious as they are, it seems to us 
 that while many of his literaiy appropriations are legitimate, 
 many others are unjustifiable larcenies. Great as he was 
 in everything, he was immense in plagiarism. In helping 
 himself to other men's literary property, he seems to have 
 had no delicacy or scruple. From the cool, unblushing 
 bodily appropriation of an entire tale or novel, to the 
 avowed reproduction of certain chapters, and the perpetual 
 unavowed transference of plots, scenes, images, and anec- 
 dotes to his own multiform pages, this Briareus of fiction 
 was the boldest, most unscrupulous, and most wholesale of 
 literary borrowers. It was said of Horace that, numerous 
 
ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 79 
 
 as are bis imitations of the Greek poets, they are never 
 mere plagiarisms or purple patches, but are made so com- 
 pletely his own, and are invested with so much noveltj' and 
 originality, that, when we compare them with the originals, 
 we derive additional gratification from the resemblance. 
 The very contrary is true of a large proportion of Dumas' 
 borrowings. He resembled not so much the broom-maker 
 who stole the materials, as the one who stole the brooms 
 ready made. He used to boast that, like Moliere, he re- 
 possessed himself of his property wherever he found it, 
 and if charged with theft, he simply laughed. In " Con- 
 science T Innocent," he took two entire chapters from a 
 novel of Conscience, the Flemish novelist, repaying him 
 for the theft by taking his name for that of his hero ; and 
 also u conveyed" half a volume from Michelet's " Peuple," 
 dedicating the book to his victim, and begging him not to 
 claim all that it contained as his own ! Of another romance, 
 " Le Pasteur d'Ashbourn," two entire volumes out of four 
 were " repossessed," with trifling alterations, from Augus- 
 tus Lafontaine, whose novel, "Family Pictures," the great 
 French romancer swallows in his own pages with as little 
 compunction as a boa-constrictor would swallow a goat! 
 When accused of the theft, he indignantly repudiates the 
 charge. Petty thieves, he protests, are guilty of stealing ; 
 not so with the Alexanders and Napoleons of letters, like 
 himself. Mighty conquerors, they invade the domain of 
 other authors, and annex to their own whole realms of 
 thought ! 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 
 
 The greatest clerks ben not the wisest men. CHAUCER. 
 
 r I "HE imperfection of human nature, even in its noblest 
 * specimens, is known to every student of biography. 
 Not only the brown ware of humanity, but its porcelain, 
 betrays strange rents and chips, cracks and flaws, which 
 are so much more glaring in the one case than in the other 
 as almost to reconcile the humbler ware to its unenamelled 
 condition. In every civilized country, and in every age of 
 civilization, we find philosophers without practical talent 
 or knowledge, poets without feeling, moralists without 
 principle, philanthropists who are domestic tyrants, and 
 scientists who are victims of the grossest delusions. Yet 
 these very weaknesses of great men are often the traits of 
 character which have the most interest for the student of 
 human nature ; and it is to supply the demand for such in- 
 formation that diaries, letters, chronicles, and loose scraps 
 of eveiy kind are ransacked by biographers, who consider 
 no personal details, however minute or homely, as value- 
 less tha will flash light upon character. These details, 
 which in narratives of great public affairs were once 
 thought to be beneath ' ' the dignity of history," are now 
 sought for more eagerly, and read with keener zest, than 
 the pages in which this disagreeable dignity is stiffl}* and 
 imperiously maintained. The Roman historian who dep- 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 81 
 
 recates the censure of his readers because he tells them 
 who it was that gave music-lessons to Epaminondas, and 
 informs them that the Theban general danced gracefully 
 and played finely on the pipe, would have no occasion to 
 apologize to-day. It is just such facts which the modern 
 reader prizes. That Julius Caesar was the greatest general 
 of his age; that he conquered Gaul, defeated Pompej*, 
 and became "the foremost man of all the world," are 
 facts undeniably of great moment ; but, as it has been well 
 said, "they are, after all, only the dry bones of history." 
 The general reader is much more interested to learn that he 
 was a tall, pale-faced, soft-skinned man, with dark, spark- 
 ling eyes, and subject to head-complaints and epilepsy ; 
 that he was bald, for which his soldiers jeered at him in 
 his G allic campaigns ; that he tried to hide this defect by 
 bringing forward his hair ; that of all the honors conferred 
 upon him by the Senate, that which most delighted his 
 heart was the right of continualh* wearing a laurel-wreath 
 around his brows, thus partiall}' concealing his defect; 
 that, though he shaved carefully, and was fond of jewels, 
 he was, in youth, at least, very careless of dress, in ref- 
 erence to which Sylla urged the aristocracy to beware of 
 that " ill-girt boy" (puerum male prcecinctitm) ; that he 
 spoke in the Senate with a shrill voice and used much 
 gesture, but with great gracefulness ; that in his military 
 expeditions he slept in chariots or on litters, making, as 
 Plutarch says, even his repose a kind of action ; and that, 
 being once, on a journey, compelled by a storm to seek shel- 
 ter in a poor man's hut which had but one chamber, and 
 that hardly large enough for one person, he bade Oppius 
 lie down, while he slept in the porch. So with the Caesar 
 of the nineteenth century. However keen the tingling inter- 
 
 6 
 
82 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 est with which we watch his victories, and whatever our 
 admiration of his Code and the other products of his genius, 
 it is the Napoleon of Las Cases and O'Meara, of Bour- 
 rienne and Madame de Remusat ; the Napoleon pictured by 
 Sir Neil Campbell in his cabinet at Fontainebieau, dressed 
 in his old green uniform, with gold epaulets, blue breeches, 
 and red- top boots, unshaven, uncombed, with particles of 
 snuff scattered profusely upon his upper lip and breast, 
 impatiently pacing the length of his apartment, and shrink- 
 ing in his soul from his fate, that most profoundly inter- 
 ests us. 
 
 To say that such details are mere tittle-tattle and gossip ; 
 that the taste for them is a petty taste, the taste of valets, 
 is simpl}* to denounce one of the instincts of our nature, 
 the instinct which, as Moore says, " leads us to contemplate 
 with pleasure a great mind in its undress, and to rejoice in 
 the discovery, so consoling to human pride, that even the 
 mightiest, in their moments of ease and weakness, re- 
 semble ourselves." But, in truth, these personal matters 
 are not mere tittle-tattle and gossip. Our interest in them 
 is due not simpty to the instinct of which Moore speaks, 
 but also to the consideration that they have often influ- 
 enced the destinies of nations and the world. Who does 
 not know that the history of the Roman empire might have 
 been wholly different from what it was if, at an intensely 
 critical period, the royal diadem of Egypt had not been 
 placed on the brows of a woman of the most marvellous 
 accomplishments, and mistress of the most witching arts 
 of pleasing, persuading, and seducing, a sorceress whose 
 chain 
 
 u Around two conquerors of the world was cast, 
 But, for a third too feeble, broke at last ; " 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 83 
 
 and that the religious Reformation in England might have 
 been delayed for many a year, though it could not have 
 been averted, had not the 
 
 " Gospel light first beamed from Bullen's eyes"? 
 
 The pedants who scorn what they call the ' ' gossip of 
 history" forget that character manifests itself in little 
 things, just as a sunbeam finds its way through a chink. 
 The jest-book of Tacitus ; the medicated drinks of Bacon, 
 and the entry in his diary " to have in mind and use the 
 Attorney-General's weakness ; " the guitar of Luther ; the 
 preparatory violin of Bourdaloue ; the inspiring damsons 
 of Dryden ; Voltaire's fifty cups of coffee a day ; Byron's 
 gin ; and the fanc}'-lighting scarlet curtains and rotten 
 apples of Schiller, all these are " biography in hierogly- 
 phics, the errata of genius that clear up the text." It is 
 doubtless true that the publication of such facts tends to 
 lessen hero-worship. It is not easy to preserve our rev- 
 erence for genius while spying out the secrets of its do- 
 mestic life. But what can be more significant than these 
 trifles, which sometimes illuminate character more than the 
 most elaborate portraiture? It is not in natural history 
 only that a Cuvier may find scope for his genius ; biog- 
 raph}' has its comparative anatomj*, and a saying or a sen- 
 timent enables a skilful hand to construct a skeleton. It 
 is for this reason, quite as much as from a love of gossip, 
 or because ' ' the defects of great men are the consolations 
 of dunces," that the accounts of personal traits are read 
 with such avidity in biographies ; that people dwell with 
 such a feeling of piquancy on the reputed gloominess of 
 Moliere, the fatness and laziness of Thomson, the silence 
 and shyness of Gray, Pope's irritability and after-dinner 
 
84 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 nap, Goldsmith's vanity and delight in low company', 
 Dtyden's fondness for snuff, Hobbes's habit of locking him- 
 self up to smoke and think all day with his shutters closed, 
 and of carrying in the head of his cane, when he walked, a 
 pen and an inkhorn, as well as a note-book in his pocket, 
 that he might not lose a thought, and the conversational 
 povert} T of Cowley, Hume, Descartes, Rousseau, Moliere, 
 and La Fontaine. 
 
 That subtle critic, Sainte-Beuve, declares that to become 
 acquainted with a man you must ask yourself a certain 
 number of questions, and answer them satisfactorily; 
 otherwise you cannot be sure of possessing him entirely. 
 Among these questions are the following : What was he in 
 his dealings with women, and in his feelings about money? 
 What was his regimen? What his daily manner of life? 
 What was his besetting vice or weakness ? for every man- 
 has one. There is not one of these questions, Sainte-Beuve 
 asserts, that is without its value in judging an author or 
 his book, unless it is a treatise on mathematics. To know, 
 therefore, that Tasso found inspiration in malmsey, Sheridan 
 in madeira, and Byron in gin, grog, and laudanum ; that 
 Burns sometimes saw two moons from the top of a whiskey 
 barrel ; that Coleridge had to be dogged by an unemployed 
 operative to keep him out of a druggist's shop ; that Bos- 
 well's scrofulous hero stood in the rain to do penance for 
 disobedience to his father, and had a trick of touching the 
 door-posts as he walked, and of picking up and treasuring 
 pieces of orange-peel ; that Robert Hall charged a lady to 
 inculcate in her children a belief in ghosts ; that Locke 
 carried a note-book in his pocket to catch the scintillations 
 of every common conversation ; that the little crooked 
 thing that asked questions, drank tea by stratagem, and 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 85 
 
 translated the Iliad on the backs of old letters, always kept 
 a candle burning at his bedside in order that, if a happy 
 thought struck him in the night, he might spring up at once 
 and note it down ; that Carlagnulus, as his friends endear- 
 ingly called the gentle, stammering Lamb, took too much 
 egg-flip hot, and found in tobacco "his morning comfort 
 and his evening curse ; " that Byron shaved his brow to 
 make it seem higher than it was, ate only a little potato 
 and vinegar at a literary dinner to give the impression 
 that he was abstemious, and afterward was found gorging 
 himself at a restaurant ; that Salmasius, the champion of 
 kings, shivered under the eye and scourge of his wife ; that 
 Sobieski, who saved Vienna from the Turks, brought rid- 
 icule, by a similar subjection, on his illustrious name; and 
 that Napoleon, who played for a world, could cheat one of 
 his own officers at whist, to know all these facts not only 
 gratifies a natural curiosity, and enhances the charm and 
 picturesqueness of biography, but gives us a deeper insight 
 into character than any other method but these unconscious 
 self-revelations will afford. Such personal details have 
 been compared to u those pen-and-ink sketches of Leech, 
 where the whole character of a man is condensed in a 
 single stroke of the pencil." What would we not give for a 
 few such items about Homer or Shakspeare? 
 
 Here let us note that the gossip of biography, if it tends 
 to lower some great men in our esteem, helps, on the other 
 hand, to exalt others. The private characters of authors, 
 while they sometimes destroy the illusion caused by their 
 books, sometimes also neutralize the repelling impressions 
 made by their works. The Count Joseph de Maistre, for 
 example, the great Ultramontanist and champion of the 
 Catholic Church, defends the Inquisition and proclaims 
 
86 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 the hangman the keystone of the social edifice. He 
 declares that the English Church is among Protestant 
 Churches like the orang-outang among apes. He deliber- 
 ately asserts that contempt of Locke is the beginning of 
 wisdom, and that the title of the " Essay on the Human 
 Understanding," which is dry as the sands of Libya, 
 without the smallest oasis, is a misnomer, and that the 
 true title would be "An Essay on the Understanding 
 of Locke." He pronounces Bacon a charlatan, and the 
 " Novum Organum" simply worthy of Bedlam. It would 
 be hard to name another writer of equal genius who con- 
 tinually startles his reader with so much dogmatism, il- 
 Hberality, prejudice, and arrogance in his principal works ; 
 and yet his letters to the members of his family, to the 
 Protestant lady Madame Huber, and others, letters 
 man}' passages of which Madame de Sevigne might have 
 envied, abound with evidences of a genial, loving nature, 
 of candor, liberality, and Christian charity. His corre- 
 spondence clearl}' shows that, as Sainte-Beuve has happily 
 suggested, his fierceness, his bursts of sarcasm, his raillery, 
 transpired, so to speak, only in the upper region of his in- 
 tellect; that they were the sallies, the flashes, and, as it 
 were, the thunderbolts of talent, of a talent too rich, su- 
 perabundant, and solitary. With what kindly pleasantry 
 he speaks in one of his letters of his attack on Bacon : 
 "We have boxed like two strong men in Fleet Street; 
 and if he has pulled out some of my hair, I am quite sure 
 that his wig is no longer in its place ! " 
 
 Having thus shown the interest and value of such details, 
 let us proceed to consider some of the most noteworthy 
 weaknesses and follies of great men. It is a popular notion 
 that such men are always modest ; but, in spite of the 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 87 
 
 assertions of " goody " books, the truth is that the great 
 majority of famous men have been not only conscious of 
 their ability, but ready to proclaim that consciousness to 
 the world. Cicero's chief weakness was a girlish vanity ; 
 he had an insatiable desire for human applause : }'et he 
 says that " if ever a man stood at the utmost remove, both 
 , by his natural disposition and by the conclusions of his 
 judgment and reason, from the vainglorious desire of the 
 praise of the vulgar, I think I may truly say that I 
 am that man." "I spoke with a divine power in the 
 Senate," he writes one day to Atticus ; " there was never 
 anything like it." Epicurus wrote to a great minister: 
 "If 3*011 seek glory, nothing will secure it so effectually 
 as the letter I am writing." William Rufus had the hardi- 
 hood to say that "If he had duties toward God, God 
 had also duties toward him." Not less irreverent and 
 egotistic was the thought of Alfonso the Wise, of Castile, 
 who, after drawing up his astronomical tables in accordance 
 with the scientific theories of the day, and placing the earth 
 in the centre of the universe, observed that, had he been 
 consulted, he should have placed the sun in the centre. 
 A famous French law} T er, Charles Dumoulin, used to write 
 at the top of his opinions : " I, who yield to no man, and 
 who have from no man anything to learn." Messieurs 
 Gaulmin, De Maussac, and Saumaise (the " Salmasins" of 
 Milton), being together in the Royal Library of Paris, "I 
 think," said Gaulmin, " that we three can match our heads 
 against all that there is learned in Europe." To this Salma- 
 sius replied : " Arid to all that is learned in Europe yourself 
 and M. de Maussac, and I can match my single head 
 against the whole of }*ou." Balzac (Jean-Louis de) was so 
 intensely vain that he always took off his hat when he 
 
88 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 spoke of himself, which, his contemporaries said, ac- 
 counted for his frequent colds in the head. Explaining 
 why he had not married, "I do not want," said he, " to 
 be obliged to count every da}' the hairs of my wife, in 
 order to feel quite sure that she is faithful." 
 
 Voiture was a vintner's son, and was so mortified by 
 anj" reminder of his early occupation that it is said that 
 wine, which cheered the heart of other men, sickened his. 
 Rousseau, "the self-torturing egotist," was a cobbler's son, 
 and was so ashamed of his humble birth that when his 
 honest father waited at the door of the theatre to congrat- 
 ulate him on the success of his first play, the son repulsed 
 his venerable parent with insult and contempt. When 
 Rousseau was in the full bloom of his celebrity in England 
 he went to see Garrick act. It was known that he was 
 to be there, and the theatre was crowded by persons who 
 desired to see him. Rousseau was greatly pleased. But 
 Mrs. Garrick, who sat by him, afterward reported to her 
 friends that she had never passed a more uncomfortable 
 evening ; for the recluse philosopher was so very anxious 
 to display himself, and hung so far forward over the front 
 of the box, that she was obliged to hold him by the skirt 
 of his coat, that he might not fall over into the pit. The 
 poet Akenside always regarded his lameness as an insup- 
 portable misfortune, since, having been caused by the fall 
 of a cleaver from one of the blocks of his father, a butcher, 
 it continually reminded him of his origin. The inscription 
 under Boileau's portrait, extolling his character with praise 
 " thick and slab," and expressing his superiority to Juvenal 
 and Horace, is unfortunately known to have been written 
 bj T Boileau. Chateaubriand's enormous vanity is well 
 known. Talleyrand said that the author of the " Genie du 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 89 
 
 Christianisme" lost his sense of bearing about the time 
 when the world left off talking of him. Let us remember, 
 however, to the credit of Chateaubriand, the fact we have 
 alread}' stated, that after Napoleon's murder of the Due 
 d'Enghien, he refused to serve the power that could do 
 an act so brutal. Queen Elizabeth, who had a hard face, 
 full of harsh lines, a hooked nose, thin lips, bad teeth, and 
 sandy hair, had an intense admiration for her own fancied 
 beauty. She was especially proud of her narrow hands, with 
 their long fingers. Before compa^' she was continually pull- 
 ing her gloves off and on, and her fingers were decorated with 
 rings and precious stones, in order to call attention to their 
 symmetry. Sir Robert Naunton tells us that her wonted 
 oath was " God's death;" but she had an abundance of 
 others, and swore with an energy becoming her character. 
 
 Milton loved to contemplate his own person, and four 
 iambics express his indignation because the engraver of 
 his portrait did not reach the epic poet's " ideal grace." 
 When a poet who had written a cantata for Handel had 
 the temerity to say that the music did not fitly express the 
 meaning of the words, " What ! " burst out the wrathful 
 composer, "my music not good? It is good, very good ! 
 I tell you that it is your words that are good for nothing ! 
 Go, and make better words for my music ! " It is said of 
 the late Richard Wagner that he expected every visitor 
 to his " Wahnfried" to offer him a tribute of well-coined 
 compliments ; and he would let you know, in a tone of 
 gentle reproof, if he thought that the tribute fell short 
 of what was due. He loved to dazzle ; and when he 
 travelled, the courier who preceded him, engaged, if possi- 
 ble, the suites of apartments in leading hotels which are 
 generally reserved for crowned heads. At his villa in 
 
90 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 Ba3'reuth he collected a vast number of fine things presented 
 to him by his admirers ; and among the tokens of their 
 affection was a huge mausoleum, in gra}' granite, which 
 adorned a corner of his garden, and bore his name carved 
 in deep letters. "I shall be buried there," Wagner used 
 to say. In speaking of this tomb, Wagner often referred 
 to a grandiose march which he had composed for his own 
 obsequies ; but it was not to be performed unless it could 
 be rehearsed during his lifetime. " And how can it be 
 rehearsed," he would say, "without overwhelming rm~ wife 
 and children with grief ? " Sir Peter Lety's vanity was so 
 noted that a malicious wag, wishing to see how large a 
 dose of flattery he would swallow, told him one day that 
 if the Author of mankind could have had the benefit of 
 his opinions upon beaut3*, we should all have been materially 
 improved in personal appearance. "For Gott, sare," 
 echoed Sir Peter, " I believe you're right ! " Sir Godfrey 
 Kneller, as he lay upon his death-bed, dreamed of distinc- 
 tions in heaven, and very complacently reported to his 
 friends the effect his name produced when announced at 
 the august portals: " As I approached, Saint Peter very 
 civilly asked my name. I said it was Kneller. I had no 
 sooner said so than Saint Mark, who was standing just 
 b}', turned toward me and said with a great deal of 
 sweetness, i What ! the famous Sir Godfrey Kneller, of 
 England?' 4 The very same, sir,' says I ; ; at your ser- 
 vice.' " The vanity of Ben Jonson is well known. When 
 he visited Drummond of Hawthornden, his free and easy 
 manners and swaggering conversation, his magisterial 
 opinions, broad jests, impatience of contradiction, and fond- 
 ness for the cup, disgusted the shy sonneteer, who set 
 down his private impression of old Ben in a few pithy 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 91 
 
 words, which have stuck like a barbed arrow in his 
 reputation. The dramatist was always bearding his cen- 
 sors in his plays, or in their prologues or epilogues. In 
 one of his prefaces he calls the public " that many- 
 mouthed, vulgar dog ; " and in some lines appended to the 
 41 Poetaster" he speaks of his as a 
 
 " most abstracted work, opposed 
 To the stuffed nostrils of the drunken rout." 
 
 Lawrence Sterne was an intense egotist. His first act on 
 entering a drawing-room was to take from, his pocket a 
 new volume of ''Tristram Shandy " and read from it to 
 the company. A similar weakness characterized Words- 
 worth, who was indifferent to every modern production but 
 his own poetry. When ' ' Rob Roy " was published, some 
 of Wordsworth's friends made a picnic, and proposed to 
 amuse themselves with the new novel. Wordsworth ac- 
 companied them to the spot, joined them at luncheon, and 
 then said : " Now, before you begin, I will read you a poem 
 of my own on Rob Roy. It will increase your pleasure 
 in the new book." Having recited the verses, " Well," he 
 said, " now I hope you will enjoy your book ; " and walked 
 off, to be seen no more during the afternoon. 
 
 After General Wolfe had been appointed to command 
 the expedition against Quebec, he was invited by Pitt to 
 dinner. In the course of the evening Wolfe broke forth 
 into a strain of gasconade. Drawing his sword, he rapped 
 the table with it, flourished it round the room, and talked 
 of the mighty things that sword was destined to achieve. 
 Pitt and his other guest, Lord Temple, sat aghast at this 
 vaingloriousness ; and when Wolfe had taken his leave, and 
 his carriage was heard to roll from the door ; Pitt lifted up 
 
92 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 his eyes and arms and exclaimed: "Good God! that I 
 should have intrusted the fate of the country and of the 
 administration to such hands ! " The heroic Nelson loved 
 to be called ' ; great and glorious " to his face ; and when 
 invited, in 1800, when bread was frightfully dear, to a din- 
 ner at which it was expected that the guests, in accordance 
 with a fashion that had consequently prevailed, would bring 
 their own bread, he made quite a scene, called his ser- 
 vant, and, before the whole company, gave him a shilling 
 and ordered him to go and buy a roll, saying aloud: " It 
 is hard that, after fighting my country's battles, I should 
 be grudged her bread." Napoleon, that colossus of fame, 
 could not bear any allusion to Caesar in his bulletins ; he 
 was even vain of his small foot. Buffon said that of the 
 great geniuses of modern times there were but five : " New- 
 ton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and myself." The 
 principal weakness of Charles Dickens was his overweening 
 vanity. Always craving for praise, present and posthu- 
 mous, he was continually supplicating his fellow-men for 
 their plaudite, and begging Mr. Forster to be sure and 
 put so and so into his biography. 
 
 Lord Erskine, the greatest of forensic advocates, had a 
 craving and ravenous vanit\ r . He talked so much of him- 
 self that he was nicknamed " Counsellor Ego." The editor 
 of the "Morning Chronicle" apologized for giving only a 
 partial report of one of Erskine's public-dinner speeches 
 by saying that his stock of capital I's was exhausted. 
 B}Ton, who once sat next to the famous advocate at dinner, 
 declared him intolerable when he got upon " Trial by 
 Jury " and repeated his public speeches. William Hazlitt 
 confessed that he felt the force of Horace's digito mon- 
 strari / that he liked to be pointed out in the street, or to 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 93 
 
 hear people ask, in Mr. Powell's court, " Which is Mr. 
 H " Your name, so repeated, leaves an echo like 
 
 music in your ear ; it stirs the blood like the sound of a 
 trumpet." Miss Martineau, speaking of the pity expressed 
 by men for women's vanity, says that when she went to 
 London she saw vanity in high places that was never 
 transcended by women in their lowlier sphere. As exam- 
 ples of this weakness she names Babbage and Jeffrey ; 
 Brougham, " wincing under a newspaper criticism, and 
 playing the fool among women;" Whewell "grasping at 
 praise for universal learning;" and Landseer "curled and 
 cravatted, and glancing round in anxiety about his recep- 
 tion." " There was Bulweron a sofa, sparkling and languish- 
 ing among a set of female votaries, he and they dizcned out, 
 perfumed, and presenting the nearest picture to a seraglio 
 to be seen on British ground. . . . There was Campbell, 
 the poet. . . . He darted out of our house and never came 
 again, because, after warning, he sat down in a room full 
 of people (all authors, as it happened) on a low chair of 
 my old aunt's which went very easily on castors, and which 
 carried him back to the wall and rebounded, of course 
 making everybod\ r laugh. Off went poor Campbell in a 
 huff; . . . and I was not very sorry, for his sentimentality 
 was too soft, and his craving for praise too morbid, to let 
 him be an agreeable companion." Vainer than any of these 
 eminent men who disgusted Miss Martineau, was the poet 
 Thomas Moore. He had an Argus e}*e for all compli- 
 mentary notices of himself, and he reproduces them in his 
 journals and letters ad nauseam. "There was a flourish- 
 ing speech of Shell's," he records, " about me in the Irish 
 papers ; he says I am the first poet of the da} T , and 
 join the beauty of the bird-of-paradise plumes to the 
 
94 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 strength of the eagle's wing." Again, at a fancy-ball 
 which Moore attended, u there was an allusion to me as 
 Erirfs matchless son; which brought down thunders of 
 applause and stares on me" Once, at an assembly at 
 Devonshire House, " the Duke," he says, " in coming to 
 the door to meet the Duke of Wellington, near whom I 
 stood, turned aside first to shake hands with me, though 
 the great captain's hand was ready stretched out." Theo- 
 dore Parker is said to have been influenced all his life by 
 the fact that his grandfather was distinguished as the man 
 who captured the first musket in the War of Independence, 
 and by his pride in the distinction. His musket stood at 
 the door of his stud}', and ' ' probably suggested the idea 
 of the pistol which graced his pulpit cushion and added 
 such effect to his pulpit eloquence." 
 
 Fondness for dress has been one of the commonest, 
 and perhaps one of the most pardonable, weaknesses of 
 great men. The slender, spindle-shanked Aristotle wore 
 several rings on his philosophical fingers, and shaved him.- 
 self and trimmed his hair with great care. He loved 
 rich apparel also, and had his shoes adorned with precious 
 materials. Maecenas, an egregious dand}', is said to have 
 ruled the Roman empire with rings on his fingers. Sir 
 Walter Raleigh was one of the greatest exquisites of mod- 
 ern times. On court da}*s he wore shoes so gorgeously 
 and heavily adorned with precious stones that he could 
 scarcely walk in them. Their value is said to have ex- 
 ceeded six thousand guineas ; he had also a suit of armor 
 of solid silver, with jewelled sword and belt, the whole of 
 enormous value. When Ha\*dn was about sitting down 
 to compose, he always dressed himself with the utmost 
 care, had his hair nicely powdered, and put on his court- 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 95 
 
 suit. Frederic the Great had given him a diamond ring ; 
 and the great composer declared that if he began without 
 it, he could not summon the ghost of an idea. Haydn 
 could write only on the finest paper, and was as particular 
 in forming his notes as if he had been engraving them on 
 copper-plate. The great Descartes, who revolutionized 
 metaphysics, was fastidious about his wigs, keeping on 
 hand four at a time ; and Sir Richard Steele never spent 
 less than forty guineas upon one of his large black peri- 
 wigs. Buffon used to put on lace ruffles and cuffs when he 
 wrote. When Honore de Balzac sat down for a spell of 
 hard work, he always wore a monk's cowl and robe. Rich- 
 ardson the novelist could write only in a laced suit and 
 with a diamond on his finger. Wesle}-, busy as he was, 
 was remarkable for the studied neatness of his appearance 
 amid all his long journeyings and strange adventures. Ers- 
 kine never came before any of the crowded audiences which 
 he kept waiting for him in the court-room, except with a 
 fine wig and a pair of new and bright yellow gloves. Wil- 
 liam Pinkney, the giant of the American Bar, was even 
 more attentive than Erskine to the details of his personal 
 appearance. He changed his toilet twice a day, and even 
 used cosmetics to smooth the roughnesses of his face. 
 Bacon, who was luxurious in all his tastes, was fond of fine 
 apparel. John Foster used to preach in a blue coat with 
 brass buttons, and top-boots, but this was from eccen- 
 tricity, not from fondness for display. 
 
 Goldsmith, when he sought to take orders in Ireland, 
 tried to dazzle his bishop by a pair of scarlet breeches. 
 When he was stud3*ing medicine in Edinburgh he wore 
 " rich sky-blue satin," " fine sky-blue shalloon," and silver 
 hat-lace. Before Johnson, Reynolds, and Garrick he 
 
96 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 strutted about, bragging of his bloom-colored coat; and 
 when his reputation had been made by the " Traveller " 
 and the " Deserted Village," he blazed forth in purple silk 
 small-clothes, a scarlet great-coat, and a physician's wig. 
 He carried a gold-headed cane, and a sword hung by his 
 side, a weapon so disproportioued to his diminutive 
 stature that a coxcomb, who passed him in the Strand, 
 called to his companion " to look at that fly icith a long 
 pin stuck through it" It is said that Napoleon had a 
 weakness for white kerseymere breeches, upon which, when 
 engrossed with the cares of State, he would continually 
 spill ink, grav}*, or coffee, a mishap which occurred so 
 often that he had to pay the imperial tailor over twenty 
 thousand francs a year ! It is hard to believe that Charles 
 James Fox, who was such a sloven in manhood, was a dandy 
 in his youth ; yet Rogers and others declare that, when 
 a young man, he wore a little odd French hat, and shoes 
 with red heels, and that he and Lord Carlisle once travelled 
 from Paris to Lyons for the express purpose of buying 
 waistcoats, and talked of nothing else during the whole 
 journe}'. The same Fox, during a session of Parliament, 
 when, at one o'clock in the afternoon, his friends would call 
 and find him in bed, or lounging about in his night-shirt, 
 would look extremely unkempt and dirty. " A conversa- 
 tion would follow ; plans would be arranged ; and by and 
 by, his toilet done, and a cup of tea swallowed, Fox would 
 stroll clown, fresh and vigorous, toward St. Stephen's, to 
 speak as no other orator ever spoke since Demosthenes." 
 The foppishness of Chatham, scrupulously crowning him- 
 self with his best wig when intending to harangue the 
 House of Lords ; of Horace Walpole, wearing a cravat of 
 Gibbons's carvings ; the bare throat of Byron ; the Arme- 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 97 
 
 man dress of Rousseau ; the scarlet and gold of Voltaire ; 
 the prudent carefulness with which Caesar scratched his 
 head, so as not to disturb the locks arranged over the bald 
 place, are known to all. 
 
 Disraeli, in his early Parliamentary da\*s, dressed in the 
 extremest style of foppery. An observer describes him as 
 "having been arrayed in a bottle-green frock-coat and a 
 waistcoat of white, of the Dick Swiveller pattern, the front 
 of which exhibited a net-work of glittering chains ; large 
 fancy-pattern pantaloons and a black tie, above which no 
 shirt-collar was visible, completed the outward man. He 
 had a countenance lividly pale, set out by a pair of in- 
 tensely black eyes, and a broad but not very high forehead, 
 overhung by clustering ringlets of coal-black hair, which, 
 combed away from the right temple, fell in bunches of well- 
 oiled small ringlets over his left cheek." Disraeli's manner 
 was in keeping with his personal appearance ; it was in- 
 tensely theatric, his gestures being wild and extravagant. 
 Of Richard Wagner's dress and manner, it has been said 
 that to call upon him for the first time, without having been 
 informed of his peculiarities, was to experience a mild 
 shock. Entering the room where his visitor was seated, 
 he would throw the door wide open before him, as if it 
 were fit that his approach should be heralded like that of a 
 king ; and he would stand for a moment on the threshold, 
 
 a curious medieval figure in a frame. The mystified vis- 
 itor, rising from his seat, would behold a man richly clad 
 in a costume of velvet and satin, like that of the early 
 Tudor period, and wearing a bonnet like that seen in por- 
 traits of Henry VI. and of his three successors. Wagner 
 had his composing costume, that of a Meistersinger, 
 
 or rather several costumes ; for he would vary his attire, 
 
 7 
 
98 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 not only according to his own moods, but according to the 
 faces of the people who came to see him. He would not 
 commit the incongruitj' of sitting down in scarlet to con- 
 verse with a man whose features denoted that he was in "a 
 brown study ; " he would prefer to leave such a one for an 
 Augenblick, while he hurried out to slip on some "arrange- 
 ment " in subfusc hues. It should be added, however, that 
 dress was a real help to Wagner in composition. Genius 
 often has recourse to mechanical appliances for stimulating 
 thought ; and in his slashed doublets there was nothing 
 more ridiculous than in Handel's bag-wig and ruffles, or 
 Ha\*dn's finger-ring. 
 
 Great men have probably been as often distinguished for 
 slovenliness as for dandyism ; and of the two extremes the 
 former is the less pardonable, especially when it is so 
 offensive as in the case of the saintly Thomas a Becket, 
 who, we are told, " swarmed with vermin." Frederic the 
 Great had a kingly contempt for " the linen decencies of 
 life." He had but one fine gala-dress, which lasted him all 
 his life. The rest of his wardrobe consisted of two or three 
 old coats fit for a second-hand clothes-shop, yellow waist- 
 coats soiled with snuff, and huge boots embrowned by time. 
 If one of his courtiers was fond of dress, he would fling oil 
 over his richest suit. Lad}' M.a.ry Wortley Montagu's neg- 
 lect of the graces of dress furnished Pope and Horace Wai- 
 pole with materials for coarse satire. Thomson the poet 
 was one of the most untidy of mortals, and kept his mone}' 
 strewed about among his clothes and papers. On one 
 occasion a friend discovered bank-notes bundled up with 
 the poet's old stockings. Dr. Johnson, who exacted the 
 utmost propriet}' of appearance in others, the same 
 Johnson who once visited Goldsmith in a new suit of clothes, 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 99 
 
 in order to teach him, who, he said, " was a great sloven," 
 to be less careless about his dress ; the same Johnson 
 who, as Mrs. Piozzi tells us, in spite of his miserable eye- 
 sight, noticed the misplacement even of a ribbon in a lady's 
 dress, was himself a sloven. In answer to the declama- 
 tions of Puritans and Quakers against showy decorations of 
 the human figure, he once exclaimed: " Oh! let us not be 
 found, when the Master calls us, ripping the lace off our 
 waistcoats, but the spirit of contention from our souls and 
 tongues. Alas ! sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a 
 green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a gray 
 one." Coleridge dressed so shabbily that it is said Dorothy 
 Wordsworth, on his first visit to the Lake country, mistook 
 him for the Southeys' groom or gardener. The Southeys had 
 desired to send a message to Wordsworth, and Coleridge, 
 who was their guest, volunteered to carry it. He met Miss 
 Wordsworth (who dressed as carelessly as himself) at the 
 back door, and did his errand, believing her to be the cook. 
 She, mistaking him for a servant too, offered him some 
 beer. The mistakes were not explained until Coleridge was 
 formally introduced to the lady later in the day. 
 
 Sir Isaac Newton was utterl}* neglectful of care in dress. 
 When at Cambridge, he would sometimes go to dine at 
 Trinity Hall with shoes down at the heels, stockings 
 untied, surplice on, and his hair scarcely combed. Pro- 
 fessor Wilson would go to his class-room in Edinburgh, with 
 a week's beard on his chin, to lecture on moral philosoph}*. 
 Beethoven often ignored the barber, and once let his beard 
 grow till it was two feet long. His hair was equally 
 neglected, becoming so thick and stiff that he could hardly 
 keep his hat on, while his shaggy clothes made him look 
 like a bear. 
 
100 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 Great minds, that have been singularly free from other 
 weaknesses, have boasted of their descent, and shown a 
 strange love of titles, stars, ribbons, and garters. Occa- 
 sionally we find that an eminent man thinks it better to be 
 the founder of a great house than its disreputable survivor. 
 When a Marshal of France, Duke of Abrantes, and Gov- 
 ernor of Paris, was taunted with the obscurity of his birth, 
 he proudly replied: " Moi, je suis mon ancetre" (T am my 
 own ancestor). Lord Chesterfield, not subscribing to the 
 saying of his maternal grandfather, Lord Halifax, that " the 
 contempt of scutcheons is as much a disease of this age as 
 the over-valuing them was in former times/' delighted in 
 ridiculing pedigree and heralds. He wrote against birth in 
 the u World," and hung up among his ancestors two por- 
 traits, "Adam de Stanhope" and "Eve de Stanhope." 
 The same philosophic indifference to the distinction of birth 
 was manifested by Svdne} r Smith, who, in reference to 
 Lockhart's attempt to make out an irreproachable pedigree 
 for Sir Walter Scott, said : " When Lady Lansdowne asked 
 me about my grandfather, I told her he disappeared about 
 the time of the assizes, and we asked no questions." But 
 such a contempt for blue blood is rare even among men who 
 in other things are the ver\~ t3 r pes of good sense. Julius 
 Caesar Scaliger, one of the vainest of learned men, claimed 
 to be descended from a princely house ; and his son Joseph 
 glorified the family so highly in a short biographic notice, 
 that their antagonist, Scioppius, called " the grammatical 
 cur," professed to have counted 499 lies in a work of about 
 fifteen pages. The Emperor Maximilian had a mania for 
 being traced to Noah. Sages remonstrated, and coun- 
 sellors coaxed in vain, till he was cured by his cook, who 
 said : " As it is, I reverence 3*011 as a kind of god ; but if 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT; 'MEN. l^ 
 
 3*ou insist on being derived from Noah, I must hail }*our 
 majesty as a cousin." The rugged Puritan, Cromwell, 
 whose massive and masculine mind had no superior in his 
 day, longed to be called king. Macaulay's asthmatic hero, 
 William III., took a childish pleasure in wearing the 
 crown of the kingdom and the royal robes. Louis Philippe 
 was greatly dissatisfied because he was not permitted to 
 style himself Louis XIX., and to be hailed king of 
 France and Navarre, instead of simply king of France. 
 His ruffled feelings were smoothed somewhat when the 
 Queen of England conferred on him the Order of the Garter. 
 Morgagni, the anatomist, could not forgive a professional 
 brother who had quoted from him without prefixing to his 
 name the address illustrissime. In one of his medical 
 works the celebrated Haller cited a large number of au- 
 thors worth}' of reference, and indicated the comparative 
 value of their respective works by the presence or absence 
 of one or more stars. There is no telling, says a distin- 
 guished plrysician, how many authors were amazed and irri- 
 tated because no stars were attached to their names. 
 
 Sir William Hamilton spent a great deal of time and 
 pains in establishing his claim to a baronetcy. Writing 
 to his mother, he says : U I wish 3*011 would give me a gen- 
 teeler appellation on the back of 3*our next letter ; " and ends 
 with, "Your affectionate son, W. S. Hamilton, Esq. Re- 
 member that." Finding by her next letter that his mother 
 did not " remember that," he threatens, if the neglect be 
 repeated, to direct his letters to her, Elizabeth Hamilton, 
 without any ceremony. Perhaps if he had devoted the 
 time thus wasted to metaphysical study, the philosophy of 
 the Unconditioned Infinite, or Absolute, would not have 
 fallen into such a maze of contradiction as it did. Lord 
 
PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 Byron had no patience with the magistrate who forgot to 
 give him his title of peer of England. Even when titles have 
 been scorned by those to whom they have been offered, the 
 refusal has often betrayed as much vanity as has prompted 
 others to parade them. This affected humility reminds 
 one of the saying of Alexander when some one in his hear- 
 ing praised Antipater, because he wore black, while his 
 colleagues wore purple: "Yes, but Antipater is all purple 
 within." Baron Steuben probably did not affect the 
 deadly fear he manifested lest some American college 
 should make him a Doctor of Laws. Having to pass 
 through a college town in which Lafayette had been thus 
 dubiously honored, the old warrior halted his men and 
 said : ' ' You shall spur de horse vel, and ride troo de town 
 like de debbil ; for if dey catch }"ou, de} r make one 
 doctor of you." When Pope Alexander VI., in order to 
 silence Savonarola, offered him the archbishopric of 
 Florence, with the prospect of a cardinal's (red) hat, the 
 monk was no doubt sincerely indignant; but there is 
 a shade of vainglory in his reply, thundered from the 
 pulpit: 41 I will have no hat but that of the martyr, red 
 with my own blood ! " What Bacon so finely says of noble 
 birth, applies to all titles and distinctions: " Nobilitatem 
 nemo contemnit, nisi cui abest ; nemo jactitat, nisi cui 
 nihil aliud est quo glorietur." A recent writer observes that 
 " the virtue of some persons is unpleasantly ferocious. One 
 cannot help regretting, for instance, that Bentham, when 
 the Czar sent him a diamond ring, did not decline it if 
 he must have declined it with less of a flourish of 
 trumpets. There is something that jars on one's mind 
 in that message about its not being his mission to receive 
 diamond rings from emperors, but to teach nations the 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 103 
 
 lessons of wisdom, or words much to that effect. Who 
 had ever supposed that it was his mission to receive 
 diamond rings from anybody?" 
 
 A volume would not suffice to enumerate all the varieties 
 of self-indulgence to which great men have been addicted, 
 especially in regard to things edible and potable. Here 
 the extremes of humanity meet ; the weaknesses of great 
 men showing little difference from those of little men. 
 Among the ancients, Plato, Socrates, Aristophanes, Euri- 
 pides, Alcaeus, and Horace drank wine freely ; and we are 
 told by the last-named that even the austere old Cato is re- 
 lated to have often warmed under the influence of wine : 
 
 " Narratur et prisci Catonis 
 Sacpe mero caluisse virtus." 
 
 Tasso, in spite of the remonstrances of his physicians, aggra- 
 vated his mental irritability by his potations. Goethe was 
 fond of wine, and drank daily his two or three bottles. He 
 sat a long while over his glass, chatting gayly, and then 
 either received friends, or went to the theatre, where at six 
 a glass of punch was brought to him. Schiller, who was a 
 night-worker, wrote at one time under the influence of a 
 bottle of Rhenish and strong coffee, at another time under 
 that of champagne, with which he would lock himself up 
 in the evening, and stimulate his jaded brain during the 
 hours of the night. He used also to munch bread continually 
 while composing. Ben Jonson was a hard drinker, and 
 it is estimated that every line of his poetry cost him a 
 cup of sack. Canary was his favorite drink ; after drench- 
 ing his brain freely with which, he would, according to 
 Aubrey, " tumble home to bed," and, " when he had 
 thoroughly perspired, would then to study." James I. 
 
104 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 gave him, besides his salary as poet-laureate, a tierce 
 of his favorite wine, his fondness for which won for him, 
 at last, the nickname of " Canary-bird." Aubrey says 
 of Prynne's "manner of studie," that u about every three 
 hours his man was to bring him a roll and a pott of ale, 
 to refocillate his wasted spirits ; so he studied and drank, 
 and they maintained him till night, when he made a good 
 supper." The poet Savage often spent in a night's revelry 
 the borrowed money which would have saved him from 
 privation and annoyance for a week. Churchill drank 
 stimulants to excess, and Hogarth has satirized his love 
 of porter by picturing him as a bear with a mug of that 
 liquor in its paw. Adclison bounded his walk at Holland 
 House by a bottle of port at each end, and sometimes 
 lingered so long over the bottle that he was compelled 
 to apologize for his writing, rendered illegible by his shaky 
 hand. The only excuses that can be given for his intem- 
 perance are, that he was of a cold temperament, and that 
 he was married to a middle-aged shrew who looked upon 
 him as a being utterty beneath her, and hardly showed him 
 more respect than she showed to her footman. 
 
 Pitt and Fox both drank wine to excess. The favorite 
 stimulant of the former was port w r ine ; it was perhaps 
 in his case a needful tonic, and his head was so strong 
 that neither the public business nor his public speeches 
 often suffered from the indulgence. Only once did his 
 friends discover an excess of vinous excitation in his 
 oratory, and that was when he replied one evening after 
 dinner to a personal attack upon himself. Next day the 
 clerk assistant of the House told the Speaker that Pitt's 
 extravagance of the night before had given him a violent 
 headache. On hearing this, Pitt laughingly declared it 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 105 
 
 to be an excellent arrangement: "I had the wine, and 
 the clerk got the headache." Sheridan was fond of claret, 
 and we owe the completion of one of his most brilliant 
 plays, the "Critic," to the inspiration it afforded. The 
 piece had been advertised for performance at Drury Lane 
 Theatre, but had not been finished, much less rehearsed. 
 The managers were impatient, but their importunities were 
 unavailing. Finally, by a clever trick, the rest of the play 
 was coaxed out of him at the eleventh hour. After dinner 
 Sheridan was decoyed into the managers' room, and then 
 locked up in company with writing materials, a good fire, 
 a tray of sandwiches, and two bottles of claret ; his per- 
 secutors whispering through the key-hole their intention 
 to keep him prisoner till he should have finished both 
 the wine and the farce. Under this lene tormentum he 
 scribbled away for into the night, finished the farce, 
 and wound up the night with a fresh carousal among his 
 colleagues. Blackstone wrote his " Commentaries " under 
 the influence of successive bottles of that wine (port) 
 which, Bentley said, claret would be if it could. The 
 frigid, cautious author of the u Pleasures of Hope " was, 
 according to Barry Cornwall, '* very vivacious, not to say 
 riotous, in his cups." Rogers, after going to see his statue, 
 observed : " It is the first time that I have seen him stand 
 straight for many years." Porson, the giant of classic 
 lore, " the greatest philosopher of the age," as Macatilay 
 calls him, was often tipsy with drink. Byron, who saw 
 him at Cambridge, says: "I can never recollect him ex- 
 cept as drunk or brutal, and generally both, I mean in 
 an evening. ... He used to recite, or rather vomit, pages 
 of all languages, and could hiccough Greek like a Helot ; 
 and certainly Sparta never shocked her children with a 
 
106 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 grosser exhibition than this man's intoxication." "I met 
 him at various hours," says Rogers, the poet, " when he got 
 completely drunk. He would not scruple to return to the 
 dining-room, after the company had left it, pour into a 
 tumbler the drops remaining in the wine-glasses, and drink 
 off the omnium-gatherum." Once at a supper-party he 
 sat till the bottles were drained and the lights went out ; 
 when he rose and muttered, ovSe roSe ovSe T aAAo, the 
 point of which persons familiar with Greek will at once 
 perceive. Fielding, Steele, and Sterne sat too long over 
 their cups. Byron sought his inspiration in a bottle of 
 Hollands. Poor Keats, stung by the ridicule of the envious, 
 flew to dissipation for relief. For six months, if we may 
 believe Haydon, the painter, he was hardly ever sober; 
 " and to show 3*011 what a man of genius does when his 
 passions are roused, he told me that he once covered his 
 tongue and throat, as far as he could reach, with cayenne 
 pepper, in order to enjoy 'the delicious coolness of claret 
 in all its glory.' The last time I saw him was at Hamp- 
 stead, lying on his back in a white bed, helpless, irritable, 
 and hectic. ... He muttered, as I stood by him, that 
 if he did not recover, he would ' cut his throat .' . . . 
 Poor dear Keats ! " 
 
 Instead of in wine and stronger alcoholic stimulants, 
 many eminent men have sought refreshment or inspiration 
 in tea and coffee, beverages which the amiable William 
 Cobbett denounces as " slops." Voltaire was excessively 
 fond of coffee, and in his old age drank fifty cups a day, 
 which greatly hurt his digestion, and hastened his death. 
 The abstemious Balzac was fond of the same drink, though 
 it seems to have acted upon his temperament very much as 
 laudanum upon others. When he sat down at his desk, 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 107 
 
 which was at midnight, his servant used to place coffee 
 within his reach ; and upon this he worked till his full brain 
 would drive his starved and almost sleepless bod}" into such 
 self- forgetful ness that he often found himself at daybreak, 
 bare-headed and in dressing-gown and slippers, in the 
 Place du Carrousel, not knowing how he came there, and 
 miles from home. Sir James Mackintosh had such a fond- 
 ness for coffee that he went so far as to say that the powers 
 of a man's mind would generally be found to be propor- 
 tioned to the amount of that stimulant he drank. The 
 illustrious Kant always took a single cup of tea and half a 
 pipe after rising at five in the morning, and over them laid 
 out his plan of work for the day. Sir James Scarlett once 
 saw Porson drink sixteen cups of tea, one after another, at 
 Baynes's chambers in Gray's Inn ; but this was an innocent 
 beverage, compared with others that he indulged in. Dr. 
 Parr, having been asked, after he had drunk a dozen cups 
 of tea at the table of a lady friend, if he would have an- 
 other, replied, in the language of Catullus : " Non possum 
 tecum vivere, nee sine te." It was said of Dr. Johnson 
 that his tea-kettle was^ never diy. The teapot he generall}' 
 used was a huge one, holding not less than three quarts. 
 It was of old Oriental porcelain, painted and gilded, and 
 from its capacity was well suited to the demands of one 
 " whose kettle had no time to cool, who with tea solaced 
 the midnight hour, and with tea welcomed the morn." Tea 
 to him was like sack toFalstaff; it " ascended him into the 
 brain," made it " apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nim- 
 ble, fiery, and delectable shapes ; " and his learning " was a 
 mere hoard, kept by a devil," till tea unlocked it and " set 
 it in act and use." But of all tea-drinkers, William Hazlitt, 
 the writer and critic, was the most intemperate. He would, 
 
108 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 according to Douglas Jerrolcl, sit over his breakfast, of 
 exceedingly strong black tea and a toasted French roll, 
 four or live hours, silent, motionless, and self-absorbed, 
 like a Turk over his opium-pouch. It was the only stimu- 
 lant or luxury he ever took, and he was very fastidious 
 about its quality, using always the most expensive kind, 
 and consuming, when he lived alone, about a pound a week. 
 He always made his tea himself, half filling the teapot 
 with tea, pouring boiling water upon it, and then almost 
 immediately pouring it out, and mingling with it a great 
 quantity of sugar and cream. Such a brewage must have 
 been delicious, indeed Jerrold says there was fascination 
 in it, but as a dally stimulant it must have been most 
 deleterious ; and as Hazlitt died from a disease of the 
 digestive organs, it probabty hastened his death. " Te 
 teneam, moriens," he might have said, " deficiente manu." 
 Cowpers fondness for kt the cup that cheers, but not inebri- 
 ates," has given us one of the most pleasing pictures in the 
 ^ Task." 
 
 Illustrious as is the roll of tipplers, it is hardly longer 
 than that of the illustrious bons vivants and gluttons. A 
 celebrated French lady had the courage to say that she 
 would commit a baseness for the sake of fried potatoes. 
 An English king died of eating lampreys, who was one of 
 the most noted statesmen and warriors of his age. Philip 
 II. of Spain ruined his digestion by excessive indulgence 
 in pastry. Louis XIV. had che appetite of an ogre ; and 
 so had Anne of Austria, who, according to a female writer 
 of royal blood, ate in a manner perfectly frightful four 
 times a day. To her voracity some authorities have as- 
 cribed the disease of which she died. The Empress Eliza- 
 beth of Russia was both a glutton and a drunkard. 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 109 
 
 Ariosto bad a ravenous appetite for turnips. Handel ate 
 enormously, and when he dined at a tavern, always ordered 
 dinner for three. When told that the meal would be ready 
 as soon as the company should arrive, he would exclaim : 
 " Den pring up de dinner prestissimo ; I am de company." 
 Beethoven, who was far from epicurean in his tastes, yet 
 had strange whims at the table and over his food. He 
 always made his coffee himself, in a glass apparatus, and 
 religiously counted sixty beans to each cup. Soup was his 
 favorite dish ; but it was hard to make it so as to please 
 him, and he said of a servant who had told him a falsehood, 
 that she was not pure at heart, and therefore could not 
 make good soup. He punished his cook for the staleness 
 of some eggs by throwing the whole batch at her one by 
 one. Fontcnelle thought strawberries were the most de- 
 licious of all edibles, and during his last illness was con- 
 stantly exclaiming: " If I can but reach the season of 
 strawberries ! " Goethe had an immense appetite, and ate 
 more than most men even on the days when he complained 
 of not being hungry. It should be added, however, that 
 except a cup of chocolate at eleven, he took no refreshment 
 till two o'clock. Bolingbroke was a moderate eater; but 
 an over-roasted leg of mutton would strangely disturb and 
 ruffle his temper. Pope was more epicurean in his tastes, 
 and when staying at Bolingbroke's house, would lie in bed 
 for days together, unless he heard there would be stewed 
 lampre}*s for dinner, when he would at once get up and 
 appear at the table. 
 
 Dr. Johnson had a keen relish for a leg of mutton, and 
 for a veal-pie with plums. " At my Aunt Field's," he once 
 said, " I ate so much of a leg of mutton that she used to 
 talk of it." Being once treated to a dish of new honey and 
 
110 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 clouted cream, he indulged his appetite to such an excess 
 that his entertainer was alarmed. Dr. Parr had a voracious 
 appetite for hot lobsters with shrimp sauce. Byron was 
 particularly fond of eggs and bacon, to which he would 
 treat himself, though he knew the inevitable result would 
 be an attack of indigestion. Leigh Hunt loved late suppers, 
 at which he would indulge in the most indigestible food, 
 notwithstanding he had repeatedly suffered from it. A 
 friend of his states that he called on him one evening at 
 nine, when Leigh Hunt saluted him thus: " I am eating 
 my supper, you see. Do you eat supper? If you do, take 
 my advice, and have regularly every night, at nine o'clock 
 precisely, three eggs boiled hard, with bread and butter. 
 There is not, I assure you, anything more wholesome for 
 supper. One sleeps so soundly, too," etc. The next 
 Friday evening his friend called again, and found that he 
 was eating a Welsh rarebit, with mustard, etc. " How are 
 you?" exclaimed Hunt. "I am just eating supper, you 
 see. Do you ever eat supper? If }*ou do, I pray 3*011 
 never take boiled eggs ; they are, without any exception, 
 the most indigestible, nightmare-producing things you can 
 eat. They have nearly killed me. No ; the lightest and 
 most palatable supper I have ever taken is a Welsh rarebit 
 with some Scotch ale. This is the second day I have taken 
 it, and I do assure you," etc. On Monday next it would 
 be liver and bacon, or what } T OU will. 
 
 The amusements of eminent men have been in many 
 cases odd and eccentric to the last degree. One of the 
 kings of Macedon spent his leisure in making lanterns, 
 and Louis XVI. delighted in making locks. Dornitian 
 spent hours in killing flies. Cardinal Richelieu, when tired 
 of contending with the French nobles and baffling hostile 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. Ill 
 
 plots, amused himself with violent exercise, and would con- 
 tend with his servant to see which could jump the higher. 
 Oliver Cromwell is said to have occasionally relaxed his 
 puritanic severit}*, and played blind-man's-buff with his 
 daughters and attendants. The great metaphysician and 
 theologian, Dr. Samuel Clarke, in the intervals of the time 
 spent in confuting Hobbes, Leibnitz, and Spinoza, would 
 leap over the tables and chairs in his study, or play at 
 all fours with children. Once, seeing a pedant approach- 
 ing, he exclaimed : ;t Now we must leave off, for a fool is 
 coming ! " The favorite recreation of Spinoza was to catch 
 spiders and see them fight ; and when he had learned how 
 to make them as angry as gamecocks, he would, all thin 
 and feeble as he was, break out into a roar of laughter, and 
 chuckle to sec his champions engage, as if they, like men, 
 were fighting for honor! Anthony Magliabecchi, the fa- 
 mous linguist, was also fond of spiders, and while sitting 
 among the piles of books in the Duke of Tuscany's library, 
 would tell his visitors " not to hurt his spiders." The 
 Italian poet Alfieri had a passion for horses, of which he 
 at one time bought fourteen in England. He ranked this 
 as third in intensit} 7 among his passions, the Count- 
 ess of Albany being first, and the Tragic Muse second. 
 His tone and humor for the da}' are said to have de- 
 pended on the neigh or whimper of the favorite horse, 
 which he fed every morning with his own hand. Dr. 
 Paley's favorite amusement was angling, and he had his 
 portrait painted with a fishing-rod in his hand. The heroic 
 Nelson, and Daniel Webster, who " in bait and debate was 
 equally persuasive," sought relief from " carking care" in 
 fishing. Gray the poet thought the ideal of earthly hap- 
 piness was to be always lying on a sofa, reading eternally 
 
112 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 new novels of Marivaux and Crebillon. Shelley took a boy- 
 ish delight in floating little paper boats on lakelets or little 
 ponds. A pond on Hampstead Heath often bore his tiny 
 craft ; and it is said that one day, as he stood by the Ser- 
 pentine, having no other paper with which to indulge his 
 passion, he actually folded a Bank of England note for fifty 
 pounds into the shape of a boat, launched the little vessel 
 upon its vo}~age, watched its stead3 T progress with anxious 
 delight, and finally walked round and received it safely on 
 the opposite side. 
 
 The anecdotes told of the oddities, eccentricities, and 
 absence of mind of great men sometimes almost stagger 
 belief. Archimedes, at the taking of Sj'racuse, was so ab- 
 sorbed in a geometrical problem that, when a soldier was 
 about to kill him, he simply exclaimed: "Noli turbare 
 circulos meos/' Joseph Scaliger was so engrossed with the 
 study of Homer during the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, 
 that it was only on the next day that he was aware of his 
 own escape from it. Vieta, the great mathematician, was 
 so lost in meditation that he was utterl}* unconscious of 
 what was going on around him, and for hours seemed more 
 like a dead person than a living. Sir Isaac Newton often 
 forgot to dine ; and when reminded of it, would say : "Have 
 I ? " and then would eat a bit or two standing. When he 
 had friends to entertain, he would sometimes go into his 
 study to fetch a bottle of wine, and then forget them. 
 Once, when he was going home to Cottersworth from Grant- 
 ham, he led his horse up the steep Spittlegate hill ; but 
 when he turned to remount, he found that the horse was 
 not to be seen. Taking advantage of his master's reverj^, 
 the sagacious steed had slipped the bridle and gone off 
 without his knowledge, leaving only the bridle in his hands. 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 113 
 
 On another occasion Newton used a lady's finger as a 
 tobacco-stopper. Another absent-minded man, whom La 
 Bruyere would have delighted to portray, was Dr. Robert 
 Hamilton, one of the profoundest philosophical thinkers of 
 his day. He was at times so completely absorbed in his 
 own reflections as to lose the perception of external things, 
 and almost the consciousness of his own identity and ex- 
 istence. One of his most notable works was an essa}' on 
 the National Debt, which is said to have fallen like a bomb- 
 shell upon the English Parliament, or rather to have risen 
 and illuminated its darkness like an orient sun. In all 
 his writings one knows not which most to admire, the pro- 
 found and accurate science, the logical arrangement, or the 
 lucid expression. Yet in public, it is said, the man was a 
 shadow. lie pulled off' his hat to his own wife in the 
 streets, and apologized for not having the pleasure of her 
 acquaintance ; went to his classes in college, on dark morn- 
 ings, with one of his wife's white stockings on one leg, and 
 one of his own black ones on the other ; often spent the 
 whole time of the session in moving from the table the hats 
 of the students, which they as constantly returned ; some- 
 times invited the students to call upon him, and then fined 
 them for coming to insult him. He would run against a 
 cow in the road, turn round, and say, " I beg your pardon, 
 madam, I hope you are not hurt ; " at another time he 
 would run against a post, and chide it for not getting out 
 of his way ; and yet we are told that his conversation was 
 " perfect logic and perfect music." The great Budasus 
 acUiall}* forgot his wedding-da3 T , and, when sought for, was 
 found buried deep in his Commentaiy. 
 
 One of the most absent-minded men that ever lived was 
 Beethoven, a peculiarity which involved him in many 
 
 8 
 
114 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 troubles. Once a crowd was found under his window, 
 watching him with wonder and merriment. Beethoven had 
 risen from bed, and was standing at the window in his 
 night-shirt, meditating chords and discords, until the noise 
 of the spectators below roused him from his revery. At 
 another time he was strolling upon the ramparts of Vienna, 
 with his hands clasped behind him, lost in thought, and 
 was roused from his abstraction only by the laughter and 
 shouts of a party of schoolbo3~s. For some time he was 
 puzzled to know what made the boys so merry. The fact 
 was, he had come from home to think over a composition 
 upon which he was engaged, and though the weather was 
 rough and blustering, he had left his hat upon the table, 
 and never missed it till the boj's reminded him of its ab- 
 sence. At times he would even forget his invited guests, 
 and dine at the hotel while they were vainly waiting for 
 him at his quarters. He once wanted to pay for a dinner 
 which he had neither ordered nor eaten, and he forgot that 
 he owned a horse until a bill was presented to him for its 
 keeping. When he had occasion to take a bath, he would 
 stand before his bowl and compose at the same time that he 
 was washing himself. Sometimes he would pour pitcher 
 after pitcher of water over his hands or body, and all the 
 while keep screaming up and down the scale. Present^, 
 with e}'es rolling, he would stride across his chamber and 
 note down something, perhaps on the window-shutter ; and 
 then the bathing would re-begin. In moments of profound 
 thought he would pour floods of water over the floor, yet 
 be wholly unconscious of what he had done, until the land- 
 lord below would hurry up-stairs to protest against the 
 deluge that was ruining his ceiling ; upon which a warm 
 conflict would ensue, that would result in the composer's 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 115 
 
 removal to other quarters. Beethoven had a singular and 
 intense hatred of etiquette. He once even abandoned a 
 lodging for which he had paid a heavy rent in advance, be- 
 cause the landlord insisted on bowing to him whenever they 
 met. The absent-mindedness of Adam Smith, the father 
 of political economy, was something amazing. Having 
 once to sign an official document, he produced, not his own 
 signature, but an elaborate imitation of the signature of the 
 person who had signed before him. On another occasion, 
 having been saluted in militaiy fashion by a sentinel on 
 duty, he astounded and offended the man by acknowledg- 
 ing it with a copy a very clumsy copy, no doubt of 
 the same gestures. 
 
 It is told of a noted Glasgow clerg3*man, Mr. McLaurin, 
 that having chanced one evening, at his son-in-law's, to see 
 the word TEA inscribed in large letters on a canister on 
 the sideboard, he stared at the mystical word for some time 
 without having the slightest idea of what it meant. He 
 then began to spell it audibly, TEA T-E-A'; but all to 
 no purpose. At last, utterly baffled, he turned to Dr. 
 Gillies. "John," he said, "what Greek word is that?" 
 None of the absent fits we have noted surpassed those of 
 Coleridge's father, of whose eccentricities the son used to 
 tell till the tears ran down his cheeks. Having once to go 
 from home for several days, the old gentleman was aided 
 in his preparations by his wife, who packed his portmanteau 
 with a shirt for each day, charging him to be sure to use 
 them. Finding no shirts in the portmanteau after his 
 return, she found, on inquiry, that he had duly obeyed 
 her commands, and had put on a shirt every day, but never 
 taken one off. There were all the shirts, not in the port- 
 manteau, but on his own back. In a Latin grammar which 
 
116 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 he composed, he changed the case which Julius Caesar 
 named, from the Ablative to the Quale-Quare Quiditive, as 
 the Highgate philosopher might have done had he prepared 
 a grammar. The moods of abstraction in which Macaulay 
 not infrequently indulged are not generally known. When 
 he strode through the streets of London, he was usuall}' so 
 absorbed in thought that his lips moved and muttered un- 
 consciously, and he heeded none that he passed, though 
 persons gazed curiously at him, and stopped to stare when 
 he had gone by. He used to carry an umbrella, which he 
 swung and flourished, and battered on the pavement with 
 mighty thumps. Once, when dining alone in the Trafalgar 
 Hotel at Greenwich, the attention of other guests was at- 
 tracted by his peculiar muttering and fidgetiness, and by 
 the mute gestures with which he ever and anon illustrated 
 his mental dreamings. Suddenly he seized a massive de- 
 canter, held it a moment in the air, and then dashed it 
 down upon the table with such violence that the solid crys- 
 tal flew about in fragments. Calling loudly for his bill, 
 which he paid, he pulled with a couple of jerks his hat and 
 umbrella from the stand, and stalked awa} r as if nothing 
 unusual had happened. It is told of the late Dean Stanley, 
 who made no gestures while preaching, and stood quite 
 still, that one Sunday, after returning from church, he asked 
 his wife why the congregation looked so intently at him 
 during the service. " How could they help it, dear," she 
 replied, " when one of your gloves was on the top of your 
 head all the time?" It had dropped from his hat. Jona- 
 than Edwards was a ver} T absent-minded man. For the 
 sake of the exercise, he used to drive his cows to pasture. 
 As he was going for them one da} r , a boy opened the gate 
 with a respectful bow. Edvvards acknowledged the kind- 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 117 
 
 ness, and asked the boy who he was. " Noah Clark's 
 boy," was the reply. Shortly afterward, on the theologian's 
 return, the same boy was at hand, and opened the gate for 
 him again. " Whose boy are you? " Edwards again asked. 
 The reply was : " The same man's boy I was a quarter of 
 an hour ago, sir." 
 
 Pascal, in his " Thoughts upon Religion," observes that 
 the soul of the greatest man living is not so independent 
 but it is liable to be disturbed by the least bustling about 
 him. " Do not be surprised if you hear him argue a little 
 incoherently at present ; he has a fly buzzing at his ears, 
 and that is enough to make him deaf to good counsel. 
 If you would have him informed of the truth, you must 
 drive away this animal, which holds his reason in check, 
 and discomposes that wonderful intellect which governs 
 cities and kingdoms." Biography teems with illustrations 
 of this weakness of human nature, some examples of which 
 the reader will find on page 249. Bayle was thrown into 
 convulsions whenever he heard water issuing from a spout. 
 Schopenhauer found noise so insupportable that he declares 
 that the amount a man can support with equanimity is in. 
 inverse proportion to his. mental powers. " If I hear a dog 
 barking for hours on the threshold of a house," he says, '-I 
 know well enough what kind of brains I may expect from 
 its inhabitants." Wallenstein had an equal dislike for the 
 barking of dogs, and even the clatter of large spurs anno}'ed 
 him. Dickens had on his desk some little bronze figures, 
 which were as indispensable for the eas} T flow of his writ- 
 ing as blue ink or quill pens. Alfieri was an exception to 
 most intellectual men, especially authors, in this respect. 
 His ideas flowed most freely while he was listening to 
 music or galloping on horseback. Montaigne tells of a 
 
118 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 scholar whom he found at Padua. " one of the most learned 
 men of France," whom he saw stud}'ing in the corner of a 
 room, cut off by a screen, surrounded b}* a number of riotous 
 servants. " Pie told me and Seneca says much the same 
 of himself that he worked all the better for this uproar, as 
 though, overpowered by noise, he w r as obliged to withdraw 
 all the more closely into himself for contemplation, while 
 the storm of voices drove his thoughts inward. When at 
 Padua, he had lodged so long over the clattering of the traffic 
 and the tumult of the streets that he had been trained not 
 only to be indifferent to noise, but even to require it for the 
 prosecution of his studies." 
 
 All readers of Addison are familiar with his story of the 
 barrister who was accustomed, when pleading in court, to 
 wind a string about one of his fingers, and who, when a 
 cunning adversary stealthily took the string from him, was 
 disconcerted, and unable to proceed. Dr. Andrew Fuller 
 used to rise up to preach with his gloves on, and with his 
 hands thrust into the pockets of his trousers. As he ad- 
 vanced with his discourse, one hand was drawn from its 
 hiding-place, and in a few minutes the other ; a few minutes 
 more and a glove was drawn off, the other shortlj* following 
 it to the pulpit floor. When in the full tide of exhortation 
 or argument, he would unconsciously twist off a coat-button, 
 which habit became so confirmed that among his intimate 
 friends he would speak of a season of great enjoj'ment in 
 preaching as " a button-time." The peculiarities of Dr. 
 Fuller were trivial compared with the eccentricities of the 
 Rev. Rowland Hill, whose ministiy at Surrey Chapel, where 
 he preached for fifty years, Sheridan often attended, because, 
 as he said, " his [Rowland Hill's] ideas come red-hot from 
 the heart." It is said that when notices were given him, 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 119 
 
 he used generally to read them aloud. When once an 
 impudent fellow placed a piece of paper on the desk, just 
 before he was going to read prayers, he took it and began : 
 " fc The prayers of the congregation are desired ' - umph 
 4 for ' umph well, I suppose I must finish what I have 
 begun 'for the Reverenti Rowland Hill, that he will not 
 go riding about in his carriage on a Sunday ! ' " Look- 
 ing up with the utmost coolness, the preacher said : " If the 
 writer of this piece of folly and impertinence is in the con- 
 gregation, and will go into the vestry after service, and let 
 me put a saddle on his back, I will ride him home, instead 
 of going home in my carriage." He then went on with the 
 service as if nothing had happened. One of the oddest of 
 modern litcraiy men was William Ilazlitt, who, with all his 
 acuteness, was the prey of the craziest fancies. Even to 
 his oldest friends he manifested the shyness of a recluse. 
 Mr. Paterson records that he would enter a room as if he 
 had been dragged there in custody; and after saying, "It 
 is a fine day," lapse into dreary silence, and apparently 
 resign himself moodily to his fate. If the talk did not 
 please him, he would sit half-absorbed and indifferent, and 
 then suddenly start up, and with an abrupt, " Well, good 
 morning!" shuffle to the door and blunder his way out. 
 His favorite haunt for his great talks was the Southamp- 
 ton Coffee-house in Southampton Buildings, Chancery 
 Lane. Any small slight, or the mere fact that the bill was 
 brought to him before he asked for it, scared him from a 
 chop-house or tavern for 3 7 ears. Odder and more eccentric 
 even than Hazlitt, was Charles Mathews, the comic actor, 
 who, though he entertained crowded houses nightlj T , was 
 one of the shyest of men. To avoid recognition he would, 
 lame as he was, make long circuits through the bye-lanes of 
 
120 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 London. His wife sa}~s, in her Memoir of him, that he 
 looked "sheepish" and confused if recognized, and that 
 his eyes would fall, and his color would mount, if in passing 
 along the street he heard his name even whispered. Pos- 
 sessing many of the noblest traits of character, he had at 
 the same time a nervous whimsicality, an irritability about 
 trifles, and antipathies to particular persons, places, and 
 objects, which made him obnoxious to ridicule and censure. 
 " 1 have seen him scratch his head," sa}'s Julian Charles 
 Young, " and grind his teeth and assume a look of anguish, 
 when a haunch of venison had been carved unskilfully in 
 his presence. I have seen him, though in high feather and 
 high talk when in a sunn} r chamber, if transferred to a 
 badly lighted room withdraw into a corner and sit by 
 himself in moody silence." When giving his entertain- 
 ments in the country, he had always a secretary to take the 
 money at the doors. U I hope and believe he is honest," 
 said Mathews : u but even if he is not, I could not wrangle 
 about mone3 T , I do so hate the very touch of it." " What ! " 
 exclaimed a friend incredulously, "hate money?" " I did 
 not sa}' that I hated money," was the reply, " but that I 
 hated the touch of money, I mean coin. It makes my 
 skin goosey." 
 
 Great men often appear to their inferiors to be freezing 
 aristocrats, when the}' have hearts full of kindness, and are 
 distant and reserved only from constitutional shyness. 
 Eobert Chambers speaks of a gentleman, holding one of the 
 highest offices in Great Britain, Avho was so shy that when- 
 ever, in a country walk, he found himself about to encounter 
 his colleague in office, he would deliberately quit the foot- 
 path and cross to the opposite side of the road, where he 
 would stand looking over the hedge and affecting to enjoy 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 121 
 
 the landscape, until his friend had passed, when he would 
 return to the footpath and resume his walk. Archbishop 
 Whately, when young, was tormented with self-conscious- 
 ness, and suffered, as he says, " all the agonies of extreme 
 slyness." Finding that he " must be awkward as a bear 
 all his life," he resolved to think as little about it as a bear, 
 and from that time got rid of most of the personal suffering 
 of shyness, and of most of the faults of manner which con- 
 sciousness produces ; but his natural roughness and awk- 
 wardness clung to him through life. He had also certain ec- 
 centricities of manner which would hardly be credited if not 
 vouched for by his biographer. When attending the meet- 
 ings of the Irish Privy Council his favorite attitude in 
 winter was standing before the fire with his coat-tails held 
 up ; in summer, sitting upon a chair which he balanced 
 upon its hind legs, with his own legs thrown over the back 
 of another chair. Referring to this practice, and to the 
 rudeness of another member of the council, who in cold 
 weather would sometimes wear his hat at a meeting, a wag 
 observed: "The prelate in council uncovers what ought to 
 be hid, and the peer hides what ought to be uncovered." 
 Whately was not less boorish in the Castle drawing-room. 
 Once while waiting there one of a large party till din- 
 ner should be announced, he deliberately took a pair of 
 scissors out of a case which he carried in his pocket, and 
 pared his nails ; at another time, under similar circum- 
 stances, he was seen to throw himself into an easy-chair, 
 and drawing another near him, to swing one of his legs 
 over its back ! Even Sj'dne}' Smith, before he became 
 u a diner-out of the highest lustre," who could at will set 
 the tables in a roar, was shy in general society. " It was 
 not very long," he told a friend later in life, " before I 
 
122 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 made two very useful discoveries : first, that all mankind 
 were not solely employed in observing me, a belief that all 
 young people have ; and next, that shamming was of no 
 use, that the world was very clear-sighted, and soon esti- 
 mated a man at his just value. This cured me of my shy- 
 ness, and I determined to be natural." 
 
 The name of Lord Chatham suggests one of the most 
 frequent weaknesses of the great. It is said that he was 
 an admirable reader of poetry, especially of Shakspeare's 
 historical plays ; but when he came to an episode of corned}', 
 he always handed the book to a relative. How finely this 
 incident combines with the public appearance of the great 
 statesman the crimson drapery, the tie-wig, the well- 
 managed crutch, the flannels " arranged with the air of a 
 Grecian drapery," the statuesque attitude, and the direction 
 to his under-secretaries never to sit down in his official 
 presence to reveal his weakness off the stage ! Probably 
 there never was another instance of a man of such genius, 
 with so lofty and commanding a spirit, who was so utterly 
 lacking in simplicity of character. Lord Bacon, Louis XIV., 
 and Napoleon were consummate farceurs. All the actions 
 of Bacon were characterized by a most inordinate love of 
 pomp. His servants wore liveries with his crest, and he 
 even went in his State-robes to cheapen and buy silks at 
 a mercer's. Alexander Pope was an inveterate poser ; he 
 was always pretending an indifference to poetical reputation 
 and to criticism, though he was "a fool to fame" to the 
 latest hour of his life. Jean J. Rousseau at one period 
 was also a poser. He was constantly writing, and con- 
 stantly affecting to despise literature ; constantly scoffing 
 at the fashionable world, and constanth' in society. Byron 
 was the prince of posers. He was always wearing his heart 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 123 
 
 on his sleeve, and parading his woes before the public, 
 describing himself as a man whose heart was withered, 
 whose capacitj' for happiness was gone and could never be 
 restored, and whose defiant spirit, alike insensible to fame 
 and obloquy, heeded " nor keen reproof nor partial praise." 
 It is ridiculous to imagine, says Macaulay, "that a man 
 whose mind was really imbued with scorn of his fellow- 
 creatures would have published three or four books every 
 year in order to tell them so ; or that a man who could say 
 with truth that he neither sought sympathy nor needed it, 
 would have admitted all Europe to hear his farewell to his 
 wife, and his blessings on his child." So far was Byron 
 from feeling the indifference he affected to the praise of his 
 fellow-men, that he was childishly elated by the compliments 
 paid to his maiden speech in the House of Lords. 
 
 An adequate account of the inconsistencies and contra- 
 dictions of great men would fill volumes. Who is not 
 familiar with the history of Seneca, who in his elegant 
 pages "raises altars to Poverty," and denounces with 
 burning indignation the corruption of Rome and the ex- 
 tortion in the provinces, yet amassed by extortion and 
 usuiy a fortune of fifteen million dollars ; who wrote a 
 work on clemenc}*, yet had a large part of Nero's atrocities 
 upon his conscience? With what admiration we read of 
 the noble and philosophical Cato, who, before putting an 
 end to his life, spent some time in meditating with Plato 
 on the immortality of the soul ; yet what a shock we feel, 
 when we learn that just before doing this he gave his at- 
 tendant a blow on the mouth, because he had removed his 
 sword from fear that his master was about to do himself 
 harm ! The effect upon our minds is like that we experi- 
 ence when we read that the accomplished and bewitching 
 
124 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 Queen of Egypt, who captivated Julius Caesar and Mark 
 Antony by her charms, flew, even in the presence of Octa- 
 vius, at one of her slaves and tore his face with her nails. 
 One of the greatest geniuses the world has ever known 
 was Leonardo da Vinci. Nature showered upon him a 
 multitude of the choicest gifts in her storehouse, }*et envi- 
 ously withheld others which she bestows upon common men. 
 Destitute, apparentl}', of patriotism and of political sense, 
 as well as of independence of spirit, he was throughout his 
 life a virtual slave. Lacking thrift, and the means of sup- 
 port which it gives, he was compelled to place his magnifi- 
 cent gifts at the disposal of others, first, of Lodovico 
 Sforza of Milan, next of the infamous Caesar Borgia, and 
 lastly of Louis XII. of France, the enemy of his country. 
 Rousseau was a bundle of inconsistencies and contradic- 
 tions. One day he would declare his certainty that God 
 exists of himself ; a few days after, he would say : " Frankly, 
 I confess that neither the pro nor the con [on the existence 
 of God] appears to me demonstrated." He wrote against 
 dramatic performances, and composed several operas ; in- 
 voked parental care for infancy, and sent his own children 
 to a foundling hospital; confessed a hundred acts of base- 
 ness, 3*et vaunted himself as a paragon of men. At one 
 time he apostasized for the sake of gain, that he might live 
 on the bount} T of his friends ; at another, too proud to re- 
 ceive any one's bounty, he condemned himself to copy music 
 at six sous a page. Of Dean Swift it has been said that, 
 intellectually and morall}', physically and religiously, he 
 was a mass of contradictions. Suffering all his life from 
 disease, he was yet capable of great endurance, and lived 
 to a good age, though he spoke but twice during his 
 last three years. Though he hated Ireland, where he died 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 125 
 
 " like a poisoned rat in a hole," he defended the rights of 
 ' the scoundrel isle " when his courage might have cost him 
 his head. Economical and saving to the last degree, he }*et 
 was liberal to the poor and indigent ; begrudging the food 
 and wine consumed by a guest, he never took any pa}' for his 
 writings, and bequeathed all his fortune to a charitable in- 
 stitution. Maintaining Steele by his influence in au office 
 of which the Government was about to deprive him, he soon 
 after by his pen caused him to be expelled from the House 
 of Commons ; ambitious to be a bishop, he wrote a work 
 which effectually prevented his rising to dignity in the very 
 Church which his book sought to exalt. Laying the founda- 
 tions of fortune for upward of fort}* families, who rose to 
 distinction by a word from his lips, he could not advance 
 himself in England a single inch. 
 
 Like Swift, the poet Young aspired to a bishopric, which, 
 with a malicious ingenuity that must have keenl}' irritated 
 him, was refused by the minister on the ground of the 
 devotion to retirement so often expressed in his works. 
 Through nearly all his life he was an inveterate place- 
 hunter, and, to secure preferment, veered with the wind 
 and trimmed his sail to every breeze ; yet he never got 
 anything save the appointment of chaplain to George II., 
 and clerk of the closet to the princess-dowager. When 
 appointed to the chaplainc}*, he withdrew his play of the 
 " Brothers," then in rehearsal at a London theatre, and sud- 
 denly professed a profound aversion for the stage ; }'et 
 afterward returned to it again. After having spent his best 
 days in toadying and place-hunting, he passed his old age 
 in satirizing the pursuits in which he had failed, and the 
 dignities to which he could not attain. Few persons could 
 write more admirably on politeness than Dr. Johnson ; yet 
 
126 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 if opposed in discussion, the prompt and blunt " You lie, 
 sir ! " " You don't understand the question, sir ! " were his 
 favorite modes of silencing an adversary. Dr. Parr states 
 that he was once disputing with Johnson about the liberty 
 of the press. "While he was arguing," says Parr, " I 
 observed that he stamped. Upon this, I stamped. Dr. 
 Johnson said: 'Why do you stamp, Dr. Parr?' I re- 
 plied : ' Sir, because you stamped ; and I was resolved not 
 to give you the advantage even of a stamp in that argu- 
 ment.'" More inconsistent, if possible, than Swift, Young, 
 or Johnson, was Robert Southey. It is doubtful if any 
 other human being of equal eminence ever held during his 
 life so many contradictoiy opinions as the author of 
 " Kehama." A freethinker and a Unitarian; an orthodox 
 believer and a heterodox Churchman ; a socialist and a re- 
 publican ; an opponent of Catholic rights and a stickler 
 for the rights of conscience, he branded Byron as chief of 
 the Satanic school, }*et wrote his own " Vision of Judg- 
 ment," which in irreverent handling of Heaven's m}'ster- 
 ies out-Byrons B3'ron. Declaring in his "Life of Cowper" 
 that the author of the "Task" is the most popular poet 
 of his generation, he asserts in a letter that Cowper's pop- 
 ularit} 1 is owing to his piet}', not to his poetry, and that 
 his piety is craziness. Groaning continually over the pop- 
 ular ignorance, he was eternally denouncing the London 
 University and mechanics' institutes. 
 
 Colton, the author of "Lacon," was a desperate gam- 
 bler, and ran deeply in debt for diamonds, jewels, and 
 rare wines. Preferring suicide to the endurance of a pain- 
 ful surgical operation, he in 1832 blew out his brains at 
 Fontainebleau ; and this was the act of the man who, in 
 his sententious book, had published this aphorism: "The 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 127 
 
 gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly 
 ruined. He adds his soul to every other loss, and by the 
 act of suicide renounces earth to forfeit heaven ! " In Na- 
 poleon Bonaparte we find a strange assemblage of opposite 
 qualities, such as few ancient or modern despots exhibit. 
 Possessing the keenest and coldest of intellects and the 
 most inflexible of iron wills, he was yet at times as ca- 
 pricious as a woman and as fretful as a child. At one 
 time organizing and executing with the utmost wisdom and 
 energy stupendous and complicated schemes, he falls at 
 another time into blunders which the most commonplace 
 intellect might have avoided. Full ordinarily of coolness 
 and self-possession in moments of imminent peril, he 
 sometimes in such crises relapses into an unaccountable 
 ennui. When the Allies, before the battle of Leipsic, were 
 gathering around him in their utmost strength, he was wav- 
 ering and uncertain in his purposes, and reluctant to de- 
 cide on a retreat. An eye-witness relates that he saw him 
 seated on a sofa beside a table on which lay his charts, 
 totally unemployed, unless in scribbling mechanically large 
 letters on a sheet of white paper, and that at a time when, 
 to use his own words, " nothing but a thunderbolt could 
 have saved him." 
 
 The weaknesses of great men which we have thus far 
 noticed are comparatively venial ; but what shall we say of 
 the absolute lack of truthfulness and of principle which 
 some celebrated men have exhibited? Pythagoras, the 
 influence of whose teaching endured in Greece for six cen- 
 turies, has been called " a demi-god in his ends, and an 
 impostor in his means." He persuaded his followers that 
 he had a golden thigh, and that, agreeably to his doctrine 
 of the transmigration of souls, his soul had animated the 
 
128 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 body of -<Ethalides, and in the Trojan war that of Euphor- 
 bus. He even, in the temple of Juno at Argos, pointed to 
 the shield which, as Euphorbus, he had borne in battle. 
 The Rev. Whit well El win, one of the latest and ablest biog- 
 raphers and editors of Pope, has shown that he was even a 
 worse liar and hypocrite than he was before supposed to 
 be ; and Mr. Lee shows the author of " Robinson Crusoe " 
 bowing in the house of Rimmon, and rivalling as a political 
 turncoat the most unprincipled politicians of our own times. 
 Mr. Minto, in his still later Life of De Foe, comes reluc- 
 tantly to the conclusion that " he was a great, a truly great 
 liar, perhaps the greatest liar that ever lived." Of Sir 
 Richard Steele, who wrote such admirable moral essays in 
 the " Spectator," it has been said that his life was spent 
 in sinning and repenting ; in inculcating what was right, 
 and in doing what was wrong. "In speculation," says 
 Macaula}*, " he was a man of piet} T and honor; in practice 
 he was much of the rake, and a little of the swindler." He 
 would write a treatise against drinking, and leave it unfin- 
 ished while he got drunk with a friend at an ale-house, or 
 slept in an armchair with two empt}* bottles beside him. 
 Swift said of him that he was the worst company in the 
 world till he had a bottle of wine in his head. " Do Steele 
 a good turn," said the Dean, "and he is your enemy for 
 ever." It is well known that he lampooned the minister 
 who had made him "gazetteer" and raised his salary from 
 60 to 300 a year. When Steele was once reproached by 
 Mr. Whiston for having given in the House of Commons 
 some votes contrary to his formerly professed opinions, he 
 coolly replied: "Mr. Whiston, you can walk on foot, but 
 I cannot." A coach had become to Steele so indispensa- 
 ble, that rather than do without it he would abandon some 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 129 
 
 of his most cherished principles and expose himself to 
 the most odious imputations. It is hard to believe that 
 Dr. Pale}*, notwithstanding the " expediency" doctrine of 
 his " Moral Philosophy," could have advocated, in his 
 coarsely provincial dialect, the use of " braibery and cor- 
 rooption ; " but so he appears to have done at the Hyson 
 Club, a liberal association at Cambridge. " Win*," said 
 he, when challenged for his reasons, " no one is so mad as 
 to wish to be governed by force, and no one is such a fool 
 as to expect to be governed b}* virtue ; so what remains, 
 tell me, but ' braibery and corrooption ' ? " Paley was, on 
 principle, slow to pay debts. " Never pay mooney," he 
 used to say, " till you can't help it; soomething may hap- 
 pen." On the other hand, he always made his wife and 
 daughters pay ready cash. ik It's of no use," he used to 
 say with a patient shrug, " to desire the women to buy 
 only what they want ; they will always imagine they want 
 what they wish to buy ; but that paying ready moone}' is 
 such a check upon their imagination ! " When Paley rose 
 in the Church he set up a carriage, and by his wife's direc- 
 tions his arras were painted on the panels. They were 
 copied from the engraving on a silver cup which Mrs. 
 Paley supposed to be the bearings of his family. Her 
 husband thought it a pity to undeceive her ; but the truth 
 was that he had purchased the cup at a sale. 
 
 One of the most deplorable weaknesses of a great man 
 which biography reveals, was the liaison of Lord Nelson 
 with the wife of Sir William Hamilton. The slave of an 
 overpowering infatuation, lie seems never for a moment to 
 have believed himself culpable, though in January, 1801, 
 Lady Hamilton gave birth to a daughter who was named 
 Horatia, and whose father was Lord Nelson. The delin- 
 
 9 
 
130 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 quencies of Coleridge his addiction to opium, his ingra- 
 titude to his friends, and neglect of his parental and conju- 
 gal obligations are well known. A giant in intellect, he 
 was a moral dwarf. Engaged to dine with an acquaintance, 
 he stayed at home ; engaged to deliver a lecture on the De- 
 cline of the Roman Empire, for tickets to which he had 
 received the mone}*, he sat smoking in his room, oblivious 
 of both audience and subject ; engaged to furnish Cottle 
 with " cop}'," he never had it ready in time, in short, in 
 the ordinary affairs of life he was a man of infinite promi- 
 ses, and of infinitesimally small performance. Few persons 
 have had more intense and violent prejudices. One of his 
 antipathies was an insuperable aversion to la grande 
 nation, which he never cared to conceal. " I hate," he 
 used to say, " the holjowness of French principles ; I hate 
 the hostility of the French people to revealed religion; I 
 hate the artificiality of French cooking ; I hate the acidity 
 of French wines ; I hate the flimsiness of the French lan- 
 guage, m}' very organs of speech are so anti-Gallican that 
 the}* refuse to pronounce intelligibly their insipid tongue." 
 In justification of his invectives against the hollowness and 
 immorality of the French character, especially that of the 
 women, he told Julian Charles Young, the actor, an anecdote 
 of the duplicity of Madame de Stae'l. As he was sitting one 
 day with that lady in London, her man-servant entered the 
 room and asked if she would receive Lady Davey. Raising 
 her ej'ebrows and shrugging her shoulders, she seemed to 
 shudder with nausea as she replied: "Ah, ma foi ! oh, 
 mon cher ami, ayez pitie de moi ! Mais quoi faire? Cette 
 vilaine femme ! comme je la deteste ! Elle est, vraiment, 
 insupportable ! " Yet on the entr}' of the " vilaine femme" 
 Madame de Stae'l flung her arms around her, kissed her on 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 131 
 
 both cheeks, pressed her to her bosom, and told her that she 
 was more than enchanted to behold her. Who, in reading 
 the story of Napoleon's campaigns, has not been thrilled by 
 the accounts given of the fiery and heroic courage, always 
 most stubborn in the most desperate circumstances, of Mar- 
 shal Ney? -Yet in the degree that we have admired his 
 matchless valor must we be pained to learn that he who, 
 after having had five horses shot under him at Waterloo, 
 led the last desperate charge of the Guard with unflinching 
 intrepidity, had previously taken an oath to support Louis 
 XVIII., and sworn to that monarch that he would drag 
 Napoleon to him in an iron cage. 
 
 A story is told of Berryer which shows a contempt for 
 truth that is almost incredible in the statesman and advocate 
 who dared to defend Ney at his trial, and to oppose the 
 coup d'etat of 1852. It is said that, when a young man, 
 with fame and fortune yet to win, he was at a loss whether 
 to range himself on the side of the Church and King, or for 
 the principles of '89. Unable, after much inward debate, 
 to decide between the arguments for atheism and repub- 
 licanism on the one hand, and those for religion and legi- 
 timism on the other, he gave up the task in disgust, and 
 decided the course of his life in a strange and unparalleled 
 waj*. He took a louis-d'or from his pocket and tossed it 
 up, saying: "Heads, king; tail, republic." Heads it 
 proved ; and from that moment Berryer became the sworn 
 champion of legitimism, which he supported to his dying 
 da}'. The immorality of Berryer's decision was hardly 
 greater than that of the advice said to have been given by 
 Keble to Arnold when the latter was troubled with doubts 
 concerning the doctrine of the Trinity. Keble counselled 
 his friend to take a living, and preach incessantly to his 
 
132 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 parishioners the doctrine in which he only half believed, 
 by wa}' of strengthening his own faith. Keble's faith was 
 so unquestioning that he probably could not conceive of 
 another's doubt as sincere and well-founded. 
 
 Meanness, avarice, and penuriousness have been too 
 often associated with genius and fame. It has been said 
 of Lord Bacon that in him the intellect of a Solomon was 
 yoked to the spirit of a slave and the conscience of a house- 
 maid. Where, indeed, shall we find elsewhere a genius so 
 lofty, so insatiable a thirst for knowledge, and so honorable 
 a desire for peaceful and studious retirement, united to an 
 ambition so servile and a baseness so repulsive ? That the 
 same hand that wrote the " Novum Organum" could com- 
 mit to paper some of the most fawning adulation that 
 biography records ; that he who had received such favors 
 from Essex could, as queen's counsel, not only show no 
 reluctance in exposing his friend's guilt, but even go out 
 of his way to prove it blacker than it actually was ; that 
 he who had professed to disapprove of torturing prisoners, 
 should in the case of the mad parson, Peachem, have urged 
 the use of the rack ; that he who told Raleigh when he ap- 
 plied for pardon for an old offence which had never been 
 clearly proved, that he was virtually pardoned already, 
 could afterward, when Spain cried for vengeance, lead the 
 way in recommending that Raleigh should, without any new 
 trial, be at once beheaded for that crime, because " nothing 
 short of an express pardon could purge the penalties of 
 treason," - all this seems too outrageojis for belief. Pain- 
 ful as is the story of Bacon, it is hardly less so to think of 
 the avarice and meanness united with the splendid genius 
 of Rembrandt, the feet of clay with the head of fine gold. 
 But the anecdotes related in illustration of these qualities 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 133 
 
 are too well attested to admit of doubt. A burgomaster of 
 liis acquaintance having chanced one day to remark that 
 the painter's works would treble in value after his death, 
 Rembrandt caught at the idea, and, returning home, directed 
 his wife and son to give out, first that he was dangerously 
 sick, and soon after that he was dead. The trick suc- 
 ceeded ; and when a sale was held of Rembrandt's paint- 
 ings, as advertised by his widow, crowds flocked to the 
 auction, and the most trivial sketches realized an enormous 
 sum. The painter was in ecstasies at his success, and in 
 due time came to life again ; but his countrymen would 
 never employ him after his resurrection. Another trick of 
 his was placing the word " Venetiis " at the bottom of several 
 of his engravings, to cheat his countrymen into the belief 
 that he was about to settle in Ital}*, a delusion which 
 would materially raise the price of his productions. Of 
 the avarice and penuriousness of the great Duke of Marl- 
 borough, now acting history in minutes, and now dirtj'ing 
 his hands by peculation in arm}* contracts, there are, un- 
 happily, too many proofs. Macaulay has said truly that 
 u his splendid qualities were mingled with alloy of the 
 most sordid kind." On one occasion, having left off' the 
 winner of sixpence after an evening at piquet, he insisted 
 with troublesome importunity that his friend Dean Jones 
 should get change for a guinea in order to pay him, on the 
 ground that he wanted his sixpence for " a chair to take 
 him home." He carried his point, got the sixpence, and 
 walked home. A beggar once asked an alms of Lord 
 Peterborough, and called him by mistake " My Lord Marl- 
 borough." " I am not Lord Marlborough," replied the 
 Earl ; " and to prove it to you, here is a guinea." Handel 
 was so miserly that at the very time when he was receiv- 
 
134 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 ing fifty pounds a night from the opera, he was frequently 
 known to wear a shirt a month to save the expense of 
 washing. The depth of meanness to which a great man 
 can sometimes descend, was never more vividly shown 
 than b}* the Emperor Napoleon when he left in his will five 
 thousand francs to the miscreant who shot at Wellington 
 in Paris. 
 
 The want of practical talent in great men is a fact 
 of common occurrence. Lord Bacon, Addison, Cowper, 
 Swift, Dante, Machiavelli, Corneille, were all striking ex- 
 amples of men who were giants in the closet, but children 
 in the world. Napoleon complained of La Place, that, as 
 Minister of the Interior, he was alwa}'s searching after sub- 
 tleties, and that he carried the spirit of the infinitesimal 
 calculus into the management of business. Adam Smith, 
 who taught the nations econom}*, could not manage the 
 econonn* of his own house. Choked with books and ab- 
 sorbed in abstractions, he was feeble and inefficient in 
 active life, incapable of acting on his own conclusions. 
 Goldsmith was so reckless in his expenditures that, though 
 he received large sums for his writings, he had always his 
 daily bread to earn. An incident told by Cottle in his 
 Life of Coleridge strikingly illustrates the ignorance and 
 helplessness which men of genius often betray regarding 
 the simplest matters of practical life. Coleridge, Words- 
 worth, and Cottle had been travelling together in a private 
 carriage, and the last undertook, at an inn, to remove the 
 harness from the horse, but could not get off the collar. 
 Wordsworth then essayed to do the same thing ; but after 
 exhausting his ingenuity, abandoned the task as impracti- 
 cable. Next Coleridge tried his hand ; and after twisting 
 the poor horse's neck almost to strangulation, gave up the 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 135 
 
 effort in despair, declaring that the horse's head must have 
 grown since the collar was put on. At that moment a ser- 
 vant girl came running to them ; and exclaiming, " La, mas- 
 ter, you don't go about the work in the right way ! " turned 
 the collar upside down and slipped it off in a moment, to 
 the great astonishment and humiliation of the three lumi- 
 naries, who were each convinced afresh that there were 
 heights of knowledge to which they had not yet attained. 
 The unhappy Keats, according to the painter Hay don, owed 
 his ruin to his lack of decision and force of will, u without 
 which," as Ha}*don says truly, " genius is a curse. Fieiy, 
 impetuous, and ungovernable, he expected the world to 
 bow at once to his talents as his friends had done ; and he 
 had no patience to bear the natural irritation of envy at the 
 undoubted proof he gave of strength." Of Leigh Hunt's 
 lack of practical! ty, and especiall}' his ignorance of the 
 comparative value of money, a number of amusing anec- 
 dotes are told. On one occasion he professed his inability 
 to pay a debt of three shillings and sixpence because he 
 had but half-crowns and shillings in his pocket. At an- 
 other time, having arrived in a cab at a friend's, he praised 
 the cabman as " a fine fellow, that! " saying in explana- 
 tion that the "cabb}*" had agreed, as he was returning 
 "empty" from Hammersmith, to take him (Leigh Hunt) 
 for half fare (the whole fare being three shillings). u I 
 told him to drive on. ... When I asked him his fare, he 
 left it to my honor. You know nothing could be fairer 
 than that, so I said I was sorry to say that I had only two 
 half-sovereigns in my pocket, would one of them do? I 
 could give him that, and if not enough, he could call at so- . 
 and-so, or I could borrow it from you. ' Oh ! that would 
 do,' he said ; ' he would not trouble you.' He took it, 
 
136 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 thanked me ; . . . but now he has driven away so suddenly, 
 as you opened the door, that I hardly know what to think." 
 
 The unpractical character of men of genius is vividly 
 shown, not onh* in their dail}' conduct, but in their pursuits, 
 and in the political, ethical, and theological doctrines they 
 have advocated. Among the questions that engaged the 
 attention of the old grammarians were such as these : What 
 name did Achilles bear when wearing a woman's dress? 
 What was the usual subject of the song of the Sirens? 
 Nicanor is said to have written six volumes on a dot, the 
 grammatical full-stop. Messala wrote a dissertation on the 
 letter S, and Martin Vogel wrote another on the German B. 
 Sir Thomas More, in his " Utopia," recommends the entire 
 abolition of property ; that rewards should be offered for 
 assassination, as a mode of warfare ; and that persons 
 laboring under incurable diseases should be encouraged to 
 commit suicide. The ridiculous scheme of government 
 which, under the sounding name of "The Grand Model," 
 the famous philosopher John Locke devised at the close of 
 the seventeenth centuiy for the government of the Carolinas, 
 is well known to readers of histor}'. With its orders of 
 nobility (landgraves and caciques), its formidable bureau- 
 cracy, with officers and titles enough for a populous king- 
 dom of the Old World, and its seigniories, baronies, and 
 manors, this system was the most complicated, fanciful, 
 and impracticable ever contrived by the wit of man, and in 
 a few 3'ears was abandoned before it was put into full 
 operation. 
 
 That greatness of intellect is no guarantee against super- 
 stition is evident from many conspicuous examples to the 
 contraiy. Caesar, "the pale epileptic," who disbelieved in 
 the gods, never stepped into a carriage without first uttering 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 137 
 
 a magical formula as a preservative against accident. Au- 
 gustus, who at a banquet openly scoffed at the gods, 
 dreaded misfortune through the entire da}- if, on rising in 
 the morning, he had chanced to put the left shoe on the 
 right foot. He would never begin a journe}* on the nun- 
 dince, nor undertake anything important on the nonas. Lord 
 Bacon and Sir Thomas Browne fully believed in witch- 
 craft. Henry IV., according to Sully, was very uneasy on 
 account of some prophecy made before his assassination. 
 Richelieu was governed by his astrologer. Wallenstein con- 
 sulted the stars. Hobbes, the deist, was a devout believer 
 in ghosts and spiritual existences. John Wesle} r , the 
 founder of Methodism, when he was doubtful on am* resolu- 
 tion, used to try drawing lots, and called the result " the an- 
 swer of God," a superstition hardly less foolish than those 
 of sortilege and ordeal in the Dark Ages. Many celebrated 
 men have manifested a predilection for certain days of the 
 year, as auspicious to them. Charles V. was especially 
 fond of the festival of St. Matthias (February twenty- 
 fourth), and sanctified it beyond all other days because on 
 that day he was elected Emperor, on that day crowned, 
 and on that da}', by his lieutenants, he took Francis I. 
 prisoner ; he was also born on that day, and on the same 
 day abdicated the throne. Louis XIII. had a predilec- 
 tion for " the unlucky day," Friday, on which he had 
 alwaj's been victorious in battle, and engaged in enterprises 
 that were uniformly successful. Napoleon had a favorite 
 da}^, the twentieth of March. Bismarck is superstitious 
 about Friday, and about sitting with twelve others at table. 
 Some of the most eminent composers of music and actors 
 have had very curious superstitions, of which a German 
 newspaper records the following : Tietjens believed that the 
 
138 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 person would speedily die who shook hands with her over 
 the threshold at parting ; Rachel and Mars thought they 
 won their greatest success immediately after meeting a 
 funeral ; Bellini would not permit a new work to be brought 
 out if on the day announced he was first greeted by a man, 
 and " La Sonnambula " was thus postponed several times ; 
 Me}~erbeer regularly washed his hands before beginning an 
 overture ; and a living noted tragedienne never pla3~s unless 
 she has a white mouse in her bosom. 
 
 The last infirmity of great men that we shall notice is 
 insanity, a mixture of which, Aristotle affirms, is to be 
 found in every great genius. Men of genius are usually 
 men in whom some one faciuMr, or set of faculties, of the 
 mind are inordinately developed ; and all such are pecu- 
 liarly liable to morbid affections of the mind. As Dryden 
 says, 
 
 " Great wits to madness nearly are allied, 
 And thin partitions do their bounds divide." 
 
 Lucretius was supposed to be insane when he composed 
 his great poem ' l De Rerum Natura ; " and Sophocles was 
 acquitted of insanity only on reciting his " CEdipus at 
 Colonus." Pascal, the precocious mathematician and bril- 
 liant polemic, tells us that " 1'extreme esprit est voisin de 
 1'extreme folie ; " and Pascal himself is said to have been 
 haunted by the fear of a gulf yawning just in front of him, 
 which sometimes became so overpowering that he had to be 
 fastened to a chain to keep him from leaping forward. 
 Zimmermann, who wrote in praise of solitude, was hypo- 
 chondriacal, and so were Johnson and Scott. Swift and 
 Rousseau were insane ; Cowper tried to hang himself, and 
 suffered from intense religious remorse ; Saint-Simon in a 
 
THE WEAKNESSES OF GREAT MEN. 139 
 
 fit of despondency fired a pistol at bis head, by which he 
 lost an eye ; Lord Byron suffered often from excessive ex- 
 altation of sentiment; Portugal's greatest poet, Camoens, 
 died of insanity ; Victor Hugo, according to high medical 
 authorit}-, was tainted with the same disease, which afflicted 
 his uncle, one of his brothers, and a daughter; and the 
 world-renowned author of u Don Quixote," who "laughed 
 Spain's chivalry away," died mad in a hospital at Madrid. 
 
THE GREATNESS OF LONDON. 
 
 THE growth of London, even in this age of great cities, 
 is one of the marvels of the nineteenth century. 
 The Great Metropolis, which Guizot once described as "a 
 province covered with houses," has ceased to be a metropo- 
 lis only, it has become a kingdom. When, in 1871, we 
 first visited " the modern Bab\*lon," the population of what 
 is called Inner, or Registration, London was 3,284,260. 
 Ten years later the aggregate of men, women, and children 
 within the same district had swelled to 3,814,471, showing 
 an increase of over 530,000, a number not far from the 
 population of Liverpool or Chicago. In 1880 the inhabi- 
 tants of Greater London that is, the Metropolitan District 
 numbered 4,790,000 ; to-day it must be considerabty more 
 than five million souls. In other words, the population of 
 the British metropolis is more than half that of Norway, 
 Sweden, and Switzerland united ; is three times that of 
 Greece ; is a million larger than that of Scotland ; equals 
 that of nine Chicagos ; and is almost as great as that of 
 the State of New York, with the cities of New York, 
 Brooklyn, Albany, Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, etc., in- 
 cluded. In the six hundred and ninety square miles that 
 lie within a range of fifteen miles of Charing Cross, more 
 people are crowded together than are to be found in all the 
 Queen's dominions in North America. If the great bell of 
 St. Paul's were swung to the full pitch of its tocsin sound, 
 
THE GREATNESS OF LONDON. 141 
 
 more ears would bear it than could hear the loudest roar 
 of Vesuvius or Etna. Stand in the ball above the dome of 
 that great edifice, and you will gaze upon a panorama of 
 life and industry such as you can gaze upon from no other 
 point on the globe. As all roads led to Rome, so they now 
 lead to London, and the vibrations of life and progress 
 here quiver and tremble from every continent and great 
 island on the glabe. 
 
 All impulses to trading activit} T , all outgoings of enter- 
 prise and energy that build up markets in the most distant 
 parts of the earth, make their effects visible and palpable 
 in the metropolis. Like a heart to which blood flows, and 
 from which it pours, money, goods, business arrive thither 
 from the four quarters of the globe, and flow thence to 
 distant poles. No sound of war or peace, no convulsion 
 in state or kingdom, but mingles its echoes with the roar of 
 London. No great bankruptc}* or embezzlement, no rob- 
 bery or assassination, but speeds on lightning wings to this 
 great focus of intelligence. No disaster by fire or flood, 
 by earthquake or landslide, but sobs its story here. No 
 ship goes down in Atlantic or Pacific tempest, in near or 
 distant seas, but the moaning winds whisper of it in this 
 ear of the world. The tick of the clock at the antipodes is 
 audible here, and if a storm blow along the Himalayas it 
 instantly disturbs the London barometer. The population 
 of London comprises more than one hundred thousand 
 foreigners, and more Roman Catholics than Rome itself, 
 more Jews than all Palestine. Eveiy four minutes a birth 
 takes place in the metropolis, and every six minutes a 
 death. London is not merely the largest and most rapidly 
 spreading city in the world, but it exceeds in opulence 
 and luxur}*, and probablj', too, in chronic destitution and 
 
142 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 miser3% every other city ; and every year its wealth and 
 wretchedness increase upon a scale to which history affords 
 no parallel. The area already covered by the mighty 
 town, which adds another big town to its mass each suc- 
 ceeding year, is about 450,000 square acres ; and it con- 
 tains 700,000 houses, of which 26,170 were built in 1881. 
 During the last thirty years whole districts, large as cities, 
 have arisen, as by the wand of an enchanter. In that 
 time the length of the streets has been increased by over 
 fifteen hundred miles, of which eighty-six miles were con- 
 structed in 1881. London stands in four counties, and is 
 striding on to a fifth. In its march it has swallowed up 
 hundreds of suburban villages, and it threatens to engulf 
 many more. In one direction it has devoured Bow, Black- 
 wall, and Stratford, and licks its lips for Ilford and Barking ; 
 in another it has nearly reached Hammersmith, and menaces 
 Chiswick and Tnrnham Green. Hampstead and Highgate 
 are almost overtaken by it on the north, and on the south 
 its antennae nearly touch Dulwich and Balham. 
 
 " When a man is tired of London," said Dr. Johnson to 
 Boswell, u he is tired of life; for there is in London all 
 that life can afford." Charles Lamb used to shed tears in 
 the motley and crowded Strand from fulness of joy at the 
 sight of so much life. In contemplating this " tuberosity 
 of civilization" (as Carlyle terms the modern Babylon), 
 now more than twice the size of Paris, who can realize that 
 it was once confined to the hill above the Walbrook ; 
 that an estuary filled what is now St. James's Park ; and 
 that Camberwell and Peckham, if on dry ground at all, 
 were on the margin of a vast shallow lake, interspersed 
 with marshes and dotted with islets ? Yet we are told by 
 Mr. Loftie, in his recent History of London, that there was 
 
THE GREATNESS OF LONDON. 143 
 
 a prehistoric time when elephants roamed on the banks of 
 the Thames, when Westminster wns a haunt of stags, and 
 when the men who slew them slew them with weapons of 
 stone. 
 
 It is said that there are more churches and chapels in 
 London than in all Italy. London has nearly thirteen 
 thousand policemen, twelve thousand cabmen, and twelve 
 thousand post-office employe's. It has over six hundred 
 railway-stations, and it is said that nearly fifteen hundred 
 passenger-trains pass Clapham Junction daily. The Lon- 
 don Omnibus Company have over six hundred omnibuses, 
 which carry more than fifty-six millions of passengers a 
 year, and the Underground Railway transports fifty mil- 
 lions more. In 1881, 157,886 foot-passengers and 21,460 
 vehicles passed in one da}' over London Bridge alone. 
 No fewer than eight hundred thousand business men enter 
 the City in the morning, and leave it in the evening for 
 suburban residences. London has eighty-five thousand 
 paupers to relieve, besides the insane ; and for their relief 
 it has a thousand and one charitable societies, whose 
 income in 1881 was 4,453,000 sterling, or upwards of 
 twenty-two and a quarter millions of dollars, a sum 
 greater than the whole revenue of Sweden, double that of 
 Denmark, and treble that of Switzerland. During the same 
 year the increase of this income was itself 331,356. Of 
 these societies ninety-two home and foreign missions re- 
 ceive 1,481,600; eighty-nine hospitals receive 528,277; 
 one hundred and twelve dispensaries and nursing institu- 
 tions receive 102,489 ; and one hundred and sixt}'-two 
 pensions for the aged receive 431,770. Half a million 
 sterling is consumed by ninet}'- three institutions for general 
 relief, and eleven for food and money gifts ; and a million 
 
144 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 and a half more is divided among ninety-four voluntary 
 homes, fifty-four orphanages, twenty protective societies, 
 sixt}*-nine reformatories, a hundred and one educational 
 charities, and thirty-five social improvement homes. Of 
 this prodigious charity revenue, it is said (we know not 
 with how much truth) that a large portion is spent in red- 
 tape. There are six hundred and thirteen pawnbrokers in 
 London, with whom from thirty to forty millions of pledges 
 are deposited annuall}'. It is estimated by an able writer 
 in the ''Quarterly Review" for Januaiy, 1883, that each 
 of three hundred thousand families in London is constrained 
 by dire necessity to resort to the pawnbroker one hundred 
 times in the course of every year. 
 
 London consumes forty thousand tons of coal every 
 winter's day in its domestic fireplaces alone ; it consumes 
 thirteen million dollars' worth of gas every year ; and the 
 water-supply is over one hundred million of gallons a day. 
 One hundred and thirty thousand tons of fish are required 
 by London every year ; it consumes six hundred thousand 
 quarts of milk every da\ r , or two hundred and nineteen 
 million quarts a year, at an expense of four and a half 
 million pounds per annum ; and to distribute this milk in 
 small quantities over the enormous area of the metropolis 
 five thousand persons are required (without counting man- 
 agers, clerks, shopmen, and shopwomen), assisted by more 
 than fifteen hundred horses and mules. It has been esti- 
 mated that if the fronts of all the beershops and gin-palaces 
 in London were placed in a row they would stretch from 
 Charing Cross to Chichester, a distance of sixty-two 
 miles ; and, again, it was estimated twentj'-fi ve years ago 
 that if all the ale, beer, and porter drunk during a year in 
 London were put in barrels, and these barrels were piled 
 
THE GREATNESS OF LONDON. 145 
 
 up in Hyde Park, they would form a thousand columns, not 
 less than a mile in perpendicular height. 
 
 Thirty- four hundred persons were maimed and otherwise 
 injured, and two hundred and fifty-two persons were run 
 over and killed in the streets in 1881, being three times 
 as many killed, and ten times as man}* wounded, as it cost 
 to storm Arabi's position at Tel-el-Kebir, and a greater 
 number, omitting the employes of the road^, than the annual 
 total of the killed and injured on all the railways of Great 
 Britain. Twenty-two thousand felonies are committed, on 
 an average, every year in London, and the acts of house- 
 breaking and burglaries amount to fourteen hundred and 
 thirty-one. One hundred and seventy-seven persons mys- 
 teriously disappeared in 1881 ; seven hundred attempted 
 suicide ; 27,228 were apprehended for drunkenness and dis- 
 orderly conduct ; and three thousand persons were arrested 
 for beggary, and having no visible means of support. 
 
 The Cook tourist who " does " other cities in two or three 
 days, finds himself appalled by the stupendous magnitude 
 of London. Adequately to see Paris, Berlin, Vienna, or 
 any other great Continental capital, demands much time, 
 patience, and strength ; but to acquaint oneself with that 
 colossal emporium of men, wealth, arts, and intellectual 
 power, the world's capital, which covers an area of 
 so man}' square miles, on the banks of the Thames, one 
 needs the feet of a centipede, the eyes of Argus, a brain 
 with four lobes, the will of a Cromwell, and " the final 
 perseverance of the saints." London is infinitely vaster 
 and more complex in its development than any other city 
 on the globe. It is the visible embodiment in brick and 
 stone of the country as a whole, and is not so much a city 
 as a congeries of cities, an aggregation of towns, of ever- 
 
 10 
 
146 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 changing hue. In this harlequin town }*ou will find streets 
 extending for miles in length, and streets hardly a hundred 
 feet long ; streets with houses built after the same pattern, 
 and streets with hardly two houses alike ; streets crossing 
 each other at all angles, streets ending with a park, and 
 streets ending with a wall ; streets running under lofty 
 arches, and streets running over viaducts of granite and 
 iron; streets nawowing, widening, and crooking in their 
 course ; here lined with magnificent edifices, and there with 
 the abodes of poverty and vice ; streets paved with granite, 
 streets paved with asphaltum, and streets paved with wood. 
 From every street diverge innumerable alleys, lanes, by- 
 ways, short-cuts, and arched passages, some straight and 
 some oblique, leading to courts, squares, markets, churches, 
 schools, colleges, or to other streets again. Railroads greet 
 3'ou everywhere, with trains thundering over the houses, 
 trains crossing stone bridges, and trains rumbling under- 
 ground. At every point of the compass you see lofty 
 church-spires, monuments towering in the sky, and tall 
 chimnej's of innumerable factories pouring out columns of 
 smoke that hang like a gloom}" pall over the town. Go to 
 the river-bank, and you will see both sides of the Thames 
 lined with huge buildings crowded with merchandise from 
 every clime ; }'ou will see a thousand acres of docks 
 stretching far inland, in which six thousand ships are lying 
 every day in the year from all quarters of the globe, 
 docks, one of which alone is said to employ three thousand 
 men in loading and unloading the vessels in the basin, 
 where one hundred million tons of produce have been stored 
 at a time, and of which the West India alone are capable of 
 holding one hundred and eighty thousand tons of goods. 
 You will see there all the types of humanity, and hear all 
 
THE GREATNESS OF LONDON. 147 
 
 the principal languages spoken under the sun ; you will see 
 the blue-eyed Norwegian elbowing the sandy-haired Scotch- 
 man, and the Milesian the bronzed African ; the yellow 
 Chinese, with his small, almond-shaped eyes, sallow skin, 
 and long pig- tail, jostling the hatchet- faced, raw-boned 
 Yankee ; the Russian, the German, the Malay rushing 
 about knocking against one another and exchanging jests, 
 perhaps oaths and fisticuffs. You will see on the 
 Thames innumerable passenger-steamers shooting under 
 the arches of the dozen magnificent bridges, and steam- 
 ships, ships, brigs, barques, schooners, war-vessels, barges, 
 propellers, tugs, scows, mud-boats, dredging-machines, 
 canal-boats, and floating hospitals and prisons, sailing 
 about or lying at anchor on the eternall} 7 vexed stream. 
 Gorgeous shops, mammoth hotels, galleries of paintings, 
 museums crammed with priceless treasures, libraries with 
 millions of volumes, countless theatres, palaces and houses 
 decorated with exquisite taste, gambling-hells, churches 
 cheek-bj'-jowl with gin-palaces and other haunts of vice, 
 gardens, clubs, restaurants, chop-houses, coffee-houses, mar- 
 kets, lecture-rooms in gloomy alleys, great banks, book- 
 stores, and publishing-houses in narrow lanes, great schools 
 behind grimy brick walls, tenement-houses where women in 
 fireless rooms make collars for five cents a dozen, or a gross 
 of match-boxes for five cents. These are some of the indi- 
 viduals that make up the great aggregate of this monster 
 town, which has no parallel in ancient or modern times. 
 
 In no other city in the world does a stranger, left to him- 
 self for the first time in the streets, especially at night, 
 experience such a sense of desertion and loneliness as 
 in this vast metropolis. De Quince}', writing half a cen- 
 tuiy ago, when London had swollen to only one third its 
 
148 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 present size, vividly describes the feeling with which a man 
 finds himself a poor shivering unit in this great aggregate 
 of humanity, but one wave in a total Atlantic, one plant 
 (and a parasitic plant besides, needing alien props) in 
 an American forest. "No loneliness," he observes, "can 
 be like that which weighs upon the heart in the centre 
 of faces never ending, without voice or utterance for him ; 
 e}*es innumerable, that have no speculation in their orbs 
 which he can understand ; and hurrying figures of men 
 and women weaving to and fro, with no apparent purpose 
 intelligible to a stranger, seeming like a mass of maniacs, 
 or, oftentimes, like a pageant of phantoms. The great 
 length of the streets in many quarters of London ; the con- 
 tinual opening of transient glimpses into other vistas 
 equally far stretching, going off at right angles to the 
 one which you are traversing ; and the murky atmosphere, 
 which, settling upon the remoter end of every long avenue, 
 wraps its termination in gloom and uncertainty, all these 
 are circumstances aiding that sense of vastness and illi- 
 mitable proportions which forever broods over the aspect 
 of London in its interior." 
 
 It is a consequence of the vast size of London that 
 there can be no intimac}', no unity of interest, among its 
 different parts. It has been said that Ezekiel might be 
 preaching in Smithfield, or Camberwell be swallowed up 
 by an earthquake, and the people of St. John's Wood 
 know nothing of it till they saw it announced in the news- 
 papers next morning. Corporate life in London, such 
 as we see in other even great cities, is an impossibility ; 
 for a hundred years, or since the Gordon riots, it has 
 never, except perhaps lately, been agitated simultaneous^ 
 in all its parts. 
 
THE GREATNESS OF LONDON. 149 
 
 The great curse of u the modern Babylon" is its smoke 
 and fog, which are becoming every }'ear more and more 
 intolerable, poisoning the physical system of the citizens 
 to such a degree that it is said that a Londoner may be 
 known in any corner of the world where he may die, if his 
 lungs be examined, their color is so sooty. During the fogs 
 of 1879-80 asthma increased 220 per cent, and bronchitis 
 331 per cent; and in the week ending Feb. 13, 1882, the 
 dense fogs sent up the death-rate from 27.1 in the pre- 
 vious week to 35.3. Yet, strange to say, thanks to its 
 scores of parks, London, in which, in the reign of 
 George II., the deaths exceeded the births by nearly 
 eleven thousand a year, is now, with its mortality of 
 only twenty-one in a thousand, one of the healthiest cities 
 on the globe.- These parks, which are the lungs of the 
 great metropolis, are probably larger and more numerous 
 than in an}' other great city in the world. Some of them 
 are the greens of the villages which the giant city has 
 devoured in its progress ; but the great majorit}*, and 
 especially the more extensive ones, are the gift of the 
 Crown. What other great towns in England have owed 
 to the munificence of rich citizens or to the self-imposed 
 taxation of the people, London has owed to the wise 
 liberality of the English kings, whose ancestors luckily, 
 through love of sport, had provided themselves with ample 
 parks for that purpose, close by the palaces in or near 
 London. Of what inestimable value these parks, given 
 up by the Crown or bought out of imperial funds, and 
 maintained by annual votes of Parliament, are to the 
 metropolis, may be judged by the fact that they comprise, 
 altogether, nearl}' six thousand acres, and that their 
 maintenance costs the public about 100 ; 000 a 3*ear. 
 
THE LONDON PULPIT. 
 
 ARCHDEACON FARRAR. 
 
 / "~T*HE first preacher whom most Americans, when visit- 
 * ing London, go to hear, is probably Archdeacon 
 Farrar. As a writer, he not only enjo3*s a transatlantic 
 reputation, but has probably more readers in the United 
 States than in England. His literary fecundity is extra- 
 ordinary, even in this age of many-tomed writers. During 
 the last ten years he has produced six octavo volumes, 
 of six hundred pages each, upon the New Testament alone. 
 Besides his " Life of Christ," which gave him an almost 
 world-wide fame, his " Life and Work of Saint Paul" and 
 his " Beginnings of Christianit} 7 ," each of which works rep- 
 resents a vast amount of research, thought, and literary toil, 
 and which most clergymen might proudty point to as the 
 fruit of a life's leisure hours, Archdeacon Farrar has written 
 a course of Hulsean Lectures on the " Witness of History 
 to Christ," and a bulky volume on " Eschatology ; " three 
 brilliant and learned linguistic works, namely, " The 
 Origin of Language," 4 - Chapters on Language," and 
 " Families of Speech," all distinguished by acuteness, 
 vigor, and independence of thought, and showing rare 
 gifts of exposition and illustration ; many volumes of ser- 
 mons ; two school-books, "Greek Grammar Rules" and 
 " Greek Syntax ; " and a considerable number of miscel- 
 
ARCHDEACON FARRAR. 151 
 
 laneous works. All this he has done before reaching his 
 tenth lustrum, besides preaching two sermons every Sun- 
 da)' for some years, contributing to magazines and reviews, 
 and delivering many lectures and addresses. His " Life 
 of Christ," which first made him known to the world in 
 general, is the fruit of far more care than an} 1 previous 
 work on the subject. Before venturing on his task he 
 found it necessary to visit Palestine in person ; and it was 
 not till he had himself trodden the streets of Jerusalem, 
 walked on the Mount of Olives, visited Bethlehem, stood 
 by Jacob's Well, and wandered in the valle}' of Nazareth, 
 along the shores of the Sea of Galilee and the coasts of 
 Tyre and Sidon, that he attempted to describe the memo- 
 rable places of the New Testament. The vivid and graphic 
 pictures which make the charm of the book would have 
 been impossible of execution, if he had not seen with his 
 own eyes the cities and villages which are marked by the 
 footsteps of the Son of God. 
 
 To the stranger who, attracted by Dr. Farrar's fame, 
 goes to hear him for the first time, his personal appearance 
 is apt to be disappointing. There are scores of men in 
 London pulpits who have more intellectual faces and a 
 grander presence, with hardly a moiety of his genius. He 
 is a man of medium stature, with a bald head, a pale, 
 scholarly face, and a quiet dignity of mariner which is 
 indicative of conscious strength. When he begins speak- 
 ing, his voice, which, though not powerful, easil\ r fills the 
 house, is somewhat husky ; but the defect soon wears awa}', 
 his articulation becomes clear and distinct, and as he 
 warms with the discussion of his theme, there is a pas- 
 sionate earnestness in his action and tones that rouses and 
 holds spellbound every hearer. This earnestness, this 
 
152 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 burning enthusiasm, which springs from deep convictions, 
 is, indeed, one of the most salient features of his char- 
 acter. It would be hard to name a preacher or author 
 whose individuality is more prominent in all his utterances. 
 Even in his critical and theological writings, when treating 
 of the origin of language, or different theories of inspira- 
 tion, and kindred topics, he cannot confine himself to the 
 aridities of a mere scholastic discussion, but infuses his 
 own personality, with the heat that accompanies it, into 
 every page and paragraph. Whether satirizing " the 
 squabbling Judaism " of the past, or " the newspaper 
 theology" of to-da} r ; "the lie which claims to be a shib- 
 boleth of the elect," or " the superstitious adoration of the 
 letters and vocables of Scripture as though they were the 
 articulate vocables and immediate autograph of God," 
 he is alwa3*s impetuous and outspoken, and stamps upon 
 all he says the impress of intense conviction. 
 
 The chief faults in his delivery are his mannerism and 
 monotone, and his habits of clutching the gas-fixture of the 
 pulpit with one hand, while he gesticulates with the other, 
 and of nervously twitching from time to time at the left 
 sleeve of his surplice. He has some peculiarities of pro- 
 nunciation, too, which startle an American hearer. He 
 accents the second syllable of " doctrinal," pronounces 
 knowledge lt knowledge," and the last syllable of evil 
 as if it were spelled "ville." One of the most strik- 
 ing characteristics of his sermons is the affluence of illus- 
 trations with which they are enforced and adorned, 
 illustrations often of the most felicitous kind, and drawn 
 from the most out-of-the-way nooks and corners of science, 
 history, biography, and literature. The driest and most 
 hackneyed themes, which, under ordinary handling, would 
 
ARCHDEACON FARRAK. 153 
 
 put an audience to sleep, are thus made to teem with 
 interest. One of the most eloquent and fascinating dis- 
 courses we have heard from his lips was delivered at St. 
 Andrew's Church, London, in November, 1886, in behalf 
 of the parochial schools of the English Church. Though 
 devoted mainly to the threadbare theme of education, the 
 sermon was full of freshness, and sparkled with pertinent 
 and striking illustrations drawn from all the realms of 
 literature. Though he had preached twice before during 
 the da}', at St. Margaret's and in Westminster Abbe}', 
 yet there was not the faintest visible symptom of weariness 
 in his manner, and his voice rose, like his thought, in 
 a crescendo of eloquence from beginning to close. Five 
 years before, we had heard him discourse on the same 
 theme, with little less earnestness and power; yet there 
 was no repetition in the present appeal of the ideas and 
 illustrations of the former, but a new and fresh presen- 
 tation of the theme. 
 
 The following passage from one of his sermons, on 
 Failure and Success, is a fair illustration of his pulpit style : 
 " No true work since the world began was ever wasted ; no 
 true life since the world began has ever failed. Oh ! under- 
 stand those two perverted words, i failure ' and ' success,' 
 and measure them by the eternal, not by the earthly stand- 
 ard. What the world has regarded as the bitterest failure 
 has often been in the sight of Heaven the most magnificent 
 success. When the cap, painted with devils, was placed 
 on the brows of John Huss, and he sank dying amid the 
 embers of the flame, was that a failure? When Saint 
 Francis Xavier died, cold and lonely, on the bleak and 
 desolate shore of a heathen land, was that a failure? 
 When the frail, worn body of the Apostle of the Gentiles 
 
154 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 was dragged by a hook from the arena, and the white sand 
 scattered over the crimson life-blood of the victim whom the 
 dense amphitheatre despised as some obscure and nameless 
 Jew, was that a failure? And when, after thirty obscure, 
 toilsome, unrecorded }*ears in the shop of the village car- 
 penter, One came forth to be pre-eminently the Man of 
 Sorrows, to wander from city to city in homeless labors, 
 and to expire in lonely agony upon the shameful cross, 
 was that a failure? Nay, my brethren, it was the life, it 
 was the death, of him who lived that we might follow in his 
 steps, it was the life, it was the death, of the Son of God." 
 Archdeacon Paley once said of some one that he knew 
 nothing against him but that he was a popular preacher. 
 It is useless to den}' that this is a fault (if fault it is) 
 of Archdeacon Farrar. The announcement that he is to 
 preach in Westminster Abbey is sure to attract a dense 
 throng of persons, who fill the seats long before the clock 
 has chimed the hour of service. His theological books, 
 too, have enjo\*ed a popularity almost without a parallel in 
 the history of such publications, even in this age of enor- 
 mous book-sales. The k ' Life of Christ," which took the 
 reading public by storm, went through twenty-four editions 
 in England in two years ; and it is now in the twenty-ninth 
 of its original and costly library form, while two other 
 popular editions have appeared. The sales of the Amer- 
 ican editions have also been very large. The " Life and 
 Work of Saint Paul," issued in 1879, is already in its nine- 
 teenth thousand, besides appearing as a popular serial. 
 The " Early Days of Christianity," which was published 
 in 1882, had reached its eighth thousand by Christmas, and 
 continues to find numerous purchasers both in England and 
 America. 
 

 ARCHDEACON FARRAR. 155 
 
 Like every brilliant preacher and writer, the author of 
 these works has his detractors. One charge brought 
 against both his preaching and writing is that his style is 
 florid, an epithet which is sure to be applied by writers, 
 who are conscious of their own lack of imagination and 
 fancy, to eveiy speaker or writer who invests his theme 
 with the graces they cannot command. There is a popular 
 notion, too, that a man who is a master of rhetoric, who is 
 eloquent and persuasive, cannot be a solid thinker. Arch- 
 deacon Farrar, his critics sa}', has a certain many-colored 
 prismatic brilliancy, but he lacks the severe concentration 
 of the white and pure light of theology which enables us 
 to see things as they are. His showy gilding dazzles the 
 popular eye, but will not stand the acid test for gold. 
 While he has the historic imagination which conjures up 
 past events with readiness, and the power of vivid and 
 picturesque expression, he lacks the calmness and sobriety 
 which are necessary in critical argument and exegeticai 
 analysis, is too pugnacious in the expression of his opin- 
 ions, and leaps too easily and confidently* to his conclusions. 
 He paints vividty, but his lights are too strong and his 
 shadows too Jblack. "He is redundant in language, pro- 
 fuse in illustration, and provokingl}' obscure in allusion. 
 He dogmatizes upon topics concerning which no positive 
 opinion can be given, and he hesitates and vacillates where 
 he should be positive and decided. He criticises with great 
 warmth an interpretation of a passage of Scripture, and 
 then offers a solution hardly distinguishable from that 
 which he has censured." Again, it is urged that the 
 themes on which he has written amidst his multifarious 
 employments are so various embracing history, archae- 
 ology, philology, metaphysics, theology, ethics, the authen- 
 
156 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 ticity and date of the New Testament Scriptures, with a 
 critical and exegetical exposition of their meaning that 
 depth and exactness are rendered impossible. Who can 
 believe that one who has written so much, especially in the 
 last twelve years, can have thought profoundly or reasoned 
 logical^? When Canon Farrar published his "Life of 
 Christ," a cynical critic in the kt Spectator" described it as 
 " by a special correspondent of the London ' Daily Tele- 
 graph."' 
 
 To all this the Archdeacon might reply, with De Maistre : 
 "You cannot have my style without my faults. Would 
 you have fire that does not burn, or water that does not 
 wet?" The virtues and vices of the Archdeacon's style 
 have a common root, and it would be difficult to eradicate 
 the one without eradicating the other. The stream of rhet- 
 oric which leaps and sparkles in his pages springs from no 
 affectation or ambition of fine writing, but flows sponta- 
 neously and irrepressibly from his pen. Tt is true that he 
 adapts his style to the taste of the age, and does not 
 condense his ideas like the old divines. The massive 
 architecture and cathedral st3"le of Hpoker, and that con- 
 gestion of the brain which one suspects in Barrow and 
 Taylor, he doubtless thinks are out of place in our time. 
 They demand a pre-railway age leisure ; and when a man 
 leaves off, he is apt to feel like the boa-constrictor after 
 he had swallowed the Witney blanket. Often where a 
 preacher has such a faculty of illustration, there is very 
 little to illustrate ; there is a very small army of ideas, but 
 a most valorous noise of drums. But such is not the case 
 with Archdeacon Farrar's books and sermons, which abound 
 in thought, and would be remarkable productions even with- 
 out the similes and metaphors, which are not purely stylistic 
 
ARCHDEACON FARRAR. 157 
 
 ornaments, mere combatants on a rhetorical parade, but 
 carry weapons and help to win the battle. Those who 
 regard the bulk of his writings as an argument against 
 their accuracy, should remember how wondrously doing 
 increases the capacity of doing, and that Archdeacon 
 Farrar is a prodigious worker, always at white heat, and 
 does more in an hour than the half-earnest man in a day. 
 
 We have spoken of Archdeacon Farrar's linguistic 
 works. Those persons who judge from their subjects 
 that these books are cold, dry, metaphysical discussions, 
 devoid of all animation and sparkle of style, will find 
 on a perusal that the very opposite is the fact. The 
 author cannot write even on scientific themes without 
 poetizing them. For example, in his " Chapters on Lan- 
 guage," speaking of the manifold forms which words may 
 assume, which yet are all directly inspired by the imitative 
 principle, he cites the names for "thunder" in Gaelic, 
 Bohemian, Albanian, Wallachian, and other languages, 
 and asks : 
 
 " Who does not see the imitative instinct here at work ? Yet 
 the results are as different as the individual impressions, which 
 even differ in the same person with the mood in which they find 
 him at any particular time. . . . What the eye sees and the ear 
 hears depends in no small measure on the brain and the heart. 
 The hieroglyphics of Nature, like the inscriptions on the swords of 
 Vathek, vary with every eye that glances on them ; her voices, like 
 the voice of Helen to the ambushed Greeks, take not one tone of 
 their own, but the tone that each hearer loves best to hear/' 
 
 It is difficult to say to what wing of the Anglican Church 
 the subject of this sketch belongs ; for some years he ap- 
 pears to have been inclining more and more to that party 
 known as the Broad Church. He evidently abhors party 
 
158 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 names, strife, and jangling. Nothing is more marked in his 
 discourses than the spirit of charity and toleration with 
 which they are saturated. He refuses to believe that any 
 school of thinkers has a monopoly of truth. The diversified 
 aspects under which the Gospel presents itself to differently 
 constituted minds, he thinks, only illustrate its matchless 
 excellence, by manifesting its adaptation to every class of 
 intellect and temperament, and its consequent superiority 
 to the narrow, one-sided systems of fallible men. Arch- 
 deacon Farrar therefore champions the right of Christians 
 outside the pale of his Church to differ in doctrine from 
 his brethren as stoutly as Sydney Smith, who tells us 
 that he once preached at Bristol a sermon so intolerably 
 tolerant that ' ' the aldermen could hardlj* keep the turtle 
 on their stomachs." Even for the Jews the Archdeacon 
 has a word of sj'inpath}*. What if their ancestors were 
 guilty of "the greatest crime in histoiy," the crucifixion 
 of the Son of God : must the sins of the fathers therefore 
 be visited forever upon the children? The Jews of to- 
 day would be the last to defend the conduct of Pilate, 
 or those whose frightful howl, "Crucify him!" ran 
 through the hall of the Roman tribunal. They are 
 no more responsible for the persecutions of the early 
 Christians than are modern Christians for the long and 
 fierce persecutions to which the Jews in past ages were 
 subjected. 
 
 Archdeacon Farrar preaches at St. Margaret's Church, 
 close by Westminster Abbey, the church of the House 
 of Commons, whose walls once echoed the voices of Cal- 
 amy, Baxter, Lightfoot, and other famous Puritan divines. 
 It was here that Case dared censure Cromwell to his face, 
 and afterward to tell General Monk that "there were 
 
ARCHDEACON FARRAB. 159 
 
 some who would betray three kingdoms for filthy lucre ; " 
 and then, to make certain whom he meant, threw his hand- 
 kerchief into the pew where Monk sat. It was a minister 
 of this church who was sharply reproved by George III. 
 for his fulsome flattery of that king in a sermon, his 
 Majesty telling the preacher that u he came to the church to 
 hear God praised, not himself." On a stained-glass window, 
 presented to the church by Americans, in memory of Sir 
 Walter Raleigh, whose body lies under the chancel floor, 
 is this verse by James Russell Lowell : 
 
 " The New World's sons, from England's breast we drew 
 Such milk as bids remember whence we came ; 
 Proud of her past, from which our present grew, 
 This window we inscribe with Raleigh's name." 
 
 A brief history of the Archdeacon's life will show how 
 rapid has been his rise to different degrees of distinction. 
 The Rev. Frederic William Farrar, D.D., F.R.S., was born 
 in the Fort, Bombay, Aug. 7, 1831, and is the son of 
 the late Rev. C. R. Farrar, rector of Sidcup, Kent. He was 
 educated at King William's College, in the Isle of Man, 
 and at King's College, London. In 1850 he became a 
 classical exhibitioner of the London University, graduated 
 B.A., and was appointed a University scholar in 1852. 
 He next went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1854 
 took his Bachelor's degree there as fourth in the class 
 of the Classical Tripos, and a junior optime in mathemat- 
 ics. While at Trinity he won three prizes, the Chan- 
 cellor's prize for English verse, the Le Bas classical 
 prize, and the Norrisian prize. In 1854 he was or- 
 dained deacon by the Bishop of Salisbury, and three years 
 later was admitted to priest's orders by the Bishop of Ely. 
 
160 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 In 1872 he was made B.D., and in 1873 D.D. For 
 several years he was an assistant-master at Harrow, and 
 in 1871 became head-master of Maryborough College, 
 where he remained till April, 1876, when he was appointed 
 to a canonry in Westminster Abbey and made rector of 
 St. Margaret's, vacated by the death of Canon Conway. 
 In 1868 he was appointed Select Preacher before the 
 University of Cambridge, and again in 1874-75 ; and in 
 1870 he delivered the Hulsean Lectures. For eighteen 
 3'ears he has been chaplain to the Queen, during the 
 first four years as honorary chaplain, and since as chaplain 
 in ordinary. In 1883 he was made archdeacon. 
 
 CANON LIDDON. 
 
 AN American who has been accustomed to hear the great 
 representative preachers of his own country in the largest 
 cities is surprised to learn that, with a few exceptions, the 
 ablest and most eloquent divines of England are not to be 
 found in the pulpits of the great metropolis. Within a few 
 3*ears there has been a decided decline in the pulpit oratory 
 of London. Thomson, Alford, Goulburn, and Boyd have 
 been lost by cathedral or Church elevation ; Magee, the 
 most eloquent of Episcopal preachers, has for many years 
 been Bishop of Peterborough ; R. W. Dale, the ablest and 
 most scholarly of the Congregational preachers, is at Bir- 
 mingham ; Mr. Maclaren, the most thoughtful and polished 
 of all the Baptist preachers, is at Manchester ; and Dr. 
 Martineau, the most powerful champion of Unitarianism, 
 
CANON LIDDON. 161 
 
 occupied, till shortly before he ceased preaching, a pulpit 
 in Liverpool. 
 
 But though London has not these great preachers, she 
 has a few others who have no superiors ; and among the 
 hundreds who discourse from her Anglican pulpits na}', 
 among the twenty thousand divines of the English Church 
 there are few whom men throng in such crowds to hear as 
 they do to listen to Canon Liddon when he is announced to 
 speak at St. Paul's. Long before the bells have tolled the 
 hour of service, every chair and bench whence one can see 
 and distinctly hear the preacher is taken. It was on Sun- 
 day afternoon, the 8th day of April, 1883, at the cathedral, 
 that we heard him last. The assembly, which was closely 
 packed, was made up of well-dressed men and women, 
 chiefly of the middle classes, including a considerable 
 number of young men, and not a few whose white ties 
 and black coats marked them as clergymen. At four 
 o'clock the procession of surpliced choristers and clergy 
 passed up the aisle into the choir to the soft, sweet notes 
 of the organ, the procession being closed by the Bishop of 
 London and the preacher for the occasion, both wearing 
 the resplendent red-silk hood that denotes the doctor's de- 
 gree. The chanting and singing were exceedingly beauti- 
 ful, approaching near to perfection, it seemed to us ; and 
 in both the congregation heartily joined. This service lasts 
 about forty-five minutes, after which, with a quiet, rapid 
 step, the preacher ascends the pulpit. Burying his face in 
 his hands, he utters a prayer so low and indistinct that you 
 begin to fear that, though he may be a great theologian and 
 a profound and subtle thinker, he maj* lack the physical 
 qualities of an eloquent preacher. As he raises his head 
 and faces the audience and announces his text, " I was in 
 
 11 
 
162 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 the Spirit on the Lord's da}'" (Rev. i. 10), you see little in 
 his luce or "bodily presence" to justify the hush of ex- 
 pectation, the indefinable thrill of emotion, that seems to 
 pervade the dense throng of hearers. He is apparently a 
 man of about fifty-six years of age, of middle stature, with 
 short gray hair, a pale, smooth-shaven face, and what 
 are perhaps his most marked physiognomical traits keen 
 eyes and a firmly compressed mouth. There is something 
 monastic in his appearance, and one of his admirers has 
 noted a resemblance in his face to that of Saint Augustine 
 in Ary Scheffer's noted picture of that saint and Monica. 
 
 On the whole, Canon Liddon looks like a man of some- 
 what severe, not to say ascetic, temperament, who takes no 
 optimistic views of life, but broods often and thoughtfully 
 upon its stern realities. His delivery tends to deepen this 
 impression. He has a clear, penetrating, though not deep 
 or powerful voice, articulates with great distinctness, and 
 from the beginning to the end of his discourse speaks with 
 an intensity and earnestness of manner that imply the 
 strongest and most deeply rooted convictions. This uni- 
 form high pressure of his delivery is the leading character- 
 istic of his oratory. He is one of the few men in whom 
 careful culture has not repressed earnestness ; and no 
 sooner has he announced his text than he begins at once to 
 throw his whole nature body, mind, and soul into the 
 delivery of his sermon, and, like an express train, which 
 never stops at intermediate stations, or even to wood and 
 water, but goes on devouring space at forty miles an hour 
 till it has reached its destination, he hardly slackens till 
 he has uttered the last sentence of his discourse, and 
 pronounces the ascription. The only pauses, and those 
 barely perceptible, are when, after having clinched some 
 
CANON LIDDON. 163 
 
 argument, or summarized some analysis with keen, re- 
 morseless logic, he passes to another branch of his subject ; 
 or when, toward the close, he exchanges logic for rhetoric, 
 the closed fist for the open palm, and strives by a 
 practical application of his reasonings to pierce or rouse the 
 heart. Though it is very exhausting, and you see the per- 
 spiration streaming down his face, there are many advan- 
 tages in this rapid utterance when it is clear and distinct. 
 " I never in my life," says a thoughtful writer, " knew a 
 good talker who was not also a rapid one. A drawling, 
 listless enunciation is sure, by an unfailing sympathy, to 
 affect the understanding and general faculties after its own 
 kind." The same remark is true, in a large degree, of pub- 
 lic speaking, especially when it is extemporaneous. A 
 brisk, nervous utterance stirs the spirit from laziness into 
 excitement ; it raises a gentle, genial glow over the whole 
 nervous system. A succession of brisk, decisive sentences, 
 freely delivered, will often kindle the mind into a luminous 
 heat, like so many blasts from a pair of bellows. 
 
 Though Canon Liddon preaches from manuscript, he is 
 so familiar with it that it imposes no shackles on his oratory. 
 Indeed, one might almost fancy his discourses to be extem- 
 poraneous, did not the affluence of learning, the depth of 
 thought, and especially the condensation, pungency, and 
 extreme finish of the st3'le, utterly forbid such a supposition. 
 Both the substance and the form of the discourse show it 
 to have been hammered again and again on the anvil, till 
 every sentence has been forged into a bolt. The late Arch- 
 bishop Whately used to distinguish two classes of authors 
 (and the same is true of speakers), the writers of sapient 
 commonplaces, like Mason on " Self-Knowledge," at whom 
 he only nodded his head ; and writers of original and vigor- 
 
164 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 ous thought, like John Foster, at whom he rubbed the back 
 of his ear. In the one case he could run and read ; the 
 thought was limpid, and he had only to run with the stream. 
 In the other case the torrent was swift, and his self-respect 
 compelled him to pause, and not be swept down by its re- 
 sistless swirl. There can be no doubt to which of these 
 classes Canon Liddon belongs. Few popular preachers 
 exact more mental effort on the part of the hearer. It has 
 been justly said that the mind is in extreme tension as one 
 tries to follow the course of the reasoning through those 
 terse, glittering, incisive sentences, which follow each other 
 so keenly and swiftly, like the steps of a mathematical 
 demonstration. It is riot strange that occasionally, as he 
 enters upon a subtle analysis, a look of perplexity or a 
 shade of weariness steals over some faces, and that others 
 betray the feelings of persons who are out of their depth. 
 Yet there is no parade of learning, no scholastic lore, in his 
 discourses. The solid ingots of scholarship are beaten out 
 b}* him, and wrought into current coin for men and women 
 who have leisure for results only, and not for processes ; and 
 but a few moments pass before the same faces are lighted 
 up again as, in words of rare felicity and with passionate 
 earnestness, he gives expression to some of the deepest as- 
 pirations of our nature, or exposes some shallow sophistry 
 of the day. 
 
 It is well known that almost every public speaker has 
 some marked fault of manner which mars the effect of his 
 elocution. One man uses his hands as if he had claws, 
 pawing with them ; another buttons his coat up to the chin 
 and folds his arms over his chest, a la Pitt ; another has a 
 trick of rising on tiptoe, as if he were accustomed to address 
 his audiences over a wall ; and another paces the platform 
 
CANON LIDDON. 165 
 
 to and fro, like a tiger in a cage. Canon Litldon is no ex- 
 ception to this rule. With all his great excellences, he lias 
 one habit which detracts not a little from the interest of his 
 discourses : it is a practice of throwing his bod}- backward 
 and forward, so that his head describes a segment of a 
 circle, like the masts of a yacht at anchor in a rough sea, 
 which is at times so odd, not to say grotesque, as to 
 divert attention even from the enchaining oratory. We 
 must add, however, that there has been a signal improve- 
 ment in this matter since we first heard him in 1871, when, 
 we sometimes almost feared he would turn a back somerset. 
 Another thing that mars his oratory is that, being short- 
 sighted, he often stoops to consult the Bible or his notes, and 
 yet goes on speaking all the while, as he does when he 
 bows at the name of Christ ; the result of which bowing of 
 the head is that his words fall on the pulpit-cushion and are 
 deadened, so that to persons at a distance there seem to 
 be frequent stops and gaps in the sermon. 
 
 The effects of Canon Liddon's oratory are due to its in- 
 trinsic excellences, and in no degree to the " presence " or 
 personal magnetism of the speaker. Nonconformists, who 
 differ from him in doctrine and ceremonial, hang upon his 
 lips with as much interest as Churchmen. His eloquence is 
 of a severe, not of a meretricious, type. It is the farthest 
 possible in its qualities from that of the fanatic who is car- 
 ried away by enthusiasm on one lone subject. It is the 
 eloquence, so rare at all times, of the man of letters who is 
 at the same time a keen observer of men and events, of 
 the man who has consumed much midnight oil in his stud3', 
 and who knows that he has to address intelligent and even 
 critical congregations, and therefore weighs as in a hair- 
 balance every word he is to utter. The eagerness with 
 
166 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 which men listen to him disproves the notion that habits of 
 intense and profound thought are necessarily fatal to elo- 
 quence ; it disproves, too, the notion that men are impatient 
 of long sermons, and only yawn after the}' have listened for 
 twenty or, at most, thirty minutes. No doubt one shud- 
 ders when he thinks of the ponderous, elephantine dis- 
 courses to which our forefathers listened for hours at a 
 stretch ; }*et even in bus}*, mammon- worshipping London, 
 men and women have sat patiently in a close, sultry atmos- 
 phere for three hours together to listen to a sermon b} T 
 Canon Liddon, which itself was an hour and three quarters 
 in length. The celebrated Dr. Binne}', himself an eloquent 
 Nonconformist preacher, states that in 1868 he heard 
 Canon Liddon for an hour and twenty minutes with unabat- 
 ing interest. The sermon to which we listened lasted just 
 an hour. It was the most lucid and masterly discourse on 
 "The Lord's Day" the meaning of that phrase, the 
 principles recognized in the observance of the day, the dis- 
 tinction between that day and the Sabbath, and the proper 
 mode of observing the day to which we have ever 
 listened. 
 
 Speaking of the objection sometimes made to the conse- 
 cration of a section of time, that in a true Christian life 
 "all time is already consecrated," he said: 
 
 " The answer is, that the larger obligation of love is not ignored 
 because the smaller obligation of duty is insisted on. In human 
 life, being what it is, it is easy to do nothing by undertaking to do 
 everything. . . . The case is exactly parallel to the case of prayer. 
 . . . The life of a good Christian is, no doubt, a continuous prayer. 
 The spirit of prayer penetrates it and hallows it ; each duty is 
 entwined with acts of the soul which raise it up above this earthly 
 scene to the throne and to the presence of Christ. But for all that, 
 in Christian lives stated times of prayer, private as well as public, 
 
CANON LID DON. 167 
 
 are practically necessary, if prayer is to be at all maintained. And 
 yet the morning and evening prayers of a Christian are perfectly 
 consistent with his recognizing the apostolic and divine ideal that 
 prayer should be incessant in a Christian's life ; and in like man- 
 ner the especial consecration of one day in seven does not by any 
 means involve and imply rejection of the claim of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ on a Christian's whole time. It is like those small pay- 
 ments known to the English law, which do not profess to give an 
 exact equivalent for that which they represent, but only techni- 
 cally to acknowledge the existence of a much larger claim ; it im- 
 plies that all our time belongs to God, although in our weakness 
 he graciously accepts a prescribed instalment or a section of it." 
 
 In another part of the discourse Canon Liddon showed 
 that abstinence from labor on one day in seven is not in- 
 consistent with a recognition of the dignity and claims of 
 labor, but, on the contrary, protects labor, arrests an ex- 
 cessive expenditure of strength, and is enacted, therefore, 
 in the interests of labor itself. 
 
 " Especially is this the case in a time like our own, when men 
 live and work at high pressure, when capital demands quick returns 
 for outlay, when competition is keen, and the place of a man who 
 faints for a moment at his post is at once occupied by a stronger 
 rival who stands watching his opportunity hard by." 
 
 In closing his discourse the preacher sa3~s of Sundays 
 spent in an atmosphere of worship : 
 
 " Sundays such as this are to human life like shafts in a long 
 tunnel, they admit at regular intervals light and air ; and though 
 we pass them all too soon, their helpful influence does not vanish 
 with the day : it furnishes us with strength and light for the duties 
 which await us, and makes it easier for us to follow loyally the road 
 which God's loving providence may have traced for each one of us 
 on toward our eternal home." 
 
 These passages give but a faint idea of the excellence of 
 the sermon on "The Lord's Dav." Canon Liddon's merit 
 
168 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 as a preacher does not lie in splendid passages, in pointed, 
 epigrammatic remarks, or magnificent bursts of eloquence, 
 but in the sustained excellence and the effect of his dis- 
 courses as a whole. Unlike Archdeacon Farrar, he deals 
 little in flowers of rhetoric. His oratoiy is of the kind which 
 Aristotle has happil}* termed the " agonistical," or wrestling, 
 kind. His thoughts cut a deep logical channel through his 
 subject, instead of sparkling over it and around it with the 
 grace of a playful fancj', or striking sparks out of it b} T the 
 shock of a strong imagination. If the style of Archdeacon 
 Farrar sometimes reminds one of a painted window, which 
 both transmits the light of da}* tinged with a thousand varied 
 hues, and diverts attention from its proper use to the pomp 
 and splendor of the artist's work, that of Canon Liddon is 
 a perfectly transparent medium that transmits light without 
 suggesting a thought about the medium itself. Every sen- 
 tence marks the man who is intent upon serious business, 
 whose sole anxiety is to convey his meaning with the 
 utmost possible precision and energy to the minds of his 
 hearers. 
 
 Canon Liddon has no sympathy with the so-called "ad- 
 vanced thinkers " in theology. He belongs to a religious 
 part} T which looks backward rather than forward for its in- 
 spiration to effort. He is, in fact, a Catholic Anglican, 
 identified heart and soul with the sacramental doctrine of 
 both the Eastern and the Western Churches, and who even 
 now would look upon reunion with the great communions 
 of the East as the only adequate presage of the victory of 
 Christ's kingdom over human evil. It is said that he would 
 make the Church of England as famous for the splendor of 
 her ceremonial as for the learning, piet}*, and zeal of her 
 clergy. He would exalt the holiest service of the Church, 
 
CAXON LIDDON. 169 
 
 which has long been regarded as an act of adoring thanks- 
 giving, into an act of sacrifice. Believing that by some 
 mysterious process the actual body and blood of Christ are 
 partaken of at the celebration of the Communion feast, he 
 would invest the rite with all the outward magnificence that 
 can be devised, with all the inward awe the heart can be 
 induced to feel. But though to a certain extent a reaction- 
 ist, Canon Liddon is not a recluse. He studies men as well 
 as books ; is fully abreast with the latest thought of the age, 
 both in theology and science ; and is quick to discern the 
 signs of the times. No other divine has more clearly per- 
 ceived where lies the brunt of the theological battle of the 
 day, or combated with more force and fiery earnestness the 
 dreary materialism of its scientific thought. It is per- 
 haps one of the chief secrets of his power that he has so 
 completely mastered the objections of modern scepticism, 
 and acquainted himself with the subtle spirit of the age and 
 the hindrances to faith peculiar to our time. In his Bamp- 
 ton Lectures and other publications almost every theologi- 
 cal or ethical problem that has agitated Europe is fearlessly 
 stated and discussed, whether connected with the names of 
 Rousseau or Kenan, Hegel or Schleiermacher, Spencer or 
 Mill. 
 
 In conclusion, in view of his great and varied mental 
 gifts and accomplishments, we may pronounce Canon 
 Liddon, if not, as Dean Stanley once declared, the great- 
 est preacher of the age, yet certainly, in the words of an- 
 other, " the brightest and fullest-orbed mind in the English 
 Church." 
 
170 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 JOSEPH PARKER, D.D. 
 
 THERE are some persons who regard it as the highest en- 
 comium on a clerg3'man to sa3' that he is " a safe preacher." 
 By tc a safe preacher" is meant one who travels by easy 
 stages on the old, orthodox turnpike roads, who never 
 vexes his brains with queries about new or improved ones, 
 but jogs on at a comfortable pace, now and then looking 
 out of the coach window to see that all is right, and then 
 dropping to sleep again. To Christians who love to be " at 
 ease in Zion," such preachers are very acceptable. They 
 never startle the ears of the hearer by original and daring 
 thoughts or novel interpretations of Scripture ; they never 
 violate a canon of taste in their sermons, never tell a 
 story, use a vulgar illustration, or provoke a smile ; and 
 after listening to them once, he feels that he can doze in his 
 pew without danger. On the other hand, it must be con- 
 fessed that the3 T never prick a conscience, never frighten a 
 sinner, never edify a saint, never pull down a stone of the 
 devil's strongholds, never save a soul. Such preaching 
 promotes church unity; the hearers are never tormented 
 with theological doubts, or at loggerheads about the sound- 
 ness of the doctrine. They had such a preacher once in 
 the city of Rouen. A French priest, speaking of the ex- 
 citement produced there by Bourdaloue's preaching, when 
 the merchants and mechanics, the lawyers and doctors, left 
 their shops and offices and thronged the church, added : 
 " But when I went there to preach, I put all things right 
 again ; not a man of them left his business." 
 
 It is no exaggeration to say of Dr. Joseph Parker that 
 whatever other faults he may have, he is at the opposite 
 
JOSEPH PARKER. 171 
 
 pole from such a clerical icicle as this. Go on an}' Sunday 
 to the City Temple, and you will find his hearers listening 
 with eager interest to his words. Nowhere, as }'ou cast 
 your eye about the crowded congregation, will }*ou see a 
 person who has the air of one who is brooding over business 
 problems, planning a corner in stocks, building air-castles, 
 or criticising a neighbor's dress. All are intent upon hear- 
 ing the preacher, and give him their undivided attention. 
 
 Of Dr. Parker's history we know but little. Nearly 
 twenty years ago, we think, he began preaching in the town 
 of .Banbury. He next settled in Manchester, and from that 
 cit}' went in 1869 to London, where he preached in the 
 Poultry Chapel. When this building had to be pulled 
 down, the society built, at an expense of 60,000, the 
 present spacious edifice in Holborn, near the Viaduct. The 
 City Temple, in which Dr. Parker has since preached, is 
 one of the most attractive and agreeable churches in the 
 metropolis. There are galleries running all around the in- 
 terior, and the pews are arranged with a view to comfort as 
 well as to economy. Back of. the handsome pulpit which 
 was given by the Corporation is a large and beautiful 
 organ, which is so constructed as to show a circular painted 
 window behind it, the effect of which is at once unique and 
 striking. There are half-a-dozen other painted windows 
 in the building, two of which are representations of the 
 Sower, and the Pharisee and the Publican praying in the 
 Temple. Though the City Temple will probably seat from 
 two thousand to two thousand five hundred persons, it is 
 almost sure to be filled, and in fine weather crowded. Great 
 courtesj- is shown to strangers by the ushers, who hardly 
 let one wait a minute before escorting him to a seat. Con- 
 nected with the church are a large and flourishing Sunday- 
 
172 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 school and a Colportage Association ; and in the winter 
 courses of excellent lectures are giv r en in the church to 
 working-men. 
 
 Of all the London preachers we have heard, Dr. Parker 
 is the one about whom we find it most difficult to form a 
 satisfactory opinion. He is to us a psychological puzzle. 
 The oftener we heard him, and the more we studied his 
 physiognomy, the more were we at a loss how to estimate 
 or classify him. Hearing him at first with some prejudice, 
 owing partly to his pompous letter to Dr. Lorimer some 
 years ago, we found our prejudice gradually disappearing 
 under the effects of his preaching ; and yet, after listening 
 to him a third and a fourth time, we found our original feel- 
 ings returning. In spite of every effort to think the con- 
 trary, we found it hard to get rid of the impression that the 
 preacher was theatrical in his manner, studying at times to 
 startle, surprise, and attract admiration, rather than to con- 
 vict and persuade his hearers of the great truths he ex- 
 pounded and illustrated. Dr. Parker is a massive man, 
 and has the look of a physical, if not of an intellectual, 
 athlete. His brawny, though somewhat coarse, pln'sical 
 organism suggests great powers of endurance, and explains 
 his abilit} T to preach three sermons a week (one on Thurs- 
 day noon), besides editing the " Christian Chronicle." 
 He has a high, broad forehead, which owes its appearance 
 of breadth in part, perhaps, to his habit of brushing his 
 hair back over his head. His voice, which is like the roll 
 of thunder, is worthy of his bovine frame, and fills easily 
 every part of the house. It is not a musical voice, but one 
 of great power, and drives his sentiments home in the 
 hearer's mind with a kind of sledge-hammer force. The 
 ver} T mass of the man helps to make his words impressive. 
 
JOSEPH PARKER. 173 
 
 Dr. Parker fully recognizes the importance of elocution ; 
 he knows perfectly well that the crying want of the pulpit 
 to-day is not profound scholarship, hair-splitting meta- 
 physic subtlety, or the moral aroma of character, but ora- 
 torical skill and power. He knows what weight and pathos 
 may be communicated b} T sonorous depth and melodious 
 cadences to the most trivial sentiments, while, on the other 
 hand, the grandest may be emasculated by a delivery which 
 fails to distribute the lights and shadows of a proper into- 
 nation. But there is one lesson, the \cry first lesson in the 
 elocutionary art, which he apparently has yet to learn ; it 
 is self-forgetfulness. He has certain tricks of manner 
 which betray a self-consciousness that is fatal to deep im- 
 pression. There is an air of self-satisfaction in his attitude 
 and deliveiy which greatly detracts from the effectiveness 
 of his speaking. He has a trick of rising on tiptoe, and 
 coming down on his heels when he wishes to be emphatic ; 
 a practice of shouting in a series of staccato tones, and 
 then suddenly lowering his voice to a whisper ; a habit of 
 thumping the Bible with clenched fist or open palm ; and 
 above all, a habit of smacking his lips and smiling when, 
 apparently, he thinks he has said a good thing, all of 
 which would be comparatively pardonable on the platform, 
 but are positively offensive in the pulpit. The last pecu- 
 liarity detracts especially from the excellence of his preach- 
 ing. One may smile when he sees the preacher fold his 
 gown about him and gesticulate with his left arm, or when 
 he makes the long pause between the end of his prayer and 
 the " Amen," which is pronounced in a basso prof undo 
 tone; but the peculiar look and tone the smirk by 
 which he shows his appreciation of the smart things that 
 have dropped from his lips, and of which, by a sort of 
 
174 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 seignorial right, he grants himself the first enjoyment, is 
 an unmistakable token of vulgarity. 
 
 While noting these defects in Dr. Parker's preaching, we 
 are happy to say that it is free from the greatest of all 
 faults, dulness. If he sometimes offends the taste of a 
 sensitive hearer, he never wearies him. Having announced 
 his text, he wastes no time upon preliminaries, but attacks 
 his subject at once. He grapples with it as did Nelson 
 with the French ships, casting out his grappling-irons and 
 boarding instanter. Few preachers know so well when to 
 close a sermon. He rarely preaches for over half an hour ; 
 when he has driven the nail home and clinched it, he stops. 
 His discourses have another great merit, that of original- 
 it}'. He can say with Horace, " Non aliena meo press! pede." 
 Montaigne, in one of his naive essays, tells us that one day 
 he was reading in a French book, when, after plodding over 
 many pages of dull, flat, commonplace matter, he came 
 suddenly to a piece that was loft}', rich, and elevated to the 
 veiy clouds. " Now, had I found either the declivity easy, 
 or the ascent more sloping," he saj's, "there had been 
 some excuse ; but it was so perpendicular a precipice, and 
 so cut off from the rest of the work, that by the first words 
 I found myself flying into the other world, and thence dis- 
 covered the vale whence I came, so deep and low that I 
 have never since had the heart to descend into it any more." 
 There are no such glaring inequalities as this in Dr. Parker's 
 sermons. There is a uniformity, an individualit}', an ab- 
 sence of purple patches in them, which show them to be 
 the coinage of his own brain. They abound in shrewd ob- 
 servation and practical sense, with occasional touches of 
 sarcasm and mother- wit ; but give little evidence of scholar- 
 ship or familiarity with history or literature. They have 
 
JOSEPH PABKEB. 175 
 
 no flashes of genius, no pungent, suggestive sayings that 
 condense the results of years of thought and observation, 
 and stick like barbed arrows in the hearer's memory. 
 
 Dr. Parker appears to be fond of expository preaching, 
 not, evidently, for the reason once assigned by -another 
 preacher for resorting to this method, namely, that when 
 he was " persecuted in one text, he could flee unto another," 
 
 but because ability in this kind of preaching is one of 
 the Doctor's strong points. Though he is rarely epigram- 
 matic, he is fond of intense expressions, such as " The 
 leonine Paul," " Paul had a strong grip on God," etc. ; 
 and in the reports of his sermons, to give increased em- 
 phasis to his observations, not a few words are printed with 
 italics and capitals, as thus : " Having gathered the Church 
 together, the}' * rehearsed ALL.' But we want to hear 
 the detail. The little word ALL is really the greatest 
 word in human speech. In its letters the whole universe 
 is included." This we should be inclined to call sensation- 
 alism, for we can conceive of no other motive for making so 
 foolish a remark ; but we remember that the Doctor, in a 
 sermon on Acts xiv. 1-7, has rebuked sermon-critics, and 
 told them that when they talk of " sensationalism " they 
 are ignorant of its meaning. He says : 
 
 " If Christianity were among the Churches to-day, men, instead 
 of criticizing sermons which they hear, would go out and preach 
 sermons themselves ; would borrow any chair or stand on any 
 stone at the street corner, and if they could not preach the Gospel, 
 they could at least read it. Fifty thousand men at the street- 
 corners to-day reading with one voice the third chapter of John ! 
 
 why, apostolic times would have come back again. That chap- 
 ter needs no comment ; it says, ' Head me, and let me do my own 
 work.' Do not be frightened by the long word ' sensationalism.' 
 People who use it do not know its meaning, and they only seek to 
 
176 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 terrify you out of your new-born earnestness in the Christian cause. 
 Nothing divides society like Christianity. Its voice is, ' Come out 
 from among them, and be ye separate : the good to the right, the 
 bad to the left.' It is a tremendous righteousness ; it does not sit 
 in silken slippers and in downy chairs, indulging itself with philo- 
 sophical" musings about nothing: it goes to roots and cores, to 
 hearts and inmost lives, and there its law pierces like a sting, 
 there its righteousness burns like an oven, there its gospel sings 
 like an angel." 
 
 The following extract from one of Dr. Parker's sermons 
 will give the reader a good idea of his st3'le of thought and 
 expression. Commenting upon the account in Acts xiv. 8 
 18, of the healing of the impotent man at Lystra, he 
 saj's : 
 
 " The very high priest of Jupiter was prepared to offer sacri- 
 fices unto the visitors. The oxen are in the streets, the garlands 
 are at the gates, the knife is waiting that shall draw the blood from 
 the oxen, and Paul and Barnabas, you shall be the gods of Lyca- 
 onia, and have what you ask for. Every life has its temptations, 
 its forty days in the wilderness, its hand-to-hand fight with hell. 
 Why did not Paul and Barnabas settle down upon this eulogium? 
 They need not perform any other miracle ; they had performed 
 one, and on that one they may rest as long as they live ; they could 
 become the tyrants of the place, ordering and commanding what 
 they please, and drawing to themselves the superstitious homage of 
 minds wonder-struck and all-trusting. It was the devil's hour : if 
 they get over that bridge, the apostles will be safe ! They were 
 over it ! When Barnabas and Paul heard what was going on, 
 * they rent their clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out, 
 and saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like 
 passions with you.' Their self-knowledge was, humanly speaking, 
 their salvation." 
 
 One of the most characteristic sermons of Dr. Parker that 
 we have heard, exemplifying in a striking degree both his 
 excellences and his faults as a preacher, is one entitled 
 
JOSEPH PARKER. 177 
 
 "Tribulation Accepted," the text being Acts xiv. 19-28. 
 We regret that we have not room for longer extracts : 
 
 " Paul was but once stoned, and he never forgot it ! Writing an 
 account of his experiences, he puts into the summary of them this 
 line Once was I stoned.' No man can forget that experience. 
 In former years those who were engaged in stoning Stephen lay 
 down their clothes at a young man's feet whose name was Saul. 
 The wheel of Providence turns round 1 There is no resentment in 
 God, but there is justice at the very heart of things. They left 
 Paul, ' supposing he had been dead.' That is a common mistake 
 about Christianity itself. Many a time has Christianity been stoned 
 and drawn out of the city and thrown into the ditch, supposed to 
 be dead.' Paul recovered his consciousness. He was blinded and 
 stunned, but not killed. So, to the joy of the little circle of weep- 
 ing disciples, he got up and stood upon his feet, a kind of resur- 
 rection before the time ! Take it as a typical instance, and regard 
 it as teaching the impossibility of killing truth. You may ' suppose 
 it to be dead,' but the error is in the supposition. Whatever is 
 true, rises again. It may be thrown down ; it may be kept upon 
 bread and water ; it may be spat upon ; it may be thrust through 
 with a dart ; over it all hell may have a moment's laugh, but it 
 finds its feet again I " 
 
 Dr. Parker quotes the statement in Acts that when Paul 
 and his colleague had come back to Antioch, and " had 
 gathered the church together, they rehearsed all that God 
 had done with them, and how he had opened the door of 
 faith unto the Gentiles." The preacher then adds : 
 
 " Into no speech with which I am acquainted is so much meaning 
 condensed. It is the penalty of speakers who have a condensed 
 style that they do not get credit for all they say. There are minds 
 that must have bulk as well as quality ; minds that must have every- 
 thing beaten out to the thinnest and widest possible surface before 
 they can begin to think. They do not fly on the wind, or take two 
 mountains at a time in their gigantic strides; they therefore say 
 they cannot follow the writers who have written such a verse as 
 
 12 
 
178 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 the twenty-seventh, which is now before us. Look at it. ... 
 * They rehearsed all that God had done with them.' They con- 
 nected the whole story with GOD. What! the stoning? Yes. 
 The statement does not read that, having called the church to- 
 gether, Paul put his hand upon his head, and said, * Oh, what I 
 have suffered for you ! ' Not a word of the kind is said. Stoning 
 and hunger and peril and persecution, these things God has 
 done. It is because AVC do not recognize that fact, that we suppose 
 ourselves to be the victims of circumstances and the butt of enemies. 
 Get rid of that sophism. God sent the hunger to bite you. Go d 
 spread the cloud in the face of the sun to shut you out in darkness. 
 God allows your enemies to smite you on the head and on the face, 
 and to malign you and misrepresent you. It is God's doing; it is 
 part of the divine education. ' Can there be evil in the city, and 
 the Lord not have done it ? ' Done it ! not in the little narrow, 
 technical sense of hand- working, but in the larger sense of working 
 up together in one complete massiveness, hells and devils, dangers 
 and sorrows, into one sublime issue. ' He maketh the wrath of 
 man to praise him, and the remainder thereof will he restrain.' 
 The Lord reigneth. The wet days are his, as well as the days that 
 are full of summer light and summer music. And the graves are 
 his, as well as the flowers which grow upon their greensward. 
 And hell is his, and the key of it is on his girdle, and he will know 
 what to do with it in the upgathering and total issue of his 
 providence." 
 
 Dr. Parker's sermons are all published in his weekly 
 newspaper, the " Christian Chronicle," for which, together 
 with the principal pra}'er preceding the sermon, they are 
 reported by Mrs. Parker. How a preacher with true deli- 
 cac}' of feeling, and with a just reverence for the sanctities 
 of religious worship, can have his prayers taken down in 
 short-hand and blazoned to the world in print, is to us a 
 mystery. It is true Henry Ward Beecher has set the ex- 
 ample ; but this is only an illustration of Horace's aphor- 
 ism, "Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile ; " and we know of 
 no clergyman, except Dr. Parker, who has imitated him in 
 
STOPFORD BROOKE. 179 
 
 this procedure. If Dr. Parker's public prayers were like 
 those of John Foster, which were called, by some of his 
 jesting hearers, "John Foster's stand-up essays," we could 
 see little objection to their publication ; but the petitions of 
 the preacher at the City Temple are obnoxious to no such 
 sarcasm. 
 
 REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M.A. 
 
 AT the southwest corner of Oxford and Bloomsbury 
 Streets, almost on the edge of St. Giles, stands a freshly 
 painted chapel, destitute without and within of architectural 
 beaut}", which one would take to be a Methodist or other 
 Nonconformist place of worship, which last it indeed 
 is, but not of any recognized Dissenting u denomination." 
 It is here that the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, M.A., one of 
 the most eminent preachers in London, has been listened 
 to with unflagging interest for the last eleven years by 
 a select and aristocratic, if not very large, congregation. 
 Of all the preachers whom we heard in London during the 
 winter of 1882-83, and again in the autumn of 1886, he, 
 with Canons Liddon and Farrar, best stood the test of 
 frequent hearings. As he stands in his Geneva gown (for 
 which he exchanged the surplice before going into the pul- 
 pit) and announces his text, you feel that here is a man 
 who must do honor to his calling, who is thoroughly in 
 earnest, who has pondered all the great theological prob- 
 lems of the day, and attained to his present beliefs, not 
 through heredity, but through many and perhaps fierce men- 
 tal struggles. You feel, too, that he is one who has the 
 
180 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 courage of his convictions, and will not hesitate to speak 
 his deepest and boldest thought, whatever ma}" be its re- 
 ception. There are few preachers in England who have a 
 more commanding presence, a greater degree of blended 
 dignity and attractiveness or of personal magnetism, than 
 Mr. Brooke ; few with so massive a head, eyes so earnest, 
 and an expression so benignant and winning. 
 
 To analyze the effects Mr. Brooke produces, and explain 
 their causes, is not an eas}* task. Whether it is the force 
 and originality of his thoughts, the nobleness and spiritu- 
 ality of his sentiments, the intensit}* of his convictions, the 
 aptness, vividness, and incisiveness of his language, or the 
 extraordinaiy earnestness of his manner, or all these to- 
 gether, that rivet the attention of the hearer, it is hard to 
 tell. In the impression produced by a sermon much is due 
 to delivery, and Mr. Brooke has a unique kind of oratory 
 which defies all attempts to describe it. His eloquence has 
 no pyrotechnics, but consists in the earnest enunciation of 
 pregnant truths, in the impassioned enforcement of senti- 
 ments that quicken the intellect and touch the heart. He 
 seems to preach, not with deliberate effort, but because, 
 like the prophet, he has " a word in the heart as a burning 
 fire shut up in his bones, so that he is weaiy of forbearing, 
 and cannot stay." As he gradually warms with his subject 
 till it has engrossed his whole heart and soul, all your fac- 
 ulties are on the alert, and 3*011 are impatient of a cough 
 that shall cause you to lose one of his glowing periods. At 
 one moment you are roused to enthusiasm by some noble 
 thought couched in noble language ; at another you are 
 melted to tenderness by some masterpiece of pathos ; again 
 3*011 are fascinated b3' a glowing portraiture of some prophet 
 or apostle of righteousness ; and then you are wondering 
 
STOPFORD BROOKE. 181 
 
 whether that indignant denouncer of the sensualist or the 
 hypocrite, whose sarcasm is so scathing, can be the same 
 man who, a few moments before, insisted that God would 
 never rest until the entire human race should have found 
 rest in Christ. When the discourse has closed, you feel 
 yourself flooded and surcharged with spiritual life. Above 
 all, 3-011 find yourself loathing and abhorring all selfishness 
 and meanness, and resolved, God helping }"ou, to trample 
 all your spiritual foes under 3*0111* feet. 
 
 Mr. Brooke is not a preacher for the masses of men. He 
 would be as much out of place in Mr. Spurgeon's pulpit, 
 even were his convictions the same as those of the Taber- 
 nacle preacher, as Mr. Spurgeon would be in his ; but his 
 sermons are admirabty adapted to the peculiar, thoughtful 
 class to which he ministers, among whom, in the galleiy, 
 modestly sits the celebrated Dr. James Martineau. Py- 
 croft, in his "Twenty Years in the Church," tells of a 
 country clergyman in England who, being asked whether 
 he studied the Fathers, replied : " No, the fathers are gen- 
 eralh* at work in the fields ; but I always stud3* the moth- 
 ers." Mr. Brooke shows by his preaching that he has 
 studied both. Yet it is, no doubt, the literary charm of his- 
 sermons which attracts mnny to hear them. Less apho- 
 ristic than F. W. Robertson's, they abound, like his, in 
 sentences that linger long in the reader's mind ; and, like 
 his also, their chief value lies in their substance rather than 
 in their form, and especially in their thought-provoking qual- 
 ities and the stimulus they give to feeble and halting wills. 
 
 Mr. Brooke was born in the county of Donegal, Ireland, 
 in 1832. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1850, 
 where he won honors as well as several prizes for po- 
 etic composition, and took his B.A. in 1855. During his 
 
182 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 college course he wrote for the " Dublin University Mag- 
 azine," contributing, just as he attained to his majority, the 
 following spirited sonnet, which shows that the youth was 
 father of the man : 
 
 " A lay of freedom ! O ye slaves that now 
 
 Cramp the broad mind to fashion, form, and rite ! 
 
 Sweep an unfettered hand across your brow ; 
 Rise like a falcon to the living light ; 
 
 Free the undying thought from licensed lies, 
 
 Till, like a river bursting from its ice, 
 And whirling error to its native night, 
 
 Brimming with freedom, through a golden land 
 
 It rolls, loud, bright, and broad, impetuously grand ! " 
 
 During the year 1864-65 he was chaplain to the British 
 embassy at Berlin, during which time he wrote the Life of 
 the Rev. F. W. Robertson, the most charming piece of 
 biography published since Dean Stanley's Life of Dr. Arnold. 
 Next he ministered for ten 3~ears at York Street Chapel, 
 London, where the service was at first thinly attended, but 
 soon drew crowds of intellectual and deeply interested hear- 
 ers. In 1876 he began preaching at his present place of 
 worship, the lease of which was presented to him by some 
 friends. The advantage of his present position is its per- 
 fect independence, since no one can call him to account for 
 supposed heresy. Mr. Brooke is said to be a connoisseur 
 in art. He has written a primer of English Literature, 
 which is a marvel of condensation, and full of delicately 
 discriminative criticism. He has also published several 
 volumes of sermons. At times he gives lectures in his 
 chapel, some of the best of which may be found in his 
 " Theology of the British Poets," a work in two volumes. 
 
 In appearance, Mr. Brooke, as we have said, is highly 
 intellectual. The broad, expansive forehead, which the 
 
STOPFORD BROOKE. 183 
 
 masses of iron-gray hair do not conceal, is one that would 
 delight a phrenologist. With the exception of side-whis- 
 kers, he is beardless. His voice, which is at times tremu- 
 lous with emotion, is musical, and his gestures arc few, 
 but appropriate and significant. With all his love for his 
 calling, he has never sunk the man in the parson ; and while 
 he properly respects the "linen decencies" of life, he 
 would not think it a sin to be seen without a white cravat. 
 The pith of his preaching is that men and women are 
 placed in this world, not to pursue their own pleasure, but 
 to do God's will, to love, work, and suffer for others, even 
 as Christ suffered, worked, and loved. He believes that 
 revelation is not completed, but continuous, and full of life 
 fitted for its age. He is fond of quoting these words of 
 Christ: " I have 3*et many things to sa}' unto }'ou, but }'e 
 cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of 
 truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth." Mr. 
 Brooke is passionately earnest for freedom in the Church. 
 He utterly repudiates the charge of dishonesty which is 
 brought against the Broad thinkers because they do not leave 
 the Church. It is no shuffling and word-splitting, he pro- 
 tests, which enables Evangelical Anglicans and Broad Church 
 persons of resolute and opposed opinions to submit to the 
 Articles, and to be content to live with them as loug as they 
 last. Regarding " the impatient requisition of many " that 
 these members of the English Church "should know their 
 own mind, and state it clearly," he says : 
 
 " I partly do not, and I partly do, sympathize with it. Every 
 man who really cares for true views, and who has investigated truth 
 with some precision, knows the difficulty of arriving at clear state- 
 ments on any political or economical question, much more on any 
 me!aphysical or theological question, which will satisfy an accurate 
 
184 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 intellect. He who has followed the long labors of the mind of man 
 for centuries on these topics, and marked its ceaseless changes, its 
 infinite variety; he who has recognized the necessity of divers 
 channels of religious opinion to enable different characters to come 
 to God ; he who has seen portions of truth at the root of many 
 theories which he considered erroneous, and feared to denounce 
 them too violently, lest he should lose the truth ; he who has so con- 
 stant a reverence for truth that he cannot bear hastily to formulate 
 an opinion, until he has looked on every possible side of the ques- 
 tion, he will sympathize with those clergymen who shrink from 
 defining clearly their theological views, and prefer to preach that 
 spiritual life of Christ which they know to be right ; he will not 
 be impatient with those who do not define because they have a 
 minute reverence for truth." 
 
 Mr. Brooke probably thinks, with Archdeacon Farrar, 
 that the imperfection of language as a vehicle of religious 
 truth is a positive blessing to mankind. In his admirable 
 4 ' Chapters on Language " the Archdeacon expresses the 
 opinion that at no period in history was it more evident 
 than now that the passions of men would be far more furi- 
 ous and uncontrollable than they are, if it were not possible 
 to maintain a truce by the common acceptance of words and 
 formulas which are fairly and honestly capable of express- 
 ing widely different forms of belief. "The gracious 
 shadows, the beneficent imperfections of language, save us 
 from being scorched up by a fulness of truth for which we 
 are yet but ill-adapted." 
 
 In Mr. Brooke's discourses tbe thoughts are so inextri- 
 cably woven together that it is difficult to exemplify his 
 abilit}' as a preacher by passages torn from" their context. 
 His merit does not lie in pointed apothegmatic sentences, 
 the gold coins of the intellectual exchange, though not a 
 few of them are imbedded in his writings, but in the focal 
 power of his sermons. There is alwaj'S in his discourses a 
 
STOPFOED BROOKE. 185 
 
 leading idea, in developing which the earnestness of the 
 preacher steadily increases, so that the emotional climax is 
 always the logical climax, and the reasoning faculty blends 
 its suffrage with the homage of the heart. One of the most 
 impassioned sermons which we have heard him preach was 
 delivered April 15, 1883, on Matthew v. 9. In this dis- 
 course he told his hearers that "each nation should work, 
 not only for its special interests, or be jealous for its own 
 honor, as duellists are jealous, but labor for the interests of 
 other nations more than for its own, and be jealous of the 
 just rights of other nations more than for its own ; that 
 nothing should even be done in the present by one nation 
 for its own interests which may in the future put into jeop- 
 ardy the freedom, the advance, or the individuality of 
 another nation ; that all that we call national prosperity and 
 pre-eminence must be systematically subordinated and 
 this should be the foundation of all foreign politics to the 
 interest of the whole of mankind." In another sermon he 
 tells his congregation, 
 
 " No time of seeming inactivity is laid upon you by God without 
 a just reason. It is God calling upon you to do his business by 
 ripening in quiet all your powers for some higher sphere of activity 
 which is about to be opened to you. The eighteen years at Naza- 
 reth, what was their result? A few years of action, but of action 
 concentrated, intense, infinite ; not one word, not one deed, which 
 did not tell, and which will not tell upon the universe forever." 
 
 The following is one of the happiest passages in Mr. 
 Brooke's sermons : 
 
 " But we have fallen upon faithless times ; and more than the 
 mediaeval who saw the glint of the angel's wings in the dazzling of 
 the noon-day cloud, more even than the Greek who peopled his 
 wood with deities, we see only in the cloud the storehouse of rain 
 
186 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 to ripen our corn, and in the woods a cover for our pheasants. 
 Those who see more have small cheerfulness in the sight ; neither 
 the nymphs nor the angels haunt the hills to us. We do not hear 
 in the cool of the day the voice of God in the garden. We gaze 
 with sorrow on a world inanimate, and see in it only the reflection 
 of our own unquiet heart. There is scarcely a universal joyous 
 description of Nature in our modern poets. There is scarcely a 
 picture of our great landscape artist which is not tinged with the 
 passion of sorrow or the passion of death. We bring to bear upon 
 the world of Nature, not the spiritual eye, but a disintegrating and 
 petty criticism. We do not let feeling have its way, but talk of 
 harmonies of color and proportion, and hunt after mere surface 
 beauty. We train the eye, and not the heart, and we become vic- 
 tims of the sensualism of the eye, which renders the imagination 
 gross, and of an instability of the eye, which, unable to rest and 
 contemplate, comprehends the soul of* nothing which we see. It is 
 our sick craving for the excitement, the superficiality of our worldly 
 life, which we transfer to Nature. What wonder if Nature refuses 
 to speak to us, and we ourselves are insensible to the wisdom, life, 
 and spirit of the universe ? " 
 
 In the following passage from a sermon on Matthew iv. 4 
 Mr. Brooke's skill in illustration is well exemplified : 
 
 " Those of you who have gone through the rooms of a great 
 factory at night have seen a strange sight. All the wheels are 
 still, all the various machinery at rest. The silence, which should 
 be speech, weighs upon the heart. There is, you know, in every- 
 thing you see, possibility of the quickest, most vivid work ; but the 
 driving power, the expansive force which sends its life through 
 every wheel and spindle, is not there : in the inner room the en- 
 gine sleeps. It is the picture of many a heart. As the man wan- 
 ders through the chamber of his soul, he sees powers, passions, 
 capabilities, interests, thoughts, aspirations, plans, all the ma- 
 chinery for an active life of work, before him ; but all are silent, all 
 motionless, all terrible and reproachful in the shadowy light. And 
 he knows that he only needs an inner force of life, a driving im- 
 pulse, a passionate faith in something, to set his whole being into 
 vivid movement. But it is not there. In the innermost chamber 
 
STOPFORD BROOKE. 187 
 
 there is no life. Set yourself free from the mere life of ease and 
 comfort ; gain a living impulse. Set in the centre of the soul a 
 divine passion, a living force of love. Love God in man, and then 
 every power of the soul connected with or driven by the mighty 
 engine of the divine emotion of love of Christ in God, of Christ in 
 Man, will whirl into life and movement, and manufacture produce 
 for mankind. 'Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every 
 word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.' " 
 
 Mr. Brooke has recently severed his connection with the 
 English Church. Some years ago he avowed himself to 
 be, after much painful thinking, out of harmony with its 
 creed, especial!}" with that which he rightly deemed the 
 central belief of that creed, the mystery of the incarna- 
 tion. There is little, however, in his preaching to remind 
 one of this change of opinion ; on the contrary, almost all 
 his language regarding our Saviour seems to show that, 
 as Robertson said of Channing, though his intellect denies 
 the divinit} r of Christ, he yet acknowledges it with his 
 heart. 
 
 We hear a great deal of foolish talk in these days about 
 the decline of the pulpit ; and Mr. Mahaffy, in his essay on 
 the " Decay of Preaching," assumes the supposed fact, and 
 investigates with much acuteness its causes, without for a 
 moment questioning whether it be a fact. Such discourses 
 as those of Mr. Brooke tend to prove the falsity of the 
 assumption. A strong proof of their power is the state- 
 ment we have heard, that clergymen of the English Church 
 have cautioned persons against their brilliancy and fasci- 
 nation. No doubt some of his former Anglican brethren 
 feel that his perfervidum ingenium, his literary power, 
 and even his spirituality itself, only render his heresies 
 the more dangerous, u on n'aime guere d'etre empoi- 
 
188 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 sonne meme avec esprit de rose." But we are confident 
 that if the pulpits of England were filled with such 
 preachers, it could no longer be said, as it has been said, 
 that even a trial at the Old Bailey for stealing a couple 
 of pocket-handkerchiefs too often stirs deeper emotion, 
 both in speaker and hearer, than the most momentous 
 realities connected with the future and unseen world. 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 IT is a common remark of the croakers of our time that 
 the palmy days of parliamentary eloquence are over. 
 The orator's occupation, they say, is gone ; it has been 
 destroyed by the newspaper, which addresses fifty thous- 
 and men while he addresses five hundred. Year by year 
 the House of Commons is becoming a business assembly ; 
 at every session it is more and more a monster vestry 
 meeting, and less and less a gathering of patres conscripti. 
 The oratorical era reached its climax with Canning; the 
 House now meets purely for business. Just as the im- 
 proved artillery, the revolver, and the repeating-rifle have 
 rendered swords, sabres, and bayonets cumbrous and use- 
 less, so the old-fashioned formal harangues of the British 
 senate have given way to the brief, business-like speeches 
 of modern times. Instead of beginning his speech with 
 a formal introduction, the modern member preambles but 
 little, shoots right at the white of his theme, and re- 
 serves his antithetic brilliance, if he has any, for the con- 
 clusion, which is hardly uttered before down he drops, and 
 his hat is on as abruptly as it was pulled off. "If you 
 should put a pistol-ball through the heart," says a writer, 
 " you could not bring him down much sooner." There 
 is considerable truth in all this ; but it must be remem- 
 bered that we are all victims of that illusion which leads 
 men to idealize and idolize the past. It must be remem- 
 bered, too, that oratorical gifts are now far more widety 
 diffused than formerly ; that if there are to-day few giants 
 
190 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 of eloquence, there is a far greater number of able, accom- 
 plished, and effective debaters ; that the standard of public 
 speaking is far higher than of old, and therefore a reputa- 
 tion for eloquence is less cheaply won. During the winter 
 of 1882-83 we often visited the House of Commons, and 
 heard all the leading speakers, whom we shall now tiy to 
 characterize as they then were and then impressed us. 
 
 Among the most effective speakers in the House is Joseph 
 Cowen, the representative for Newcastle. With the excep- 
 tion of a loft}' brow, the slouched hat that surmounts it, 
 and a general negligence of attire, there is nothing striking 
 in his personal appearance. In private conversation his 
 voice is low, and his manner quiet and subdued ; but in the 
 House of Commons he is suddenly transformed. When he 
 rises to speak, the first sentences are hesitating and indis- 
 tinct, but as he proceeds, his voice grows clearer and 
 clearer ; the Northumbrian burr, or peculiar roll of the 
 canine letter, which mars his articulation, becomes less and 
 less unpleasant ; and there is a kind of Roman stateliness, 
 a majestic roll in his periods, a force in his argumentation, 
 a splendor of imagery in his illustrations, and a passionate 
 earnestness and vehemence in his tones and gestures, which 
 hold the House spell-bound to the end. " Wor Joe," as 
 the Northumbrian pitmen call him, has waged war with 
 nearlj' every despotism in Europe. The intimate friend of 
 Mazzini, Garibaldi, Kossuth, and Louis Blanc, he has been 
 the chief banker and general agent in England of all the 
 modern revolutionaries, whom he has not only sheltered 
 when in trouble, but subsidized in their enterprises to the 
 extent of more than two thirds of his princely income. By 
 birth and education a humanitarian politician, he takes a 
 European, or rather cosmopolitan, view of political problems, 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 191 
 
 and on the Irish and Eg}'ptian questions has been at vari- 
 ance with the Ministry, who doubtless regard him as 
 crotchety and impracticable. Mr. Cowen is owner and 
 director of the ''Newcastle Chronicle," one of the most 
 powerful provincial journals in England. The effect of its 
 teaching was seen in 1874. When the Conservative reac- 
 tion raged successfully everywhere else, the Northumbrian 
 Liberals smote their opponents hip and thigh all along 
 the line. 
 
 Lord Hartington is a good specimen of the ponderous, 
 elephantine British speaker, who stammers and hems and 
 haws all the way through a speech, mouthing his sentences 
 " as a cur mouths a bone," so as to be understood only b}* 
 the reporters and others who are familiar with the muffled 
 sound of his lips. Though acting with the Liberal party, 
 Lord Hartington, if we may judge by his bearing and 
 manner, is an aristocrat to the backbone. Reserved, con- 
 temptuous, and scornful, he has been called the devil's 
 advocate of that party, " with a mind quick to raise all 
 sorts of objections, which he formulates in raspingly queru- 
 lous tones." 
 
 Sir Stafford Northcote would be a forcible speaker if 
 he had the courage of his convictions. He dreads respon- 
 sibility, is terror-stricken at every political crisis, and, 
 above all, is too conscientious, fair, and candid to be a 
 powerful parliamentary speaker and leader. 
 
 A very different kind of speaker from the last two is 
 Mr. Trevelyan, the Secretary for Ireland, who, though 
 never eloquent, is always earnest, courteous, lucid, and 
 interesting. He belongs to the old school of politicians, 
 who pass through a regular course of training for high 
 office, achieving an academic reputation, serving long 
 
192 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 apprenticeships in minor offices, and steadily advancing to 
 higher and higher places in the Cabinet. 
 
 One of the most brilliant, witty, and epigrammatic 
 speakers in the House is Sir William Vernon Harcourt, 
 well-known to Americans as the " Historicus," who, during 
 our late Civil War, vindicated the North in a series of 
 powerful letters in the London "Times." Pie is a man of 
 great natural and acquired abilities, is strikingly original in 
 his speeches, and as a master of bitter and caustic irony 
 has no superior in the House. Unhappilj' he lacks the 
 qualities which win the good-will of opponents, and is more 
 powerful to subjugate than to win. The history of the 
 rapid steps with which he has climbed the steeps of fame 
 is like a stoiy out of the Arabian Nights. Taking his B.A. 
 at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1851, at the age of 24, 
 when he won honors as a senior optime and a first-class in 
 the Classical Tripos, he was called to the Bar of the Inner 
 Temple in 1854, became Queen's Counsel in 1856, after- 
 wards Solicitor-General, and now (1883) holds the pro- 
 fessorship of International Law at Cambridge, and the 
 onerous post of Home Secretary in Mr. Gladstone's Admin- 
 istration. 
 
 A still more brilliant speaker, and next, perhaps, in de- 
 bating power to Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, is Mr. 
 Gibson. No other speaker, on either side of the House, 
 has sprung to the front with greater rapidity than did the 
 member for the University of Dublin during the sessions 
 of 1881 and 1882. Everybody knows what a multiplicity of 
 complex, tangled, and almost incomprehensible issues was 
 raised by the Irish Land Bill. Amid the intricacies and 
 perplexities of this labyrinth, in which so many parliamen- 
 tary speakers hopelessly floundered and lost their way, Mr. 
 
THE HOUSE (XF COMMONS. 193 
 
 Gibson moved with the sure and easy step of a man to 
 whom every inch of the route was as familiar as the way to 
 his own house. His speech on the second reading of the 
 Bill was a masterpiece. " For nearly two hours," said the 
 " Spectator," " with breathless speed and with unflagging 
 animation, he dragged the House through all the highways 
 and byways of the Bill, penetrating every nook and corner 
 of it, exposing every hidden flaw, tracking out the unsus- 
 pected consequences of unobserved provisions, multiplying 
 illustrations, and accumulating instances, to the manifest 
 embarrassment of his opponents, and the bewildered ad- 
 miration of his exhausted followers." The freshness, the 
 energetic force, the antithesis, the subtlety, wit, and irony 
 of the speech took the House by storm. When no minister 
 ventured to reply, the Tories were seized with a fit of exul- 
 tation which lasted for a week. Since this effort. Mr. Gib- 
 son has made others even more creditable. He speaks with 
 great vigor and nervous energ}', in a ringing voice, and 
 with a distinct articulation which it is a luxury to hear. 
 As you listen to his pungent, epigrammatic sentences, you. 
 seem to hear thick hail falling and rattling on the roof, 
 
 " Tain multa in tectis crepitans salit horrida grando." 
 
 Lord Randolph Churchill, " the rising hope of Toryism," 
 has a face and figure which, once seen, are not speedily for- 
 gotten. The pale, bloodless face ; the broad forehead ; the 
 largety developed mustache, of peculiar turn and shape ; 
 "the large, restless, wild-looking eyes, observing every- 
 thing, watching an adversary as a cat does a mouse ; the 
 manner, alternating between excess of listlessness and ex- 
 cess of excitability ; the temperament, proud, highly strung, 
 keen, sensitive, disdainful, forgiving, revealing itself in 
 
 13 
 
194 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 every movement of the body, nay, in the very fashion in 
 which the cigarette smoke is inhaled ; the toilet sombre in 
 color, careful, and in good taste," these are the outward 
 signs of a character that is too full of contradictions to be 
 easily analyzed. As a speaker in the House of Commons, 
 Lord Randolph has energy, audacity, and power of invec- 
 tive, but lacks persuasiveness. He has more smartness 
 than force, more vehemence than facts or argument. In 
 his frequent attacks on Mr. Gladstone, he reminds one of 
 a small dog snarling and yelping at a great English mas- 
 tiff. He seems never to have learned that the adjectives 
 are the greatest enemies of the substantives, and that " no 
 one thinks a drummer a giant because he thumps away on 
 a big drum." His read}*, rattling harangues, both in and 
 out of Parliament, are so uniformly shrewish and vituper- 
 ative that it is difficult to believe in his sincerity ; there 
 is a hollowness in their ring which makes you suspect he is 
 talking for political effect. He is fond of irony, but he has 
 not the swift and stealth}' iron}- of Canning, which stabbed 
 like a stiletto, nor has he any of the ludicrous combinations 
 of words, the happy alliterative phrases, with which that 
 master of rhetoric annoyed his adversary. Lord Randolph 
 aspires to wear the mantle of Beaconsfield ; but he lacks 
 the pungent, well-bred raillery with which the latter over- 
 whelmed his foes, and still more the by-play of manner 
 which was at times so irresistible, the emphasis, the 
 glance, the arched eye, the intonation, the exquisitely sar- 
 castic effect sometimes produced by a single word. 1 Per- 
 
 1 Nevertheless, it must be admitted that Lord Randolph has greatly 
 improved as a speaker since this paper was written. His speech at 
 Bow on June 3, 1885, before the Tower Hamlets Conservative Associa- 
 tion, shows the possession of some of those qualities which make a Brit- 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 195 
 
 haps we judge Lord Randolph too harshly. If he some- 
 times excites the disma}' of his friends as well as provokes 
 the anger of his foes by his speeches, it may at least be 
 said in his favor that he has a decided, vivid personality, 
 which stands out in bold relief from the dull, humdrum 
 mediocrities by whom he is surrounded. 
 
 Americans who think that our legislatures have a mo- 
 nopoly of those stentorian speakers who half deafen their 
 hearers, should hear Baron De Worms. "Ilia se jactet 
 in aula, ^Eolus," which was applied years ago to Wedder- 
 burn, might with equal aptness be applied to him. To 
 Baron De Worms's mind, apparently, the value of a speech 
 depends altogether upon the strength of lungs which gives 
 it projectile force, and the volume of voice which assaults 
 the ear of the hearer. Such a voice as this member's we 
 have never heard in any other public assembly. Its only 
 parallel is that of Novius, the Roman tribune, which, Horace 
 tells us, was loud enough to drown the noise of two hun- 
 dred wagons and three funerals meeting in the forum. 
 Baron De Worms rarely rises except to denounce the Ad- 
 ministration ; and as with violent gesticulation he pours 
 forth his tempestuous periods, there is a rushing force of 
 denunciation, a declamatory vehemence, which reminds one 
 of the roar of the cataract or the dash of the torrent. For 
 a few minutes one listens with amazement at such a display 
 of lung-power ; but the monotony of the declamation soon 
 becomes tiresome, and suggestive of the beating of a gong, 
 or of an oratorical machine. The title which an English 
 
 ish politician formidable to his foes, ami enable him to force his way to 
 place and power. " The Cabinet of the thirty-seven policies," as he 
 called the Gladstone Administration, was a happy sarcastic phrase, 
 which condensed into one sentence the quintessence of hostile criticism. 
 
196 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 judge once gave to Lord Brougham, "The Harangue," 
 would not be inappropriate to Baron De Worms ; or, better 
 still, the second title of Lord Erskine, with which that vain 
 but brilliant orator was so often teased by his enemies, 
 "Baron Clackmannan" 
 
 A still more fiery speaker, an irascible gentleman of the 
 old school, is Sir W. Barttelot, a kind of political Sir 
 Anthony Absolute, one of those "good haters" whom 
 his fellow-Tor}', Dr. Johnson, so loved. When he rises 
 from his seat on one of the back benches, and in rapid 
 periods and with vehement gesticulation begins an impet- 
 uous attack on the Ministry, demanding, for example, 
 whether "we [the House of Commons] are going to allow 
 our throats to be cut " on the Suez Canal at particular 
 times, etc., you may expect to see Mr. Gladstone and 
 his associates tomahawked and scalped without mercy. 
 Instead of hemming and hawing after the approved style 
 of British speakers, he begins and rushes on like one 
 who is brimful and running over with pent-up indignation, 
 and seems to feel a kind of impatient rage that he can- 
 not more swiftly cleanse his bosom of the perilous stuff 
 that weighs upon it, and wreak his thought upon intenser 
 expression. 
 
 Sir Charles W. Dilke author, journalist, traveller, pol- 
 itician, known to Americans as author of "Greater Bri- 
 tain," a work in which the men, manners, and institutions 
 of the United States are for once described b}' an English- 
 man as they really are is eas3 T , fluent, straightforward in 
 debate, one of the best level business speakers in Parlia- 
 ment. With no pretension to eloquence, he is always mas- 
 ter of his theme, and rareh* fails to catch and hold the ear 
 of the House. 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 197 
 
 Mr. Henry Fawcett, the blind, spectacled Postmaster- 
 General, is one of the tallest and most sinew}* looking men 
 in the House. He is a man of great intellectual vigor, 
 tenacity of purpose, and courage mingled with caution, 
 and a trenchant parliamentary debater as well as an admir- 
 able platform-speaker. On account of his profound knowl- 
 edge of Indian affairs and sympathy with the people of 
 that country, he is sometimes called u the member for 
 India ; " and when, with little inone}*, he was trying to 
 force the portals of " the rich man's club " at Westminster, 
 a great number of very poor Hindoos subscribed a sum suf- 
 ficient to defray the cost of his return for Hackney. 
 
 One of the wits of the House is Sir Wilfrid Lawson, who, 
 notwithstanding the jokes with w r hich he is alwaj's bub- 
 bling and running over, and notwithstanding his great 
 wealth, is a man of great moral earnestness, and a zealous, 
 uncompromising Radical. The sworn foe of soldiers and 
 publicans, he has shown in his advocacy of 4 'Local Op- 
 tion " and the principles of peace that, in the right hands, 
 the scimitar of Saladin may strike home as effectually as 
 the battle-axe of Richard. A critic in one of the magazines 
 complains that Sir Wilfrid's wit is waning, that it is 
 beginning " to smack of the cold water which he advocates, 
 rather than of the sparkling champagne which he keeps in 
 his cellar." 
 
 Mr. Goschen, a tall, slim man, with dark eyes and hair, 
 pale face, and a slightly foreign look, is a grandson of a 
 Leipsic German bookseller. A native of England, he be- 
 came a pupil of Drs. Tait and Goulburn at Rugby, en- 
 tered Oriel College, Oxford, at which University he took, in 
 1853, a first-class in classics, and then founded a successful 
 banking-house in London. He represents the old City 
 
198 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 of London, and is a read}', independent, vigorous, and 
 instructive speaker, to whom one listens with more profit 
 than delight. 
 
 That gentleman on the Treasury bench with the closely 
 shaven face, hair brushed back, eye-glass, and nose like 
 that on which the younger Pitt used to dangle " the Oppo- 
 sition," is Mr. Chamberlain, the dictator of Birmingham, 
 the father of the hated caucus (which Mr. Cowen regards 
 as a plutocratic instrument of torture, contrived by Amer- 
 ican bosses for the purpose of " putting the screws " upon 
 working-men), and author of that masterpiece of political 
 machinery, the National Liberal Federation. He is a clear, 
 vigorous speaker, whose chief fault is a tendency to sing- 
 song. Probably no other man, after so short an acquain- 
 tance with the House of Commons, ever acquired so much 
 political influence, or was so deeply feared, not to say 
 hated, by his Tory enemies. He was thirty-two years old 
 before he ever spoke in public ; but having utilized all his 
 leisure hours in his libraiy, consisting of three thousand 
 carefully chosen volumes, he had large stores of knowledge 
 to draw from, and became a powerful champion of Liberal 
 principles. 
 
 With the exception of Mr. Gladstone, John Bright is 
 the most powerful speaker in the House. When he rises 
 to speak, his portly, muscular frame, leonine head, and 
 thoughtful face arrest the attention of strangers at once. 
 There is little mobility in his features, which the jaw and 
 mouth especially indicate resolution and firmness more 
 than any other mental quality. His voice, which is power- 
 ful, resonant, and clear, has a vibration which gives a 
 wondrous effect to his words of pathos, indignation, or 
 scorn. Beginning in low and tremulous tones, with the 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 199 
 
 hesitation common to English orators, he grapples at once 
 with the question before the House ; and stating its difficulties 
 without any attempt to evade them, wrestles with them like 
 an intellectual athlete. There is no display of learning, no 
 subtle disquisition, no elaborated climax, still less any of 
 that drawling mannerism so common in the House, but a 
 simple and masterly presentation of the speaker's views 
 which touches alike the heart, conscience, and intellect of 
 the hearer. It matters not how much you dislike his politi- 
 cal opinions, you cannot listen to him and feel an indif- 
 ference to his words. A presence which fills the eye, a 
 voice that captivates the ear, and a slow and deliberate 
 utterance, which, as one of his critics has said, seems to 
 choose the best word, and to watch its effect in order that 
 he may so choose and place the next as to heighten, or, if 
 need be, to soften and qualify, the impression of the first, 
 compel attention and interest. Simple in language, com- 
 pact in statement, pre-eminentlj T happy in illustration, he 
 speaks much as Daniel Webster spoke. There is the same 
 straightforward plainness of speech, the same superb self- 
 restraint, the same parsimony of gesture, the same appear- 
 ance of reserved power ; and the soul of conviction shines 
 through all his utterances. What other parliamentary ora- 
 tor has matched thoughts so pathetic with words so eloquent 
 and happy, as the man who by the charm of his oratory 
 almost persuaded the House during the Crimean War, as it 
 listened in hushed silence to his words, that he could hear 
 the flapping of the wings of the angel of death? 
 
 As a parliamentary orator only, Mr. Bright ma) 7 not 
 equal Mr. Gladstone, who when on the Treasury bench 
 is more at home than on "the stump" or in the lecture- 
 room. But place the Quaker orator on the platform or in 
 
200 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 the open air with six thousand hearers before him, and he 
 has no equal in eloquence in Great Britain. He is empha- 
 tically a tribune of the people ; and the fact that he has won 
 his way to eminence with no adventitious helps, but by the 
 sheer stress and force of genius, is the secret of not a little 
 of the sympathy with which he is regarded by his country- 
 men. A born orator, he has trained and improved his 
 natural gifts with the most sedulous care. His speeches 
 abound with illustrations drawn from the masterpieces of 
 English literature, especially from Shakspeare and Milton. 
 These authors he has profoundly studied ; and there was a 
 time, it is said, when it was rare to find him without 
 " Paradise Lost" in his hand or in his pocket. To his 
 intimate knowledge of these great poets may be ascribed 
 his felicity of quotation, for which he has a positive genius. 
 He is very familiar with the Scriptures too, and his most 
 impressive tropes, and even many of his turns of expression, 
 are drawn from the Old Testament. He is a striking ex- 
 ample of the mental discipline and culture which may be 
 derived from a few books, if they are books of the highest 
 order and are thoroughly mastered. Lacking the advan- 
 tages of a university education, he has shown himself a 
 match for any of the u double-firsts " and " senior optimes " 
 that Oxford or Cambridge has produced. With less wit 
 than Disraeli, he has more humor ; with all the earnestness 
 of Gladstone, he has more self possession ; while he has a 
 simple pathos, and an occasional grandeur, indignation, 
 and scorn, that belong to neither. What other public 
 speaker has contributed to the literature of oratory so 
 many phrases which have become household words, as Mr. 
 Bright? Who has forgotten Mr. Disraeli as u the mystery- 
 man " of his party, or as the mountebank with " a pill for 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 201 
 
 the earthquake ; " or Mr. Horsraan and Mr. Lowe as the 
 Scotch-terrier part}', of which no one could tell the head 
 from the tail ; or the Conservatives as the party who, " if 
 they had been in the wilderness, would have complained of 
 the Ten Commandments as a harassing piece of legisla- 
 tion " ? phrases which belong to history as truly as do 
 u the Adullamites," the " peer of adulterous birth," and the 
 " fancy franchises" to the political vocabulary of England. 
 When was an argument put more strongly in a few words 
 than in the following passage from a speech against the 
 Crimean War? 
 
 " The property-tax is the lever or the weapon with which the 
 proprietors of land and Louses in this kingdom will have to support 
 the ' integrity and independence ' of the Ottoman Empire. Gen- 
 tlemen, I congratulate you that every man of you has a Turk upon 
 his shoulders.' 1 
 
 What, again, can be happier than the following from a 
 speech on the corn laws? Speaking of the attempt of 
 Charles I. to levy taxes without the consent of Parliament, 
 he asks, 
 
 " If our fathers refused to be the bondmen of a king, shall we 
 be the born thralls of an aristocracy like ours ? Shall we, ivho struck 
 the lion down, pay the wolf homage ? " 
 
 Mr. Cobden once said, on a memorable occasion, that 
 Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone were the only speakers in 
 Parliament who ever changed votes by their eloquence. Mr. 
 Bright would be still more persuasive if he took more pains 
 to understand the views of his opponents, whom he too 
 often defies, instead of conciliating. It is not a hostile but 
 a friendly critic who saj's that when he encounters what he 
 thinks prejudices, and others might think principles, his 
 
202 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 massive understanding passes over them like a steam-roller 
 crushing and pulverizing stones. 
 
 Of all England's orators Mr. Bright is most emphatically 
 the champion of the oppressed. His clients, as he has 
 justly said, have not been generally the rich and the great, 
 but the poor and the lowly. In pleading their cause he 
 has, to use his own words, " endured measureless insult, 
 and passed through hurricanes of abuse." For forty years 
 he has labored unceasingly to redeem his country from the 
 charge that her greatness and her wealth are wrung from 
 the rags, the toil, and the hunger of pauperized millions. 
 Having now reached his seventy- third year, it is not strange 
 that he shows signs of declination. His eye no longer 
 sparkles with its wonted fire, and his organ-like voice, 
 which once lent itself easily to ever}* expression of passion, 
 pathos, humor, or scorn, though it occasionally thunders as 
 of old, has lost much of its volume and compass. When 
 listening to his opening address at the great annual meet- 
 ing of the Liberation Societ}' in Mr. Spnrgeon's Tabernacle 
 in 1883, where he had to inspire him an enthusiastic and 
 sjTnpathetic audience of nearly seven thousand persons, we 
 were surprised at the extreme slowness, resembling recita- 
 tion rather than declamation, and the lack of fire, with 
 which he spoke, and at the almost total absence of those 
 magical passages with which he once electrified his hearers. 
 
 In moral earnestness Mr. Bright is the equal of Mr. 
 Gladstone, and in pathos and humor he is his superior. 
 But as a parliamentary leader and speaker, in breadth and 
 versatility, in capacity for receiving and assimilating new 
 ideas, in genius for organization and the marshalling of 
 multitudinous details, above all in the astonishing readiness 
 as well as power with which he can handle every subject 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 203 
 
 that comes up, Mr. Gladstone has no superior, nor even an 
 equal. Other statesmen have surpassed him in the higher 
 regions of orator}', man}' in the art of managing men ; but 
 where shall we look for one to match his readiness, his 
 adroitness, his intellectual keenness, his vast stores of 
 knowledge in debate? Lord Palmerston had more tact and 
 self-control, and Disraeli could give a keener edge to his 
 sparkling sarcasms ; but Mr. Gladstone has made half-a- 
 dozen successful speeches to Palmerston's or Disraeli's one. 
 No other speaker half follows, half guides the moods of his 
 audience more easily, more quickly, than Mr. Gladstone. 
 He is pre-eminently the orator of affairs. Of all the Chan- 
 cellors of the Exchequer, he is the only one who has made 
 budgets eloquent, and imparted a moral significance even to 
 figures. He is a man of medium stature, with a well-pro- 
 portioned body of average size. His face, though not 
 handsome, is highly intellectual, and indicative of goodness 
 and honesty as well as power. As Sydney Smith said of 
 Horner's, "the ten commandments are written in it." A 
 pale complexion, slightly tinged with olive, and dark hair 
 cut close to his head, with an e}'e of remarkable depth and 
 fascination, and a slight tinge of melancholy in his expres- 
 sion, give him, in some degree, the air of a recluse. 
 
 When he enters the House by the door behind the 
 Speaker's chair, he creeps to his seat silently, with a cat-like 
 tread, and in a few minutes you see him absorbed in the 
 study of some papers, or more probably listening to the 
 speaker on the floor. With pencil in hand, his knees 
 crossed so as to serve for a table, and his head bent for- 
 ward in the direction of the speaker, he sits hour after hour, 
 making notes of what is said ; when suddenly he drops his 
 papers, and advancing to the table, answers an opponent's 
 
204 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 question, or proceeds to vindicate, enforce, or explain some 
 measure he has in charge. The promptness, ease, and 
 felicity with which he does this, show him to be a consum- 
 mate parliamentary debater. Mr. Gladstone's first orator- 
 ical qualification is his admirable voice. It is not a loud 
 voice, or one of great volume, but pure, clear, vibrating, 
 and as silvery as Belial's. Without the slightest effort or 
 strain of the speaker, it reaches the ear of the remotest 
 hearer. Of late years some of its finer and more delicate 
 qualities have often been wanting ; but in Mr. Gladstone's 
 best days no harshness ever jarred the music of his tones, 
 and though he spoke for hours together, the closing sen- 
 tences were as clear and bell-like in their cadence as the 
 first. It is said that a foreigner who heard him one night 
 declared that until then he had never regarded the English 
 as a musical language ; but now he was convinced that it 
 is one of the most melodious of living tongues. Some- 
 body once said that Mr. Gladstone was the only man in the 
 House who could talk in italics. "The saying," adds Mr. 
 Justin McCarthj*, " was odd, but was, nevertheless, appro- 
 priate and expressive. Gladstone could by the slightest 
 modulation of his voice give all the emphasis of italics, of 
 small print, or large print, or any other effect he might 
 desire, in his spoken words." 
 
 The three distinguishing qualities of Mr. Gladstone's 
 oratory are readiness, fertility, and force. Of all the great 
 English speakers he has been the most independent of 
 preparation. His foot is always in the stirrup, his lance is 
 always in the rest. No matter what the subject, or how 
 suddenly he is called upon to speak, he seems always to 
 have a multitude of facts, ideas, arguments, distinctions, 
 and illustrations relating to it, and to have mastered all its 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 205 
 
 difficulties. Even Fox, eager and impetuous as he was, 
 was great only in reply, when his feelings were roused by 
 the excitement of battle ; whereas Mr. Gladstone is just 
 as impassioned and forcible in the beginning as in the mid- 
 dle of a speech, in opening a debate as in reply. Great as 
 are his intellectual gifts, they are not so remarkable as the 
 intensity of feeling which he throws into everything he 
 does. Endowed apparently by Nature with " a larger 
 supply than most men of what George Eliot calls ' solar 
 energy,' " he is not occasionally aglow, but always aglow. 
 A temperature which would be regarded as fever-heat in 
 other men is his normal condition. Hence it is that neither 
 the seventy-four years that have passed over him, nor the 
 division of his mind among a multiplicity of things, pol- 
 itics, theology, history, scholarship, art, and social topics, 
 have diminished his amazing vigor, and that he can 
 throw the whole weight of his nature upon whatever he 
 touches, and yet have such a reservoir of force behind 
 as never to suffer from the drain. Of the strength of his 
 physical constitution a striking example was given by his 
 famous Midlothian campaign of 1879. In the course of a 
 fortnight, in bitter winter weather, he addressed audiences 
 numbering in all seventj'-five thousand persons, a feat of 
 bodily and mental prowess unparalleled by any other states- 
 man in his seventieth year. 
 
 More than forty years ago, Bunsen wrote : "Gladstone 
 is the first statesman in England as to intellectual power, 
 and he has heard higher tones than any one else in this 
 island." It is his moral seriousness, the strength and 
 transparent honesty of his convictions, with the purity and 
 elevation of his character, which, more even than his 
 power as an advocate, have given weight to his opinions 
 
206 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 and won the admiration and esteem of his countrymen. 
 Mr. Gladstone is not a political pioneer, an original thinker, 
 but a practical statesman who watches the course of events, 
 and adapts his measures to the exigencies of the hour. In 
 his boundless stores of knowledge, in his adroitness and 
 flexibility, in the marvellous subtlety which enables him to 
 wind into his subject like a serpent, and in a mastery of 
 language which enables him to express accurately the most 
 delicate distinctions of thought, he has no equal in Parlia- 
 ment. In the power, too, of organizing complex and diffi- 
 cult details into an orderly scheme, and of giving legislative 
 form to the measures on which the nation has determined, 
 as well as of supporting those measures by varied and pow- 
 erful argument, he is without a rival. At the beginning of 
 his career he was exceedingly nervous, scrupulous, and sen- 
 sitive. He professed to act from high religious motives, 
 and was regarded as a casuist unsuited to the region of 
 practical politics. He seemed a recluse of scholarly, poeti- 
 cal temperament, a kind of political lotos-eater, and 
 was thought to lack the pugnacit}* necessaiy for parliamen- 
 tary conflict. But he had not been long in Parliament 
 before it was found that instead of being a dream}* enthusi- 
 ast, a mere chopper of Oxford logic, who could only 
 split straws and advocate extreme opinions of High-Church 
 policy, he was a statesman of the most practical kind. 
 Business men brought into contact with him found that he 
 understood their own branches of trade as well as they 
 themselves. They discovered that " he possessed vast in- 
 formation in connection with that undercurrent of com- 
 merce which flows in warehouses and counting-houses, but 
 of which the cabinet and the library scarcely know the 
 existence." Politicians discovered that, Conservative though 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 207 
 
 he was, he kept all the windows of his mind open, and was 
 alive to all the dominant ideas of his time. Educated in 
 the narrow and selfish Toryism of Lord Kldon, he began 
 his public career as an upholder of established laws and 
 institutions ; but though he remained a Tory for twenty 
 years, he argued every question in a liberal spirit. Even 
 at Oxford keen observers had noted that he argued on the 
 Conservative side from Liberal principles. 
 
 In 1845 he began casting oft' the wrappings of conven- 
 tionalism, and his whole subsequent career has been a slow 
 but steady progress of repudiation of all that his old politi- 
 cal friends hold dear. It was in finance, of which he in- 
 troduced a new and brilliant era, that Mr. Gladstone won 
 the highest distinction. His labors upon the budget and 
 his tariff scheme were enormous. In his first budget he 
 abolished the duty on a hundred and twenty-three arti- 
 cles, and reduced that on a hundred and thirty-three, 
 the entire relief to the people amounting to 5,000,000. In 
 the session of 1842 he spoke a hundred and twenty-nine 
 times, chiefly upon subjects connected with the new fiscal 
 legislation. In these speeches, and especially in the bud- 
 gets he introduced as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 
 1859 to 1866, he showed that the intellect which could deal 
 with abstract ideas with the subtlety of a casuist or a met- 
 aphysician, was not less at home with the subject of Baltic 
 timber, or the duties on hops, salt-meat, and herrings. Pitt 
 only excepted, what other Chancellor of the Exchequer has 
 ever contrived to make a budget-speech fascinating? Who 
 has forgotten when the expounding of the national finances 
 was the great oratorical sensation of the session ; when the 
 House of Commons was charmed by eloquent periods on 
 sugar, spirit-duties, and tea, and the unfolding of the sur- 
 
208 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 plus was awaited with breathless anxiety, like the denoue- 
 ment of a novelist's plot? When Mr. Gladstone introduced 
 his memorable budget in 1860, the desire to hear him was 
 so intense that strangers with members' orders took their 
 places as early as 9 A. M., or seven hours before the session 
 began, and for the first time since he had left the House of 
 Commons, Lord Brougham sat in the gallery, that night. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone has defined in a picturesque phrase the 
 business of the orator as he views it. u The speaker," he 
 says, " gives back to his hearers in a rain what he has 
 received from them in a mist." This well describes one of 
 the characteristics of his own speeches. Great, however, 
 as are their merits, they are for the ear, and not for the 
 63-6, for the hour, and not for all time. Some one has 
 called them Demosthenic ; we could hardly conceive a 
 grosser misnomer. Amplification, not condensation, is his 
 forte. Few speakers, equally powerful, have uttered so few 
 quotable passages, passages sparkling with gems of 
 thought and expression, in which j'ears of reflection are 
 condensed into a phrase or a sentence. His language 
 never suggests a region of thought, a dim vista of imagery, 
 an oceanic depth of feeling, beyond what is compassed by 
 his sentences. It is useless to deny that there is a great 
 deal of verbiage in his speeches, and that whole paragraphs 
 might l)e cut out with decided advantage to the effect. It 
 is not that there is any poverty of ideas, but too much cir- 
 cumlocution and repetition, too many parentheses, qualifi- 
 cations, and subdivisions of explanation. A member of the 
 House once declared that Mr. Gladstone would not say 
 that twice six is twelve, but that twice six multiplied by 
 three minus thirty plus six is twelve. A writer in the 
 u Quarterly Review " burlesques Mr. Gladstone answering a 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 209 
 
 question, and contrasts him with Lord Palmerston, thus: 
 44 Supposing each minister were asked on what day the 
 session would be over, the Viscount would reply that it was 
 the intention of her Majesty to close the session on the 18th 
 of August. Mr. Gladstone would possibl}' premise that 
 inasmuch as it was for her Majesty to decide upon the day 
 which would be most acceptable to herself, it was scarcely 
 compatible with parliamentary etiquette to ask her minis- 
 ters to anticipate such decision ; but presuming that he 
 quite understood the purport of the right honorable gentle- 
 man's question, of which he was not entirety assured, the 
 completion of the duties of the House of Commons and the 
 formal termination of the sitting of the legislature being 
 two distinct things, he would say that her Majesty's min- 
 isters had represented to the Queen that the former would 
 probably be accomplished about the 18th of August, and 
 that such would not be unfavorable for the latter; and, 
 therefore, if the sovereign should be pleased to ratify that 
 view of the case, the da3* he had named would probabty be 
 that inquired after by the honorable gentleman." 
 
 It is in Parliament rather than on the platform that Mr. 
 Gladstone achieves his greatest oratorical triumphs. He is 
 too fond of looking at all the sides of a question, instead of 
 plucking out the heart of its mystery at once, to please a 
 great popular audience. His chief defect as a parliamen- 
 tary speaker is that he has the logical faculty in excess. 
 He has a scholastic intellect that is fond of metaphysical 
 subtleties and nice distinctions. His mind is a dialectical 
 mill, which grinds everything to dust. His arguments be- 
 gin with an intelligible breadth, but too often are spun out 
 to a microscopic tenuit}*, becoming u fine by degrees and 
 beautifully less," till they are nearl}' impalpable. As he 
 
 14 
 
210 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 proceeds, he attenuates, till he is lost, "like the gutta- 
 percha harness when warm, which leaves the carriage a mile 
 behind, the traces drawn out to the fineness of a gossamer, 
 the vehicle not drawn at all." This extreme subtlet}^ of 
 mind, which gives him an inexhaustible supply of replies 
 and rejoinders, leads him, as was said of Chief-Justice Par- 
 sons when pleading at the bar, not only to split hairs, but 
 to decimate them. No matter how apparently antagonistic 
 two principles are, he will show that they may be re- 
 conciled ; and hence to convict him of an inconsistency is 
 an impossibilit3 r . During Garibaldi's visit to London, it 
 was suggested that a noble and richly jointured widow, who 
 went about much with him, should marry him. To the 
 objection that he had a wife living, the read}' answer was : 
 " Oh ! he must get Gladstone to explain her away." Fond, 
 however, as Mr. Gladstone is of over-refining, his bitterest 
 enemies will not pretend that his subtlety of thinking has 
 ever checked his activity, or that he is not as far as pos- 
 sible from being a visionary or a dreamer. He never ties 
 knots for the purpose of entanglement, but, as it has been 
 truty said, the mental puzzle refers to some practical 
 measure, and the over-refining usualty consists in efforts to 
 justify prompt action. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's industiy is something that almost stag- 
 gers belief. For fifty-three years he has sat in the House 
 of Commons toiling with a vehement and unsleeping ardor 
 that would have worn out an ordinary man in half the 
 time. Even at Eton he used to stupef\' his fags by his 
 prodigious capacity for work. At the Universit}' of Oxford 
 he graduated t; double-first" in his twenty-second 3*ear, and 
 has since never ceased to add to his varied acquirements. 
 A superlative master of the languages and literatures of 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 211 
 
 Greece and Rome, he is also familiar with the leading lan- 
 guages of modern Europe, especially with the language 
 and literature of Italy, where his name is a household word. 
 On one occasion he is said to have delivered a speech of 
 three hours in faultless Italian. His faculties, bodily and 
 mental, like sailors on watch, seem to have relieved each 
 other by turns, and none of them has long slumbered or 
 slept. Going to Naples for his children's health, he makes 
 all Europe ring with his denunciations of the atrocities 
 committed by the Neapolitan court. No sooner does he 
 resign the premiership, than he startles the public with a 
 work on Homer. Before men have ceased wondering how 
 he finds time to keep up his classic studies, he surprises 
 them anew with a powerful pamphlet on Ultramontanism. 
 Hardly is the ink dry, when in another publication he is 
 thundering against the Turkish massacres ; and when peo- 
 ple begin to think that he must be exhausted, he hurries to 
 Scotland and delivers a series of speeches which in range, 
 grasp, passion, and power, rank among the most effective 
 electioneering harangues recorded in the political history of 
 Great Britain. 
 
 To the admirers of the British Premier in this country, 
 who, it is safe to say, may be counted by hundreds of thou- 
 sands, the tidings flashed across the Atlantic from time to 
 time, of late, concerning his health, have caused much 
 anxiety. Till now Mr. Gladstone's spare, sinewy frame 
 has shown a marvellous recuperative power during the 
 almost unparalleled mental and physical strain to which for 
 upward of fifty }*ears it has been subjected. Even when 
 occasionally incapacitated for ministerial and parliamentary 
 labor by colds caught while walking in the teeth of fierce 
 northeasters, or when engaged in his favorite winter 
 
212 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 exercise of tree-felling and wood-cutting, lie has always 
 regained bis wonted health quicker than do most men who 
 are twenty-four years younger. Rarely is such a mind 
 wedded to such a body. More than thirty years ago his 
 iron frame and prodigious capacity for work excited the 
 astonishment of his associates in the House of Commons, 
 one of whom, Mr. Sidney Herbert, said: "Don't talk to 
 me about Gladstone's mind ; it is nothing, compared with 
 his body." Again and again in past years he has been ex- 
 amined, sounded, and tested b}' auscultation by his medical 
 advisers, and invariably they have pronounced him to be 
 "made of pin-wire." Nothing but a lignum-vitae tough- 
 ness of constitution, and nerves of steel, with a rare genius 
 for sleep, and implicit obedience to the laws of health, 
 could have borne him for over half a centuiy, without 
 exhaustion, through all his herculean toils. 
 
 Like most Englishmen, Mr. Gladstone has alwa}*s been 
 a fast and vigorous walker. He loves the open air, and 
 in the bleakest weather rarety wears an overcoat or rides 
 in a cab. Why, lean, sinewy, without an ounce of super- 
 fluous flesh about him, he is admirably fitted for pedestrian 
 feats ; and when a considerably }'ounger man, used to sa}*, 
 without the slightest appearance of boasting, that he was 
 good for a forty-mile walk an}' day. A writer in one of 
 the London daily papers, who knows the Premier's habits 
 intimately, states that when he lived in Harley Street, it 
 was only at the urgent request of his physician that he 
 abstained from trudging down to the House of Commons 
 eveiy day, and from walking home in all weathers at night. 
 For riding on horseback, and for field-sports, we believe he 
 has never shown much taste. For his neglect of the latter, 
 an accident he met with, about forty years ago, may par- 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 213 
 
 tially account. Going out with a large shooting part}-, near 
 York, during a visit at a relative's, he was loading his gun, 
 when one barrel exploded, and the index-finger of his left 
 hand was blown away. It is well known that great orators 
 are usually poor sleepers. The strain to which the mental 
 and physical faculties are subjected, both before in prepara- 
 tion and during the delivery of a long and impassioned 
 speech, are such as to excite the nerves and to exhaust 
 their energy more quickly than any other kind of effort. 
 There have been public speakers who have achieved their 
 highest successes only at the cost of several nights of wake- 
 fulness. A famous parliamentary orator said that every 
 one of his speeches cost him two sleepless nights, one in 
 which he was thinking what to say, the other in which he 
 was lamenting what lie might have said better. Not so with 
 Mr. Gladstone. No speech, however long, whether de- 
 livered in the open air, or late at night in the close, sultry 
 atmosphere of the crowded House of Commons, no serious 
 speech delivered during an exciting Liverpool or Mid- 
 lothian campaign, has ever banished sleep from his eye- 
 lids. Till within a \eai* or two past, he has always been 
 good for seven and a half hours' sleep: "Seven," he has 
 been accustomed to sa}*, " are not enough for me ; I must 
 have seven and a half." But now, we are told, this happy 
 faculty is no longer possessed by the Premier. The sleep- 
 lessness which drove him several years ago to Cannes, 
 has returned, and points unmistakably to an overtasked 
 brain. 
 
 Few persons who have not given special attention to the 
 subject are aware what an enormous amount of labor and 
 what a weight of responsibility are imposed upon the Prime 
 Minister of Great Britain to-day. It is not in Downing 
 
214 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 Street only that he is forced to toil ; his duty follows him 
 like his shadow wherever he goes. The weight of an em- 
 pire presses upon his brain. Upon him the final responsi- 
 bility in regard to a hundred matters of importance falls ; 
 he has piles of papers to look over ; it is his task often not 
 an easy one to preserve harmony in the Cabinet ; and to 
 all his other duties may be added that of leading the House 
 of Commons, and advocating and defending there the meas- 
 ures he has introduced. No matter how far into the night 
 a debate may be protracted, his position as leader of his 
 party keeps him chained to his post. A circumstance that 
 makes this duty far more arduous than formerly is that the 
 sessions of Parliament are both longer and later than they 
 used to be. In the years 1862 to 1866, inclusive, the 
 average number of hours which the House of Commons sat 
 annually was 807, of which 79 were spent after midnight. 
 Since then the average has been steadily increasing, till in 
 the quinquennial period closing with the session of 1881 the 
 average sittings of the House had risen to 1,153, of which 
 176 in each session were spent after midnight. 
 
 Another circumstance that intensifies Mr. Gladstone's 
 toils is the irony of fate, cruel be3'ond precedent, which has 
 embroiled his countiy with foreign Powers. A sincere lover 
 of peace, and coming into office with the cry of " non-inter- 
 vention," he has been compelled to see England dragged 
 again into the vortex of foreign politics, and committed to 
 contests in which, even if victorious, she could win neither 
 honor nor profit. Still another thing that makes Mr. Glad- 
 stone's labors more exhausting than they would otherwise 
 be, is the ardor of his temperament, the perfervidum 
 ingenium Scotorum which he has inherited. One of his 
 enemies has described him as " a statesman of second-rate 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 215 
 
 intellect in a first-rate state of effervescence." He takes 
 life almost too seriously. Having no half-convictions, he 
 is terribly earnest in his speeches, and champions the 
 measures he has introduced into the House of Commons 
 with the whole force of his brain and heart. "There is 
 nothing," sa}'s Balzac, " that exhausts and wears us out 
 so fast as our convictions. A political or a literary convic- 
 tion is a mistress that kills us at last with the tongue or the 
 sword." Of such convictions as Mr. Gladstone holds, this 
 is too true. They literally possess his soul, and allow it no 
 rest. Hence he does not understand the value of absti- 
 nence. When he speaks, he is so possessed with his sub- 
 ject, so anxious to examine it on every side, in order that 
 he ma}' fully grasp the truth, that he is apparently oblivious 
 of the lapse of time, and exhausts both his theme and him- 
 self. His great budget speech of 1860, four hours long, was 
 made just after an attack of bronchitis. One of his famous 
 speeches in reply to Disraeli has been thus described : 
 
 " In the memory of the present generation there has been no 
 speech delivered in the House of Commons in which there was 
 such a rage of words. Its * go ' was incomparable. There was 
 not even time to cheer. It seemed as if the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer had only five minutes to spare, and into that space had to 
 crowd the entire dictionary. He seemed to be speaking against 
 time, and the pace reminded one of nothing so much as of the last 
 half-mile of the Derby. He kept this up for a good hour. He 
 swept on as a hurricane, the House, as he tore on, rising to catch 
 every word. There was exultation in his voice ; there was an 
 intensity ... in his speech of which the printed report conveys 
 but a poor idea. He took the House by storm, and retained it 
 for the remainder of the evening. It was a physical rather than 
 intellectual impression that he had created. It was a sensation 
 rather than a demonstration he had made ; but the sensation was 
 tremendous." 
 
216 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 Another trait of Mr. Gladstone is that, partly from mag- 
 nanimity and partly from sensitiveness, he too often stoops 
 to notice p.ygmy opponents, who think it an honor to be 
 tossed b}' his horn, and whose insignificance renders them 
 powerless for mischief. His time and strength are wasted 
 in discussions with foemen unwortlr^ of his steel. It is as 
 hard for him to sit silent when he hears the Land Bill or a 
 speech of his own misquoted, or a misstatement made con- 
 cerning the practice of the House, as it was for Lord North 
 to be dumb when a speaker was guilt}' of a false quantity in 
 a Latin quotation, or for Macaulay to keep his lips closed 
 when a false date or other error touching the reign of Queen 
 Anne was thundered in his ears. " Why, Mr. Speaker," 
 we once heard Mr. Gladstone exclaim, in reply to an ob- 
 scure opponent who had cited some rule or practice of 
 the House in past years, " the honorable gentleman talks 
 as if he had been a member of the House ever since 
 Adam ! " As an English friend, to whom we are indebted 
 for some of our facts concerning Mr. Gladstone, has tersely 
 said, " his Nasm3*th hammer is equally read}' to beat into 
 shape the armor of a parliamentary iron-clad, or to crack 
 a political nut." 
 
 To all this the great English statesman may reply that he 
 is what he is, that if he is killing himself by overwork, 
 lie bears that within him which would more ignobly kill him, 
 if he did not throw himself impetuously into the political 
 struggle and fight for the principles and measures he holds 
 dear. Needless as it may seem for " the fiery soul to o'er- 
 inform its integument of clay," yet it is better to wear out 
 than to rust out ; better, far better, that the ship should be 
 shivered upon the rocks, or go down beneath the waters, than 
 rot ingloriously at the wharves ! Yet there is another and 
 
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 217 
 
 more quiet arena, to which the Prime Minister might trans- 
 fer his labors, where he would not be scourged by so merci- 
 less an activity as that which is now sapping his vitality, 
 and might obtain a new lease of life, with the hope of long- 
 continued usefulness. In that Upper House which has rung 
 with the thunders of Chatham and echoed the silvery ac- 
 cents of Bolingbroke and Mansfield, he would find oppo- 
 nents pares congressus Achillis, and scope for the fullest 
 healthful exercise of his magnificent abilities, with opportu- 
 nities for repose which, while "stretched on the rack of 
 restless ecstasy " in the Lower House, he can never expect 
 to enjoy. 
 
THE QUEEN OF WATERING-PLACES. 
 
 BAD-HOMBURG, Sept. 16, 1886. 
 
 U OEE Naples, and die!" is an oft-quoted epigram con- 
 **-* cerning the beauty of an Italian city. See Homburg, 
 and live ! would be a juster tribute of praise to one of the 
 most popular German watering-places. Leaving Boston on 
 the 8th of July last, with the intention of spending August 
 and September in the Lower Engadine and the TJTO!, I 
 stopped on the wa}' to look at this watering-place ; and after 
 a glance at the Kurhaus and the Park, consulted with the 
 eminent physician, Dr. Deetz, and on his assurance that the 
 waters of Homburg were just suited to my ailments, decided 
 to pitch my tent here. After over a month's stay, during 
 which I have dail}' drunk and bathed in the waters of one 
 of the springs, with great benefit to my health, T am pre- 
 pared to pronounce Homburg the queen of all the Euro- 
 pean watering-places I have }~et visited, not even excepting 
 Baden-Baden. Of course there is no watering-place abso- 
 lutely perfect in its situation, climate, waters, and appoint- 
 ments ; as Boileau said of a perfect sonnet, 
 
 " Get heureux phenix est encore a trouver." 
 
 It is said that there are only two perfect things in this 
 world, one's first baby, and the perfect tense ; but Hom- 
 burg, it seems to me, lacks but two things to make it prac- 
 tically perfect, namely, a large, luxurious bath-house, 
 like that of Baden-Baden (which it will have next season, 
 
THE QUEEN OF WATERING-PLACES. 219 
 
 at an expense of half a million of marks), and a natural lake 
 or river, which I fear it must always lack. It is true there 
 is an artificial lake in the park ; but the stagnant, muddy 
 water in which the ducks wanton, so unlike the limpid, 
 transparent water of a natural lake or pebbly stream, has 
 for me no attraction. 
 
 But what, you will ask, are the primary merits of Horn- 
 burg as a watering-place? What is the nature of its waters, 
 and for what diseases are they a remedy? Let me say, 
 then, that the chief merit of the place is its health-restoring 
 opportunities, its climate, mineral springs, and baths. The 
 climate, to begin with, is remarkably pure, dry, and invig- 
 orating. The dryness is due to the absence of rivers in the 
 vicinity, and to the high, sloping ground on which the town 
 is built. After the heaviest rain the streets of Homburg 
 become quickly dry, the water running rapidly away, and 
 permitting the invalid to take his wonted walk in half an 
 hour with perfect safety. Though there are some hot, and 
 even sultry, daj's in Homburg, they are exceptional, I am 
 told, and the weather is, on the whole, very agreeable 
 throughout Juty, August, and September. The extensive 
 woods, which cover the mountains and hills in the neighbor- 
 hood, give a delicious coolness to the atmosphere, and cause 
 a gentle breeze, which is rarely wanting even in dog-da3'S. 
 Of the value of such a climate dry, gently stimulating, and 
 rich in oxygen in the restoration of health, I need not 
 speak. 
 
 The mineral waters of Homburg, which are found in five 
 springs, are about ten minutes' walk from the heart of the 
 town, in a charming park, of which I shall say more pres- 
 ently. Of these springs, called respectively the Elisabeth, 
 the Kaiser, the Ludwigsbrunnen, the Luisen, and the 
 
220 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 Stahlbrunnen, the first three are characterized by resolvent 
 qualities; the remaining two, in which iron predominates 
 over the salt, are tonic in their effect. Salt, carbonic acid, 
 and in some cases iron, are the chief constituents of the 
 waters ; and with these are mingled chloride of calcium and 
 of lime, etc., which enhance or modify the general effect. 
 This effect is produced by the action of the waters upon 
 the mucous membrane, the large glands, the kidneys, and 
 the liver, revolutionizing, as the waters do, according to 
 high authority, the whole economy of the body, increasing 
 the tissue-changes, and renewing the blood more quickly 
 than usual. But of the diseases which the}' cure or greatly 
 alleviate, the first and most important, according to Dr. F. 
 Haeber, one of the leading physicians here (see the " Fort- 
 nightly Review" for August), "are the diseases of the 
 mucous membrane of the alimentary tract. Chronic catarrh 
 of the stomach and bowels, congestion or slight enlargement 
 of the liver, as well as sluggishness or inactivity of that 
 organ, impaired circulation in the abdominal organs, habit- 
 ual constipation and hemorrhoids, will be most directly in- 
 fluenced by these spas." Again, corpulency, rheumatism, 
 and gout are almost sure of being relieved by these waters ; 
 and it is not strange, therefore, that rich and titled English- 
 men flock here by hundreds. How delightful it must be for 
 John Bull to exchange for this pure, stimulating atmosphere, 
 his own dismal climate, of which an English wit, Hemy 
 Luttrell, once said, that on a fine da}' it was like looking 
 up a chimney, on a rain}' day, like looking down it ! As 
 you sit at table d'hote in your hotel, or sit under the trees 
 in the Kurhaus garden, listening to the delicious strains 
 of Herr Tomlich's well-trained orchestra, you will hear the 
 language of Shakspeare and Milton spoken by your neigh- 
 
THE QUEEN OF WATERING-PLACES. 221 
 
 bors on the right hand and the left, as often as the more 
 guttural tongue of Goethe and Schiller. Among the recent 
 English visitors here has been the Prince of Wales, who 
 took his dram of mineral water earl}' every morning at the 
 Elisabeth spring, in common with us poor wretches who, 
 as Horace says, k ' numerus sumus, et fruges consumere 
 nati." 
 
 The waters of the Luisen and the Stahlbrunnen wells are 
 found most efficacious in secondary anaemia, resulting from 
 exhausting ailments, chiefly those of the alimentary tracts. 
 Professional men, scholars, and business men. who have 
 been " burning the candle at both ends," who, in other 
 words, have over-taxed their physical and mental faculties, 
 and who are suffering from nervous exhaustion, the result 
 of excessive toil, anxiety, and worry, who are afflicted with 
 no positive disease, but who feel a lack of spring, buo3*anc3', 
 and elasticity, and are tormented with sleeplessness, ennui, 
 and doubts whether the game of life is worth the candle ; 
 persons who are weakened b} T long sicknesses, in which 
 they have been so near to death's door that, as Hood says, 
 they could almost hear the creaking of the hinges, all 
 these find unquestionable relief in the iron springs. 
 
 A few Sundays ago, I was walking to the Scotch Presby- 
 terian church (which holds its service here in the chapel of 
 the Hof, or Royal Castle) in company with a rotund Scotch 
 gentleman, one of those burly men whose presence could 
 be felt in a room you entered blindfold, when he asked 
 me if I was taking Homburg waters. " You certainly do 
 not look," said he, with a significant smile and glance at 
 my ghostly physique, " as if yon needed veiy much to re- 
 duce your bulk." In this remark he had reference to the 
 fact that many obese persons come here to be relieved by 
 
222 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 the waters of their excessive fat; and as, for some time 
 past, I have been losing flesh, and threatening to shrink to 
 the dimensions of Hipponax, the Greek comic poet who 
 invented parody, or to rival in thinness that ancient sooth- 
 sa3*er who weighed but an obolus, or that aerial poet of Cos 
 who had to fasten lead to his sandals to keep the wind from 
 blowing him awa}', the remark was a very natural one. 
 It is a paradoxical fact that the Homburg waters are used 
 with advantage for diseases of a seemingly opposite charac- 
 ter. Not only do those who, like Falstaff, " lard the lean 
 earth as the}' walk along," and who often, like Hamlet, ex- 
 claim, " Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt!" get 
 relief here from their grossness, but thin, spider-legged, 
 spectral persons, who look as though they could barely turn 
 a money-scale, men who are all made up of nervousness 
 and sensibilitj', complete conductors of electricity, ^Eolian 
 harps that tremble at every passing breeze, aspen-like 
 mortals who can say with Wordsworth, 
 
 " My apprehensions come in crowds, 
 I dread the rustling of the grass ; 
 The very shadows of the clouds 
 
 Have power to shake me as they pass," 
 
 find these waters exceedingly helpful. 
 
 The Homburg waters are used both internally and ex- 
 ternally. The curative effect of the springs is aided by the 
 use of mineral baths. The effect of the salt and other in- 
 gredients of the mineral water on the skin, according to 
 the authority alread} 7 quoted, is to vivify and invigorate the 
 whole nervous sN'stem, " to increase the activity and force 
 of resistance of the skin, and greatly to aid in the assimila- 
 tion of nutritious substances." To the agreeable qualities 
 of these baths I can testify from many trials. It is hardly 
 
THE QUEEN OF WATERING-PLACES. 223 
 
 too much to say that they are positively delicious. A de- 
 lightful prickling, gently stimulating, yet soothing sensation 
 steals over you, and you feel that you would like to lie and 
 doze and dream there forever. After one of these baths a 
 man must be the veriest cynic not to feel kindly to all his 
 fellow-beings. I could at such a time forgive my worst 
 enemy, even the cousin who cozened me out of that half- 
 dollar fifty-nine years ago at the Maine Wesleyan Seminary, 
 or the critic who said of one of my books that it was " the 
 most commonplace of commonplace." I fully sympathize 
 with the Frenchman who, when taking a similar bath at 
 Schwalbach, was overheard saying to himself: "Dans ces 
 bains on est absolument amoureux de soi-meme " (In 
 these baths one is absolutely in love with himself). 
 
 Besides the ordinary mineral baths, they give you at 
 Homburg, if your blood is thin and 3*our body like Dr. 
 Holmes's "one-horse sha}*," read}' to fall in pieces from 
 general debility, an effervescing "Schwartz bath ;" and if, 
 in addition, }*ou are suffering from nervous irritability or 
 rheumatism, they give you pine-baths, which I have found 
 very pleasant, although on first lying in the tub you half 
 fancy that you have been plunged into Acheron or a sec- 
 tion of the Stygian lake. The pine-oil which is mingled 
 with the mineral water in these baths is distilled from the 
 leaves of pine-trees, and is diluted with a decoction of pine- 
 leaves. For neuralgia and severe rheumatism you can have 
 mud-baths ; and for scrofula and skin-diseases, mother-of- 
 lye baths. Let me add that the managers at Homburg do 
 not pretend, as do those at some other European watering- 
 places, that the waters are a panacea for all, or nearly all, 
 the ills that flesh is heir to. Invalids there are, of course, 
 whom no mineral waters can help ; of whom it may be 
 
224 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 said, indeed, as the Thames waterman said to Pope when 
 the little crooked dwarf, after having been rowed from Lon- 
 don home, disputed about the fare, and ejaculated, as he 
 had a thousand times before, " God mend me ! " "Mend 
 you, indeed ! Much easier to make another ! " 
 
 The effect of the Homburg waters and of the pure, brac- 
 ing mountain air is greatly enhanced by the regimen pre- 
 scribed by the doctors. Their patients are furnished with 
 a list of forbidden articles of diet, among which are salmon, 
 cabbage, cauliflower, cucumbers, onions, radishes and 
 horse-radishes, macaroni, puddings, pastn*, and butter. 
 Light wines are allowed ; but spirits of every kind, heavy 
 w r ines such as Burgundy, and the 4 ' liquor wines " gener- 
 all}', such as sherry, madeira, port, and champagne, are 
 strict^ prohibited. Claret is deemed the best wine for the 
 invalid, specially if his digestive organs are inclined to 
 acidity. Raw, uncooked fruit of all kinds is rigidl}* for- 
 bidden. There is no doubt that, apart from the mineral 
 waters, the pure, bracing air, the pure water from the 
 mountain springs, the frequent exercise in the open air, 
 the early hours for retiring and rising (the last, two being 
 earnestly enjoined), the freedom from care and anxiety, 
 together with the avoidance of harmful stimulants and of 
 all innutritions, indigestible food, would of themselves in 
 many cases of disease work a cure. From 7 to 9 A. M. 
 the long, tree-shaded walk from the Kaiser to the Elisabeth 
 spring is crowded with men and women of all ranks and 
 nations, walking leisurely between the drams of water, 
 chatting, and listening to the strains of the fine Kursaal 
 band. The hollow in w r hich the latter spring lies is en- 
 circled with fine, lofty trees, and its sides are covered with 
 exquisitely arranged beds of flowers, flowers of all hues, 
 
THE QUEEN OF WATERING-PLACES. 225 
 
 and vividly contrasting with each other in form and color. 
 Close by the spring are a covered walk for rainy weather, 
 festooned with flowers, a palm-house, and an orangery. In 
 the afternoon the visitors flock to the Kurhaus garden, 
 where, sitting under the trees, they listen to the master- 
 pieces of the great composers played by the orchestra of 
 forty picked musicians, and on " Fest" nights, alternately 
 to these and to a fine regimental band from Frankfort. On 
 these nights the garden is brilliantl} 7 illuminated by hun- 
 dreds of Chinese lanterns and colored lamps, and hung 
 with the flags of all nations. The festivities close with a 
 grand display of fireworks, and, perhaps, a dance in the 
 Kursaal. 
 
 The Kurhaus, built "by M. Blanc in the days when the 
 croupiers raked thousands of "krones" and u doppel- 
 krones " into his coffers, is one of the most magnificent in 
 Europe. It is a vast palatial building, with two wings, 
 in one of which are the reading, chess, and billiard rooms, 
 and in the other an opera-house and a restaurant. In the 
 centre are the grand entrance-hall or front corridor, a 
 promenade in itself, cool in summer, and warm in winter, 
 the ball-room, and the concert-room. How spacious, air}-, 
 and cool seem all these rooms, especially the concert- room, 
 with its marble floors, and how pleasant the walls in tinted 
 arabesque, on which fall bright rays of light through the 
 cupola above ! Antiquaries will be glad to learn that in 
 the Kurhaus there is a collection of antiquities found on 
 the " Saalburg," the remains of a Roman castle, situated 
 on a wooded height of the Taunns, about two miles from 
 Homburg. In the rear of the Kurhaus is an immense ve- 
 randa or terrace roofed with glass and fronting the garden, 
 where hundreds of visitors sit in the evening, dining at 
 
 15 
 
226 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 small tables and listening to the band. But the Park, 
 the unrivalled, enchanting Park, with its lawns of deep 
 green ; its walks winding under shady trees along hills, 
 dales, and levels, its attractive light pavilions draped with 
 caressing creepers, its flower-beds gorgeous with many- 
 colored blossoms, how shall I do justice to its charms? 
 To think of giving a picture of it by particularizing its 
 features would be as absurd as to describe the separate 
 features of a man, and call the sum-total Jones or Brown. 
 As the features of the face are only an alphabet, and a dry, 
 dead map of a person's face can give no idea of his looks, 
 so an enumeration of the separate beauties of a park con- 
 veys no more idea of its total charm than the simple 
 presentation of an alphabet shows what there is in a poem. 
 Equally useless would it be to compare this Park with that 
 of any other watering-place ; it would be like Captain Flu- 
 ellen's comparison of Macedon with Monmouth, because 
 there was a river in both places, and " salmons in poth." 
 I must content myself with saying that all which the most 
 consummate taste and artistic skill could do to make a 
 rural paradise in which one might forget the " carking 
 cares " of life, and enjoy not only that indefinite and in- 
 stinctive happiness which Dr. Paley attributes to infants, 
 oysters, and periwinkles, but the exalted pleasure yielded 
 by the contemplation of Nature's charms, enhanced by art, 
 has been done here. How many years of painstaking must 
 have passed, how many elaborate studies of effect must 
 have been made, before these landscape beauties, these 
 bewitching negligent graces were hit upon, which seem ac- 
 cidental, but are the product of the highest art ! I never 
 tire of strolling along the winding walks shaded by over- 
 arching trees, by the beds of flowers, in the silent and 
 
THE QUEEN OF WATERING-PLACES. 227 
 
 fragrant woods that skirt the Park ; of gazing on the lawn- 
 tennis-players, enjoying their sport under their picturesque 
 flags, on the finest grounds in German}- ; or of sitting in 
 some quiet nook under the grand old elms, and listening 
 to the birds, or to the strains of the distant orchestra borne 
 on the breeze, building castles in Spain, and thinking of 
 absent dear ones (" in inedio fonte leporuin surgit amari 
 aliquid") who alone are wanting to make my bliss com- 
 plete. Little did I dream before I came here that I 
 should ever delight to rise at six in the morning, and 
 without taking even a cup of that Arabian beverage 
 which, as Pope says, 
 
 " Makes the politician wise, 
 And see all things through his half-shut eyes," 
 
 walk two hours before breakfast. But such is the necro- 
 mancy of this Park ; and I am fast becoming what a col- 
 ored man one day told the late James T. Fields, when he 
 was taking his " constitutional," that he had become, "a 
 mighty predestinarian." 
 
 A witty French writer, enamored of the charms of Hom- 
 burg. which he lately visited, sa}'s that it was born (that is, 
 the new town), like Venus, in the bosom of the waters, 
 it has sprung by enchantment from its saline fountains. 
 Only, he adds, it needed an enchanter, and that enchanter 
 was the devil himself, in the form of M. Blanc, who estab- 
 lished the gaming-house, die Spielhotte as the German 
 language, with its inexhaustible lexigraphic power, can say. 
 It was in 1840 that he began operations ; and at once, at 
 the sound of the roulette, the number of visitors began to 
 increase, till, from eight hundred in that year, it mounted 
 up to ten thousand in 1860, and in the last year of the 
 
228 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 games swelled to twenty thousand. The suppression of the 
 roulette was ordered in 1866, after the Landgraviat of 
 Hessen-Homburg had been annexed to the kingdom of 
 Prussia. M. Blanc was allowed, however, to maintain his 
 Spielholle six years more, on condition of relinquishing his 
 garden and park, with the buildings erected upon them, to 
 the Prussian Government (which afterward gave them to 
 the town of Homburg), and paying a fixed sum annuallj', 
 to provide a fund for the subsequent administration of the 
 Kurhaus and the mineral waters. Since 1872 the click of 
 the little ball cantering round in its steeple-chase till it 
 drops exhausted into its fatal resting-place, has no longer 
 been heard in the Kursaal. It is by the revenue from the 
 fund just mentioned, and by a moderate tax upon visitors, 
 which the town is authorized to lev}', that the cost of 
 maintaining this earthly paradise which is said to be 
 about fifty thousand dollars a year is defrayed. Every 
 stranger who passes more than five days at Homburg is re- 
 quired to pay to the town twelve marks. For a family the 
 tax is. according to the number of persons, twenty, twenty-- 
 four, or thirty marks. (A mark is nearly twenty-five 
 cents.) The payment of this charge, which is called the 
 Kurtaxe, gives one a right, through the season, to use 
 and enjoy the Park, the springs, and the Kurhaus, with 
 its salons, its reading-rooms, which spread before him 
 sixty journals and reviews in all languages, its gardens 
 with their illuminations, the concerts, given three times 
 daily by the Kurhaus orchestra, the frequent military 
 music, and the dancing soirees which take place weekly. 
 Three dollars for all these luxuries ! What other invest- 
 ment of that sum would yield an equal return in health 
 and happiness? 
 
THE QUEEN OF WATERING-PLACES. 229 
 
 It is worth a visit to Homburg simply to enjoy its doke 
 far niente, its dreamy lotos-eating, which may here be 
 had in perfection ; or to sit under the trees in the Kurhaus 
 garden and hear the stirring or soothing strains of the 
 orchestra in the kiosque, the forty trained musicians 
 directed by Herr Gustave Tomlich, who are employed by 
 the town at a cost of fifteen thousand dollars a year. From 
 the beginning of the season, May 15, to the end, Septem- 
 ber 15, they play not fewer than twent} 7 pieces a da}*. 
 Herr Tomlich is an artist of the most catholic as well as 
 the most delicate taste. His repertor}* comprises selections 
 from more than a hundred composers, old and new, of all 
 nations, from Beethoven, Gluck, and Wagner, to Rossini, 
 Balfe, and Strauss. Imagine the amount of musical knowl- 
 edge which programmes containing such an exquisite variety 
 of pieces, and changed at every concert, must imply in the 
 leader of the orchestra ! Imagine the long and laborious 
 training they presuppose on the part of these Saxon (as 
 most of them are) musicians, who play as one man, and as 
 if they had given their lives to the mastery of each piece ! 
 A significant peculiarit}^ of the morning concerts at the 
 springs is that they begin always with a chant of adoration. 
 The titles of some of these chorals are as follows: " The 
 Lord is my Fortress;" "Holy, holy, holy Lord God Al- 
 mighty ; " " Praise the Lord, O my soul ; " " How great is 
 the goodness of the Almighty;" "Let us praise Jesus 
 Christ;" "Let God lead us." Who would not be sur- 
 prised at such a phenomenon as concerts thus opening at 
 a French or American watering-place? 
 
 In conclusion, I will add, for the information of any of 
 my readers who may not know its situation, that Homburg 
 vor der Holie (Homburg on the Height), as it is called, is 
 
230 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 situated on a spur of the Taunus Mountains, about twelve 
 miles from Frankfort-on-the-Main. The town was formerly 
 the residence of the Landgraves of Hessen-Homburg, who 
 occupied the Schloss which overlooks the town at its west 
 end. Connected with the Schloss is the beautiful palace 
 garden, which is open to the public, with its orangery, fine 
 old cedars, and fish-pond. 
 
DIARIES. 
 
 THE publication of Hawthorne's Life by bis son, with 
 extracts from his note-book containing cynical ob- 
 servations on Margaret Fuller, has called public attention 
 to the practice of diary -keeping, its virtues and vices. The 
 assiduity of Curll in publishing memoirs and letters made 
 Arbuthnot call him u a new terror of death." It is said 
 that Lord Campbell, when writing the Lives of the Lord 
 Chancellors, met one day the great advocate Sir Frederic 
 Thessigcr, and said to him: " Well, Sir Frederic, I under- 
 stand you are to be Chancellor." "O heavens! I hope 
 not," was the reply; " you would write my life." Never 
 before, since the days of Cain, have the lives of men been 
 taken so cruelly as now. This posthumous martyrdom 
 has become part of the stipulated tax which genius pays 
 for celebrity. " Don't let the awkward squad fire over 
 me," was the dying request of Burns ; but an eminent 
 statesman, poet, or man-of-letters has a fate to dread far 
 more fearful than the confused firing of country militia over 
 his grave. To suspect that almost as soon as the breath is 
 out of his bodj T its spiritual tenant will be turned inside out 
 and scrutinized with a microscope ; that he is to be photo- 
 graphed exactly as he is, with all his ugly little peculiarities, 
 all his eccentricities, all his weaknesses, faults, and foibles, 
 is enough to make a sensitive man shudder. 
 
 No man can be a Solon at all times. In a moment of 
 thoughtlessness, in the ebullition of animal spirits, in the 
 
232 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 frankness and playfulness of a smoking-room, in the un- 
 wariness which is induced by a glass or two of wine in 
 " the wee small hours ayant the 'twal," a satirical remark 
 is made, or a ludicrous personal anecdote is told, with no 
 malicious intent ; and down it goes into the inevitable jour- 
 nal of some one present, to confront you afterward on a 
 printed page, when, though you bitterly repent the folly, it 
 is too late to recall it, whatever misery it may cause. 
 Since the publication of the Biography of Wilberforce and 
 the Letters of Carlyle, no public man can be secure that his 
 peace of mind and the friendship of a lifetime may not 
 be destined by the indiscretion of a biographer who 
 chooses to spice his work with epigrams that were dropped 
 and regretted years ago. No wonder that the gentle, 
 kindly poet Whittier should have declared, after reading 
 the Carlyle correspondence, that he had set to work and 
 destroyed the major part of his own collection of letters, 
 covering a period of over fifty years, lest they should be 
 published after his death and bring suffering to some one. 
 "I wish," he adds, "that all the letters I have written 
 could be treated by my friends in the same manner." 
 Nor is it strange that, as an English paper asserts, an 
 eminent personage is reported to have inquired specially 
 whether the nominee for a private post about her person 
 kept one of these damning records of familiar conversa- 
 tions. It is said that a Frenchman tried to shoot himself 
 when he learned that his wife kept one. When it is con- 
 sidered that a diary is ex parte, and cannot be cross- 
 examined, that it is sure to be colored \>y the moods, 
 misapprehensions, and prejudices of the writer, it seems 
 strange that this kind of testimony should be trusted and 
 cited so often as it is by Macaulay and other historians. 
 
DIARIES. 233 
 
 The best men have their ill-natured moments, when the 
 wind is east or their dinners have not been digested. 
 How would a Gladstone fare in a Tory's diary, or a 
 Disraeli in a Radical's? 
 
 No doubt diaries have been published, some of them 
 in this generation, which the world could ill have spared. 
 How could we do without the " Paston Letters," that 
 44 precious link in the chain of England's moral history," 
 as Mr. Hallam has characterized them ; or without the 
 letters of Anselm, John of Salisbury, and Peter Blois? 
 Who would willingly part with Evelyn's diary, with its 
 revelations of Charles II. 's court, and its graphic pictures 
 of the plague and the great fire in London ; or with the 
 naive and amusing chronicle of that inveterate old gossip 
 Pepys, with its piquant social disclosures and its diary 
 of the quarrels and reconciliations springing from Mrs. 
 Pepys's fits of jealousy? How much of our knowledge of 
 Swift we owe to the journals he kept, and which he trans- 
 mitted to Mrs. Dingley and Mrs. Johnson, journals in 
 which we see him without disguise, in his dressing-gown 
 and slippers ! How characteristic the wish expressed in 
 one of them, when a man wakes him every day b}' crying 
 savoys, that his largest cabbage was sticking in his throat ! 
 How naive the Dean's self- portraiture in the account he 
 gives of his treatment of a wretched poet, who sends him 
 as a bribe some of the finest wild-fowl he ever saw ! He 
 eats the fowl, and tells his servant "never to let up the 
 poet when lie comes. The rogue," he sa^ys, " should have 
 kept the wings, at least, for his Muse." How could we 
 dispense with Judge Sewall's journal : or with that exquisite 
 mosaic work of histoiy, wit and anecdote, character and 
 incident, which Horace Walpole has left us in his letters ; 
 
234 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 or with Boswell's matchless journal ; or with the auto- 
 biographic correspondence of Cowper, so inimitable in its 
 seductive negligence of style, and rivalled only by Sevigne 
 pour center des bagatelles avec grace ; or with the hardly 
 less entertaining gossip served up in the later reminiscences 
 of Henry Crabb Robinson, Greville, and Mozley? Amid 
 not a little rubbish, these works contain much valuable mat- 
 ter, both biographical and historical. The pett}* incidents 
 and seemingly trivial anecdotes and sa}'ings which they 
 record often flash more light upon public events and upon 
 national and individual character than pages of elaborate 
 history. The copy of Montaigne's Essaj's containing the 
 autograph of Shakspeare is esteemed of almost priceless 
 value. But how much more should we prize, if we had it, 
 the old Gascon's diary ! What a treasury of Dryden's wit 
 and wisdom might have been bequeathed to us if Colley 
 Gibber, who told Johnson that he had met the poet a thou- 
 sand times and knew him intimately, had possessed Boswell's 
 taste for personal facts and rare genius for journalizing ! 
 
 Not so, however, thinks that brilliant critic, M. Philarete 
 Chasles. " What care I," he exclaims, " about the patience 
 or scrupulousness of a former frequenter of the Alexandrian 
 Library who should have saved for me in twenty-five vol- 
 umes in folio the billets-doux of Cleopatra and the bills of 
 her washerwoman and jeweller?" Onty a Nares whose 
 Memoirs of Lord Burleigh, according to Macaulay, fill two 
 thousand closely-printed quarto pages, and weigh sixty 
 pounds avoirdupois would overwhelm his readers with 
 twenty-five volumes of such material ; but who can doubt 
 that a selection might be made from Cleopatra's bills and 
 billets-doux, if we had them, that would reveal to us much 
 that we do not and cannot otherwise know of the habits, 
 
DIARIES. 235 
 
 manners, and tastes of the Egyptian queen, the people, and 
 the time? How perfectly her artfulness is epitomized in the 
 incident mentioned by Plutarch, that, to avoid discover}*, 
 she rolled herself in a carpet, and, carefully tied up at full 
 length, was delivered in a large parcel at Caesar's palace ! 
 Has not Mr. Forster shown, in his charming biography of 
 Goldsmith, that even a tailor's bill may be used to throw 
 light on character? as, for example, the bills of Filb} T , of 
 Fetter Lane, who made the famous peach-colored coat. 
 Facts and incidents like these, whether found in biograpfiy 
 or histoiy, are eminently worth relating. The}' differ ma- 
 terially from the frivolous ones noted by a large class of 
 writers, of whom the pedant ridiculed in u Gil Bias " is a 
 good example. He solemnly narrated that the Athenian 
 children cried when they were whipped, "a fact of 
 which cut for his vast and select erudition we should have 
 remained ignorant." 
 
 The London " Athenaeum " not only defends the publi- 
 cation of damaging things in memoirs, but goes so far as to 
 insist that such works are not worth the paper they are 
 written on "if they do not contain something that partial 
 friends would not approve of, good taste would revolt 
 from, and the nearest and dearest would be shocked 
 at." Mr. Froude defends his publication of Carlyle's atra- 
 bilious utterances by saying: "I learned my duty front 
 himself, to keep back nothing, and extenuate nothing." 
 He seems to think that as Cromwell liked to be painted 
 with the moles upon his face, so it may be right to expose 
 a great man's mental and moral deformities, even at the 
 risk of overshadowing the finer or nobler qualities. The 
 trouble is, in Carlyle's case, as in many others, that the ex- 
 posure of his defects and Mbles cannot be made without 
 
236 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 giving pain to other persons. The revelations have in not a 
 few cases scarified the justly sensitive feelings of his worthy 
 acquaintances, to whom this literary vivisection is as pain- 
 ful in realit} T , if not in degree, as that of the poor animal 
 that writhes under the knife of the operator. 
 
 No doubt man}' of the evils of diary-publishing are due 
 rather to the indiscretion of literary executors in publishing 
 diaries immediately after the writer's death, and thus giving 
 pain or doing injury to living men, than to the reminiscences 
 themselves. But even this evil has its compensation. A 
 false story or libel published during the lifetime of its 
 victim ma}' be contradicted, or its exaggeration exposed ; 
 but not so twenty or twent}'-five years after the writer's 
 death, when the person calumniated, or the witness who 
 might disprove the calumny, is in the grave. There is 
 reason to fear that some malicious diarists have directed 
 the postponement of the publication of their gossip till many 
 years after their decease, not from motives of delicac}* and 
 kindness, but to prevent contradiction of their inventions. 
 Considering the frailty of human life, it is dangerous for a 
 public man to keep a diary which he would shrink from 
 having published; but probably, as a recent writer says, 
 most diaries, like Pope's letters, are penned with an eye to 
 publication; and "it may reasonably be believed that the 
 one exception, namel}', Mr. Pepys, had the writer 
 ever imagined that Parson Smith, of Cambridge, would 
 have discovered the secret of his cipher, might have con- 
 tained fewer memoranda about ' black-eyed girls ' and the 
 little infidelities which, though proper enough for a Caro- 
 linian courtier, were scarcely becoming in the President of 
 the Royal Society." 
 
THE ADVANTAGES OF UGLINESS. 
 
 " "VTEVER say that it is a small thing to be ugty," says the 
 -*- ^ late George Dawson in one of his eloquent lectures. 
 " It is a terrible thing to be ugly ; it is a rock, a mountain, 
 an obstruction, and a hindrance ; and it should be counted 
 in any man's way to gloiy that he had this Alp to cross." 
 Now, we believe the very opposite of this to be true, and we 
 will give our reasons. The advantages of personal beauty 
 are obvious ; but those of plainness, and especially of 
 positive ugliness, are less patent, and therefore less gen- 
 erally recognized. It is one of the unhappy drawbacks of 
 beauty that though we all admire it and sing its praises, 
 we do not trust it. We look upon it as a vain, transitory, 
 skin-deep thing, which it is well enough for young persons 
 and poets to rave about, but which, having no solidity or 
 permanence, is not to be depended upon. On the contraiy, 
 there is a durability, a fixedness, a respectability about 
 ugliness, that wins our respect and our confidence. Again, 
 it is difficult to associate the ideas of mental and moral ex- 
 cellence with beauty, while it is easy to associate them with 
 ugliness. The exquisite Venus de Medicis, " the statue 
 that enchants the world," is hardly less remarkable for the 
 absence of every intellectual charm, than for the possession 
 of every animal grace. When Miss Bremer was asked by 
 her American adorers what she thought when so many 
 people came to see her, she replied : " I wished that I was 
 
238 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 handsomer." Now, we greatly doubt whether the Swedish 
 authoress, if beautiful, would have commanded half the 
 admiration and esteem that she won by her plainness. 
 What greater misfortune, then, can befall a young man 
 than to be afflicted with a beautiful form and face? He 
 may be praised and petted, but he is secretly despised. He 
 begins life at a positive disadvantage, and may spend half 
 his days in disabusing his acquaintances of their unfavor- 
 able impressions. Because he has so many outward, physi- 
 cal attractions, it is inferred that he has no inner mental 
 ones. On the other hand, the plain-looking man gets 
 credit at once upon the mere security of his face. An un- 
 gainly form conveys the idea of stedfastness of purpose ; 
 a wrinkled brow suggests thoughtfulness ; and a scarred 
 cheek, a good bank account. Rufus Choate, when yielding 
 to an adverse decision of Chief-Justice Shaw, did but ex- 
 press the feeling which all men, in a greater or less degree, 
 secretly entertain toward the ill-favored man : "In com- 
 ing into the presence of your honor, I experience the 
 same feelings as the Hindoo does when he bows before 
 his idol. I know that you are ugly, but I feel that you 
 are great ! " 
 
 Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, has well ob- 
 served that " in the natural world we rarel}' see beauty allied 
 with usefulness. Lofty trees of magnificent aspect bear no 
 fruit, productive trees for the most part being ugl} T little 
 cripples. So also the most beautiful buildings are not 
 useful. A temple is not a dwelling-place." What is more 
 worthless than the gaudy poppy, or what more valuable 
 than the gnarled oak or the bristling corn? So with ani- 
 mals : how valueless is the brilliant peacock or the gazelle, 
 and how useful the plain ox, cow, or mule ! 
 
THE ADVANTAGES OF UGLINESS. 239 
 
 Again, who does not know that the consciousness of 
 ugliness has proved to many a man an intellectual stimulus, 
 as Bacon expresses it, "a perpetual spur to rescue and 
 deliver himself from scorn"? Deformity, says that great 
 thinker, provokes men to industry ; while " in their su- 
 periors it quencheth jealousy towards them, as persons that 
 they think they ma}' at pleasure despise ; and it layeth their 
 competitors and emulators asleep, as never believing they 
 should be in possibility of advancement, till they see them 
 in possession; so that upon the matter [upon the whole], 
 in a great wit deformity is an advantage to rising." 
 Who can doubt that it was because Socrates was so intoler- 
 ably ugty, so ill-looking that Rabelais compares him to 
 one of those boxes in an apothecary's shop with ugly figures 
 on the outside, but filled within with precious drugs, that 
 he so distinguished himself by his mental powers? A more 
 grotesque figure never attracted the gaze of passers-by in 
 the streets. He had a flat nose, lobster-like e}*es, and 
 thick lips, with a round and protuberant body that made 
 his friends liken him to the figures of Silenus. Again, 
 who can doubt that it was because Seneca was "lean and 
 harsh, ugl}' to behold ; " the Emperor Galba, crookbacked ; 
 Agesilaus, mean and contemptible-looking, that these men 
 several!}' rose to eminence? Who can help believing that 
 it was by a similar provocation that Boccharis, the most 
 deformed ruler that Egypt ever had, was fired to labor at 
 self- culture till he surpassed in wisdom and knowledge all 
 his predecessors? JEsop the fabulist is a }*et more strik- 
 ing example, or would be if Bentley had not cast suspicion 
 upon, or rather destro} r ed,the credibility of the story which, 
 he says, was first told b} r Planudes, a B}'zantine monk of the 
 fourteenth centur}' that ./Esop was a humpbacked dwarf. 
 
240 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 "What but a consciousness of their ugliness, and of the con- 
 sequent contempt of their fellows, has pricked on some of the 
 most famous warriors of ancient and modern times ? Would 
 Uladislaus Cubitatis, the pygmy king of Poland, had he 
 possessed the ordinary bulk and stature of a man, have 
 manifested so fiery a valor, and fought, as a quaint old 
 writer says, " more victorious battles than any of his long- 
 shanked predecessors"? Was not the Duke of Luxem- 
 bourg, one of the ablest generals of Louis XIV., deformed? 
 " I can never beat that little hunchback," said William of 
 Orange one day angrily. " How does he know that I am a 
 hunchback?" asked Luxembourg, on hearing of the excla- 
 mation ; " I have often seen his back, but he has never yet 
 seen mine." Was it not, in all probability, a consciousness 
 of his own plr^sical meanness by Robespierre who was but 
 five feet and two or three inches in height, with a livid and 
 bilious complexion, eyelids 'continually blinking, and shoul- 
 ders and neck subject to frequent spasmodic motions 
 that goaded him on in his career ; and did not the same 
 mortifying sense of bodily inferiority sting into fearful 
 activity his rival Marat, who was even shorter than 
 Robespierre, and had a hideous face and a head monstrous 
 in size? 
 
 The ugliness of Goldsmith is well known. Short and 
 thick in bod}*, round-faced, and with " an expanse of fore- 
 head equal to a prize cauliflower," he had a pale complexion, 
 and was deeply pitted with the small-pox. Can we doubt 
 that these phrysical disadvantages, which made him a butt 
 of ridicule in his childhood, provoked him to those literary 
 toils which extorted the world's admiration in the "Vicar 
 of Wakefield" and the u Traveller"? The same observa- 
 tion ma}* be made upon Ben Jonson, of whom it might have 
 
THE ADVANTAGES OF UGLINESS. 241 
 
 been said, as Madame de Sevignu said of Pelisson, " qu'il 
 abusait du privilege dont jouissent les homines d'etre 
 laids." Decker, in a satire on old Ben, says of his face : 
 " It looks, for all the world, like a rotten russet apple when 
 it is bruised. . . . Look at his parboiled face, his face 
 punched full of eyelet-holes, like the cover of a warming- 
 pan ! " But massive and unshapely as the old dramatist 
 was in body, his " mountain-stomach and rocky face" were 
 only symbols of his rugged, tough, and arrogant mind. In 
 the days of the French salon, one of the queens of society 
 was the Princesse de Vaudemont, nee Montmorenc}', who 
 was grande dame to the tips of her fingers, though her face 
 and figure ill qualified her for her part. She was not only 
 short and red-faced, but " plump and thin at the same 
 time, that is, plump where she ought to have been thin, 
 and thin where she ought to have been plump." But her 
 physical disadvantages only piqued her ambition, and she 
 triumphed over all obstacles by dint of air, manner, and 
 address. So with Catherine des Jardins, once famous as a 
 writer of poetiy and dramas : though badly disfigured by 
 small-pox, yet did she not win for herself three husbands, 
 and a great many lovers besides? Was it not a woman 
 whom he himself describes in his sonnets as ugly, black in 
 complexion, hair, and eyes, with no charm for any physical 
 sense, that enslaved Shakspeare in his youth? It was her 
 music that drew him to her, her intellectual grace, and 
 an aptness which clothed the ugly with beaut}', and raised 
 in his eyes " the worst in her above all best." Lckain, the 
 French actor, was both ugly and ungraceful ; but the mo- 
 ment he had stepped on the stage, " il semblait avoir de- 
 pouille sa nature bourgeoise avec ses habits bourgeois ; un 
 heros sortait de cette grossiere envelope." Men and 
 
 16 
 
242 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 women who had sneered at his ugliness in the morning, 
 admired his beauty in the evening. Of Pope, who was so 
 small and crooked as to be compared to an interrogation- 
 point, Hazlitt has well asked : " Do we owe nothing to his 
 deformity? He doubtless soliloquized, 4 Though my person 
 be crooked, my poetry shall be straight.' " 
 
 Was it not because he was rudely shaped, wanting love's 
 majesty, that Richard III. shaped out a great, unscrupulous 
 career for himself; and would Brougham ever have ascended 
 the woolsack had he not been so ill-favored as to become no- 
 torious b}~ provoking the gibes of O'Connell and "Punch "? 
 " Did you never see him? " once asked the Irish Liberator ; 
 "if you never have, I hope 3*011 never will. He is one of 
 the ugliest beings in existence ; it would make a fellow 
 almost sick to look at him. I have often seen a head 
 carved on a walking-stick handsomer than he is." It was 
 because Francis Horner was so plain-looking that Scotch 
 and English gave him such credit for honesty ; Sydney 
 Smith said that the ten commandments were written in his 
 face. Lord Chesterfield, if we may believe his contemporar}-, 
 Lord Hervey, was as disagreeable as it was possible for a 
 human figure to be without being deformed, and George II. 
 could not believe that a woman could like such a "dwarf 
 baboon." Yet his very knowledge of this disadvantage 
 prompted him to laborious self-improvement, and he be- 
 came not onh T a leader of fashion, but an eminent ambassa- 
 dor and diplomatist, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Soame 
 Jenyns once expressed a wonder that anybod^v so ugly as 
 Gibbon ccnild write a book ; the real marvel would have 
 been if that monumental work, the "Decline and Fall," 
 had been produced by a handsome man. The remark was 
 still stranger, coming, as it did, from one who was himself 
 
THE ADVANTAGES OF UGLINESS. 243 
 
 a writer of books, and of good books too, although he was 
 disfigured by an immense wen under his head, and had eyes 
 protruding like a lobster's, yet allowing room for another 
 wen between them and his nose. It would be interesting 
 to know how far Baron von Humboldt, the diplomatist, was 
 indebted to the plainness of his features for his worldly 
 advancement. " Look at me," he said, in reply to the re- 
 quest of Isabey, the French painter, for a sitting, " and 
 acknowledge that Nature has given me so ugly a face that 
 you cannot but approve the law I have laid down, never to 
 spend a halfpenny to preserve the likeness for posterity. 
 Dame Nature would have too good a laugh at my expense 
 on seeing me sit for my portrait ; and to punish her for the 
 shabb}* trick she has pla}'ed me, I will never give her that 
 pleasure." 
 
 It is a popular notion that beauty is the chief passport to 
 woman's love and esteem, though facts of daily occurrence 
 prove the contrary to be true. Of all the famous women 
 whom history records, how many have dazzled a larger 
 circle of admirers than the beautiful, fascinating, and ac- 
 complished Lady Hamilton? Yet she gave her heart un- 
 reservedly to the dwarfish, homely, sickly-looking Lord 
 Nelson. He had the soul of a hero, which was enough for 
 her. and she loved him not a whit less passionately when 
 his deformity was aggravated by the loss of an eye and an 
 arm. Who was it that, triumphing over a host of princely 
 rivals, won the heart of " the prettiest and most extraordi- 
 naiy creature in England " in the time of Charles II., the 
 bewitching, universally sought, }*et fastidious Frances Jen- 
 nings? It was the affected, big-headed, pygmy-legged Jer- 
 myn, who lacked ever}- grace of person and manner which 
 is deemed necessary to carry the female heart captive. So 
 
244 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 with Lord llervey, one of the ministers of George II. A 
 man of weak physical frame, he suffered from epilepsy and 
 many other ailments ; and his face was so meagre and so 
 pallid, or rather livid, that he used to paint and make up 
 like an actress or fine lad}'. Yet, in spite of these disad- 
 vantages, he succeeded in winning the hand of one of the 
 most beautiful women of the da}', the charming Mary 
 Lepell, whose name has been celebrated in more than one 
 poetical panegyric by Pope ; and he also captivated the 
 heart of one of the royal princesses. It is well known that 
 the preachers George Whitefield and Edward Irving were 
 both favorites of the fair, though both were disfigured by 
 strabismus. 
 
 What Englishman of note had ever a more uncouth figure 
 than Erasmus Darwin, author of the " Botanical Garden "? 
 His bod}' was vast and massive, and his head almost buried 
 in his shoulders. He had in these a stoop, and in his face 
 traces of small-pox. But though twice her age, clumsy, 
 a stutterer, lame, and ugly, he won the hand of the young 
 and beautiful Mrs. Pole, in spite of the rivalry of many 
 young men. Again, what man was ever more successful in 
 laying siege to female hearts than the demagogue John 
 Wilkes? He was so exceedingly ugly that a lottery-office 
 keeper once offered him ten guineas not to pass his window 
 while the tickets were drawing, for fear of his bringing ill- 
 luck on the house. Rogers the poet, who had seen him, 
 speaks of his "diabolical squint." Yet, though the ugliest 
 man in England, he was at the same time its most accom- 
 plished intriguer. He was the Don Juan of his day, sneer- 
 ing at the very women he subdued. He once boasted to 
 Lord Townshend, whom he admitted to be the handsomest 
 man in the kingdom, that, give him but a half hour's start, 
 
THE ADVANTAGES OF UGLINESS. 245 
 
 he would enter the lists against his lordship with any woman 
 he might choose to name. In our own day have we not 
 seen the strongest-minded woman of the age wed the bril- 
 liant and versatile but exceedingly plain, not to say ugly, 
 George H. Lewes? 
 
 Again, the ugliest Frenchman that ever walked the streets 
 of Paris was Mirabeau, the master-spirit of the French 
 Revolution, whose looks some one compared to those of " a 
 tiger pitted by small-pox." He had the features of a wild 
 beast, and the massive shock of hair which surmounted his 
 huge forehead gave him at times the aspect of an enraged 
 lion. Yet the belt of no u gay Lothario" of his time was 
 hung with a greater number of bleeding female hearts 
 than that of this thunderer of the tribune, who shook 
 from his locks " pestilence and war," who seemed born of 
 the tempest, and to have been reared by Providence 
 expressly to 
 
 " Guide the whirlwind and direct the storm." 
 
 Such was the man who was worshipped by the delicate 
 beauties of his time, and such the head which, when 
 wearied by the fierce logic of debate, could rest in the lap 
 of a royal Venus, and be petted by hands as white and del- 
 icate as the lily. " There was magic in the strong man's 
 hideousness. It made men crouch, and women worship. 
 It blasted from the politician's tribune, but one would 
 almost suppose it blessed in the lady's chamber, so ca- 
 ressed, and fondled, and kissed into a sort of grim good- 
 humor was it every night and every morning." To a 
 friend who expressed his astonishment at Mirabeau's suc- 
 cess in intrigue, the great man replied: "Ah, 1113* friend, 
 you know not the power of my ugliness ! " 
 
246 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 Such are a few of the compensations of ugliness ; but 
 though besides these we might mention several others, we 
 will conclude by naming only one. Who has not read of 
 the stock-jobbing mania that raged in Paris under the aus- 
 pices of the Scotchman, Law? The Rue Quinquempoix, to 
 which the business was confined, was so crowded with 
 people of all ranks and conditions that, though desks and 
 writing materials were in great demand, it was difficult to 
 obtain them. In this exigency a humpbacked man let out 
 his deformity for the speculators to sci;ibble upon ; and so 
 useful did it prove that he is said to have made by it in a 
 few daj*s a hundred and fifty thousand livres. What ill- 
 looking man, after that, need despair of coining his defects 
 into doubloons ? 
 
WORRY. 
 
 worry" is a pithy prescription which is often 
 given in these days of overwork and severe mental 
 strain. Worry, we are told, is the converse of work ; the 
 one develops force, the other checks its development and 
 wastes what we already have. It is not the revolution that 
 destroys the machinery, but the friction. All this is sagely 
 said ; but those who say it forget that worry is an almost 
 necessary incident of the best, which is high-pressure, work. 
 To tell persons who have a lofty ideal not to be gloomy 
 because they fall short of it ; to tell other persons not to 
 brood over things, not to look forward, not to devise ter- 
 rors, all this, as Scott said of similar advice, is as useless 
 as " for Molly to put the kettle on the fire and say ' Don't 
 boil!'" They cannot help themselves. It is easy to ab- 
 stain from worry if one has low aspirations, if one is easily 
 pleased with what he is and with what he does, or if one 
 has a hard, dull nature, or an incapacit} T for s3'mpath} T . 
 There is a large class of worries which are inseparable from 
 the exercise of the affections, and which can be avoided 
 onty when they are suppressed or extinguished. Swift 
 knew this ; and hence when some one spoke in his pres- 
 ence of "a fine old man," he exclaimed: "There's no 
 such thing ; if his head or heart had been worth any- 
 thing, it would have worn him out long ago." At the same 
 time it must be admitted that many persons have a chronic 
 
248 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 habit of worrying which is wholly unjustified by the circum- 
 stances m which they are placed. 
 
 It is a well-known fact that men and women who have 
 the fewest real troubles and trials often torment themselves 
 with imaginar} 7 ones. On the other hand, persons who 
 have to toil hard and to struggle with bona-fide difficul- 
 ties, who have daily to keep the wolf from their door, are 
 rarely given to invent fanciful grievances. Chronic inva- 
 lids who are prisoners to their room, hard- worked mothers 
 of families, and husbands or sons on whose shoulders rests 
 a heavy load of care for helpless relatives, often manifest 
 a cheerfulness that is wanting to their rich neighbors who 
 appear to possess all of fortune's gifts. Again, men rarely 
 worry over great calamities ; it is the pett\- trials and vex- 
 ations of life which tease and fret them most. Charles V., 
 overwhelmed as he was with cares during his long reign, 
 bore up under all his trials and disappointments with 
 patience, calmness, and dignity; but after his abdication 
 and retirement to the monastery of St. Juste, his restless, 
 fidgety habits were the torment of the monks. Being 
 seized with a mania for punctuality, he spent a large part 
 of his time in regulating clocks and trying to make them 
 keep time together, and used to visit the monks at prema- 
 turely early hours to awaken them for the morning devo- 
 tional service. On one occasion a young monk whose 
 sleep was thus foolishly disturbed, muttered that the Em- 
 peror might be content with having troubled the peace of 
 all Europe for years, and leave a poor monk to his repose. 
 Charles's death is supposed to have been hastened by the 
 rehearsal of his own obsequies. Richelieu at the zenith of 
 his power was as anxious and worried about the success of 
 his miserable play as if his political power depended on it. 
 
WORRY. 249 
 
 He trembled for its fate as much as he ever had for that of 
 an embassy or a treaty ; and when the piece fell flat, was 
 persuaded that the actors were drunk. On its second per- 
 formance, the cardinal, whose frown overawed even the 
 king, was transported with delight by the hand-clappings of 
 toadies and groundlings. The calmest of men in trials 
 which would have overwhelmed most men with anxiety, cool 
 and self-possessed when webs of conspiracy were woven 
 about him, he yet was worried by trifles. 
 
 An amusing catalogue might be made of the trifles about 
 which some of the most celebrated men have tormented 
 themselves. Wallenstein, accustomed as he was to the 
 thunder of artillery and the uproar of battles, had such a 
 dislike for noise at home that he could not bear the barking 
 of dogs, nor even the clatter of the large spurs then in fash- 
 ion. To keep every noise at a distance, he had twelve 
 patrols making, night and da}', regular circuits around his 
 palace. Julius Caesar could not hear the crowing of a cock 
 without shuddering. The poet Beattie had such a hatred 
 of chanticleer that he denounced his lusty proclamation of 
 the morn in language applicable to the deeds of a Nero. 
 Kant left a house in which he was pleasantly domiciled, be- 
 cause a neighbor kept a cock that disturbed his nerves. 
 When the same metaphysician sat down to think at the 
 close of the day, he used to fix his eyes on a certain old 
 tower; and when some poplar-trees grew up and hid it 
 from his view, he found that he could not think at all, till 
 at his request the poplars were cropped and the tower made 
 visible again. Buffon was equally dependent upon trifles 
 for literary success. He could not think to good purpose 
 except in full dress, and with his hair elaborately arranged ; 
 and for an external stimulus to his brain he had a hair- 
 
250 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 dresser interrupt his work twice, and sometimes thrice, a 
 da}\ The ingenuity which some persons exhibit in finding 
 means of self-torment is extraordinary. In Richter's 
 4 'Fruit, Thorn, and Flower Pieces" there is a singular 
 example of this. A young student marries, and is obliged 
 to pursue his studies in two small rooms occupied by him- 
 self and his wife. The latter has a domestic turn, and 
 loves to keep her apartments clean. Unfortunately he has 
 formed a habit of listening to her, which scatters all his 
 ideas to the winds. At last, having one day endured the 
 noise of her tidying toils as long as he can, he begs that 
 she will make as little noise as possible, since otherwise he 
 cannot get on with his writing, which she knew was for pub- 
 lication. She agrees ; and then skims over the floor, and 
 athwart the various webs of her household labors, with the 
 tread of a spider. The nervous, fidgety student has to 
 keep his ears on the alert to hear her ; but he succeeds, and 
 at last jumps up and cries out to her: "For one whole 
 hour I have been listening and watching that dreadful trip- 
 ping about on tiptoe. Please go about as }*ou usually do, 
 darling." She complies, and goes about almost as she 
 usually did ; but this does not satisfy him, and he asks if 
 she would mind going about the house in her stockings 
 when he is at work at his writing. When his wife sits 
 positive!}' idle, the scribbling martyr torments himself b}' 
 thinking that she will presently resume her labors ; and 
 when she actuall}* leaves the room and sits quietly in the 
 adjoining one, he calls through the keyhole: " Lenette, I 
 can't hear very distinctly what it is, but I know you are up 
 to something or other there. For God's dear sake, stop it 
 at once ! " The poor woman was merely wiping the rails of 
 the bedstead noiselessly with a flannel ; but the student was 
 
WORRY. 251 
 
 determined to be worried by her work, and went on tor- 
 menting himself long after all occasion for his annoyance 
 had ceased to exist. 
 
 Ill-health especially nervous exhaustion is a fruit- 
 ful source of worry. It is one of the many infirmities of 
 old age, when a man's bodily stamina have been sapped by 
 retrogressive changes in which the nervous S3*stem shares, 
 that cares which sat lightly on the shoulders when he was 
 young, become now an almost insupportable burden. But 
 when this proneness to low spirits and discouragement 
 shows itself in men or women not past their prime, and not 
 overwhelmed with exhausting toils or cares, it is generally 
 a sign that the bodily health is "below par," and needs 
 "toning tip." A New York preacher says that he went 
 out of the city to his farm early one summer feeling that 
 the world was just upon the brink of ruin ; he returned to 
 his church in early autumn persuaded that " we were on 
 the eve of the millennium." 
 
 Wony, like love, is often " the child of idleness and ful- 
 ness of bread." The leisure which so many toilers j'earn 
 for is a pleasant garment to look at, but often a very shirt 
 of Nessus to wear. Wony is not rarely, too, the child of 
 fastidiousness. Byron, in his diary, speaking of the poet 
 Rogers's house, says : 4t There is not a gem, a coin, a book 
 thrown aside on his chimney-piece, his sofa, his table, that 
 does not bespeak an almost fastidious elegance in the pos- 
 sessor. But this very fastidiousness must be the miseiy of 
 his existence. OA, the jarrings his disposition must have 
 encountered through life!" A real trouble, if not irre- 
 mediable, is sometimes a blessing, since it puts a host of 
 scarecrow ills to flight. A story is told of a French abbe 
 who, having very little to trouble him, " fell into a melan- 
 
252 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 choly" which at last affected his health. Luckily for him, 
 he had certain enemies who contrived to send him, on some 
 frivolous charge, to the Bastile. He was liberated after a 
 while ; but the desire to detect and punish his false accusers 
 cured alike his body and his mind. He forgot his melan- 
 choly and his bad health in this engrossing occupation, till 
 his friends were wont jestingly to ask him " what had be- 
 come of the abbe, as they now knew quite a different per- 
 son." Such has been the transformation wrought in many 
 a person who had been a prey to paltry worries ; but, un- 
 fortunately, to some the habit of brooding over trivial 
 troubles returns the moment the pressure of a giant griev- 
 ance has been removed. They are so habituated to their 
 grievance that they cannot live without it. Just as a mule 
 accustomed to cariy panniers or a pack-saddle in a moun- 
 tainous country, steers his way, when free from his burden, 
 as if he still bore it, allowing always the distance between 
 the rocks and himself which was necessary to clear his 
 loaded panniers ; just as a person doomed in his early 
 years to poverty often persists in painful petty economies 
 long after the necessit} r for them has ceased, so a man 
 who has been suddenly relieved from some genuine cause 
 for worry which has weighed him down for years, experi- 
 ences a strangely uneasy feeling in his new situation, and a 
 latent yearning, like that of Le Brun's Sophie Arnould, for 
 " le bon vieux temps quand j'etais si malheureux." He 
 misses the accustomed grievance as Charles Lamb missed 
 the desk-work which he hated when he quit it, or as the 
 court favorite who, after man}' rebuffs, had struggled up to 
 her dazzling position at Versailles, missed the obscure life 
 in which she had so long languished. " I am like the 
 carp," she said ; " I regret the mud." 
 
COURAGE. 
 
 The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear. MONTAIGXK. 
 
 /"T^HERE are few subjects upon which more fallacious 
 * popular notions are current than in regard to cour- 
 age. No quality is more admired by men in general ; yet 
 it is evident that there is no merit in it, except so far as it 
 is prompted by rational and conscientious considerations, 
 since otherwise, whether active or passive, it is but a merely 
 senseless instinct, which some of the best and most saga- 
 cious men have lacked, while other and far inferior men 
 have possessed it abundantly. Turenne, dining one day at 
 M. de Lamoignon's, was asked whether his courage was 
 never shaken at the beginning of a battle. "Yes," was 
 the repty, "I sometimes feel great nervous excitement; 
 but there are many subaltern officers and soldiers in the 
 army who feel none whatever." The great Conde was 
 much agitated in his first campaign. " My body trembles," 
 he said, " with the actions my soul meditates." It is told 
 of Charles V. that he often trembled when arming for 
 battle, but in the conflict was as cool as if it were impos- 
 sible for an emperor to be killed. When he once saw in- 
 scribed on a tombstone, " Here lies a man who never knew 
 fear," he said : " Then he can never have snuffed a candle 
 with his fingers ! " Perhaps if Charles had lived in our 
 day, and had been half-petrified in some Continental cold- 
 water establishment, he would have said: "Then he can 
 
254 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 never on a winter's morning have gone naked under a 
 mountain-torrent converted into a douche ! " 
 
 The brilliant Savoyard, Count de Maistre, after quoting 
 the mocking mot of Charles V., finely says in his " Soirees 
 de Saint-Petersbourg" : "Fear! What man has never 
 in his life felt fear? Who has never had occasion to won- 
 der, both in himself and about him, and in history, at the 
 all-powerful weakness of this passion, which often seems 
 to have the more empire over us in proportion as it has 
 fewer reasonable motives? . . . There is a woman's fear, 
 which flees crying ; and that we are permitted, even bidden, 
 to regard as impossible, though it may not be a wholly un- 
 known phenomenon. But there is another form of fear 
 W 7 hich is much more terrible, which sinks into the manliest 
 heart, freezes it, and persuades it that it is vanquished. 
 This is the frightful scourge always hung over armies. I 
 put one daj r to a military man of the highest rank this 
 question: ' Tell me. general, what is a lost battle? I 
 have never well understood that.' He replied, after a 
 moment's silence : k I know nothing about it ; ' and, after 
 being silent again, he added : ' It is a battle which one 
 thinks he has lost. 1 Nothing is more true. A single 
 man who fights with another is vanquished when he is 
 killed or thrown down, and the other stands up. It is not 
 so with two armies ; one of them cannot be killed, while 
 the other remains on foot. The forces balance each other, 
 as well as the dead ; and since especially the invention of 
 powder has made the means of destruction on both sides 
 more equal, a battle is no longer lost materially, that is, 
 because there are more dead on the one side than on the 
 other. Frederic II., who understood this somewhat, said : 
 * To vanquish is to advance.'' But who is he that advances ? 
 
COURAGE. 255 
 
 It is he whose conscientiousness and front (la conscience et 
 la contenance) make the other recoil. . . . Opinion is so 
 powerful in war that it alone can change the nature of the 
 very same event and give it two different names, with no 
 other reason than its own good pleasure. A general throws 
 himself between -two hostile corps, and he writes to his 
 court: ' 1 'have cut him off ; he is lost.' The other writes 
 to his : ' He has put himself between two fires ; he is lost.' 
 Which of the two is deceived? He who shall first let 
 himself be seized b}- the cold goddess." 
 
 The Greeks recognized that " frightful scourge hung over 
 armies " of which De Maistre speaks, that fear which sur- 
 prises men without any visible cause, by an inexplicable 
 impulse. Modern military histor}' teems with examples of 
 panic-struck armies, from the Battle of the Spurs, in 1513 
 so called because the vanquished troops fled with such haste 
 that the best mounted cavaliers could not overtake them, 
 down to Falkirk, the final sauve qui peut of Waterloo, and 
 our own Bull Run. The Romans lost their first pitched battle 
 against Hannibal through this cause. A part of their arm}', 
 comprising ten thousand infantry, took a sudden fright, and 
 seeing no other way of escape, threw themselves, strange to 
 say, upon the great array of the enemy, which they charged 
 again and again with incredible force and fury, and routed 
 with great slaughter, "thus purchasing," as Montaigne 
 says, "an ignominious flight at the same price at which 
 they might have won a glorious victory." It is said that the 
 dread of being dragged in triumph along the Appian Way, 
 and thus undergoing a personal humiliation if they resisted, 
 utterly paralyzed the monarchs of the ancient world ; so that 
 at the bare approach of a Roman army they hastened to 
 make such terms as they could. 
 
256 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 An English soldier, after many years' service in one of 
 the bravest armies in the world, has expressed the opinion 
 that cowardice is far more common than courage on the 
 battle-field. "In the whole course of my military career," 
 he says, " I never saw two bodies of any size cross bayo- 
 nets. . . . Before such a collision takes place, one side 
 always gives way ; and I hold it as a maxim in warfare 
 that if one body will only stand still, another of equal size 
 will not come up to it. Before the assailing party arrives 
 within twenty paces of their enemy, it will be found to be 
 divided into three parts : the first composed of your rash, 
 daring fellows, who outstrip their companions ; the next, 
 of your steady hands, who will do their duty and no more ; 
 and the last, of those who would stay behind if they could. 
 Fear is the most powerful of human passions, and is more 
 evinced than the world generally supposes. We hear of 
 armies and corps 4 covering themselves with glory,' but we 
 seldom hear of their covering themselves from the fire of 
 the enemy. ... I have seen a great deal more to make me 
 ashamed of my species than proud of it." 1 In contradic- 
 tion to this, some of the greatest military commanders have 
 expressed the highest confidence in their soldiers' bravery. 
 Scipio was wont to say that there was nothing he could 
 command his army to do that the} 7 were not prepared to 
 execute on the instant. When halting at Syracuse, on his 
 way from Italy to Africa, he said: "Look at those three 
 hundred men, and that tower near them : every one of them, 
 were I to give the order, would go up to the top of it and 
 throw himself down headlong." Marlborough's soldiers 
 smiled at any difficult}', however disheartening it looked, 
 saying : " That is no business of ours ; Corporal John will 
 1 Kincaid's " Twenty Years of Retirement " (London, 1835). 
 
COURAGE. 257 
 
 cany us through, somehow or other." The Duke of Wel- 
 lington, when the war in the South of France was concluded, 
 in 1814, said of his veteran Peninsular army: "At that 
 time they would have gone anywhere with me, and I could 
 have done anything with them." " When I see that old 
 man on his horse," said a young officer of his commander, 
 Sir C. J. Napier, " the hero of Scinde," during a campaign 
 in that country, " how can I be idle, who am young and 
 
 strong? By , I would go into a loaded cannon's mouth 
 
 if he ordered me ! " 
 
 When we consider that a man does not make his own 
 nervous system, which, even if originally health}', is often 
 grievously impaired b}* the senseless treatment of nurses 
 and teachers, constitutional timidity is to be pitied, rather 
 than ridiculed or condemned. It is easy to be brave if 
 one has been endowed from infancy with iron nerves. Such 
 was the gift of Charles XII. of Sweden, who loved fighting 
 for its own sake, for the certaminis gaudia, " the rapture 
 of the strife." "What is that noise? "he asked, as the 
 balls whistled b}' him when landing in Denmark, a mere 
 stripling, under heavy fire. " The sound of the shot 
 they fire at your Majest}*," replied one of his marshals. 
 "Good!" said the king; "henceforth that shall be my 
 music ; " and such it continued to be until, eighteen years 
 after, the fatal bullet was fired at Frederikshall which 
 crashed through his brain and ended his miraculous career. 
 The courage of Nelson was inborn. When, after he had 
 rambled late one night in his boyhood, his mother said to 
 him on his return that she wondered fear did not drive him 
 home, "Fear!" replied the lad, "who's he? I don't 
 know him." It is when moral courage is engrafted by 
 education, pride, or a sense of duty on a timid tempera- 
 
 17 
 
258 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 ment, a nature original!}* craven, that it merits the 
 highest admiration. It is therefore by no means a bad 
 omen when a soldier betrays extreme fright in his first 
 battle ; it shows that he has a keen sensibility, which is 
 the source of that pride and sense of honor which will en- 
 able him, with discipline and experience, to face danger 
 manfully. Both Henry IV. of France and Frederic the 
 Great of Prussia had an instinctive fear of danger ; yet 
 both triumphed over their natural poltroonery, and mani- 
 fested the coolest self-possession and the most daring valor 
 in many a fiercely fought battle. Henry's body trembled 
 like an aspen-leaf in his first action ; but this agitation only 
 provoked him to exclaim : u Villanous nature, I will make 
 thee ashamed of thyself! " as he spurred his horse through 
 a breach where the bravest veterans hesitated ; and ever 
 afterward his white plume was seen in the thickest of the 
 fight, and regarded as the rallying point of his men. Fred- 
 eric ran away, shivering with fright, from his first battle- 
 field, at Molwitz ; but he never turned his back on the 
 enemy again. When an officer, in a sharp engagement, 
 complained to Wellington that a brother officer had fled 
 with terror before a fierce charge of the enemy, the Duke 
 simply replied : "Look to yourself!" Shortly afterward 
 the situation was reversed ; the officer who had been fright- 
 ened was in the hottest of the fight ; and the accuser was 
 spurring his horse away from the foe. 
 
 Colonel T. W. Higginson, in his admirable u Out-door 
 Papers," observes that " there is a certain magnetic power 
 in courage, apart from all physical strength. . . . Read 
 one narrative of shipwreck, and human nature seems all 
 sublime ; read another, and under circumstances equally 
 desperate, it appears base, selfish, grovelling. The differ- 
 
COURAGE. 259 
 
 ence lies simply in the influence of a few leading spirits. 
 Ordinarily, as is the captain, so are the officers, so are the 
 passengers, so are the sailors. Bonaparte said that at the 
 beginning of almost every battle there was a moment when 
 the bravest troops were liable to sudden panic ; let the per- 
 sonal control of the general lead them past that, and the 
 field was half won." 
 
 The hare-brained, dare-devil courage of the Irish is well 
 known. The author of "Hints to a Soldier on Service" 
 declares that, in a faction fight, he has driven hundreds of 
 them before him, with a handful of dragoons ; and yet 
 these very men recruited the ranks of a native regiment 
 a few months afterwards, which, bayonet to bayonet, 
 scattered like sheep Napoleon's Middle Guard at Fuentes 
 de Onore. 
 
 It has been justly said that no man can tell who are 
 brave and who are cowardly till some crisis comes that 
 puts men to the test. And " no crisis puts men to the test 
 that does not bring them alone and single-handed to face 
 danger. It is nothing to make a rush with the multitude 
 even into the jaws of destruction. Sheep will do that. . . . 
 But when some crisis singles put one from the multitude, 
 pointing at him the particular finger of fate, and telling 
 him, ' Stand, or run ! ' and he faces about with steady 
 nerve, with nobody else to stand behind, we may be sure 
 the hero-stuff is in him. When such a crisis comes, the 
 true courage is just as likely to be found in people of 
 shrinking nerves or in weak and timid women, as in great 
 burly people." True courage is a moral, not a physical, 
 quality. Its seat is not in the temperament, but in the 
 will. In our Revolutionary War there was an officer in the 
 American army who was nicknamed "Captain Death," 
 
2oO MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 and who was always singled out for the most desperate 
 enterprises. If a forlorn hope was to be sent out, a danger- 
 ous battery to be stormed, or an}' other peril to be encount- 
 ered that demanded nerves of steel, this man was always 
 chosen to head the enterprise ; yet it was observed that he 
 was never called up to hear a proposal of this sort that he 
 did not turn as pale as his namesake, and tremble from 
 head to foot. He never failed, however, to do the deed of 
 daring that 'was required of him, and, it is said, escaped all 
 the perils of war unscathed. That man had genuine cour- 
 age ; he saw and keenly appreciated the danger, but when 
 his country called, shrank not from encountering it. 
 
 Courage is of many kinds, and the possession of one 
 kind by no means implies that of any other. There is 
 man}' a man who can act with the utmost pluck in a great 
 crisis, in a moment of personal danger, in a struggle with 
 a burglar, or in a burning house, who yet cannot bear 
 heroically excruciating pain or the miseiy of a protracted 
 illness. The young English ensigns and lieutenants who 
 at Waterloo, as Wellington said, " rushed to meet death as 
 if it were a game of cricket," had a moral courage which 
 was the product of a high civilization ; yet the courage of 
 the men who, after providing for the safety of the women 
 and children, went down in the ' Birken head," ma}' have 
 been greater than that of those who gave their lives for 
 their country at Waterloo. Peter was valiant enough in 
 the Garden of Gethsemane ; yet, though a hardy Galilean 
 fisherman, he quailed at the bluster of the winds and waves, 
 and was cowed by a question from a maid-servant at the 
 high-priest's palace. How many persons, like Peter, are 
 ready to use the sword, who yet will shrink from avowing a 
 principle which, however dear to them, is held in contempt 
 
COURAGE. 261 
 
 by the circles in which the}' move ! What a noble resolu- 
 tion was that shown by Sir Thomas More when Henry 
 VIII. tried to frighten him into signing a wicked law ! 
 "Terrors," replied he to the king, " are for children, not 
 for me ! " 
 
 There is a courage which is proof against powder and 
 steel which is not proof against a blow. It is no impeach- 
 ment of Napoleon's courage that he shrank from clamor 
 and violence as he would not have shrunk from a cavalry 
 charge or a battery. That he quailed when hustled and 
 shaken by the collar in the Cinq-Cents, and deprecated 
 violence from the Southern Bourbons when about leaving 
 Fontainebleau for Elba, was proof rather of a creditable 
 self-respect than of cowardice. " Let the Bourbons have 
 me assassinated," said he : "I forgive them ; but I shall 
 perhaps be abandoned to the outrages of the abominable 
 population of the South. To die on the field of battle is 
 nothing ; but in the mud, and by such hands ! " 
 
 In war the immeasurable superiority of moral courage 
 to physical is well known. It is only on rare occasions, 
 comparatively, that the latter can be turned to account ; 
 while endless opportunities open to him who possesses the 
 former. A man whose impetuous and enthusiastic daring 
 leads him to volunteer himself as an enfant perdu of a 
 forlorn hope will sink under the fatigues and privations of 
 a few forced marches ; while the impassive determination 
 of another who lacked nerve to head a deadly struggle in 
 the breach will calmly encounter the most disheartening 
 difficulties, and, by the union of head and heart, establish 
 a palpable superiority over the reckless adventurer who. 
 dares to "stake his life upon the cast," and with fearless 
 determination "stand the hazard of the die." A great 
 
2G2 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 deal of so-called courage is simply desperation, the result 
 of poverty, disease, or despair. The Roman poet Horace 
 tells a story of a soldier who, having been robbed to the 
 last penny of the little stock of money which he had got 
 together by many hardships, became a very wolf in fierce- 
 ness, and 
 
 " offhand 
 Stormed a treasure-city well walled and manned." 
 
 Subsequent!}' the general, desiring to capture some other 
 fortress, singled out the same hero for the deed, and began 
 exhorting him in words that might prick on a coward : 
 
 " Go, my fine fellow, go where valor calls ! 
 There 's fame, and money too. inside those walls." 
 
 But the cunning fellow would not move, and simply replied : 
 u He will go whither }~ou wish who has lost his purse " (Ibit 
 eo quo vis qui zonam perdidit) . Plutarch tells of a soldier 
 of Antigonus, noted for his bravery, who had an unhealthy 
 look. Prizing his courage, Antigonus put him in charge 
 of his own plr^sician, who finally cured the disease ; but 
 with it disappeared all the soldier's valor. Observing this, 
 the general asked the reason ; to which the soldier re- 
 plied that he was made less bold by being relieved from 
 misery by which his life was made hateful to him. The 
 bravery of Wolfe was doubtless only the more desperate 
 and daring because he was wasted and almost dying with 
 dysentery at the time of his triumphant but dangerous 
 attack upon Quebec; and Nelson at Trafalgar, mutilated 
 in former battles with the enenrv, having but a single arm 
 and eye, was ready to win victory at the cost of life. 
 
 Among the many brilliant examples of military courage 
 it would be difficult to name any surpassing those of Murat 
 
COURAGE. 263 
 
 and Ney. Yet the difference in the ways in which the 
 matchless bravery of these heroes was manifested is strik- 
 ingly great throughout their careers. In the retreat from 
 Moscow Murat, with dare-devil audacity, at the head of his 
 dashing cavalry, conspicuous by his white-plumed cap, and 
 ever present where the contest was the hottest, won even 
 from the Cossacks their boundless admiration. Ney, on 
 the other hand, "the bravest of the brave," as half buried 
 in the snow-heaps and shivering with cold he examined his 
 maps, and while all around him despaired, pricked out the 
 route by which he was to lead back to France the fragments 
 of her magnificent army ; or as at Waterloo, after having had 
 five horses shot under him, he led with unfaltering courage 
 the last "forlorn hope" against the impregnable British 
 lines, was greatest in defeat and ruin. " To which of 
 these unequalled soldiers," asks a British militaiy writer, 
 4i should the palm of moral courage be awarded? To him 
 of Moskwa, indubitably." 
 
OYSTERS. 
 
 PROFESSOR BAIRD, in a work published by the 
 United States Government, states some facts con- 
 cerning oysters and oyster-culture that are both delight- 
 ful and depressing. On the one hand, he tells us that 
 about five and a half billions of oysters are produced in 
 North America ; on the other hand, the decrease in the 
 yield in four j-ears has been from forty-one bushels to 
 the acre to twenty-five. At present we consume in this 
 country about five and a half millions of oysters annually. 
 Facts like these last would overwhelm us with sadness did 
 we not know that the oj'ster is the most fecund of all the 
 denizens of the sea, and that with proper provision for 
 its culture there need be no fear of a famine in this de- 
 licious food. A scientist of so high authority as Frank 
 Buckland asserts that a single oyster may contain at one 
 time over eight hundred thousand embn'o oysters. He 
 avers, too, that he has had in his possession as many 
 molluscous protoplasms as would have grown in time into 
 one hundred and twenty-three million marketable oj'sters ! 
 
 Where is the epicure whose heart will not leap with 
 joy at these announcements? A quaint old author has said 
 that o}'sters u are ungodty, uncharitable, and unprofitable 
 meat : ungodty, because they are eaten without grace ; un- 
 charitable, because they leave nothing but shells ; and 
 unprofitable, because they must swim in wine." But were 
 
. OYSTERS. 2C5 
 
 they ten times more ungodly than this writer declares, we 
 fear that few persons, unless made of sterner stuff than 
 flesh and blood, could resist the temptation they present. 
 The connection of the oj'ster with the material and moral 
 health and prosperity of our country is a subject the ade- 
 quate discussion of which would require volumes. How 
 closely the succulent bivalve is entwined with all our 
 deepest feelings ; how vastly, in its social aspect, it con- 
 tributes to make life worth living ; how indispensable it is 
 as the genial leader in our dinner-courses, at our church 
 festivals, and at our evening entertainments, to say nothing 
 of its place in commerce, will never be fully realized 
 till the gayety of the nations is eclipsed by the loss of this 
 fondly loved friend. It was not in our da}-, but by a wretch 
 in the time of Queen Anne, that the mot was uttered, 
 " What a grand thing oysters would be if one could make 
 his servants live on the shells ! " The ingrate, to qualify 
 his regard b}' so mean a condition as this ! Who of our 
 readers does not scorn such a screw? Is there one of 
 them to whom ' ' oyster " is not a charmed word ? What 
 a flood of tender and delightful recollections does it not 
 conjure up ! Oysters raw, stewed, fried, roasted ; oysters 
 on the shell, oysters pickled, oyster pies, and oysters scol- 
 loped ! who does not love them in all the forms in which 
 the exhaustless ingenuity of modern cookery can serve them 
 up, whether the cuisinier have the genius of a So}'er, who 
 can make 3*011 devour the soles of your boots with infinite 
 relish, or his ressources de cuisine be as easity exhausted 
 as those of the cheapest stall-owner, who knows nothing 
 be}~ond "the plain article," with the condiments of pepper 
 and vinegar? It is barely possible that there may be per- 
 sons with such an idiosj'ncrasy as not to relish this most 
 
266 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 delicate and delicious of bivalves, just as there are persons 
 who have no e}*e for the exquisite creations of Raphael, or 
 no ear for the divine harmonies of Mozart ; but, like ghosts 
 and anthropophagi, they have never appeared to us. Such 
 "an odd stick" must have been the old moralist just 
 quoted. But if O3~sters are an abomination, what would he 
 have said of oyster-sauce, which is, we believe, a modern 
 invention, and which reminds us of Hood's ostracean de- 
 sign ; namely, a cod's head gravel}* rebuking a number of 
 very pert-looking oysters, with which she is surrounded, in 
 the words of a vernacular classic, "None of yonr 
 sauce ! " 
 
 The alimentaiy virtues of the oyster have provoked the 
 praises not only of the epicure, but of physicians and pli3~si- 
 ologists. Its meat is firm, yet soft and delicate. It has 
 flavor enough to please the taste, 3*et not enough to excite 
 to surfeit. Unlike the fier}* kidney and the vicious Welsh 
 rarebit, the oyster is easily digestible, and even an approved 
 remedy for indigestion. The oyster-eater is hardly con- 
 scious of its presence in his stomach, and }*et it satisfies 
 the taste, appeases the appetite, and soothes that irritability 
 of the nerves which hunger creates. As an excellent 
 French writer has said : " That which constantly pleases in 
 eating oysters is the fact that, while gastric ailments are 
 defied, the mind is neither disquieted nor irritated by fears 
 of the future. One devours them in the full and perfect 
 certainty that health will not be in the slightest degree com- 
 promised, were one even to plunge into that ab}'ss which is 
 called satiety. To eat oysters is, therefore, at once physi- 
 cally and morally healthful." 
 
 Where satiety begins in oyster-eating, it is not easy to 
 tell; it depends, of course, upon the stomachic capacity of 
 
OYSTERS. 267 
 
 the ostreophagist. Brillat-Savarin says : " It was well known 
 that formerly a feast of any pretensions usually began with 
 O3'sters, and that there were epicures who did not leave off 
 until they had swallowed a gross, in other words, a dozen 
 dozen. Wishing to know what such a prandial advanced 
 guard weighed, I verified the fact that the weight of a 
 dozen oysters (including water) is four ounces avoirdupois ; 
 and this gives for the whole gross three pounds. Now, I 
 look upon it as certain that these persons, who did not 
 dine the less heartity after the oysters, would have been 
 completely satiated if they had eaten the same quantity of 
 meat, even had it been chicken." 
 
 The same writer tells us that a friend once said to him : 
 "The despair of my life is that I can never get n^- fill of 
 O3~sters," to which Brillat Savarin replied: "Come and 
 dine with me, and you shall have 3*our fill." The friend, 
 one M. Laperte, came punctual to his time, and was soon 
 engaged in an interesting conference with the oysters. 
 Brillat-Savarin looked quietly on for an hour, by which 
 time M. Laperte had given good news of thirty-one dozen ; 
 and was proceeding, as fresh as ever, to discuss the thirty- 
 second dozen, when his host, wearied with long inaction, 
 said : " My poor friend, not to-day will destiny allow you 
 to eat your fill," and rang for the soup. M. Laperte did 
 ample justice to the excellent dinner which followed. After 
 this, who can doubt the truth of the story that the glutton- 
 ous Emperor Elagabalus took four hundred O3'sters, one 
 hundred ortolans, and one hundred peaches daily for his 
 breakfast ? 
 
 Besides their healthfulness, another great merit of oysters 
 is that they are the most democratic of dishes, which ex- 
 plains their great popularity with Americans. They are the 
 
268 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 amalgamators of society, obliterating the hateful lines of 
 demarcation between rank and the canaille, wealth and 
 povert}'. It is only the rich man, " the incarnation of fat 
 dividends," who can luxuriate in turtle-soup, canvas-backs, 
 and champagne ; but upon the delicious bivalves the most 
 unhappy " circulator of copper coin " can reek and riot. It 
 is said that Greek writers rarely mention the oyster, one 
 of them calls it u the truffle of the sea;" but among the 
 old Romans it was held in high esteem. With them oysters 
 were the token of sincere fellowship, of profound sympathy, 
 and of innocent hilarity. They figured prominently in the 
 banquets of the emperors, gave eclat to the victories of 
 generals, imparted zest to the harangues of orators, and 
 were considered by the epicures as the best of all dishes 
 with which to quiet a barking stomach (lenire stomachum 
 latrantem) or to spur a jaded appetite. The Roman 
 ladies were so enamoured with oysters that it is said that 
 they used to gorge themselves to the roots of their tongues, 
 and then apply peacock's feathers to make their stomachs 
 disgorge the load, that the}' might feast again on the tempt- 
 ing fish. The Roman orators, prose- writers, and poets 
 were " passed-masters " in O3*ster-eating. Cicero nourished 
 his eloquence with the dainty ; and Seneca tells us that he 
 ate hundreds of the appetizing bivalves weekly. " Oyster, 
 dear to gourmands ! " exclaims the moralist, " which ex- 
 cites instead of satiating the appetite, which never causes 
 illness, even when eaten to excess, so easy art thou of 
 digestion ! " Martial found inspiration for his epigrams in 
 the small Lucrine ; and Horace, Lucilius, Ausonius, Pliny, 
 and man} T other Romans of note, have each a warm word 
 of praise for his pet oyster. The Emperor Trajan was fond 
 of oysters ; and the gluttonous Vitellius is reported to have 
 
OYSTERS. 269 
 
 sometimes eaten a thousand at a sitting. It is said that 
 an oyster-pate was served to some of the gourmets of 
 ancient Rome which required the juice of five thousand 
 Lucrine natives to flavor it, and was filled and pasted over 
 with layers of British oysters besides. 
 
 It was to little purpose that Horace told the epicures 
 of his day to seek for delicate dishes in active exercise ; 
 that it was not in the price and savor of their food that the 
 highest enjoyment was to be found, but in themselves, 
 
 " Non in caro nidore voluptas 
 Simima, sed in te ipso est. Tu pulmcntaria quaere 
 Sudando ; pinguem vitiis albumque neque ostrea 
 Nee scarus aut poterit peregrina juvare lagois." 
 
 Just as at the present day epicures are split into parties 
 touching the merits of different "brands," the Edin- 
 burgher extolling his " Pandores," the citizen of Dublin the 
 blackbearded 4i Carlingfords," or the i4 Powldoodies " of 
 Burran, famous in song, while with the Londoner nothing 
 else slips down so well as the large, full-flavored " Colches- 
 ter," or the little fat " Milton," the American meanwhile 
 deeming them all flat and unprofitable compared with his 
 own mammoth juicy 4i Balti mores," so the gourmands 
 of the Eternal City were divided in opinion about the pro- 
 duce of different beds, though on the whole the palm was 
 given to the o}*sters of the Lucrine Lake, of Brundusium, and 
 of Ab} T dos in the Hellespont, for which men paid fabulous 
 prices. Baskets of these were considered to be fit presents 
 to kings ; and we are told that the Emperor Trajan, when 
 fighting the Parthians, had some sent to him b}' the Ad- 
 ams Express of the day from the Pontiff Apicius. Horace's 
 Catius, in his discourse on the art of living, tells us that 
 the real oysters are from the Circaean coast. Some of the 
 
270 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 " stall-fed" Roman oysters were of mammoth proportions. 
 There was one abnormally large kind, to which they gave 
 the name of " Tridacna," that required three bites for its 
 consumption. To such a degree of gustatoiy acumen had 
 the gourmets of Rome attained that, according to Juve- 
 nal (Sat. iv. 140), one of them, "the fat-paunched Mon- 
 tanus," could tell at the first bite from what coast an oyster 
 had been taken, whether from Cireeii, the Lucrine Lake, 
 or Whitstable, at the mouth of the Thames, 
 
 " Circaeis nata forent, an 
 Lucrinum ad saxum, Rutupinove edita funda 
 Ostrea, callebat primo deprehendere morsu." 
 
 To supply the Roman market, large oyster-beds were 
 formed. Sergius Grata, whom Cicero characterizes as 
 "ditissimus, amoenissimus, deliciosissimus," made large 
 reservoirs at Baioe, in which he put thousands of these 
 shell-fish. Close by he built a palace, in which with his 
 friends he was wont to feast upon this favorite fish. In the 
 early da}'S of Rome many slaves were empkn^ed in trans- 
 porting O3*sters from their ocean-beds to the imperial cit}'. 
 
 In ancient Athens oysters were the interpreters of the 
 judicial sentences of the law, the citizens inscribing upon 
 these conchological tablets the doom of their disgraced 
 philosophers or heroes. If six thousand shells were cast 
 against a man he was ostracized. After the fourth century 
 we hear little of oysters till the Middle Ages. In the 
 twelfth century we are told that the students of the Uni- 
 versity of Paris, when the scholastic disputes were unusually 
 fierce and noisy, used to rehearse the debates over oyster- 
 suppers. Louis VIII. was so delighted with the appetizing 
 manner in which his cook prepared oysters for the roj-al 
 
OYSTERS. 271 
 
 table that he gave him a title of nobility and a pension. 
 Louis XI., that scholarship might not become defunct in 
 France, used to invite all the members of the College of the 
 Sorbonne annually to an oyster-feast. In the reign of the 
 grand monarch, Louis XIV., oysters came again into vogue 
 in France, and at last became so popular with the frog-eaters 
 that Louis XVIII. was nicknamed by the wags of Paris 
 Louis des huitres (Oyster Louis), instead of Louis dix-huit, 
 because he was accustomed to swallow dozens upon dozens 
 of o}'sters daily as a whet before dinner. Gastronomers 
 declare that this may be done with impunity, and even with 
 advantage, as "the stomach is thus cleared of accidental 
 phlegm, the gastric juice increased, and any air which may 
 be fixed about the organs of digestion condensed and dis- 
 persed." The Encyclopaedists were especially fond of the 
 dainty mollusk. George I. of England had a great liking 
 for this shell-fish ; but he could not endure the English 
 oysters. He grumbled long, Mr. Justin McCarthy tells us, 
 at their queer taste, their want of flavor ; and it was some 
 time before his devoted attendants discovered that their 
 monarch liked stale oysters, with a good strong rankness 
 about them. No time was lost, when this important dis- 
 cover} T had been made, in procuring O3*sters to the taste of 
 the king, and one of George's objections to the throne of 
 England was removed. 
 
 Peter the Great was so fond of oysters that he had them 
 served up in different styles at eveiy meal, and called them 
 his '* life-preservers." Napoleon, who used his table as a 
 State-engine, prided himself upon the varied and unique 
 modes in which he had O3'sters cooked. The night before 
 the battle of Austerlitz he supped heartily on oysters, which 
 helped him to win a memorable victory, as at Dresden it was 
 
272 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 nearly snatched from him by a leg of mutton stuffed with 
 onions. Cervantes ate so many O3~sters that his enemies 
 accused him of squandering all his substance in voracious 
 feasts on this fish. The learned Bentley, in the intervals 
 of critical stud}', recruited his energy with liberal dishes of 
 O}*sters. Writing in 1740 from the country, he says : u My 
 great relief and amusement here is mj' regular supply of 
 O3*sters. These things must have been made in heaven. 
 They are delectable, satisfying, delicious, and mentall}* 
 stimulating in a high degree. I can indite matter b\ T the 
 yard when I have had a good meal of them." He adds that 
 while he had his oysters cooked in all the different ways, he 
 had, on the whole, " a secret relish for the scalloped fashion 
 above ever}' other." Who can doubt that the Doctor's 
 brilliant victory over the scholars of Christ Church in the 
 Phalaris controvers}* was due to the perspicacity imparted 
 by this stimulating food? Rousseau had so keen a relish 
 for oysters that he was accused of gluttony. Alexander 
 Pope was almost as fond of stewed oysters as of his pet 
 lampreys ; and he once made his acceptance of an invitation 
 to dine at Lord Bolingbroke's conditional upon his being 
 regaled with the former luxury. The poet Thomson supped 
 so voraciously on O3*sters the night before his last illness 
 that this " surfeit" is said to have been one of the chief 
 causes of its fatal termination. Thackeray had a keen 
 relish for this shell-fish, the consumption of which abated 
 for a while his cynicism, and made life wear the beauty of 
 promise. Upon his visit to this country, he became ac- 
 quainted with the product of the American beds, an inci- 
 dent of which Mr. James T. Fields has given a humorous 
 account. " Six bloated Falstaffian bivalves lay before him 
 in their shells. I noticed that he gazed at them anxiously, 
 
OYSTERS. 273 
 
 with fork upraised, and then he whispered to me, with a 
 look of anguish, 4 How shall I do it?' I described to him 
 the simple process by which the free-born citizens of Amer- 
 ica were accustomed to accomplish the task. He seemed 
 satisfied that the thing was feasible, selected the smallest 
 one in the half-dozen, and then bowed his head as if he 
 were saying grace. All eyes were upon him to watch the 
 effect of a new sensation in the person of a great British 
 author. Opening his mouth very wide, he struggled for a 
 moment, and then all was over. I shall never forget the 
 comic look of despair he cast upon the other five over- 
 occupied shells. I broke the perfect stillness by asking 
 him how he felt. ' Profoundly grateful,' he gasped, ' and 
 as if I had swallowed a little bab}*.' " 
 
 Oysters are interesting in a scientific and poetical as 
 well as in a gastronomic point of view. The anatomical 
 structure of the little creature is wonderfully perfect ; it has 
 a liver, an intestinal canal, a bag for a stomach, a tiny 
 heart with its auricle and ventricle, a series of blood-vessels, 
 and nerves acutely sensible, just as perfect as in bigger 
 animals. Like a dandy of the deep, it sports a beard 
 (scientifically called a " byssus"), which has an acute sense 
 of feeling, in allusion to which some one has called the 
 oyster one of the greatest anomalies in Nature, because 
 
 " It wears a beard without any chin, 
 And leaves its bed to be tucked in." 
 
 The gills, or beard, of the oyster " consist of two pairs of 
 membranous plates, beautifully striated, and floating within 
 the cavity of the cell. Microscopists tell us that if a small 
 portion of the gill be placed on a slip of glass with a little 
 sea-water, and viewed under a power of about three hun- 
 
 18 
 
274 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 dred, a beautiful spectacle will be seen ; the thousands of 
 tin} 7 cilia lash the water incessantly, thus causing fresh cur- 
 rents of water to aerate the blood which flows through the 
 branchial vessels." 
 
 As to the " tucking in " of the oyster, it is b} r its enemies, 
 not by its friends, that tin's is done most effectually ; for 
 impregnable as it ma}* seem in its limestone castle, its life 
 is taken by its fellow- tenants of the deep as well as \)\ man. 
 Among its enemies is the codfish, which takes a whole 
 O}*ster into its mouth, cracks the shells, and sucks out the 
 meat. The crab, the drum-fish, the sea-star, and the 
 sheep's-head, each appreciate the exquisite flavor of its flesh, 
 and banquet on it with the gust and greediness of true 
 ocean epicures. The first, which must be considered by the 
 oyster a decided bore, drills a hole in the shell of its victim, 
 and then, thrusting in its sucker or "stinger," sucks out 
 the contents bodily, just as a fast youth sucks mint-juleps 
 through a straw ; the second swallows shell and all ; the 
 third, by a devilish contrivance of ingenuity, settles down 
 upon the poor oyster, wraps its five points about it, and 
 hugs it closely, until its victim, which cannot live without 
 an occasional supply of fresh water, opens its shell, when 
 quick as lightning a nipper is inserted, which keeps it open, 
 and enables the villain to feast at leisure, like the vulture 
 at the vitals of Prometheus, upon the gelatinous substance 
 within. The food of the oyster itself, by the way, scien- 
 tists tell us, consists of minute animalcules and infusoria, 
 to the peculiarities of which it owes its flavor. Another 
 enemy of the oyster is sand, a drift of which has sometimes 
 destroyed miles of oyster-beds and "the spat" in a single 
 night. Punch has vividly depicted this evil in the following 
 sj'mpathetic lament : 
 
OYSTERS. 275 
 
 " 'T is the voice of the oyster ; I hear him complain : 
 ' I can't live in this place, here 's the sandstorm again. 
 I was settling to rest 'mid the rocks and the tiles 
 They had made for a home ; but this sand, how it riles ! 
 It gets into my shell, and the delicate fringe 
 That I use when I breathe, and I can't shut my hinge 
 When the grit lodges there; so the crabs come at will : 
 Since my poor mouth is open they feed and they kill. 
 I 've complained to a friend, who quite understands, 
 But he can't undertake to abolish the sands.' 
 Thus the native made moan, though I took up the brown 
 Bread and butter and lemon, and swallowed him down." 
 
 Quaint old Thomas Fuller says that oysters are " the 
 only meat which men eat alive and yet account it no 
 cruelty." The notion entertained 03- some persons that the 
 oyster dies the moment 
 
 " The damsel's knife the gaping shell commands, 
 And the salt liquor streams between her hands," 
 
 is an erroneous one, unless some vital part of the mollusk 
 has been touched by the blade of the operator. This may 
 be tested b}' putting the shell-less o}*ster under a little sea- 
 water, when the movements of its several parts may be 
 seen. 
 
 The old divine just quoted tells us that King James was 
 wont to say, " he was a very valiant man who first ventured 
 on eating of oysters," a sentiment afterward echoed by 
 Gay : 
 
 " The man had sure a palate covered o'er 
 With brass or steel, that on the rocky shore 
 First broke the oozy oyster's pearly coat, 
 And risked the living morsel down his throat." 
 
 But probably the flavor of the oyster was accidentally 
 learned, just as according to Charles Lamb men dis- 
 covered the exquisite taste of roast-pig. 
 
276 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 From five to seven years are required to bring the oyster 
 to perfection. An oyster bears its years on its back, 
 each successive layer observable on the shell indicating one 
 year ; so that by counting the layers we can tell at a glance 
 when the philanthropic creature came into the world. 
 
 Touching the true mode of eating the oyster, there is a 
 mistaken notion that it should be eaten off the upper shell 
 and swallowed whole. The objection to this is that it is a 
 waste of the liquor, the natural sauce which accompanies 
 the fish, as well as of the finer flavors, which are only to 
 be extracted by mastication. This liquor is not mere salt 
 water ; it is really the blood of the oyster, and should al- 
 ways accompany the fish in its last moments when it is 
 gently " tickled to death" by the teeth of the judicious 
 epicure. A great authorit}*, Dr. Kitchener, contends that 
 the o}'ster should be devoured when absolutely alive ; other- 
 wise the flavor and spirit are lost. "The true lover of an 
 oyster," he says, " will have more regard for the feelings 
 of his little favorite than to abandon it to the mercy of a 
 bungling operator ; he will alwa}"s open it himself, and con- 
 trive to detach the fish from the shell so dexterously that 
 the o}*ster is hardly conscious he has been ejected from his 
 lodging till he feels the teeth of the piscivorous gourmet 
 tickling him to death." It is in the city of Baltimore 
 that the cooking of the o}~ster is carried to the last degree 
 of perfection, as it is in Chesapeake Bay, on which Balti- 
 more stands, that the most aldermanic and luscious oysters 
 are raised. Instead of brutally smashing the shells with a 
 hammer and "dashing the poor, unoffending oyster into 
 the batter, like doughnuts into a kettle," the Baltimore 
 cooks, says a sensible writer, "gently persuade the reluc- 
 tant shells apart, tenderly lift therefrom the fragile, quiver- 
 
OYSTERS. 277 
 
 ing morsel, and with a labor so incessant and loving as to 
 be worthy of all praise, watch over each phase of the oyster 
 as it dawns gradually, under the beneficent glow of the 
 furnace, into the more perfect and admirable state of a 
 true edible." It must have been after the deglutition of a 
 dozen fried in crumb by one of the artists of the Monumen- 
 tal City that the following sonnet was composed : 
 
 " Fallings of Neptune, delicately crusted, 
 What savory succulence your pores exude ! 
 Metliinks I love you better fried than stewed, 
 Or gridiron'd, like Saint Lawrence, or combusted 
 On red-hot coals, or raw with cayenne dusted ; 
 Nevertheless, I like you all ways, dressed or nude. 
 Tidbits for deities, ambrosial food, 
 Dainties of dainties to the waves intrusted ! 
 Bless'd was the man who from an oyster's nip 
 His finger snatched, and sucked when it was free. 
 What rare sensations must have thrilled his life, 
 And tickled all his physiology, 
 When, by suspicious torture made to sip, 
 His pain succumbed to speechless ecstasy ! " 
 
 We have spoken of the poetry in oysters. We are aware 
 of the popular prejudice which deems the oj-ster a dull, 
 sluggish animal, doomed to a lonek, semi- vegetable exis- 
 tence, and which "nothing in its life becomes so much as 
 its leaving it," when it finds a tomb in the stomach of the 
 grateful epicure. "As stupid as an o}'ster" is a prover- 
 bial expression, not only among English-speaking peoples, 
 but among the French. The} 7 tell a person whom they wish 
 to reproach with mental inferiority that he " argues like an 
 oyster,'* and torment the soul of the card-plaj'er on whose 
 skill they have staked their money, b}~ sajMng that he " pla3*s 
 like an oj'ster." The poet Bryant, too, who doubtless 
 often in his long life fed his poetic fire by an oyster-stew or 
 
278 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 a fancy roast, moistened with Chateau Yquem or Chablis, 
 was once guilty of so ungenerous a fling as to counsel that 
 insatiable blood-sucker, the mosquito, to 
 
 " Go to the man for whom in ocean's halls 
 The oyster breeds and the green turtle sprawls." 
 
 In reply to all such cold-blooded reasoners it suffices to cite 
 the opinion of scientists, who have shown that, though 
 oysters do not rank high in the scale of intelligence, yet 
 their sensibilities are not so obscure, nor their instincts so 
 limited, as is generally supposed. Dr. Carpenter tells us 
 that the oyster is sensitive to the influence of light, closing 
 his shells when the shadow of a boat passes over them ; 
 and we know that it has sense enough to guard against an 
 enemy's attack by closing its valves, by expelling violently 
 the water between them (which often frightens its adver- 
 sary) , and when its shell is perforated, by depositing fresh 
 shellj' matter in the breach. Again, in La Fontaine's amus- 
 ing fable of the encounter between the Rat and the Oj'ster, 
 it was the long-whiskered rodent that was worsted, the 
 bivalve catching him in his yawning trap. Nor is the 
 oyster wanting in happiness. Somebody has styled fossil- 
 iferous rocks " monuments of the felicity of past ages." 
 Commenting on this text, a learned naturalist in the 
 " Westminster Review " says, 
 
 " An undisturbed oyster-bed is a concentration of happiness in 
 the present. Dormant though the several creatures there congre- 
 gated seem, each individual is leading the beatified existence of 
 an Epicurean god. The world without, its cares and joys, its 
 storms and calms, its passions, evil and good, all are indifferent 
 to the unheeding oyster. Unobservant even of what passes in its 
 immediate vicinity, its whole soul is concentrated in itself ; yet not 
 sluggishly and apathetically, for its body is throbbing with life and 
 
OYSTERS. 279 
 
 enjoyment. The mighty ocean is subservient to its pleasures. 
 The rolling waves waft fresh and choice food within its reach, and 
 the flow of the current feeds it without requiring an effort. Each 
 atom of water that comes in contact with its delicate gills evolves 
 its imprisoned air to freshen and invigorate the creature's pellucid 
 blood. Invisible to human eye, unless aided by the wonderful in- 
 ventions of human science, countless millions of vibrating cilia are 
 moving incessantly with synchronic beat on every fibre of each 
 fringing leaflet." 
 
 To show that the oyster, like man, is " fearfully and 
 wonderfully made," it is sufficient to point to the revelations 
 of the microscope. These show that the bards who apos- 
 trophize eagles and vultures, mean poultry-stolen and 
 carrion-hunters, or who chant the praises of that rank 
 and rancid monster, the lubberly, blubberly whale, mistake 
 their themes. They show that the shell of an oyster, so 
 far from being a lonely dwelling-place, is a world occupied 
 by an innumerable host of animals, compared to which the 
 oyster itself is a colossus. The liquid inclosed between the 
 shells of the oyster contains a multitude of embryos, cov- 
 ered with transparent scales which swim with ease ; a hun- 
 dred and twenty of these embryos, placed side by side, 
 would not make an inch in length. Moreover, this liquor 
 contains a great variety of animalcules, five hundred times 
 less in size, which give out a phosphoric light. If these 
 facts do not kindle the imagination, it will surely be enough 
 to hint at the famous pearls of Cleopatra, which were the 
 excrescences of this exquisite fish. All persons remember 
 the brilliant feat of epicureanism when, Antoii} r having 
 wagered a heavy sum that she could not expend ten million 
 sesterces (about $400,000 in our money) on one entertain- 
 ment, she accepted the challenge ; and taking from her ear 
 one of the matchless pearls that had descended to her from 
 
280 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 her ancestors, dissolved it in vinegar and swallowed the 
 precious draught, a feat miserably burlesqued by the Eng- 
 lish sailor who placed a ten-pound note between two slices 
 of bread and butter and gave them to his "Black-eyed 
 Susan" to eat as a sandwich. Not content with this prodi- 
 gal extravagance, the queen would have swallowed the 
 other pendant also, had not Lucius Plancus snatched it 
 from her hand and proclaimed her victor in this lovers' 
 contest. We are aware that Dr. Mobius, a cold-blooded, 
 matter-of-fact German,' has denied, in his History of Pearls, 
 the practicability of Cleopatra's famous feat of gastronom}* : 
 but who cares about the truth of a story so characteristic 
 of the Oriental queen ; or whether Clodius the glutton had 
 long before, as Pliny saj's, swallowed a pearl worth over 
 forty thousand dollars? The same Pliny tells us that the 
 oyster produces the pearl from feeding upon heavenly dew ; 
 and an old British writer affirms that earl}' in tiie morning, 
 when the sky is clear and temperate, "the oysters open 
 their mouths a little above the water, and most greedily 
 swallow the dew of heaven," upon which they at once 
 " conceive and breed the pearl." But alas for poetry and 
 romance ! science, which, with its sledge-hammer of mat- 
 ter-of-fact, has converted the diamond into charcoal, has 
 also declared the precious pearl to be composed of concen- 
 trate layers of membrane and carbonate of lime ! And }*et 
 is there not poetry in the fact which this same science dis- 
 closes, that this brilliant ornament of beauty is the result of 
 suffering on the part of the poor shell-fish? Naturalists 
 tell us that when living in its glossy house, should any 
 foreign substance find its way in, the fish coats the offend- 
 ing substance with nacre, and converts it into a pearl. The 
 pearl is, indeed, a little globe of the smooth, glossy sub- 
 
OYSTERS. 281 
 
 stance yielded by the oyster's beard, yielded ordinarily to 
 smooth the narrow home to which his nature binds him, 
 but yielded in round drops, real pearly tears, if he is hurt. 
 Little thinks the beauty, as she sweeps through the mazes 
 of the dance, the cynosure of dazzled eyes, that the pearls 
 which cluster in her hair and enhance her witching loveli- 
 ness are the product of pain and diseased action endured 
 by a poor shell-fish ! 
 
 But why dwell upon this theme? Was not Callisthenes, 
 the companion of Alexander the Great, an oyster epicure? 
 Was not Cambaceres famous for his shell-fish banquets? 
 Were not D'Alembert, Diderot, Helvetius, Voltaire, all 
 oyster-eaters of taste? Did riot Hume and Dngald Stewart 
 gather strength for their metaphysical researches from the 
 ''whiskered pandores " of their day? Did not Walter 
 Scott, when young, and Sir Adam Ferguson, if tradition 
 may be believed, eat a whole barrel ful of oysters in a sin- 
 gle evening? Did not Blomfield, Bishop of London, de- 
 clare that the sight of an oyster-stall, common in his day, 
 alwa}'s made his mouth water? Are not the bivalves so 
 relished by Englishmen to-da} r that a thousand millions of 
 them are consumed yearl}' b}' London alone? Have not 
 bivalves affected the politics of our land, and almost 
 provoked war between sovereign States ? Was it not for 
 these that Governor Wise of Virginia threatened to draw 
 the sword, and is not a hard-shelled Shrewsbury the arms 
 of Old Tammany? What would an evening-party be 
 without oysters ? The musicians might be dispensed with, 
 the wax-lights and gorgeous chandeliers laid aside, and 
 even polkas and quadrilles embargoed ; but without oys- 
 ters the affair would be a dead failure, like the play of 
 Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out. Oysters are a 
 
282 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 fruitful theme for the moralist, and supply the poet with his 
 finest metaphors. "The world's mine oyster," says Pis- 
 tol, "which I with sword will open." Doubtless Shak- 
 speare was fond of the conchiferous animal to which he thus 
 sententiously alludes, the bivalves of which recall the name 
 of another, the most subtle and philosophic of English 
 poets, Shelley. The world is, indeed, an oyster, as the 
 immortal bard has declared, the riches and honors of which 
 are impenetrable to the tyro until time instructs him to use 
 the knife of experience so adroitly as to attain at a blow 
 the long-coveted treasure. 
 
CYNICS AND CYNICISM. 
 
 all the disagreeable persons whom one meets with 
 in society, there is no one whose influence is more 
 pernicious than that of the cynic, the man who prides 
 himself upon his knowledge of human nature, and delights 
 to mock at every appearance of virtue in his fellow-creatures. 
 There are persons in every community who have a preterna- 
 tural gift for detecting evil ; who find apparently an intense 
 satisfaction in proving that all human beings are equally 
 selfish, corrupt, and base ; who boast of their skill in de- 
 tecting the vilest motives for apparently the noblest actions ; 
 who gloat upon every new revelation of domestic sin and 
 shame, 
 
 " As if it were a pleasant thing to find 
 The racer stumbling, and the gaze-hound blind." 
 
 They have a fatal scent for carrion, a lynx's eye for spots 
 and blemishes. Their memory has been compared to the 
 museum of a medical college, where one sees preserved all 
 the hideous distortions and monstrous growths and revolt- 
 ing excrescences by which man can be disfigured and 
 afflicted. 
 
 Prove to them bej'ond the shadow of a doubt that a man 
 has at least one virtue, and they will maintain that it is at 
 the expense of all the others. Is he philanthropic? Then 
 he is boastful, or censorious, or greedj' of applause, or slow 
 in the payment of his debts, or he lets his own family suffer 
 
284 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 while he relieves the miseries of his fellow-men. As literary 
 critics, they have a microscopic eye for petty blemishes and 
 minute faults. Speak to them of an orator who holds his 
 audience breathless by his eloquence, and they will remind 
 you of some " clap-trap" remark, some slip in the construc- 
 tion of a sentence, some slight incongruit}' in a metaphor, 
 or " non-distribution of a middle term," which neutral- 
 izes all his merits. If a writer has a dazzling wit, they 
 complain of his lack of judgment ; if another has a scientific 
 turn of mind, the}' complain of his lack of enthusiasm and 
 imagination. Brilliant he is, but superficial; solid, but 
 dull: " so runs the bond." Forgetting that Nature is too 
 frugal to heap together all manner of shining qualities in 
 one mass ; that she gives to the beautiful peacock a dis- 
 cordant voice, to the bird-of-paradise coarse legs, and that 
 the fleet greyhound has no scent, they demand qualities 
 of mind and heart diametrically opposite in the same per- 
 son. The Psalmist said that he had " seen the end of all 
 perfection " : they have never seen the beginning. As in 
 the gun-trade, among the men who sight the barrels, and 
 detect faults in the bore, there are eyes that will dis- 
 cover a deflection measuring less than a thousandth part of 
 an inch, so these critics, while blind to the beauties, will 
 detect infinitesimal flaws in every work of genius. Of 
 course they find no difficulty in provoking a laugh at the 
 expense of their victims ; it is so much easier for an ill- 
 natured man than for a good-natured one to be smart and 
 
 witty, 
 
 " S'il n'eut mal parle de personne, 
 On n'eut jamais parle de lui." 
 
 Hazlitt, himself one of the most genial of critics, was des- 
 perately afflicted with them: " Littleness," said he, " is 
 
CYNICS AND CYNICISM. 285 
 
 their element, and they give a character of meanness to 
 whatever they touch. They creep, buzz, and fly-blow. It 
 is much easier to crush than to catch these troublesome 
 insects ; and when they are in your power, your self-respect 
 spares them." 
 
 Cynicism is one of the chief vices of our times. The 
 writers of the day especially the novelists, dramatists, 
 and poets, the Hawthornes, Braddons, and Reades are 
 full of it. They are perpetually calling on us to see the 
 human heart laid bare, and to sec how unutterably black 
 and foul it is. Judging by their representations, one would 
 suppose that all goodness had been emptied out of it. 
 They depict a state of society similar to that described in 
 Holy Writ, whose enormities brought down the thunders of 
 Heaven. We have no sympathy with such views, or with 
 the men who hold them, and who pride themselves on their 
 knowledge of the "morbid anatom3 r " of human nature. 
 The man of openly depraved character, who mocks at mor- 
 ality, is not half so offensive nor half so dangerous an ac- 
 quaintance as the shrewd, sly, witty, evil-speaking fellow 
 who, having an extended knowledge of men and things, 
 comes into one's household with his innuendoes, insinua- 
 tions, sarcasms, and scandals, that sap our faith in humanity 
 and make us distrust every appearance of virtue. There is 
 no other atheism like this, no unbelief so hard and incura- 
 ble as that which is constantly inveighing against human 
 hollowness, and turning men away from virtue by persuad- 
 ing them that it is never genuine ; that " friendship is all 
 a cheat, smiles hypocrisy, words deceit." Such pessimists, 
 who are often cultivated men, pride themselves on their 
 penetration and breadth of mind ; they have no credulity, 
 no superstitions, no prejudices, no foolish enthusiasms 
 
286 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 for the idols of the day ! But, with all their culture, 
 they are shallow creatures, for, as Richard Sharp has well 
 said, "The most gifted men have been the least addicted 
 to depreciate friends or foes. Dr. Johnson, Burke, and 
 Fox were always inclined to overrate them." Will it be 
 said that Pascal is an exception to the rule ? It is true 
 that Pascal gave to his representations of the depravity 
 of human nature a Rembrandt-like depth of coloring which 
 seems to spring from misanthrop3 T . But we must remember 
 that he dwells as much upon the " greatness" as upon the 
 4 'misery" of man; that, as Hallain finely says, "it is the 
 ruined archangel that Pascal delights to paint." It is with 
 no fiend-like chuckle, no smile of malicious triumph, but 
 with the profoundest pity, that he declares the results of his 
 researches into the depths of man's moral nature. So with 
 Thackera\ r ; it is with no sat}*r's delight, but with sadness 
 and sorrow, that he depicts the varnished but rotten sinners 
 that flit across his pages. Not so with Talleyrand, who was 
 always saying sarcastic and malicious things about other 
 people ; as when some one told him that M. de Semonville 
 had a bad cold, "What interest can M. de Semonville have 
 in catching cold?" asked the cynical statesman. But Tal- 
 leyrand's youth had been passed in " a hot- bed of intrigue 
 and back-stairs influence," which powerfully distorted his 
 views of human nature. Charles II., too, if we may believe 
 Bishop Burnet, and as we should naturally expect, had a 
 veiy ill opinion of both men and women, and believed that 
 there was neither sincerity nor chastity in the world out of 
 principle, but that some had either one or the other out of 
 humor or vanity. The letters of Sir Robert Walpole are 
 flavored throughout with a kind of satirical cynicism against 
 man and man's nature, which betrays itself especially in 
 
CYNICS AND CYNICISM. 287 
 
 untruthful anecdotes of eminent men, which he tells with 
 evident glee. M. de Lassay, a Frenchman who had a great 
 knowledge of society, is cited by Chamfort as saying that 
 it would be necessary to swallow a toad every morning, in 
 order not to find anything disgusting during the rest of the 
 da}', when one has to spend it in the world. Akin to this 
 was the cynical snarl prompted by the gloomy misanthropy 
 of La Monnoye : 
 
 ' The world of fools has such a store 
 
 That he who would not see an ass, 
 Must bide at home and bolt his door 
 And break his looking-glass." 
 
 But the greatest of all the libellers of humanity was that 
 dark and fierce spirit, "the apostate politician, the per- 
 jured lover, and the ribald priest," Dean Swift. He was 
 emphatically the prince of pessimists and the king of libel- 
 lers, a libeller of human nature, a libeller of persons, and 
 a libeller of himself. 
 
 The pessimist is usually as false when he flatters as 
 when he reviles. He rarely praises Jones but to vex 
 Brown. All such should be shunned as one would shun 
 a man afflicted with leprosy or the plague. Let them live, 
 Diogenes-like, in their tubs, and snarl and sneer at every 
 passer-by ; but let none go near them to be infected with 
 the poison of their ill-nature, and of " cette philosophic 
 rigide qui fait cesser de vivre avant que Von soit rnort." 
 Better to be forever defenceless, a butt to every consola- 
 tory falsehood and pleasant cheat, than to be always using 
 the spear of Ithuriel. Full earty does one learn the bitter 
 lesson of human depravity, to grow shy, suspicious, and 
 distrustful of his fellow-men, without being made ac- 
 quainted with the painful lesson in advance. Wisely has 
 
288 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 the Roman Church proclaimed the sanctity of the confes- 
 sional. Who that loves to think well of his species would 
 not loathe the knowledge with which the memory of the 
 priesthood is burdened and soiled ? Who does not rejoice 
 that the same creative wisdom which shelters from every 
 human eye the processes of our animal frame, has shrouded 
 from observation the workings of our spiritual structure? 
 Yet it is of these latter that the cynic boasts of having a 
 microscopic knowledge ; in reply to which we may say that 
 though it is " a blunder to mistake the Newgate Calendar 
 for a biographical dictionary," yet, as Burke has justly said, 
 he who charges all men with being knaves at heart, is sure 
 at least of convicting one. 
 
THE EXTREMES OF DRESS. 
 
 OF all the articles of dress which protect and beautify 
 the human bod}*, there is no one which so decidedly 
 stamps a man's character as the hat. Next to a man's 
 head is his chapeau, in importance as well as in local posi- 
 tion. It is the crowning article of costume, the keystone 
 of the arch of the outer man, and as a symbol of the 
 wearer, of his calling, habits, tastes, and opinions, is 
 brimful of meaning. Pride, extravagance, haughtiness, 
 and vulgarity, with their opposites, all betray themselves 
 in its form and fashion, as well as in the st\'le in which it is 
 worn. In all ages and countries men have been compara- 
 tivety neglectful of their soles, provided their brains were 
 protected by a proper head-dress. Not to speak of the 
 Phrygian cap of Liberty or the red cap of the cardinal, 
 both intensel}' significant, what can be more gorgeous than 
 the Greek cap, more picturesque than the turban, or more 
 dazzlingly beautiful than the soldier's helm with its nodding 
 plume? If the part played by the hat in history were fully 
 written out, it would fill a volume. Dr. Draper, in writing 
 his " History of Civilization in Europe," could hardly have 
 summed up the leading epochs in its development more 
 satisfactorily than under headings designated b}* the prom- 
 inent head-piece of each epoch. What better symbol for 
 the old Greek epoch than the o-re'^avos ; for the old Ro- 
 man epoch than the civic crown ; for the Byzantine empire 
 
 19 
 
290 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 than the diadem ; for the Middle Ages than the papal 
 tiara; or for the French Revolution than the bonnet 
 rouge? Gessler's hat upon a pole, as ever} 7 school-boy 
 knows, has a reputation co-extensive with the apple of 
 William Tell. The Highland bonnet, with dark raven 
 feather, is the volume-speaking emblem of mountain brav- 
 eiy and independence. What would Faux and his dark-lan- 
 tern be without his sugar-loaf; or what 3'our " ginoowine 
 live Yankee " without his towering, narrow-brimmed bell- 
 crown, an heirloom from his great-grandfather? What 
 other article of dress has caused so much stir in societ}* as 
 the hat of George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, the hat 
 which he refused to take off before Cromwell's magistrates 
 and ministers? The steeple-hat is as indissolubty asso- 
 ciated with our idea of the Puritan as are his long Hebrew 
 name, his nasal tones, and his " heavenly hawings and 
 hummings." Chateaubriand used to say that Napoleon's 
 little three-cornered hat set upon a stick would cause all 
 Europe to fly to arms. 
 
 When we meet an acquaintance in the street, how do we 
 testify our respect? Is it not by taking off the hat? Is 
 there not a graduated scale of respect, the degrees of which 
 are indicated by touching and by the manner of doffing this 
 part of the dress? 
 
 What boots it that a man is well shod, if he is not also 
 well covered ? What matters it that he is in other respects 
 a poor subject, if he is loyal to the crown of his head ? 
 We can conceive of a man's wearing an ugly coat or 
 "seedy" trousers, and } T et being a good citizen, an exem- 
 plary head of a famih T , an honest man, and even a Chris- 
 tian. But what if he is caught with a vile hat, one 
 knocked in at the side, sunken at the top, soiled with dust, 
 
THE EXTREMES OF DRESS. 291 
 
 made years ago, and then by a bungler? Would not a 
 constable arrest him as a vagabond? Would he let him go 
 without the oath of at least two well-hatted householders ? 
 A "shocking bad hat" marks the lowest deep of social 
 degradation. Look at the criminals in the dock : by what 
 one peculiarity are they universally distinguished, if not by 
 the never-failing bad hat? On the other hand, the elegant 
 chapeau of the man of fashion, with its exquisite texture 
 and well-brushed, gloss}' exterior, is as characteristic as 
 the melancholy spectacle of " a brick" in one's hat. When 
 you have done a man a signal favor, or hit him with a sharp 
 jest, how does he acknowledge it? By tendering you his 
 gloves ; or by the far more significant act of doffing his 
 beaver, and saying, " You can just take my hat"? In view 
 of all these considerations, who can help admiring the 
 wisdom of the "forty merchants " in a town in Illinois, 
 who, we are told, some years ago signed a pledge to wear 
 high hats " to increase the dignity of the town "? We say, 
 therefore, in the words of the u Autocrat of the Breakfast 
 Table " : 
 
 " Have a good hat ! The secret of your looks 
 Lives with the beaver in Canadian brooks. 
 Virtue may dwell in a bad cravat, 
 But man and Nature scorn the shocking hat ! " 
 
 Next to the hat, the boots must be regarded as the most 
 important and significant part of the costume. The boot is, 
 in fact, the very foundation of the dress, the base which 
 supports the whole superstructure. A man may have a 
 threadbare coat and forget it ; his vest may be shabby, and 
 his linen ill-shaped and antiquated, yet he ma} 7 be uncon- 
 scious of it. But he cannot stand upright in a pair of boots 
 with worn-down heels ; and it is just as difficult to feel mor- 
 
292 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 ally upright in them. He feels at eveiy step the weakness 
 of his foundation ; and in that forlorn condition all self- 
 respect, all enterprise, all elan is impossible. A man ill- 
 shod sometimes natters himself that he carries off attention 
 from his boots by the use of a " stunning" necktie, a spark- 
 ling breast-pin, or a gorgeous watch-chain ; but this is a de- 
 lusion and a snare. The boots are the key of the position, 
 and if this is neglected, all is lost. 
 
 When a stranger makes his entree upon a fashionable 
 promenade, to what part of the dress is it, after the hat has 
 been inspected, that the glass of the critic and the soft e}*e 
 of beauty are directed? Is it to his close-fitting coat, his 
 elegant vest, or his genteel trousers, that attention is 
 universally turned ? No ; it is the boots that instantane- 
 ously decide the character of the man. If they are the 
 work of an artist and properly polished ; if they are del- 
 icately shaped and free from squeak, then he may walk 
 with a proud and elastic step, even though his coat be not 
 of the most fashionable cut, and though his vest be but- 
 toned a whole button too high. The boots, in fine, speak 
 volumes concerning a man's pretensions to standing, as 
 they also reveal unmistakably his largeness or littleness of 
 sole, which last is a sure sign that there is not much to go 
 upon. We have seen boots that were perfectlj* eloquent, 
 that told as plainty as though endowed with the gift of 
 speech the capacity of the understandings they covered, 
 boots from which we could have formed a better opinion 
 of the wearer's cultivation, refinement, and general tastes, 
 than from a week's acquaintance. There seems to be a 
 sort of "destiny" that shapes these pedal ends of men; 
 " roughhew them as we will," the}' will still speak with 
 "most miraculous organ," so that the ex pede Herculem 
 
THE EXTREMES OF DRESS. 293 
 
 continues to be as safe a rule to-day as in the time of 
 Phidias. 
 
 Who has forgotten the pride and joy with which, when a 
 boy, he watched his first pair of boots as they grew day by 
 day into shape under the hands of Crispin? And when the 
 boy grew into a man. and the thought flashed into his brain 
 that "life is real, life is earnest," and he must be up and 
 doing, what were the first words that rushed to his lips? 
 "My boots!" The most damning condemnation of an 
 enterprise is to say that it is "bootless." 
 
 Among the circumstances which affect man's physical 
 comfort there are few more potent than the shape and 
 workmanship of his boots. What, indeed, can be more 
 completely destructive of even' capability of happiness than 
 a pair of ill-fitting boots or shoes? Talk of " the insolence 
 of office," "the law's delay": what are they to a tight 
 boot? And "the proud man's contumely," or "the pang 
 of despised love " : can it compare with the agony inflicted 
 by a half-dozen corns? Truly Hamlet chose petty griev- 
 ances to justify suicide, compared with the misery inflicted 
 by bungling cobblers. It is told in Catholic churches that 
 Saint Dunstan made Satan roar by holding him by the nose 
 with red-hot pincers ; had the hoi}' saint lived in our da}', 
 he would have wedged his adversary's foot into a tight 
 boot, as Prospero threatened to wedge Ariel into a cleft 
 
 tree : 
 
 " I will rend an oak, 
 And peg tliee in his knotty entrails, till 
 Thou hast howled away twelve winters/' 
 
 The literature^ of boots would fill a volume. One of 
 Abraham Lincoln's best stories was a boot-story. It was 
 about a big Hoosier who went to Washington during the 
 
294 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 war, and called on a street-arab for " a shine." Looking 
 at the tremendous boots before him, the boy called out to a 
 brother " shiner " across the street : " Come over and help, 
 Jimmy ; I've got an army contract. 1 " Dr. Holmes, in his 
 " Urania," has treated of the choice of boots with his usual 
 felicity and good sense : - 
 
 " Three pairs of boots one pair of feet demands, 
 If polished daily by the owner's hands : 
 If the dark menial's visit save from this, 
 Have twice the number, for he '11 sometimes miss. 
 One pair for critics of the nicer sex, 
 Close in the instep's clinging circumflex, 
 Long, narrow, light ; the Gallic boot of love, 
 A kind of cross between a boot and glove. 
 But not to tread on everlasting thorns, 
 And sow in suffering what is reaped in corns, 
 Compact, but easy, strong, substantial, square, 
 Let native art compile the medium pair. 
 The third remains ; and let your tasteful skill 
 Here show some relics of affection still. 
 Let no stiff cowhide, reeking from the tan, 
 No rough caoutchouc, no deformed brogan, 
 Disgrace the tapering outline of your feet, 
 Though yellow torrents gurgle through the street ; 
 But the patched calf-skin arm against the flood, 
 In neat, light shoes, impervious to the mud." 
 
THE TRICKS OF TYPES. 
 
 Foul murder hath been done, lo! here's the proof I OLD PLAY. 
 
 A MONG the petty vexations of a literary man's life, 
 * *- the flea-bites of his woes, which sometimes irritate 
 more than graver troubles, not the least annoying is the 
 ridiculous figure he is made to present through errors of the 
 press. Ignorance, stupidity, and affectations which seem 
 to be the offspring of the most ineffable conceit are fathered 
 upon him b} 7 the freaks of types. A circumstance which pe- 
 culiarly aggravates the vexation in such cases is that mis- 
 prints fall, not upon indifferent words or passages, but with 
 marvellous certainty upon the tenderest parts of one's writ- 
 ing, just where there is a vital meaning to be destroyed. 
 Write a sentence which }'ou foolishly think to be unusually 
 fine, and the printer's devil, as if he w'ere some dogging fiend 
 or secret enemy trying to " feed fat an ancient grudge," is 
 sure to mangle, if not to murder it outright, in a way that 
 will make your flesh creep. Verbal felicities and rhetorical 
 bravuras that have cost }'ou perhaps da}*s of labor ; wit- 
 ticisms over which, anticipating the sensation they must 
 create, you have chuckled in an ecstas} 7 of delight, disap- 
 pear altogether in print, or are converted into something 
 to which the}' are as unlike as a " hawk to a hernshaw." 
 Boileau's witty complaint, in his address to Moliere, de- 
 scribes, with a slight alteration, your luckless fate, 
 
296 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 "Souvent j'ai beau rever du matin jusqu'au soir ; 
 Quand je veux dire ' blanc,' la quinteuse dit ' noir ; ' 
 Si je pense exprimer un auteur sans dcfaut, 
 La raison dit Virgile, et la rime Quinault." 
 
 It has often surprised those who have been the victims 
 of typographical errors that amid the infinite combinations 
 of types there are no lucky blunders in the author's favor, 
 turning cacophony into euphony, turgidity into sublimity, 
 and nonsense into sense. It is true that once in a century 
 a thought is actually improved by a typographical blunder. 
 It is told, for example, of Malherbc that when in his famous 
 epistle to Du Perrier, whose daughter's name was Rosette, 
 he had written, " Et Rosette a vecu ce que vivent les roses " 
 (And Rosette has lived as the roses live), the printer, 
 who found the manuscript difficult to read, put " Roselle " 
 instead of " Rosette." Malherbe, in reading the proof, was 
 struck by the change, and re- wrote his verse as follows : 
 " Et Rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses, 1'espece d'un 
 matin " (And a rose, she has lived as the roses live, the space 
 of a morning). But cases like these are exceedingly rare. 
 
 There are some printers who appear to have an uncon- 
 querable repugnance to "following copy." Like all men 
 of original genius, they hate to tread the path which 
 another has marked out, to be ' "cabined, cribbed, con- 
 fined " by the shackles which a writer has imposed ; and in 
 vain will you seek to fortify yourself against any daring im- 
 provement of your manuscript at their hands, though you 
 should make your handwriting as legible as block- letter. 
 There are other sons of Faust who make it an invariable 
 rule to stick to copy (or what they think is copy), into 
 whatever absurdities, contradictions, or nonsense it may 
 plunge them. No matter how cramped, crooked, or obscure 
 
THE TRICKS OF TYPES. 297 
 
 3~our chirograph}', though every line of your manuscript 
 should present only " a swell-mob of bad characters," out- 
 Choateing Choate's hieroglyphics, the most obvious and 
 literal interpretation, however ridiculous, is rigidly adopted. 
 There is still another class of " typos " who do better with 
 bad manuscript than with good. Like a great general or a 
 famous beauty, they do not care for too easy a conquest. 
 Give them a difficulty to overcome, and they summon all 
 their wits to contend with it ; make their path easy, and 
 they walk into bogs and quagmires. The press, in truth, 
 is a sort Of half-reasoning animal, or species of lunatic, 
 which sometimes with a sort of inspired felicity divines in- 
 stantly the meaning of pot-hooks more puzzling than the 
 hieroglyphics on a Chinese tea-chest ; while at other times, 
 when all is as clear as rock-water, it commits the most 
 asinine blunders, and turns the most lucid composition 
 into " confusion worse confounded." 
 
 A collection of errors of the malignant type would be one 
 of the most entertaining chapters in the curiosities of litera- 
 ture. Some 3'ears ago the London " Times," in speaking 
 of a discussion before the council of ministers when Lord 
 Brougham was Chancellor, stated that " the chandelier had 
 thrown an extraordina T light on the question." In the 
 London u Christian World," in 1883, a writer, referring to 
 an address at Christ Church by the Rev. Theodore Hookes, 
 represents him as saying that some of the clergy had gone 
 back " to the black lie [tie] of their boj'hood." In one of 
 the editions of Davidson's "Popular English Grammar" 
 the principal parts of the verb " to chide" were given as 
 follows: "Present infinitive, to chide; past finite, I 
 chid; past infinitive, to have children." In the London 
 "Courier," some fifty years ago, his Majestj' George IV. 
 
298 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 was said to have a fit of the goat at Brighton. Another 
 journal advertised a sermon by a celebrated divine on the 
 " Immorality of the Soul," and also the " Lies of the 
 Poets," a work, no doubt, of man}' volumes. The Lon- 
 don "Globe" once gave an extract from the Registrar- 
 General's return, in which it was stated that the inhabitants 
 of London were suffering at that time " from a high rate 
 of morality" A letter more or a letter less makes strange 
 havoc of a sentence. Earl}' in the French Revolution the 
 Abbe Sieves, in correcting the proof-sheets of a pamphlet 
 in defence of his political conduct, read : "I have abjured 
 the republic," a misprint for adjured. "Wretch!" he 
 cried to the printer, "do you wish to send me to the 
 guillotine?" What is treason, once asked a wag, but 
 reason to a t, which t an accident of the press may dis- 
 place with most awkward effect. On the other hand, a 
 printer who omitted the first letter of Mr. Caswell's name 
 might have pleaded that it was as well without the C. 
 Some years ago an eminent lecturer on "Peace" intro- 
 duced into his discourse a familiar line from a Latin 
 poet, 
 
 " Est deus in nobis, et illo agitante incalescimus," 
 
 which has been translated : "There is a divinity within us, 
 and when he awakens us we grow inspired." In the printed 
 copy of the discourse the letter u in deus was set upside 
 down, so that the quotation read, 
 
 " Est dens in nobis, et illo agitante incalescimus," 
 
 which means : " There is a tooth within us, and when that 
 jumps, we get hot," or, more freely, " we jump too." A 
 hardly less ludicrous effect was produced by the change of 
 a letter in an article in the " Revue des Deux Mondes." 
 
THE TRICKS OF TYPES. 299 
 
 The writer, being at Venice, quoted the first line of the fourth 
 canto of Byron's " Childe Harold," which the printer ren- 
 dered thus : 
 
 " J stood at Venice on the Bridge of Sighs." 
 
 The author of " Reminiscences of an Old Bohemian" 
 tells of a ludicrous typographical error that occurred in the 
 Paris " Constitutional " in the time of Louis Philippe. One 
 morning there appeared in that paper the following startling 
 paragraph: '"His Majesty the king received M. Thiers 
 yesterday at the Tuileries, and charged him with the for- 
 mation of a new cabinet. The distinguished statesman 
 hastened to reply to the king : 4 1 have only one regret, 
 which is that I cannot wring your neck like a turkey's.' " A 
 few lines lower down there was another paragraph running 
 to the following effect: " The efforts of justice have been 
 promptly crowned with success. The murderer of the Rue 
 du Pot-de-fer has been arrested in a house of ill-fame. Led 
 at once before the Judge of Instruction, the wretch had the 
 hardihood to address that magistrate in terms of coarse in- 
 sult, winding up with the following words, which amply 
 show that there remains not a spark of conscience or right 
 feeling in this hardened soul : ' God and man are my wit- 
 nesses that I have never had any other ambition than to 
 serve your august person and my country loyally, to the 
 best of my ability/ " The printer had just innocently man- 
 aged to interchange the two addresses. Laughable as the 
 joke was, it derived additional point from the universal 
 knowledge that there was little love lost between the king 
 and the minister. 
 
 In a volume of American Chaneeiy Reports it is said to 
 be decided that carpenters (co-partners) are liable for one 
 
300 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 another's debts. In a recent catalogue of books to be sold 
 by auction in Boston, we find the following amusing 
 blunder : 
 
 " 78. BENTHAM, Jeremy. Thirty Years in the U. S. Senate. 
 Vol. I. Portrait. 8, cloth" 
 
 Mistakes in punctuation, such as the omission or misplac- 
 ing of a comma, sometimes greatly change the sense of a 
 passage ; as when a compositor, probably an old bachelor, 
 in setting up the toast, "Woman, without her, man would 
 be a savage," put the comma in the wrong place, and made 
 the sentence read, "Woman, without her man, would be a 
 savage." Another compositor is said to have punctuated a 
 well-known proverb of Solomon thus : " The wicked flee, 
 when no man pursueth the righteous, is bold as a lion." 
 
 Some 3'ears ago an editor at the South, wishing to con- 
 gratulate General Pillow, after his return from Mexico, as 
 a battle-scarred veteran, was made by the types to char- 
 acterize him as u a battle-scared veteran." The indignant 
 general, rushing into the editorial sanctum, demanded an 
 explanation, which was given, and a correction promised 
 in the next day's paper. Judge of the editor's feelings on 
 the morrow, when, as if to heap horrors upon horror's head, 
 he found the general styled, in the revised paragraph, " that 
 bottle-scarred veteran " ! This was less excusable than the 
 blunder of an English journal which stated that the Russian 
 General Backinoffkowsky was "found dead with a long 
 word in his mouth ;" for no compositor could be blamed for 
 leaving out a letter in a sentence after setting up such a 
 name correctly. Many years ago, in an article on the sub- 
 ject of literature for children, we wrote: " It is true, they 
 will devour the most indigestible pabulum, for want of 
 
THE TRICKS OF TYPES. 301 
 
 better." The last word of this sentence was transformed 
 b}* the typographical imp into butter. Erasmus once dedi- 
 cated a book to the Queen of Hungaiy, and complained 
 bitterly that the rascal of a printer had lost him his gratuity 
 b}' printing two successive words as one, and thus so chang- 
 ing the meaning as to convert a compliment into an insult. 
 An edition of the Bible printed at the Clarendon Press in 
 1617 is known as the " Vinegar Bible," because, in the title 
 of the twentieth chapter of Luke, the Parable of the Vine- 
 yard is printed u Parable of the Vinegar." Perhaps the most 
 fearful error of the press that ever occurred was caused by 
 the letter c dropping out of the following passage in " a 
 form " of the Book of Common Prayer: " We shall all be 
 changed in the twinkling of an eye." When the book 
 appeared, the passage, to the horror of the devout reader, 
 was thus printed : " We shall all be hanged in the twink- 
 ling of an eye." Some }*ears ago the editor of the Port- 
 land (Me.) "Argus" undertook to compliment an eminent 
 citizen as " a noble old burgher, proudly loving his native 
 State ; " but the neatly turned compliment came from the 
 compositor's hands " a nobby old burglar, prowling round 
 in a naked state." This is almost matched b} T a telegraphic 
 blunder of which the Rev. Joseph Cooke tells. Not long ago 
 Ernest Renan had occasion to telegraph across the English 
 Channel on the subject of a proposed lecture by him in 
 Westminster Abbey. The subject, as written by him, was 
 " The Influence of Rome on the Formation of Christianity." 
 It was announced in England as " The Influence of Rum on 
 the Digestion of Humanity " ! In the second volume of his 
 " History of the United States," Mr. McMasters speaks of 
 "the Spartan bard in the pass of Thermopylae." 
 Among the most ludicrous misprints are those that some- 
 
302 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 times occur in works of sentiment ; as where the authoress 
 of a French novel wound up a brilliant rhapsody on love 
 with the sentence: "Pour bien connaitre ramour, il faut 
 sortir de soi " (To know truly what love is, we must go out 
 of ourselves) ; which the printer metamorphosed into the 
 equivocal phrase : " Pour bien connaitre 1'amour, il faut 
 sortir de soir " (To know truly what love is, we must go out 
 o' nights) ! This is more atrocious than " the Sybil burning 
 her rooks " an anti- classical! ty which would have almost 
 driven Scaliger mad. The name of Scaliger reminds us of 
 the misprints which sometimes occur in classical works, and 
 which afford infinite amusement to the scholar by the way 
 in which the^y excruciate the wits of commentators. Critic 
 after critic racks his brain and bites his nails to the quick in 
 attempts to elucidate a passage ; a prodigious array of learn- 
 ing is brought to bear upon it, and endless explanations, 
 many of them exceedingly plausible, are given : when lo ! 
 it turns out, to the confusion of pedantry, that the vexed 
 phrase was a blunder of the tj~pes. Thus in a passage in 
 nearl}' if not quite all the editions of Pausanias, the Sybil 
 declares that her mother was a goddess, but her father 
 an eater of whales, Trarpo? Se /o7To<ayoio, a phrase which 
 elicited from the commentators many ingenious explanations. 
 Dindorf saw that it was a misprint, and transformed it into 
 % IK o-iTo^ayoto, " an eater of bread," instead of " an eater 
 of whales," "bread-eater " being the obvious periphrasis 
 for "mortal." 
 
 It is a curious fact that typographical errors are among 
 the characteristics that recommend a book to book-hunters. 
 The celebrated Elzevir " Caesar" of 1635 is known by the 
 circumstance that the number of the 149th page is mis- 
 printed 153. All that lack this distinction are counterfeits. 
 
THE TRICKS OF TYPES. 303 
 
 This rare and costh< volume offered a temptation to fraudu- 
 lent imitators, who, "as if by a providential arrangement 
 for their detection, lapsed into accuracy at the critical fig- 
 ure." John Hill Burton, in his " Book-Hunter," tells of a 
 typographical mishap that befell a solid scholar who never 
 missed a date nor left out a word in copying a title-page, 
 nor ever ended a sentence with a monosyllable. He had 
 stated that Theodore Beza, or some contemporary of his, 
 went to sea in a Candian vessel. The statement at the 
 last moment, when the sheet was going through the press, 
 caught the eye of an intelligent and judicious corrector, 
 more conversant with shipping-lists than with the literature 
 of the sixteenth century, who saw clearly what had been 
 meant, and took upon himself, like a man who hates all pot- 
 tering nonsense, to make the necessary correction without 
 consulting the author. The result was that people read 
 with some surprise, under the authority of the paragon of 
 accuracy, that Theodore Beza had gone to sea in a Cana- 
 dian vessel ! It has been truly said that the pearls of culti- 
 vated minds are cast in vain before dull understandings. 
 On the admission of the Cardinal Dubois into the French 
 Academy, Fontenelle, referring to his constant intercourse 
 with the young king Louis XV., observed, with more grace 
 than truth: "It is known that in your daily conversation 
 with him yQu left nothing untried to render yourself use- 
 less." A Dutch publisher imagined that useless must be 
 an error of the press, and substituted useful. Leigh Hunt 
 has suffered sorely from errors of the press, especiall}' be- 
 cause his marked peculiarities shut out the charitable sup- 
 position of a possible mistake of the printer. A misprint of 
 a line of Hunt's, " the moon is at her silvertys " (silverest), 
 was ridiculed as a Huntism, and Laman Blanchard even 
 
304 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 warmly defended it. In one of the editions of " Men of 
 the Time," an English annual, some lines dropped out of 
 Robert Owen's biography into that of the Bishop of Oxford, 
 which immediately followed it. The article upon the eccle- 
 siastical magnate began, therefore, as follows: " Oxford, 
 the right reverend Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of, was born 
 in 1805. A more kind-hearted and truly benevolent man 
 does not exist. A sceptic as regards religious revela- 
 tion, he is nevertheless an out-and-out believer in spirit- 
 movements." 
 
 It is amusing to note the different degrees of sensitive- 
 ness to typographical errors manifested by a }'oung writer 
 and by a veteran of the press. The neophyte can never 
 forgive the butchery, as he calls it, of his fine sentences, 
 the dear "begotten of his mind," which for da}*s and 
 nights he has been licking into shape. The bare misplac- 
 ing of a comma distresses him keenly ; the change of an 
 entire word makes him shudder ; and the omission of a sen- 
 tence almost throws him into convulsions. Not so with the 
 " old stager." Having, in the course of years, been made 
 to father some of the most incredible forms of nonsense, he 
 gets as used to such experiences as eels to being skinned ; 
 and though now and then some preternaturally frightful 
 blunder gives him a twinge or two, yet he hardly bites his 
 lips even when the printer ruins his sublimest effusion by 
 turning, as Hood says, all his roses into noses, his angels 
 into angles, and his happiness into pappiness. 
 
CAUSES OF DIVORCE. 
 
 r I "HE frequency witli which divorces are sought and 
 *- granted in this country is acknowledged to be one of 
 the ugliest features of the times. A careful examination of 
 the statistics of divorce, made in 1878, showed that the 
 ratio of divorces to marriages in that year was among Pro- 
 testants, 1 to 15 in Massachusetts, 1 to 13 in Vermont, 1 
 to 9 in Rhode Island, and 1 in less than 8 in Connecticut, 
 an average of 1 to 11.7 for the four States together. 
 What are the causes of this? Considering the haste with 
 which most persons rush into matrimony, it is not strange 
 that there should be occasional tiffs, disagreements, and 
 possibly quarrels ; and some moralists have even regarded 
 these showers and thunder-storms as necessary to clear 
 away the noxious vapors from the hymeneal sky, and to 
 prevent wedded life from stagnating, or being smothered in 
 its own sweetness, like a bee stifled in honey. No feeling, 
 it is argued, is so short-lived as admiration. A little 
 change of temper, it is held, is absolutely necessary to give 
 even the most charming woman that variety which prevents 
 her from being regarded with indifference, and perhaps dis- 
 gust. Caprice is the very salt of gallantly, that prevents it 
 from corrupting ; jealousies, piques, and reconciliations, if 
 not the diet, are at least the exercise, of love. Dr. Paley 
 could conceive of nothing more insipid than man and wife 
 living together thirty years without a single quarrel. 
 
 20 
 
806 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 Be this as it ma}', we cannot see in the ordinary quarrels, 
 or in the lack of congeniality, real or fancied, of married 
 persons of which we hear so much in these days a 
 good ground for divorce. There are two mistakes which 
 almost all persons who are unhappy in their conjugal life 
 are apt to make on this subject. One is the belief that 
 souls were paired when sent into this world, and exactty 
 fitted to each other, but that by some jugglery the} T have 
 been separated, and so confused that no one can find its 
 mate ; hence all the janglings of the married state. Many, 
 even educated, persons believe in this fatalism, and are 
 confident that had they found their u affinities," they would 
 have experienced nothing but bliss in the married state. 
 They forget that every human being has a double nature, 
 a selfish nature to be subdued, as well as an angelic to be 
 developed ; and that both of these ends are to be accom- 
 plished only by constant watching and the most persistent 
 self-denial. When two such imperfect beings are brought 
 into the closest intimacy, it will be a miracle if their points 
 of moral repulsion do not begin speedily to appear. If the 
 two are essentially selfish, and are fully determined to make 
 no concessions, the jagged points of their natures will grow 
 more and more obtrusive and aggressive, till utter aliena- 
 tion ensues. At first perhaps they will onty wish to look 
 at the moon through separate windows ; but soon, as Hood 
 sa}*s, they will want separate moons to look at ; and finally 
 there will be no moon at all, for their charming illusions 
 will have vanished, and the silver light will have gone out 
 in darkness. If, on the other hand, the} 7 overcome their 
 natural selfishness, and live for each other ; if the}' study 
 each other's weak points, as skaters look for the weak parts 
 of the ice in order to keep clear of them ; and above all, 
 
CAUSES OF D1VOHCE. 307 
 
 if they regard the last word as " the most dangerous of in- 
 fernal machines," then the jagged points of their natures 
 will wear off; they will cease to be two beings, odd halves 
 of humanity, paired, not matched; or, if two, will be 
 
 " Two like the brain, whose halves ne'er think apart, 
 But beat and tremble to one throbbing heart." 
 
 Another mistake regarding marriage is that of fancying 
 that it can yield the highest happiness only when it is a 
 union of congenial tastes. The very opposite is true. 
 What man or woman, unless the vainest of peacocks, wants 
 in a life-long companion a mere duplicate or repetition of 
 him or herself? Every sensible man seeks in part by mar- 
 riage to supplement his own imperfect nature, to reined}' 
 his own defects. The parties must be very two before they 
 can be very one. It has been happily said that u ideal 
 men want practical wives ; ideal wives want practical men : 
 and then, the earth-side and the heaven-side of life being 
 put together, it rounds to a glorious completeness." As 
 Swedenborg says, they must be conjoined, not adjoined ; 
 for though it is the theory of marriage that man and wife 
 are one, it is not the ceremon} r of marriage that makes 
 them so. They were one before, else, to use the words of 
 Milton, "all the ecclesiastical glue that liturgy or laymen 
 can compound, cannot solder up two such incongruous na- 
 tures into the one flesh of a true, beseeming marriage." 
 
 If these remarks are true, it is evident that divorces 
 should not be granted simply because the parties do not 
 always live happily together, or have found wedlock to be 
 something else than a long honeymoon. How long will 
 the marriage-tie retain its sacreclness if it may be loosened 
 on the first growth of a new inclination, the first feeling 
 
308 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 of satiety, the first discover}- of a difference in taste or 
 temper? Separations should be granted only in cases of 
 great and irremediable hardship, and not at the demand 
 of caprice, or because wedlock is found to have its little 
 disappointments. No doubt cases of such hardship now 
 and then actually exist where to the public they are not 
 apparent. When Paulus Emilius was asked why he wished 
 to put away his wife for no visible reason, " This shoe," he 
 replied, holding it out on his foot, "is a neat shoe, a new 
 shoe ; and yet none of you know where it wrings me." But 
 admitting that occasionally there are separations of man 
 and wife for reasons that are good but not evident, yet 
 we are sure that nothing can be more trivial than the 
 causes of nearly all the quarrels which end in applications 
 for divorce. Nine tenths of them grow out of the most 
 insignificant beginnings. A little nervous excitement, fol- 
 lowed by a few tears and 03- a resolution to have the last 
 word ; trifling neglects, repeated again and again till they 
 end in a decided aversion, these, with the nameless negli- 
 gences that spoil the beaut}' of association, are the kind and 
 amount of feeling and treatment that, in most cases, soon 
 produce a confirmed alienation of parties who, by a little 
 concession and forbearance, might have lived happily to- 
 gether ; turning all the currents of affection from their 
 course, and leaving nothing but a barren track, along 
 which the skeleton of a dead affection stalks alone. It 
 is absurd to suppose that the miser\ T of such persons results 
 from their being " mismated." Where men and women 
 are essentially selfish and exacting, and think of happiness 
 for themselves as the chief end of marriage, there is no 
 possible "mating" that could make their joint life a 
 happy one. It is not their so-called and fancied " incorn- 
 
CAUSES OF DIVORCE. 309 
 
 patibilitv," or uncongeniality which causes their unhappi- 
 ness, but their lack of patience, humility, self-control, and 
 consideration for others, qualities without which com- 
 panionship is impossible, and life unendurable in any 
 relation whatever. 
 
 tk He that marries," says Heine, " is like the Doge who 
 was wedded to the Adriatic. He knows not what there is 
 in what he marries ; mayhap treasures and pearls, mayhap 
 monsters and tempests, await him." True ; but in ninety- 
 nine cases out of a hundred it is for the married man him- 
 self to determine whether " treasures " or '* tempests " are 
 permanently to characterize his life. It has been well said 
 that the true blessedness of souls is not insured by a bare 
 exchange of plighted faith. It comes through and after 
 man}* a self-sacrifice, many a crucifixion of the will, many a 
 scourging of the pride, vanity, and selfishness of the heart. 
 Home is a school in which husband and wife are to learn 
 tlioughtfulness, self-forgetfulness, and forbearance, getting 
 rid of their angularities, harmonizing their differences, and 
 becoming gradually what they supposed each other to be 
 when they were outwardly united, one in thought, 83*111- 
 pathy, and life. Probably not one couple in twenty ever 
 lived man}* years together without periods of struggle, 
 without hours, days, and even weeks, when all their firm- 
 ness was demanded, all their self-denial, all their good 
 sense, to induce them to bear and forbear, till mutual con- 
 cession became a habit, and a profound affection was felt. 
 It is said that Napoleon used to keep his letters unopened 
 for a fortnight, and then found that most of them required 
 no answer. It is not improbable that many dissatisfied 
 husbands and wives, if the}* would wait a }*ear or two before 
 seeking to be delivered from their troubles by a divorce, 
 
310 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 would find that there is nothing to be delivered from but 
 their own faults of temper. 
 
 To weaken the bonds of society by granting divorces in 
 cases of supposed incompatibility of temper would be to 
 destroy that confidence between man and wife which is the 
 chief guarantee of their happiness. At the prospect of an 
 easy separation, trivial quarrels, which they now soon forget 
 under the pressure of necessity, would flame up into deadly 
 and lasting hatred. The wife, fearful of a divorce, would 
 intrigue against her husband's interest to secure for her- 
 self a separate maintenance in the day of trouble ; the 
 rights of children would be mixed up with the disputes of 
 parents ; the families of both parties would be embroiled ; 
 and society would reach at last the condition of Rome as 
 described by Seneca, when women computed their ages by 
 the number of their husbands instead of by the years they 
 had lived. Let the example of that city, where the marriage- 
 tie could be loosed by mutual agreement, be a warning to 
 Americans and to American legislators. In the early days 
 of the Republic Roman virtue frowned upon divorce when it 
 was sought for insufficient reasons, and triumphed over the 
 inclinations of those who wished to separate. According 
 to Plutarch it was two hundred and thirty, according to 
 other authorities it was two hundred and fifty, years before 
 a divorce was known in Rome. But in the last period of 
 the Republic divorce prevailed so generally as to be the 
 rule, and not the exception ; marriage was thoughtlessly 
 entered upon, and dissolved at pleasure. The slightest 
 diminution of affection, the merest shadow of distrust, or 
 even the desire of novelty, and the inclination of caprice, 
 were deemed ample warrant for putting away a wife. Sulla, 
 Caesar, Pompey, Cicero, and Antony did not scruple to do 
 
CAUSES OF DIVORCE. 311 
 
 this, and Augustus followed their example. Terentia, from 
 whom Cicero was divorced after a long union, was after- 
 ward married successively to Sallust the historian, Messala 
 Corvinus, and Vibius Rufus. A still greater looseness pre- 
 vailed in Rome during its decline. Jerome speaks of wit- 
 nessing the funeral of a woman who was followed by her 
 twenty-second husband to the grave, she having been his 
 twenty-first wife. Judging by the slender hold which the 
 most sacred ties have upon men's consciences, we are trav- 
 elling fast in the same direction, and only a revolution in 
 public morals can save us. Experience has shown that it 
 is not upon courts or legislatures that we must rely, for 
 41 Bobissimus the elect is only the superlative of Bobus the 
 elector ; " and, besides, the evil is beyond the reach of 
 judges and legislators. Its roots are to be found in the 
 growing egoism, selfishness, luxury, and scepticism of the 
 age, in the pride of wealth, in a wretched system of do- 
 mestic training, and in a contempt for those moral ties 
 without which society cannot exist. 
 
 There is one aspect of this subject which urgently needs 
 the attention of our legislators. There is probabty no other 
 subject upon which the laws of the different States are so 
 at variance as upon divorce. In England till about thirty 
 3'ears ago it was only in very rare cases, at enormous ex- 
 pense, b} r an act of Parliament, that a divorce could be 
 obtained. In the State of South Carolina up to a recent 
 period a divorce had never been granted in a single in- 
 stance, even under the most urgent circumstances. But 
 the statutes and decisions of the other States are completely 
 at loggerheads. In some of the States it is impossible to 
 tell what is and what is not a legal marriage. In many 
 cases children may be legitimate in one State and illegiti- 
 
312 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 mate in another, and parties liable to the penitentiary for 
 adultery in one State who are living in lawful wedlock in the 
 State adjoining. Indeed, it is said that were the boundaries 
 of certain States coterminous, the husband, if he wished to 
 indulge in the luxury of two wives without going to Utah, 
 might build a house with a wing in each of the two States, 
 and live with one wife a week in one State, and then with 
 his other wife a week in the other State ; but should his two 
 partners, not being well versed in law or geography, ex- 
 change houses for a moment, both might be arrested as 
 prostitutes, and the husband held liable in both States as a 
 bigamist. 
 
ILLUSIONS ABOUT THE PAST. 
 
 Past and to come seem best; things present, worst. SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 TT 7IIENCE comes that feeling toward the past which 
 * * leads men to look back with tenderness, and even 
 regret, upon things which when present were objects of 
 dread or dislike? Just as a landscape which is tame and 
 bald, even disagreeable in many of its aspects, when we 
 are journeying through it, looks beautiful in the blue dis- 
 tance, so things which were repulsive when present, wear an 
 attractive aspect if viewed through the lapse of years. A 
 kinsman or acquaintance who was pestilent when living, 
 will when dead be thought of not only without anger, but 
 even with kindly feelings. Even upon Nero's grave flowers 
 were strewed, and the most hated monarch that ever lost 
 a crown l\y tyrann} r and folly did not lack friends to cherish 
 his memor}* in secret amid the general execration. As 
 with individuals, so with institutions and customs : time 
 weaves a web of romance about many which were hated 
 during their existence, and as soon as they have retired 
 into " the long-withdrawing vale of history " they are ideal- 
 ized and regretted. By a cunning moral chemistry which 
 converts all unpleasant experiences into pleasant subjects 
 of reflection, institutions which broke the hearts of men 
 customs, superstitions, and modes of living which sprang 
 from gross ignorance and filled men's lives with misery 
 
314 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 are transformed into objects of interest, just as ivy and 
 time 
 
 " Have softened with beauty many a tower 
 
 Which in its days of hardihood and strength 
 
 Was only terrible." 
 
 Illustrations of this will suggest themselves to every 
 reader. How much we find in English literature in praise 
 of bluff King Hal ! Because he was big, burly, and hand- 
 some, a beef-eating, beer- drinking, typical John Bull, - 
 and defied the Pope, he is thought of with kindly feelings ; 
 though eveiy student of histoiy knows that he was as brutal 
 and selfish a tyrant as ever disgraced a crown. How many 
 persons do 3*011 suppose, reader, suffered death b}* the hands 
 of the executioner during the reign of the "bluff" king? 
 Not fewer, according to Macaula}*, than seventh-two thou- 
 sand ; and among the victims of his blood-thirsty cruelt}* were 
 some of the noblest Englishmen that ever lived, men the 
 latchet of whose shoes he was not worth}* to unloose. One 
 of these victims was the noble and high-minded Sir Thomas 
 More, who, because his conscience forbade him to take the 
 oath relating to the ecclesiastical supremacy of the king, 
 was beheaded. So, because he had a sad, interesting face, 
 and wore a picturesque Vandyke costume, Charles I. is 
 pitied and regretted as a blessed martyr, the simple fact 
 being that he was a martyr to his own untruth and lack 
 of sincerity. Truly did Henry G rattan say that "two 
 artists have contributed not a little to the popularity of 
 Charles I., Vandyke and the headsman." Tonnage and 
 poundage, ship-mone}*, forced loans, continual violations 
 of his most solemn engagements, the collective misery of 
 the English people, all are forgotten, simply because he 
 was a king, and his end appalling, like the fifth act of a 
 
ILLUSIONS ABOUT THE PAST. 315 
 
 drama. So, too, with Charles II., "the Merry Monarch," 
 the most profligate of kings, and Louis XIV. of France. 
 Even those daring navigators Sir Walter Raleigh, Drake, 
 Hawkins, and other fine old Englishmen who founded the 
 British empire on the seas, will not bear a close, not to say 
 a microscopic, examination. A writer in a Conservative 
 London journal admits that if we strip them of their swag- 
 ger, gallantry, and doublets, we shall find them to be little 
 better than pirates and highwa3*men, who sliced men's 
 throats and pocketed other men's money in open defiance 
 of all laws of honor and morality. 
 
 If we go back some centuries farther, to the reign of 
 Henry II., we find things still worse. How rude were the 
 manners of that age may be judged from the fact that the 
 finest gentlemen and the most lettered clerks lived as 
 plainly, spoke as coarsely, treated each other as roughly, as 
 only the roughest of English boors would do to-day. Henry 
 II. swore worse than any trooper, and did not hesitate at the 
 Chancellor's banquet to jump over the table to seat himself 
 by Becket's side. When Fulk Fitz-Warine was playing 
 chess with Prince John, the Prince broke his head with the 
 chess-board, and Fulk gave him a blow that nearly killed 
 him. Bishops scolded, gibed, and threatened each other 
 like modern fishwives. The archbishop died with a foul 
 word on his lips. In a fight for precedence, one bishop 
 would plump down upon the lap of another ; and once, in 
 a playful tussle for Becket's cloak, Heniy and his friend 
 nearty pulled each other off their horses. 
 
 The condition of the people and the manner of living in 
 " the good old times " are invested with an amount of ro- 
 mance and idj'llic association which the facts not only do 
 not justify, but show to be in glaring contrast to the truth. 
 
316 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 In Henr}* II. 's time the very^ highest persons in England 
 were glad to drink beer only, and to eat fat pork without 
 change for months together. Under their gorgeous apparel 
 no clean white linen, but only coarse wool, dirt}* from long 
 wear, was to be found. Henn-'s couch of state was merely 
 a mattress stuffed with ha} T or straw. For one who has 
 been charmed by " Ivanhoe " and other such romances it 
 is hard to believe that the glamour thrown over those times 
 is a sham ; that the chivalry, the gallantr3 T , and the hos- 
 pitality which we have so admired were more than coun- 
 terbalanced by the misery, the semi-barbarism, the utter 
 absence of comfort, and even decency. But such was the 
 fact. Even the poetry investing the iv}~-grown castle and 
 the picturesque old Elizabethan mansions of a later cen- 
 tur}' is rudely dispelled when we consider what the domestic 
 life in those mansions was. In none of them was there a 
 carpet, a bathing-tub, a contrivance for ventilation or for 
 sewerage, without which even the poorest man's cottage 
 would now be deemed unfit for habitation ; and in some 
 there was not even a chimney. Salt beef and strong ale 
 constituted the chief part of even Queen Elizabeth's break- 
 fast, and similar refreshments were served to her in bed for 
 supper. The nobles and dames ate with their fingers, gen- 
 eralty in couples, out of one trencher, at a bare table. 
 The ''most godly queen" interlarded her discourse with 
 oaths ; she boxed the ears of one courtier, and spat upon 
 the fringed mantle of another. She delighted in bull-bait- 
 ings and bear-baitings, and prized the nobler sports of the 
 field less for the skill and excitement than for the butchery. 
 " The stag, hunted down by man and beast, was brought to 
 receive its death-blow," says the "Quarterly Review," 
 "from a hand which might more gracefully have been raised 
 
ILLUSIONS ABOUT THE PAST. 317 
 
 to command its deliverance. She went to bear a sermon at 
 St. Maiy's Spital, two white bears following in a cart, 
 we need not say for what purpose they were destined after 
 the discourse." 
 
 The public roads in those days were deeply rutted tracks, 
 which in bad weather were almost impassable ; and most 
 of them were so infested b}' bandits and robbers that trav- 
 ellers had to go armed. Public conveyances and private 
 carriages were alike attacked. In the reign of George I. 
 handbills were stuck up at the gates of many known rich 
 men in London, forbidding an}' of them, on pain of death, 
 to travel from town without a watch, or with less than ten 
 guineas of money. Horace Walpole complained, only a 
 little over a hundred years ago, that he could not stir a mile 
 from his house without one or two servants armed with a 
 blunderbuss. The coaches in Elizabeth's time were hardly 
 more than carts without springs ; and even a century later 
 the public vehicles were so wretched that they were known 
 as " hell-carts." Rural England, instead of being the Ar- 
 cadia which poets and romancers have represented it, with 
 ruddy squires, contented swains, and gentle damsels, was 
 prosaic and unromantic to the last degree. If we come 
 down to the eighteenth centur}', we find that it was an age 
 of drunkenness, cock-fighting, ratting, duelling, gambling, 
 in short, of all those vices which are now deemed most 
 disgraceful to society. London was full of fashionable 
 gaming " hells," White's, Watier's, Brooke's, Graham's, 
 the Union, the Cocoa- tree, Crockford's, etc., where 
 dukes, lords, and fashionable tk gentlemen" staked and 
 won or lost thousands of pounds in a night. One man, 
 known as le Wellington des joueurs, lost t went}'- three 
 thousand pounds at a sitting, which began at midnight, and 
 
318 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 ended at seven the next evening. He and three other 
 noblemen lost in play, at different times, sums estimated at 
 not less than a hundred thousand pounds apiece. The 
 number of families beggared by the play at Crockford's 
 alone may be judged of by the fact that he retired from his 
 business a millionnaire. 
 
 Political elections in the last century were scenes of 
 bacchanalian frenzy, debaucheiy, and corruption. Riots 
 were frequent in all the towns where party spirit raged. 
 Heads were broken, polling-booths were burned, and part- 
 isans fought from street to street like hostile armies on a 
 battle-field. The money spent in electioneering was enor- 
 mous. Thomas, Marquis of Wharton, who died in 1815, is 
 said to have spent in this way eighty thousand pounds. In 
 the hot contest in 1807 which ended in Wilberforce's election 
 for Yorkshire, " the Austerlitz of electioneering," the 
 defeated candidates, Lord Milton and Lascelles, spent, for 
 bringing up voters, a hundred thousand pounds each ; and 
 it is stated that the entire contest cost near half a million 
 pounds sterling! Men kept boroughs then as they now 
 keep a yacht. They invested in them as a speculation, and 
 " cultivated them for sale." In one of Lord Chesterfield's 
 letters to his son he says that he spoke to a borough- 
 monger, and offered him five and twenty hundred pounds 
 " for a secure seat in Parliament ; " but " he laughed at my 
 offer, and said that there was no such thing as a borough to 
 be had now, for the rich East and West Indians had secured 
 iliem all, at the rate of three thousand pounds at least, hut 
 many at four thousand, and two or three that he knew at 
 fide thousand." 
 
 Probably no writer has done more to glorify the iron 
 castles and iron men of past ages in England than Sir 
 
ILLUSIONS ABOUT THE PAST. 319 
 
 Walter Scott. Even the plaided Highlanders of 1745, 
 though regarded with horror and contempt by contem- 
 porary Whigs, and after their defeat scarcely treated as 
 human beings, became under his magic pen most interest- 
 ing monuments of a form of society long since passed away. 
 But the true way to test these " good old times" is just to 
 imagine them once more present. Were any one of these 
 old institutions, which are invested with such poetic hues, 
 to be suddenly reproduced with all its odious features, how 
 would it startle us in these happy times ! How insufferable 
 would it be, for example, to be forced to leave one's fam- 
 ily and follow to the field some warlike lord who looks so 
 picturesque through the mist of the past ! How much more 
 intolerable still would be the whole system of feudal " inci- 
 dents," as they were called, reliefs, fines upon alienation, 
 escheats, forfeitures, aids, wardship, and marriage ; by 
 which last was meant the right of the lord to tender a hus- 
 band to his female ward in her minorit}', or a wife to his 
 male ward : a right which was the source of the greatest 
 abuse and extortion. Yet such were some of the hardships 
 to which men were subjected as late as the fifteenth cen- 
 tury. Matthew Paris tells us that during the Barons' Wars 
 in England, in order that castles might be fortified, " the 
 houses of the poorest agricultural laborers were rummaged 
 and plundered even of the straw that served for beds." 
 The ignorance of economic science was so great that a bad 
 harvest generally produced almost a famine. The danger 
 to life was so great from turbulence that in 1216 u markets 
 and traffic ceased, and goods were exposed for sale only -in 
 churchyards." 
 
 How delightful it must have been to live in the days of 
 "merry England" when the plague used to come from 
 
320 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 time to time and sweep off a large part of the population ; 
 when in the reign of one monarch alone (Edward IV.) it 
 destroyed as man}- persons as the Wars of the Roses ! 
 What blessed days were those when a philosopher so far 
 in advance of his age in science as Bacon published minute 
 directions for guarding against witches ; and when that 
 legal luminary, Sir Matthew Hale, after having condemned 
 a poor woman to death for witchcraft, sneered at the rash 
 innovators who were urging a repeal of the statute against 
 that crime, and, falling on his knees, thanked God for be- 
 ing enabled to uphold one of the sagest enactments of u our 
 venerable forefathers " ! Who does not regret that he did 
 not live in the halcyon days when inoculation for the small- 
 .pox, and the use of ether or chloroform in surgical and 
 dental operations, had not been dreamed of; when oil from 
 kittens boiled alive was considered an excellent application 
 for a wound, and ointment was applied to the weapon that 
 had inflicted it; when toads roasted alive were adminis- 
 tered for asthma, and the hair of mad dogs for hydropho- 
 .bia ; when the powdered thigh-bone of an executed felon 
 was considered a specific in dysentery ; when doctors put 
 .faith in plvylacteries, and watched with intense anxiet}* the 
 influence of black days and white days, and the aspect of 
 the stars ; and when, in attempting to quench the fires of 
 fever and inflammation, they diligently fed the consuming 
 flame, and hurried their patients to an untimely grave ? 
 
 Again, how mournful it is to think that the days of 
 Tooke, Thelwall, and Hardy, when men were tried for 
 " constructive treason," have gone, never to return, the 
 "good old times" when in England hundreds of the most 
 trivial offences were punished with death ; when the theft 
 of a fish, maiming cattle, transporting wool, and marrying a 
 
ILLUSIONS ABOUT THE PAST. 321 
 
 couple out of church, were put in the same category of 
 crime as murder, arson, and rape ; when counsel were never 
 allowed to prisoners, even in capital cases ; and when the 
 wretch condemned to death might be dragged at the heels 
 of horses to the place of execution, and there embo welled, 
 quartered, slit in the nose, or left hanging on the gallows ! 
 
 But why confine ourselves to the "good old times " in 
 England? If we look back over the history of our own 
 country we shall find its " golden age " to have been one of 
 bronze. In the days of Washington and Franklin men 
 were compelled to pass their lives in a kind of destitution, 
 which in this age of scientific luxury would be considered 
 a state of semi-barbarism. A hundred years ago hardty 
 one of the modern contrivances for cooking, and for warm- 
 ing and lighting dwellings, was known. Not a pound of 
 coal or a cubic foot of illuminating gas had been burned 
 in the country. There were no machines for mowing, reap- 
 ing, and threshing, for carding, spinning, and weaving ; 
 nor had the sewing-machine been dreamed of, which has 
 done so much for woman's health and strength, and so 
 abridged the labors of the family. To us "effeminate" 
 men of to-daj- it is painful to think of the efforts of our 
 "hardy" ancestors to obtain warmth in their dwellings by 
 the scorching and freezing of their alternate sides under 
 the blast that swept from many apertures toward the cur- 
 rent of a vast open chimney. Pine-knots or tallow candles 
 supplied them with light for the long and dreary winter 
 evenings, and sand on the floor supplied the place of car- 
 pets and rugs. There were no pumps in those days ; no 
 friction-matches ; and when the fire went out upon the 
 hearth in the night, and the tinder was damp, so that the 
 spark could not " catch," the only alternative was to wade 
 
 21 
 
322 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 a mile or more through the deep snow to borrow a fire- 
 brand of a neighbor. Beef, when one could afford it, was 
 roasted on a revolving spit turned by a man, a dog, or a 
 smoke-jack. If in summer a man wished for a draught of 
 cold water, there was no ice ; and if, in the rainy season 
 or in winter, he wished to keep his feet dr} T , there was no 
 india-rubber. 
 
 How much stuff has been written by picturesque and ro- 
 mancing writers about the glories of the old coaching daj's ! 
 How delightful it was, in spring or autumn, to drag along 
 in a heav}', stuffy coach, with the wheels sunk half up to 
 the axles in mud, at the rate of three miles an hour; or in 
 winter to plod, half- frozen, through a succession of snow- 
 drifts, with an occasional overturn, to the great danger of 
 one's ribs or limbs ! How much preferable it was to be 
 from six to eight days in travelling two hundred miles, with 
 the expense of lodging and meals at wretched inns on the 
 waj', to ftying over the same distance on the wings of steam 
 in five or six hours, taking your meal, if 3*ou require one, 
 in an elegant parlor as 3*011 speed along ! The truth is, the 
 inventions and improvements of modern times have been 
 equivalent to making human life far longer than it pre- 
 viously was ; they have virtually trebled or quadrupled its 
 duration. If a man in travelling can pass over in a single 
 hour a distance which once, on a horse, would have occu- 
 pied seven or eight hours, he has in this respect added six 
 or seven hours to his life For all the purposes of living, 
 human life is longer than it was in the time of the antedi- 
 luvians, for the simple reason that with modern time-and- 
 labor-saving inventions one can accomplish more than he 
 could in former ages, even had he lived for centuries. 
 
 That men live to-day in a more intellectual atmosphere 
 
ILLUSIONS ABOUT THE PAST. 323 
 
 than their fathers did, and that they have immeasurably 
 more culture and knowledge, will hardly be denied by the 
 most inveterate pessimist. Not only are the classics of al- 
 most every literature published at incredibly low prices, but 
 the best works are condensed for us in the magazines and 
 reviews, so that those who from lack of ability or time can- 
 not digest large masses of mental food, may have its es- 
 sence extracted and prepared in a seductive and easily 
 assimilated form. Will it be said that this intellectual gaia 
 has been purchased at the cost of phj'sical degenerac}', 
 that man is wiser but 'weaker to-day than he was centuries 
 ago? We reply that the very reverse is the truth. Statis- 
 tics show that the average length of life the true test in 
 the case is steadily increasing. Physical culture, so 
 long neglected, has never received such attention before 
 since the days of Greece. The number of young men who 
 play at games that exact the severest labor and the most 
 rigid discipline, such as base-ball, foot-ball, cricket, rowing, 
 long bicycle rides ; the number who camp out, make long 
 pedestrian excursions, climb mountains, show that phy- 
 sical weakness is not a characteristic of our times. Man is 
 a tougher walker, a swifter runner, a stouter and more 
 skilful swimmer, an experter oarsman, a surer marksman, a 
 finer horseman, in this than in any previous century. He 
 ripens earlier to-day, works faster, and lives longer than he 
 formerly did ; and both his physique and his command of 
 his powers, instead of degenerating, are steadily improving. 
 But we shall be told, perhaps, by some Cassandra that 
 if not physically, yet morally man has degenerated ; that 
 there was more virtue in " the good old times " than now ; 
 that they were the days of contented industry, respect for 
 the aged, regard for the Sabbath, and reverence for things 
 
324 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 sacred, virtues now, alas! fast disappearing from the 
 earth. Well, let us hear what that famous and stern old 
 New England divine Dr. Emmons says regarding the cul- 
 tivation of those virtues in the golden age in which he 
 lived. In a sermon preached in 1790 he says that "it is 
 truly alarming to take a particular view of our prevailing 
 corruptions. . . . The streets are filled with children who 
 learn the dialect of hell before they learn the rudiments of 
 their mother-tongue. . . . Multitudes may be seen every 
 day, and almost everywhere, wallowing in drunkenness. 
 Intemperance appears not only in public houses and at pub- 
 lic places, but in private families and among individuals 
 of every age and sex." Having specified other vices, he 
 adds : "I might still add to this long list of vices injustice, 
 avarice, oppression, indolence, gaming, and almost every 
 species of corruption which ever disgraced the most aban- 
 doned people." Some years ago " Zion's Herald," of Bos- 
 ton, printed a cop}' of a bill rendered at an ordination service 
 in Hartford, Conn., about a hundred years ago. Among the 
 items charged were these: "3 Bitters; 15 boles Punch; 
 11 bottles Wine; 5 mugs Flip; 3 boles Punch; 3 boles 
 Toddy." Three-bottle men, now as rare as dodos, were 
 then to be found in eveiy community. Political animosity 
 was bitterer, and part}' journals were more reckless and 
 abusive, in the days of Washington than now. The 
 " Father of his Country " was denounced as a cheat, a des- 
 pot, a liar, and an adulterer, "wanting in all generous 
 sentiments, and even in common humanity." We complain 
 to-day of the corruption in our politics ; fifty-seven years 
 ago William Wirt in a public address pronounced our elec- 
 tions "our glory and our shame." He complained bitterly 
 of the " corrupt combinations" and the " vile intrigues " of 
 
ILLUSIONS ABOUT THE PAST. 825 
 
 that da}*, of the "slander and falsehood," of the " coarse 
 and vulgar flattery," the " wheedling and coaxing of the 
 4 dear people.'" Among other devices, he says, u a kind 
 of electioneering machinery is in use in some places, by 
 which the people have become spell-bound, and taught to 
 play the part of automatons in their own elections." 
 
 A thoughtful writer has well said that "the present is 
 contemplated coolly, clearly, exactly by the intellect, and 
 may be considered as the prose of the mind ; the future and 
 the past may be considered as part of the mind's poetry." 
 The feeling of admiration for the past is, no doubt, a legiti- 
 mate feeling ; but when indulged to excess, when it 
 leads men to glorif}' what is old merely because it is old, 
 and to denounce what is new simply because it is new, it 
 is exceedingly baneful in its effects. It is the feeling which, 
 exaggerated, led the ancient Jews to remain among the 
 graves, and lodge in the monuments, for which they were 
 indignantly denounced by the prophets. It is the source of 
 that fallacy which ascribes superior wisdom to our ancestors, 
 who were really the children of the world, and therefore 
 less qualified to arrive at just conclusions than we, their 
 descendants, who only are the white, silver-haired ancients, 
 the true Nestors, that have treasured up the experience 
 which successive ages can supply. Of individuals living 
 at the same time, the oldest has, of course, the largest 
 experience ; but among generations of men the reverse is 
 true, that is, if by " oldest" we mean the most ancient ; 
 but in reality the times in ichich we live are the oldest. 
 The sum of the whole matter is that " the good old times," 
 over the departed glories of which so many persons sigh, 
 and which, like the horizon, keep flying farther and farther 
 backward as we try to approach them, owe their existence 
 
326 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 to a trick of the memory which sheds the softening hues of 
 the imagination about that which when present was to the 
 last degree dull and prosaic. The past of the laudator 
 temporis acti, when men were larger, longer-lived, healthier, 
 happier, and more virtuous than now ; when the peaches 
 were larger, the apples finer, and the cherries more abun- 
 dant than to-da}' ; when May-day was always pleasant, and 
 Christmas " snowy and seasonable," is a past that never 
 was present. 
 
IMMORAL NOVELS. 
 
 TV /T ANY of our readers will remember the fierce contro- 
 -***- versy that raged some years ago on the publication 
 of Charles Reade's novel " Griffith Gaunt," concerning the 
 morality of that powerful work. About once in a year we 
 have a periodical fit of morality in this country, when our 
 newspapers think it a duty they owe to the rising genera- 
 tion to denounce " the flood of pernicious, demoralizing 
 trash which, under the name of cheap literature, is deluging 
 our countr}'." Many and scathing are the invectives we 
 have read on this theme by men who have seemed pro- 
 foundly conversant with the works they have decried ; and 
 shrewd, indeed, have been the arguments for expurgated 
 editions of the English and the Latin classics by men 
 who, after going through a gallery of antiques, and view- 
 ing the matchless Apollo, Venus, and Laocoon, could come 
 away with imaginations impressed only with the remem- 
 brance that they were naked. It is a delicate and perplex- 
 ing question, in some cases, to determine how far the efforts 
 of these nice persons should be applauded. That a writer 
 with the fine genius of Mr. Reade can, by debauching the 
 imaginations, do incalculable damage to his readers, is but 
 a truism. But shall we, therefore, proscribe all novels but 
 those that contain no descriptions of vice and wickedness, 
 and of which the heroes and heroines are models of impos- 
 sible excellence? To this question not a few moralists will 
 
328 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 reply with an emphatic ' ' No." They think little of that 
 ''fugitive and cloistered virtue," as Milton calls it, which, 
 u unexercised and unbreathed," is kept healthy only by 
 shunning all contact with the real world. That great high- 
 priest of literature and profound anatomist of human nature, 
 Dr. Johnson, had, it is certain, no such over- fastidious deli- 
 cac}', not to say squeamish ness, in regard to this proscribed 
 class of writings. He was willing to trust people with 
 books that have great faults, provided they have great excel- 
 lences to redeem them ; and as for mere trash, he knew it 
 would produce a surfeit which would make it ever after dis- 
 gusting. When Mrs. Sheridan's eldest daughter began to 
 give signs of that love of literature for which she w r as after- 
 ward distinguished, and was noticed b}' Johnson one da} r 
 reading his " Ramblers," her mother hastened to assure the 
 great moralist that it was only works of that unexception- 
 able description which she suffered to meet the eyes of her 
 little girl. u In general," added the fastidious mother, ex- 
 pecting, doubtless, to be eulogized for her prudence, " I am 
 very careful to keep from her all such books as are not cal- 
 culated, by their moral tendency, expressly for the perusal 
 of youth." " Then you are a fool, madam ! " bluntly 
 vociferated the Doctor. " Turn your daughter loose into 
 the libraiy," continued he, to the astonishment of his hearer. 
 "If she is well inclined, she will choose only nutritious 
 food ; if otherwise, all 3*0111* caution will avail nothing to 
 prevent her following the bent of her inclinations." 
 
 Pertinently to this subject, the Scotch poet, Mr. Bu- 
 chanan, maintains, in an essay in the "Fortnightly 
 Review," that no literary production can be morally del- 
 eterious to men of culture, if it be sincere and real in its 
 conception, that is, written from the heart, with the full 
 
IMMORAL NOVELS. 329 
 
 consent of all the author's faculties of belief. The mere 
 quality of thorough and absolute sincerity of literary pur- 
 pose diffuses, it is urged, a charm over the writer's style, 
 and steeps it in an atmosphere of art which, to a reader able 
 to perceive it, operates practically as a safeguard against 
 every corrupting influence. That this theory is as true as 
 it is ingenious and original, in regard to imaginative or ar- 
 tistic pictures of evil actions, few thoughtful persons can 
 doubt. The man who finds his imagination debauched after 
 reading any of Shakspeare's masterpieces may be sure that 
 the mischief was already done before he felt the necromancy 
 of the great magician of the pen. The picture of Othello 
 never tempted an\* man to stifle his wife in a fit of jealousy ; 
 nor did that of Lady Macbeth ever tempt any woman who 
 could comprehend it into unscrupulous ambition for her hus- 
 band ; nor did that of Cleopatra ever fill with sensual feel- 
 ings a mind that could grasp it imaginatively in all its 
 proportions. True art, as another has remarked, has the 
 power to transfigure all the human passions, desires, hopes, 
 or fears, to the experience of which it appeals, into some- 
 thing different from ourselves. 
 
 In spite of all this, however, we doubt if so sagacious a 
 moralist as Johnson would seriousl}' recommend to any 
 3"oung man or woman such a novel as " Griffith Gaunt." 
 The great objection to the work is not that its author apolo- 
 gizes for the guilt of its hero, a bigamist, by saying that 
 " he was the sport of circumstances," which might be said 
 of the vilest miscreant that ever lived ; not that all the 
 scoundrels go unwhipped of justice, while the chief scoun- 
 drel is rewarded for his villany by receiving a large for- 
 tune, and ends his days in a palatial home and in connubial 
 bliss ; but that the work deals almost exclusively with the 
 
330 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 darker passions of man, that it tends to sap our belief in 
 human virtue, to make us sceptical of its very existence. 
 Of all the demoralizing works of the day, there are none 
 which should be more studiously shunned b} T the young than 
 those written by c}*nics, by writers whose dramatis per- 
 sonce are drunkards, seducers, courtesans, liars, and hypo- 
 crites ; whose heroes are men of "one virtue, linked to a 
 thousand crimes ; " who aim to anatomize the human heart, 
 that they ma}* show how black and foul it is ; who display 
 a lynx-eyed acuteness in detecting the vilest motives for 
 the noblest actions ; who reek and riot in revelations of 
 domestic sin and shame. 
 
 It is in vain that such writers, in reply to the charge of 
 impurity, cry " Honi soit qui mal y pense," and denounce 
 their critics as ''prurient prudes. 5 ' Mock delicacy, that 
 prudery which betrays its lack of the reality of virtue by 
 its niceness about the shadow ; which abhors plain noun- 
 substantives, and tries to hide its improper imaginings in 
 studied circumlocution ; which, when a word is used that 
 has two meanings, is sensitively conscious of the worst one, 
 and is as deeply shocked as if the better one could never 
 be intended ; which leads young ladies to pantalette the 
 legs of their pianos, and to throw a veil over marble Cupids 
 and Psyches, that spurious feeling which led Swift to 
 define a nice man as " a man of nasty ideas," we detest as 
 thoroughly as does Mr. Reade. But to say that every man 
 who denounces impurit}* in a poem or novel is conscious of 
 impurity in his own thoughts, and reads the work, to quote 
 Mr. Reade's own words, " by the light of his own foul im- 
 agination," is simply absurd. Purity can detect the pres- 
 ence of the evil which it does not understand, and of which 
 it is wholly void, just as the dove which has never seen 
 
IMMORAL NOVELS. 331 
 
 a hawk trembles at its presence. "Just as a horse rears 
 uneasily and quivers when the wild beast, unknown and 
 new, is near, so innocence is startled b} r , }'et understands 
 not, the unholy look, the guilty tone, the impure suggestion. 
 It shudders, and shrinks from it instinctively, by a power 
 like that which God has conferred on the unreasoning 
 mimosa." While it is true enough as a rule that ' ' to the 
 pure all things are pure," yet the rule has its limitations ; 
 and it must be remembered that, unhappily, all men are not 
 pure, for which bad books are much to blame. Michael 
 Angelo's replj* to Paul IV., that if he would reform the 
 morals of the world, the picture of "The Last Judgment" 
 in the Sistine Chapel (which had been criticised severely on 
 account of the nudity of the figures) would be reformed of 
 itself, does not meet the case ; for the world must be taken 
 as it is, and not as it should be. It was a sharp indictment 
 of Richardson when a person who was reading " Pamela " 
 on the grass of Primrose Hill, and who was joined by a 
 friendly damsel that desired to read in company with him, 
 confessed: "I could have wished it had been any other 
 book." Defend as one may some of the warmly colored 
 scenes of " Tom Jones " and other classic novels, the judg- 
 ment of the right-minded reader will not be convinced. To 
 say that they conduct the history to its natural catastrophe, 
 and have their sting drawn by the moral, it has been well 
 said, is like telling us to live tranquilly over a cellar of 
 combustibles because an engine with abundance of water 
 is at the end of the street. The great objection to the im- 
 moral novel is not generally that the writer openly excuses 
 bigamists, seducers, and other miscreants ; not that we 
 can here and there select a proposition formally false and 
 pernicious, but that he leaves an impression which is 
 
332 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 unfavorable to a healthful state of thought and feeling, 
 and peculiarly dangerous to the 3'oung and inexperienced, 
 who swallow without suspicion the insidious poison that 
 lurks under the honeyed words of the elegant and philoso- 
 phical apologist for vice. The brilliant creations of the 
 novelist are too often, as Professor Frisbie said of Byron's, 
 "the scene of a summer evening, where all is tender and 
 beautiful and grand ; but the damps of disease descend 
 with the dews of heaven, and the pestilent vapors of night 
 are breathed in with the fragrance and the balm, and the 
 delicate and the fair are the surest victims of the exposure." 
 We cannot leave this subject without expressing a doubt 
 which has arisen in our minds touching the tendency of 
 minute criticisms, even denunciatory criticisms, of im- 
 moral novels and other works. Concerning many cases of 
 wrong-doing, so much pains have sometimes been taken 
 to show people the way not to be naughty, that the}' have 
 been thereby, for the very first time in their lives, taught 
 how, and tempted to be so. Sins of which the}* were utterly 
 ignorant, and devices for the accomplishment of evil which 
 would never have occurred to their minds, have first been 
 taught them Iry romances and other works written with the 
 sincerest desire of deterring them from the commission of 
 the crimes the writer has exposed. The Boston clerk who 
 a few years ago confessed that he stole money from the 
 safe of the Ames Plow Company in Quincy Market after 
 having blown open the safe with gunpowder, said, in reply 
 to a question, that the method of his crime was suggested 
 to him by narrations of similar exploits in the newspapers. 
 In like manner, while in some cases, to a reader of the 
 romances in question, the guilt of the bad characters 
 and the retribution which has overtaken them have been 
 
IMMORAL NOVELS. 33 
 
 revolting enough to make him shudder at the thought of 
 resembling them, the effect produced on other minds has 
 been the very opposite. The pictures of vice have been 
 more attractive to them than those of virtue, and the arrow- 
 shot at evil has been turned against good. There have 
 been expurgated editions of books, of which the missing 
 portions, like the statues of Brutus and Cassius, were the 
 more conspicuous by their absence. Especially does this 
 hold true of moral reform societies, denunciations of im- 
 moral books and of theatrical performances and publica- 
 tions intended to portra} 7 the frightful increase and terrible 
 consequences of licentiousness in a communit}'. Such pub- 
 lications operate in man}' cases only as finger-posts and 
 advertisements to those whose fervid passions, notwith- 
 standing their present purity and innocence, are but too 
 ready to be fanned, by the slightest suggestion, into a 
 violent and uncontrollable flame. To the writer who, like 
 Jaques in :< As You Like It," would thus, by u speaking his 
 
 mind," 
 
 " through and through 
 Cleanse the foul body of the infected world," 
 
 we ma}' say, with the Duke, 
 
 " Fie on thee ! I can tell what thou wouldst do, 
 Most mischievous font sin in chiding sin." 
 
 When William Pitt was Prime Minister of England, a bill 
 was passed for the prevention of smuggling, prohibiting 
 boats of a certain length of keel, breadth of beam, draught 
 of water, etc., from being built by any subject of King 
 George. The model prohibited was so exquisitely fine, 
 of such matchless proportions, that all the smugglers at 
 once adopted it, and had their craft constructed in French 
 ports exactly according to the measures forbidden by the 
 
334 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 statute ; and the Deal boatmen used to say that they never 
 knew how to build a boat for smuggling till Billy Pitt 
 taught them the way. The anecdote forcibly illustrates the 
 pernicious effects upon the morals of society resulting from 
 even well-intended publications denouncing immoral books, 
 or themselves abounding in eloquent and glowing descrip- 
 tions of its various forms of vice and wickedness. A 
 still further confirmation of our views is found in a fact 
 stated some years ago by an English newspaper that cer- 
 tain articles in the London " Morning Chronicle " had the 
 effect of inspiring hundreds with an irresistible desire to 
 live themselves the strange and peculiar modes of life so 
 minutely depicted by the writer. It ma}* be questioned 
 whether De Quincey's vivid and masterly descriptions of the 
 delights and horrors of opium-eating have not attracted 
 more persons to, than they have frightened from, the prac- 
 tice. We never read an impassioned dehortation from this 
 and kindred vices, above all, those of licentiousness, but 
 we think of the hostler who was asked on confession day by 
 his priest if he had never greased the teeth of his guests' 
 horses, to prevent them from eating their allowance of hay 
 and oats. "Never!" was the prompt response. Subse- 
 quentty, he confessed the frequent perpetration of the trick. 
 " How ! " exclaimed the astonished father, " I thought you 
 told me, at 3'our last confession, that }'ou had never played 
 that trick." " True, nor had I then" was the reply ; " for, 
 till you told me, I never knew that greasing a horse's teeth 
 would prevent his eating." 
 
WHAT SHALL WE READ? 
 
 r I ^HERE are few cultivated men of the present day who 
 * liave not tormented their brains with attempts to an- 
 swer this question. How shall we grapple with the vast 
 and ever-accumulating literature of the day? Nothing is 
 more obvious, as nothing is more provoking, to him who 
 loves to spend his leisure hours in " the still air of delight- 
 ful studies " than his utter inability to read more than a 
 fraction of the new books to say nothing of the old 
 which are daily issuing from the press. Irnmanuel Kant, 
 the German philosopher, who wrote several works of a light, 
 agreeable character, which are delightful to read when one 
 has the toothache, has proved to the satisfaction of all 
 metapl^sicians that Time and Space have no absolute ex- 
 istence, but are merely forms of thought. It is clear to us 
 that Kant was not a greed}* bookworm ; he never tried to 
 keep up with the literature of his day. Space and Time he 
 would find to be formidable realities, were he living now, 
 and attempting to cope with the myriads of volumes that 
 pour 3'earty from the teeming press. Looking at the new 
 announcements in the London " Athenaeum," the American 
 " Publishers' Weekty," etc., one is amazed at the volu- 
 minousness of modern authorship, and still more at the 
 insatiable demand for new books by the public. Five 
 thousand new publications are issued annually in England ; 
 and it has been ascertained that over ten thousand works, or 
 
336 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 a million of volumes, are published even* year in Germany 
 alone. The shelves of the British Museum groan under 
 the weight of eleven hundred thousand volumes ; the Biblio- 
 theque Rationale in Paris is more enormous still, and fifty 
 thousand volumes and pamphlets are added to it yearly. 
 The Voltaires, De Vegas, and Balzacs of past ages were 
 thought to have a rabbit-like fecundity ; but they are certain- 
 ly matched in productiveness by the Southeys, Trollopes, 
 Dumases, and Balzacs of this nineteenth century. 
 
 The elder Pliny mentions somewhere in his writings that 
 there was a dearth of paper (papyrus) in the reign of 
 Tiberius so alarming that senators were appointed to at- 
 tend to its distribution. When swamped by the deluge of 
 modern books, who has not, in certain foolish and sarcastic 
 moments, almost prayed for such a calamity in our da}' ? 
 Living at a time when it is deemed unpardonable for a man 
 not to know everything, to be superficially omniscient, at 
 least, how can a poor one-headed man keep up with the 
 age? Millions of "winged arrows of good and evil "are 
 plunged in hourly inkstands ; the wheel of publication, like 
 the wheel of day and night, rolls round from January to 
 December, with no pause to cool its fiery axle ; and the 
 most voracious devourer of novelties finds the four and 
 twenty hours too brief to taste and chew, much less in- 
 wardly to digest, all the books he would feed upon. Not 
 to speak of epitomes, abridgments, plagiarisms, paste-and 
 scissors books, catalogues, old sermons, anniversary ora- 
 tions, 4l transcendental lad}- books," ex parte ante mortem 
 inquisitions like the u Life of Blaine " or the u Biography 
 of GroA r er Cleveland," dark-lantern-and-bludgeon tales, and 
 records of pill-and-sarsaparilla heroes, which are all out of 
 the question, there are enough of instructive and amusing 
 
WHAT SHALL WE READ? 387 
 
 books to keep a man employed till the millennium. A Bos- 
 ton haekman may have a larger and better library than 
 Charlemagne or Duns Scotus. Who can cope with all these 
 books? Who can snatch time to get even a smattering of 
 their contents? 
 
 The question is one that would have puzzled even a 
 Huet or a Southey, with his anaconda-like digestion, to 
 answer. Steel-pens, steam, and Hoe presses have multi- 
 plied the power of production, and railways hurry bales of 
 books to your door as fast as printed ; but what has in- 
 creased the cerebrum and the cerebellum? The two lobes 
 of the human brain are not a whit larger than when Adam 
 learned his abs and ebs in the only extant spelling-book. 
 The spectacles by which one may read two books at once 
 are yet to be invented. We have heard of a belle making 
 her toilet while she despatched her devotions ; but where 
 is the blue-stocking that can read George Sand and Emer- 
 son while she studies Greek and plays on the piano? Ency- 
 clopedic culture is now an impossibilit}*. The da}' has gone 
 by when a Leonardo da Vinci could be not only a painter, 
 but a sculptor, architect, engineer, mathematician, metaph}*si- 
 cian, poet, anatomist, and botanist. The domain of knowl- 
 edge has extended so widely that one needs now a kind of 
 intellectual seven-league boots to traverse it in a life-time 
 as long as Methuselah's. It was said of Brougham that 
 " if science was his forte, omniscience was his foible ; " and 
 we know that in the case of all such aspirants to universal 
 knowledge, surface and depth of knowledge are apt to vary 
 inversel}'. In view of the frightful and growing evil we 
 have been considering, we are almost ready to drink to the 
 memor}' of Omar, who burned the Alexandrian libraiy. 
 Instead of deploring, scholars should exult that so many of 
 
 22 
 
338 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 the classics are lost, that we have but four of the thirty 
 books of Tacitus, but thirty-five of the hundred and forty 
 books of Livy, and that of the hundred and thirty com- 
 edies of Plautus but twenty have come down to us. Were 
 all the classics that have been written still in existence, 
 the youth that should master them would be the mir- 
 acle of a 3'ear or two, and an idiot for the remainder of his 
 life. 
 
 44 But is there no alleviation for this state of things?" 
 we hear some one en* who, out of breath in trying to keep 
 up with the Froudes, Grotes, Guizots, Mills, Macanlays, 
 and Ruskins, despairs of mastering even a twentieth of the 
 current English literature, let alone the French, Italian, 
 and German. Shall one do with his reading as Pitt did 
 with his official business, namely, divide it into three 
 parts, of which the first is not worth doing, the second 
 does itself, and the third is quite enough for an}' man to 
 attempt? Various expedients will suggest themselves. 
 
 First, one can read epitomes. He can limit himself to 
 abstracts and abridgments. An epitome, it has been said, 
 is only a book shortened ; and, as a rule, the worth increases 
 as the size lessens. There is considerable truth in Young's 
 comparison of elaborate compilations to the iron money of 
 L} T curgus, of which the weight was so enormous, and the value 
 so small, that a 3'oke of oxen only drew twenty-five hun- 
 dred dollars. But epitomes are the bones of books, with- 
 out the flesh ; and, unfortunately, bones, though good for 
 other exhausted soils, will not regenerate the soil of the mind. 
 Iliads in nutshells are compendious; but " one would not 
 like to have all his company reduced to General Nutts and 
 Tom Thumbs, nor all his orchard filled with Chinese minia- 
 tures of trees." Besides, knowledge, like food, to be easily 
 
WHAT SHALL WE READ? 339 
 
 digested, must not be taken in too concentrated a form. 
 Next there are "Beauties" and " Elegant Extracts." 
 But who can judge of a house by a specimen brick? The 
 literary feast to which the Leigh Hunts and Charles Knights 
 invite us may be one of " nectared sweets ; " but who is to 
 insure the perfect taste of the gustator? How shall I know 
 that Matthew Arnold has not omitted from his " Selections 
 from Wordsworth " something even more to my taste than 
 "Tintern Abbey" or the "Daffodils"? Then who does 
 not know that the finest gems lose some of their lustre 
 when torn from their setting? The " Balm of a Thousand 
 Flowers " may be all it professes, ma}' be fraught with 
 the accumulated odors of a thousand roses ; but who does 
 not prefer wandering through a garden of roses to snuffing 
 Lubin's daintiest extracts? Thirdly, there is the wa\' of 
 sldmminy, going over books as the butterfty over 
 flowers. But literary epicures who touch nothing but 
 dainties, and pick books for the plums, acquire speedily a 
 morbid appetite, upon which at last the dainties themselves 
 pall. It is well enough to skim milk, for you thus get the 
 cream ; but how is one to skim Pascal or Bacon? 
 
 A. fourth way is to skip judiciously ; in other words, to 
 consult books according to one's needs, rather than to read 
 them through. A man who is used to books and well-read 
 can find out the pith of a work without reading it through 
 from page to page. He knows instinctive!} 7 where to look 
 for the novelties, the original and striking thoughts, just as 
 a practised angler knows where the trout and salmon lie, 
 and will waste no time upon what does not concern him, 
 while he will miss nothing that he really needs. To do 
 this, however, requires a certain degree of critical acute- 
 ness ; but even the less practised reader may skip with 
 
340 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 advantage. Reading the preface, the table of contents, and 
 other indications to the general physiognomy of a book, 
 hovering over its pages like a hawk, glancing at the head- 
 ings of chapters, at suggestive words, phrases, and proper 
 names in the text, descending leisurely for a closer view 
 when am'thing attracts his notice, and swooping down rap- 
 idly and greedity whenever he descries a golden thought, he 
 will economize time, and master the work more thoroughly 
 than another who has plodded through every page. 
 
 A. fifth way is to consult books, instead of reading them. 
 When Johnson was asked by Bos well if he should read Du 
 Halde's account of China, u Wh}-, yes," was the repty, 
 "as one reads such books; that is to say, consult it." 
 The lives of nations, as of individuals, often concentrate 
 their lustre and interest in a few great periods. Such were 
 the ages of Pericles and Augustus, Leo, Elizabeth, Charles 
 V., and Louis XIV. Occasionally a single chapter embraces 
 the wonders of a century ; as the Feudal System, the Mar- 
 iner's Compass, the Dawn of Discovery, and the Printing- 
 press. A good reader will make much use of indexes. It is 
 better to know where to find information on many subjects 
 than to be informed about a few. Still, there are some 
 books which one would like to know through and through ; 
 and while others, man m y thousands even, are only to be 
 tasted, 3~et as a rule it is not well to live from hand to 
 mouth, phj'sicalty or intellectually. It has been well said 
 that a merchant has little financial strength whose means 
 consist wholly of moneys due from others. A heavy bank- 
 deposit, subject to a sight-draft, is the only position of 
 strength. So he onh* is intellectually strong who has made 
 heav}' deposits in the bank of memon', upon which he can 
 draw in any emergency* according to his needs. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE READ? 341 
 
 A sixth way is to stick to a few, and those the best. 
 Read, says one, the most famous book extant in a partic- 
 ular department, and next the best reputed current book 
 on the same subject. Study only the great authors, and 
 you ma}' dispense with the rest, whom the}' include and 
 go far beyond. Who would go for information to Reille or 
 D'Erlon, after he had questioned Napoleon on the art of 
 war? Excellent advice, if one could only follow it. The old 
 saws, Non multa, sed multum, etc., are easy to utter. It 
 needs no Solon to tell us that it is better to read one first- 
 class book a hundred times, than to read a hundred books 
 once. A few acres of land well tilled will yield a larger 
 crop than a quarter-section scratched over. Master one 
 great work, and you have put an oaken beam into the mind 
 which strengthens and steadies the whole fabric. But who 
 is willing to look at the world through the spectacles of 
 Shakspeare only? " He that reads deeply in only one 
 class of writers," says Dr. Arnold, " only gets views which 
 are almost sure to be perverted, and which are not only 
 narrow, but false." 
 
 Another, and the last, way is to read only the writers of 
 our own day. Alas ! this method is as objectionable as 
 most of the others. True, it is the fashion of the hour. 
 All the shelves of our libraries and the centre-tables of our 
 parlors are crowded with the histories of Motley, Froude, 
 Parkman, and Macaulay ; with the poems of Tennyson, 
 Swinburne, Longfellow, and Browning ; with the theology 
 of Bushnell, Robertson, Liddon, and Munger; and with 
 the novels of Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, Hawthorne, 
 and Oliphant. But all these writers, however diverse in 
 thought and style, have certain strong resemblances. With 
 all their individuality and idiosyncrasies, they are still en 
 
342 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 rapport. As we have said elsewhere, they breathe the 
 same air, handle similar topics, are acted upon by the same 
 influences. Every generation of writers has a personality 
 of its own ; and to read them exclusively, is to bow slav- 
 ishly to their authority, to accept their opinions, to make 
 their tastes our tastes, and their prejudices our prejudices. 
 Only by qualifying their ideas and sentiments with the 
 ideas and sentiments of writers in other ages, shall we be 
 able to resist the intense pressure which writers who are 
 near to us exercise upon our convictions and feelings, and 
 avoid that mental slavery which is baser than the slavery of 
 the body. 
 
 Shall we then, in despair, solve the problem by cutting 
 the Gordian knot, in other words, not read at all? 
 Radcliffe, when asked to show his library, pointed to a few 
 vials and test-tubes. The laboratory of the rich Mr. Cav- 
 endish consisted of apparatus not worth five pounds in the 
 open market. But one needs to be a great genius to do 
 like these men. It is said that bears contrive to live 
 through the winters by sucking their own paws ; but their 
 condition is a torpid one, and they come forth from their 
 dens lean and hungry in the spring. A Pascal, when his 
 books are taken from him, to save his health sapped by 
 excessive study, may supply their place by the force and 
 depth of his own reflections ; but there is hardly one Pascal 
 in a centurj". 
 
 Read, then, we must; but there are several ways of con- 
 soling ourselves if we cannot keep up with the steam- 
 presses of the day. One is the reflection that nine tenths 
 of the current, and a large part of all, literature is medi- 
 ocre, and such as would not win attention, did not the fool- 
 ish readers, as Boileau complains, match the foolish writers. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE READ? 343 
 
 In the days of Goldsmith men talked of u building books," 
 as if to compass an entire volume were a feat of literary 
 architecture ; but in these da} r s of steam and electricity 
 comparatively few authors toil for years over a production. 
 If the writer of to-da} r ma}' be said to " build the lofty 
 rhyme " or other literary edifice, it is too apt to be rushed 
 up like our other buildings, in a hurry, with little solid 
 masonry and a good deal of shell-work. The tendency 
 of literature now is toward easy writing; there are many 
 authors who know nothing, apparently, of those pangs of 
 composition which Horace describes as leading one often 
 to scratch his head and bite his nails to the quick. Many 
 of these fast writers are not worth attention, for the simple 
 reason that they create nothing ; they are mere literary 
 mechanics. Their brains are their tools, and they turn off 
 volumes just as other persons do boots, bricks, or bureaus. 
 As for heart, soul, or taste in the business, they betray no 
 more, ordinarily, than factory-spindles in weaving a web of 
 cloth, or Babbage's calculating-machine in turning out a 
 solution of a mathematical problem. Hence you find no 
 felicitous passages, nothing to kt create a soul under the 
 ribs of Death " in their writings. They have none of those 
 happy combinations of words, those original ideas con- 
 densed into startling phrases, which seize at once on the 
 reader's attention, and stick like burrs in his memoiy. 
 Another consolation which will suggest itself to the thought- 
 ful reader is that the mass of new books are new only in 
 stj'le and treatment, and add nothing to the general stock 
 of thought. Newton said that if the earth could be com- 
 pressed into a solid mass, it could be put into a nutshell. 
 So with the world of books ; many new ones are but a ri- 
 facimentO) or rehashing of old ideas, a pouring of old 
 
344 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 wines into new bottles, with generally much dilution; so 
 that to a veteran reader nothing is so old as a new book. 
 The complaint of Bacon is as just now as in his own time : 
 "If a man turn his eye to libraries, he may perhaps be 
 surprised at the immense varieties of books he finds ; but 
 on examining and diligently weighing their matters and 
 contents, he will be struck with amazement on the other 
 side ; and after finding no end of repetitions, but that men 
 continually treat and speak the same things over and over 
 again, fall from admiration of the variety into a wonder 
 at the want and scantiness of things which have hitherto 
 detained and possessed the minds of men." 
 
LITERARY QUOTATION. 
 
 \ LONDON literary journal denounces the practice, so 
 *- * common among parliamentary orators and journal- 
 ists, of employing hackneyed quotations. Old threadbare 
 phrases bits of dog-latin and scraps of French have 
 always been a doubtful ornament of editorials and speeches ; 
 but of late the vice has reached a climax which, the critic 
 thinks, renders it an intolerable nuisance. A Paris cor- 
 respondent no sooner begins a letter to a London journal 
 than he fancies he must display his profound knowledge of 
 the French language by the use of such phrases as raison 
 d'etre, en revanche, tant pis ; while for Latin quotations 
 scarcely one is used which has not the ancient and fish-like 
 smell of the elementary school-books whence they are 
 gathered. The writer thinks that a stand should be made 
 also against the too audacious -repetition of old stories and 
 historical illustrations. The tale of Bruce and the spider 
 has been worn threadbare ; Actaeon has grown old and 
 wrinkled in the public service ; Caesar on the banks of the 
 Rubicon has become a standing bore ; and Achilles' heel, 
 Don Quixote's windmill, Canute and the ocean, Mrs. Par- 
 tington's attempt to brush back the Atlantic with a broom, 
 the wart on Cromwell's face, and Puck putting a girdle 
 around the earth, have done duty for so many years that 
 they are entitled to be shelved, and enjoy henceforth an 
 old age of honorable repose. 
 
346 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 We sympathize with the London critic, and would en- 
 large his list by some hundreds more of veteran quotations 
 which bear the scars of long and honorable service. Why 
 not include in the roll the legion of stock phrases and allu- 
 sions borrowed from the heathen mythology, Jove's thun- 
 ders, the eyes of Argus, the arms of Morpheus, Cupid's 
 darts, the Sibyl's leaves, the cleansing of the Augean sta- 
 ble, Minerva springing full-armed from the brain of Jupi- 
 ter, Ixion's wheel, Tantalus' torments, Sisyphus' stone, a 
 Triton among the minnows, Fame's hundred tongues, 
 Pelion heaped upon Ossa, the Phoenix rising from its 
 ashes, Saturn devouring his children (so sure to be cited 
 in every reference to the French Revolution), and other 
 " old soldiers " that have fought for centuries on so many 
 fields of literature? Then there is an army of allusions 
 drawn from the literature and history of Rome, to say 
 nothing of as many more borrowed from the topograph} T , 
 history, and literature of Greece. What well-worn scraps 
 of erudition are more venerable than Fabian dela}'s, geese 
 that saved the capitol, Marius sitting among the ruins of 
 Carthage, the Goths and Vandals, falling into Scylla while 
 trying to avoid Charybdis, " the aspiring youth that fired 
 the Ephesian dome," and the never-to-be-forgotten Infan- 
 dum regina f Is not every critic still an Aristarchus, 
 and every carper a Zoilus? Is not every leading writer 
 " the Coryphaeus of literature," and is not even' successful 
 man presumed " to weep, like Alexander, because there are 
 no more worlds to conquer " ? And if these are to be ex- 
 empted from all further service, should not the many hun- 
 dreds of seedy and used-up quotations from English 
 authors, collected by Mr. Bartlett in his well-known book, 
 be discharged, or at least granted a furlough? Would it 
 
LITERARY QUOTATION. 347 
 
 not be well to provide a literary Greenwich Hospital for 
 such exhausted and superannuated veterans as " the winter 
 of our discontent," " the bourn " from which " no traveller 
 returns," " the feast of reason and the flow of soul," " am- 
 ple room and verge enough," " like angel visits, few and 
 far between," "the schoolmaster is abroad," etc.? Is it 
 not about time, too, to pension off that New Zealander 
 who has been standing so long on the ruins of London 
 Bridge; the "Let us alone" of the French merchants in 
 reply to Colbert ; Columbus's egg ; the dreary " mills which 
 grind slowly ;" the cow in the way of Stephenson's locomo- 
 tive, and the cow that kicked over the lamp that set fire to 
 Chicago ? Might we not also spare the solitude that was 
 created and " called a desert ; " the victory of which a sec- 
 ond would have ruined the victors ; and the low watershed 
 that divides the raindrops into two rills, which, becoming 
 mighty rivers, flow, the one into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 
 the other into the Gulf of Mexico? 
 
 It is one of the disadvantages of a tenacious memoiy that 
 if its possessor reads much, he is tempted to over-quote. 
 One of the most entertaining and suggestive books in our 
 language is Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy," which is 
 a mass of quotation. Macaula}', whose memory held every- 
 thing with a vice-like grasp, frankly confesses that he was 
 afflicted with this propensit}*. Writing to his friend Sharp, 
 he says : "I feel a habit of quotation growing on me ; but 
 I resist that devil, for such it is, and it flees from me. It 
 is all that I can do to keep Greek and Latin out of ail my 
 letters. Wise sayings of Euripides are even now at my 
 fingers' ends. If I did not maintain a constant struggle 
 against this propensity, my correspondence would resemble 
 the notes to the 'Pursuits of Literature.'" Yet, notwith- 
 
348 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 standing this confession, Macaulay has been known to shed 
 tears because he could not finish a quotation he had begun. 
 Some of the anecdotes told of his aptness in sudden quota- 
 tion are very striking. In a literary circle in London, Lady 
 Morgan was one evening indulging in some persiflage on 
 serious subjects immediately after the discussion of a fatal 
 accident arising from the fall of some houses in Tottenham 
 Court Road, the incident which, it is said, suggested to 
 Dickens the catastrophe of " Little Dorrit." While the 
 conversation was going on, Macaulay whispered to Lord 
 Carlisle, 
 
 " Here falling bouses thunder on your head, 
 And there a female atheist talks you dead," 
 
 a couplet from Dr. Johnson's "London," in imitation of 
 Juvenal. 
 
 Readers of Dickens must have noted that he rarely, if 
 ever, indulges in quotation. It is perhaps to ridicule the 
 abuse of it that he represents one of his characters, Rich- 
 ard Swiveller, as alwa}'s soothing himself, when in trouble, 
 with bits from a favorite author. It is recorded of some 
 learned man, whose very name is forgotten, that though 
 his reading was very deep, he would quote by the page 
 in his lectures from books in many languages, never open- 
 ing one, but having them all on his lecture- table, together 
 with an open sword. "Here," he would say. "are the 
 books : follow me in them when you please ; and if I mis- 
 quote so much as a syllable, stab me. 'Here is the sword." 
 
 Sir James Mackintosh used to say that the best Latin 
 quotation ever made was b}' Leibnitz, on hearing of Ba}'le's 
 death, and imagining one of the rewards of his candid spirit 
 in the other world. The German philosopher quoted the 
 words of Menalcas in Virgil's Fifth Eclogue, 
 
LITERARY QUOTATION. 349 
 
 " Candidus insuetum miratur limen Olympi, 
 Sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis." 
 
 Person, the famous "Grecian," who had a great and 
 exact memory, had also a remarkable power of apt quota- 
 tion. On one occasion, beginning with an apology for 
 borrowed shoes, he and a learned friend are said to have 
 quoted and capped in quick succession felicitous passages 
 from ^Eschylus, Homer, Bion, Theophrastus, Theocritus, 
 Horace, and other classical authors. Bishop Heber ex- 
 celled in this faculty. When one day after dinner the 
 removal of the white cloth revealed a green baize covering 
 to the table, he exclaimed, in the words of Horace, kt Dif- 
 fugere nives, redeunt jam gramina campis." He quoted 
 from the same poet u Ex somnis stupet Evias," when a fat 
 gentleman, who was known by a peculiar nickname, awoke 
 and asked in astonishment what the}' were all laughing at. 
 
 As if the world were not afflicted enough with real quo- 
 tations, there have been forgers of quotations, just as there 
 are artists who vamp up old bric-a-brac or write fictitious 
 autographs. It is said that Cardinal De Retz in a parlia- 
 mentary speech once improvised a neat and telling thing 
 from Cicero, and so tickled the Parliament that he carried 
 his point. A similar story is told of Sheridan. Hearing a 
 member of the House of Commons quote against him some 
 Greek lines, he immediately rose, and replied that though 
 the lines might seem conclusive, the honorable gentleman, 
 if he had completed the passage, would have shown the 
 House that their real meaning was just the contrary. He 
 then proceeded with the utmost gravity to repeat what 
 seemed to be a sentence of Greek, but was really a string 
 of gibberish such as he could invent on the spur of the 
 moment. The House, astonished at his classical lore and 
 
350 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 promptness of recollection, cheered him with great enthu- 
 siasm, while his discomfited opponent sat clown without 
 reply. 
 
 Of all the men who have abused quotation, the advocates 
 of the sixteenth arid the early part of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury in France were probably the most outrageous in their 
 excesses. Their speeches were often, in many parts, mere 
 centos of quotations from Greek and Latin authors. M. 
 Berry er says that "they exhibit an amalgam of paganism 
 and Christianity, where Jupiter, Minerva, and all the fabled 
 gods of antiquitj r are found side by side with our Saviour 
 and the saints ; a luxuriant profusion of undigested knowl- 
 edge which borrows from all ages since the creation of the 
 world ; a rage for historical allusions which confounds in 
 the same page the names of persons the most opposite, who 
 are amazed to find themselves in company together. You 
 meet in the same page with Ammianus Marcellinus, Homer, 
 Petrarch, and Saint Chrysostom, Darius and Charlemagne ; 
 by and by a few Hebrew words ; then verses in Greek, 
 Latin, and French, and all, perhaps, with reference to a 
 suit for divorce by a husband against a wife." The truth 
 is, adds the author of " Hortensius," after the capture of 
 Constantinople the remains of classic writers were scattered 
 over Western Europe, and being made accessible to the 
 public by the discovery of the art of printing, they were 
 read with an avidity of which we to-day can form no con- 
 ception. The minds of men had so long been starved upon 
 the dry husks of the Schoolmen and their barren subtle- 
 ties that when the rich banquet of ancient learning was 
 placed within their reach, they devoured it with famished 
 appetites : - 
 
 " Greedily they ingorged, without restraint." 
 
LITERARY QUOTATION. 351 
 
 Talleyrand once said of a man who was eternally parrot- 
 ing the sayings of others: "That man has a mind of in- 
 verted commas ; " and the sarcasm justly characterizes the 
 whole race of scribblers who, having no ideas of their own, 
 sponge on others, and steal these dingy rags of reference 
 to cover their own literary nakedness. They are the gyp- 
 sies of literature, whose language has been stolen from 
 every country through which they have passed ; or, rather, 
 the chiffonniers, the rag-pickers, who appropriate every 
 worn, threadbare thought that lies in their way. Their 
 writings are a kind of mosaic, the parts of which are in- 
 geniously dovetailed, and remind one of the architectural 
 workmanship of those Barbarians who used the Coliseum 
 and the Theatre of Pompe}* as quarries, who built hovels out 
 of Ionian friezes, and propped cow-houses on pillars of laz- 
 ulite. To quotation, when consisting of fresh and if we 
 may use the term original extracts, bits of thought, allu- 
 sion, or illustration not worn threadbare, there can be, of 
 course, no objection. Out of the depths of a full mind apt 
 and sparkling literary illustrations will almost of necessity- 
 bubble up to the surface ; and a critical eye can tell instantly 
 whether a quotation is spontaneous, or borrowed from Bart- 
 lett. "An intimate acquaintance with Greek and Latin," 
 said the Marquis of Wellesley, " is to a man what beaut}' 
 is to woman, and gives a grace and finish to his words and 
 writings which nothing else can supply." Who can doubt 
 that the parliamentary speeches of Pitt, Burke, Peel, and 
 Canning would lose half of their charm if bereft of that 
 " classical quotation " which, as Dr. Johnson tells us, " is 
 the parole of literary men all over the world"? A happy 
 quotation, especially when suddenly improvised, may some- 
 times show as much acuteness and ingenuity as an original 
 
352 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 remark ; as, for example, when Mr. Stanley, afterward 
 Lord Derby, quoted against O'Connell, who, contrary to the 
 rules of the House, had spoken three times in Committee 
 on the same question, "Thrice the brinded cat hath 
 mewed," from "Macbeth," and when Lord Denman ap- 
 plied to Lord Brougham and Vaux the words "Vox, et 
 prseterea nihil." So when Lord Carteret replied to Swift r 
 who bustled into the court which the former was holding as 
 Lord-Lieutenant, and demanded how he could do this and 
 that, 
 
 "Res dura, et regni novitas me talia cogunt 
 Moliri." 
 
 Equally as felicitous was the quotation by Swift, who, when 
 he saw the motto, " Non rapui, sed recepi," on a medal 
 of William III., observed : " The receiver is as bad as the 
 thief." Mr. Gladstone, one of the few members of the 
 House of Commons who to-day grace their speeches with 
 classic quotation, made an apt application of a passage 
 from the -ZEneid in his speech on Parliamentary Reform, 
 April 27, 1866. Turning to the Liberal party, he said : 
 
 " I came amongst you an outcast from those with whom I asso- 
 ciated, driven from the ranks, I admit, by no arbitrary act, but by 
 the slow and resistless forces of conviction. I came amongst you, 
 to make use of the legal phraseology, in forma pauperis. I had 
 nothing to offer you but faithful and honorable service ; you re- 
 ceived me as Dido received the shipwrecked jEneas, 
 
 ' . . . Ejectum littore, egentem 
 Excepi.' 
 
 And I only trust you may not hereafter at any time have to com- 
 plete the sentence in regard to me : 
 
 ' Et regni, demens ! in parte locavi/ " 
 
LITERARY QUOTATION. 853 
 
 Some 3'ears ago a famous university' proposed the " Discov- 
 ery of the Sources of the Nile " as the subject of a prize 
 essa} r , the competitors being desired to send in their papers 
 with mottoes attached, by which the successful effort might 
 be identified. One of these was "Ex Nilo nihil fit," 
 which witticism was worth more probably than some of the 
 essays. 
 
 When quotation is introduced with the felicitj' of a Haz- 
 litt, nothing can add more to the attractiveness of literary 
 composition. It is said that that brilliant writer, whose 
 mind was a florilegium of fine passages gathered from 
 every field of literature, once boasted that at ten minutes' 
 notice he could illustrate any subject with an appropriate 
 quotation from Shakspeare, and give the play and the act 
 from which he took it ; and on Theodore Hook giving him 
 that most unpoetical of themes, u the treadmill," he in a 
 few minutes repeated the following from the last scene of 
 the fourth act of " Lear : " - 
 
 " Oh cease, tliou hard ascent of climbing sorrows ! " 
 
 But all writers are not Hazlitts, and the generality of quo- 
 tations are desperate makeshifts, dragged in by head and 
 shoulders, without regard to fitness, because the writer is 
 bankrupt of ideas or expressions. No one will object to 
 occasionally greeting his old friends, "Nous avons change 
 tout cela," u Revenons a nos moutons," " Oinne ignotum 
 pro mirifico," Mahomet's coffin, the genius in the brass 
 kettle, etc. ; but there are some writers who can never in- 
 troduce them too often. The moment they take their pens 
 in hand, these or some other pet phrases and illustrations 
 begin bobbing up and down in their minds, and keep them 
 in a state of perpetual unrest till the}* can make use of 
 
 23 
 
354 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 them. Now, if a writer cannot express himself except by 
 borrowing the winged words of another, and, jackdaw-like, 
 decking himself with pilfered plumage, he would better be 
 silent. A man's style of expression should be as character- 
 istic and inseparable from him as his clothes. His words 
 and phrases should be the exact vesture of his thought. 
 If, instead of being dressed in his own garments, he be 
 all patched and pied and dappled ; if he have on one 
 man's boots, another's hat, and have borrowed a coat and 
 vest from a third, how are we to know him ? His own 
 garments may not be of the latest and most fashionable cut, 
 or of the best material ; but if they are a true expression of 
 himself, the\' are infinitely more becoming to him than more 
 costly or showy ones that mask his individuality. 
 
THE VALUE OF FAME. 
 
 author of "The Religion of Nature Delineated" 
 a work extensively popular in its day, but now rarely 
 read, or even named strikingly shows what a mockery 
 is posthumous fame. " In reality," says he, "the man is 
 not known ever the more to posterity because his name 
 is transmitted to them ; he doth not live because his name 
 does. When it is said, 'Julius Caesar subdued Gaul, con- 
 quered Pompey,' etc -5 it i s tne same thing as to say, the 
 conqueror of Pompey was Julius Caesar ; i. e., Caesar and 
 the conqueror of Pompey is the same thing. Caesar is as 
 much known by one designation as by the other. The 
 amount, then, is only this : that the conqueror of Pompey 
 conquered Pompey ; or rather, since Pompey is as little 
 known now as Caesar, somebody conquered somebody. Such 
 a poor business is this boasted immortality, and such is 
 the thing called glor} r among us ! To discerning men this 
 fame is mere air, and what they despise, if not shun." 
 
 What a satire on human ambition are all the contrivances 
 to cheat oblivion ! How much disappointment and misery 
 men would avoid if they could realize how fleeting is 
 human fame ! The applause of the multitude is sweet, but 
 it is in most cases the thing of a da} r , a flower that is fresh 
 and fragrant in the morning, but droops in the hot noon- 
 tide, and dies in the evening. " Popularity," said Lord 
 Mansfield on a notable occasion, " may be obtained without 
 
356 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 merit, and lost without a fault." How often do we find 
 that the man to whom hosannas are sung to-day, is fol- 
 lowed to-morrow by the cry of "Crucify him ! Crucify him ! " 
 Man}- a man who was once the god of the people's idolatry, 
 " the observed of all observers," the shake of whose hand 
 or the nod of whose head was welcomed as the presage of 
 thick-coming honors, has in a few years, perhaps in a 
 few months, outlived his fame, and then languished in ob- 
 scurity, to be named, if named at all, only with a sneer. It 
 is curious to see what trifles sometimes make or unmake 
 the fortunes of men. A thoughtless or silly remark, uttered 
 or penned in a moment of haste, will often place men of 
 eminent ability and real moral worth in a ridiculous posi- 
 tion, withdrawing attention from all their past services, and 
 making them the butt of every malicious pen and the 
 byword of every wagging tongue. 
 
 We have a notable example of this in the case of Gen- 
 eral Scott, a veteran soldier and a patriot of unquestioned 
 ability and virtue, who was at one time a candidate for the 
 Presidency of the United States. By one foolish, unguarded 
 expression, the merest slip of the pen, " a hast}* plate of 
 soup," he came near signing his political death-warrant. 
 Had he embezzled the public funds or committed some act 
 of moral turpitude, it would have been far better for him ; 
 for this might have been overlooked in the dazzling bril- 
 liancy of his past career. But he had been guilty of no 
 crime, done the State no injur}* ; but, what was far less 
 excusable, he had made himself ridiculous. The old hero 
 of Chippewa and Lundy's Lane found it difficult to breast 
 this torrent of ridicule, harder far than to stand up against 
 the iron shock of the battle-field ; and it is doubtful if his 
 reputation ever fully recovered from the damage it received. 
 
THE VALUE OF FAME. 357 
 
 Napoleon well understood the fickleness of human applause. 
 44 The crowd that contemplates me with admiration," said he, 
 "would with the same feeling see me mount the scaffold." 
 So thought also the Scottish monarch in the " Lady of the 
 
 Lake : " - 
 
 "With like acclaim, the vulgar throat 
 Strained for King James their morning note ; 
 With like acclaim they hailed the day 
 When first I broke the Douglas' sway ; 
 And like acclaim would Douglas greet 
 If he could hurl me from my seat." 
 
 Wellington, in a less degree, had experience of the fickle- 
 ness and ingratitude of those he served. Even after Water- 
 loo, the nobility regarded him as a soldier of fortune, a 
 militar}' adventurer, who would soon find his level in 
 societ}' ; and the}' actuall}* combined to keep him in u his 
 proper place." Such, in almost every land, is military and 
 political popularity, huzzas one day, and death the next. 
 Its possessor may stand on the topmost pinnacle of public 
 admiration, yet the wafting of a feather may send him 
 toppling to the earth. 
 
 What reader of Roman history is not familiar with the 
 magnificent ''triumphs" of Pom pey over Mithridates, the 
 last of which surpassed in splendor every similar pageant 
 in the imperial city? Having triumphed successive!}' over 
 Europe, Africa, and Asia, Pompey was looked upon as tho 
 conqueror of the world, and was classed not only with 
 Alexander, but with the more ancient heroes and divinities, 
 Bacchus and Hercules. He had concluded victoriously a 
 war of thirty years' duration, during which he had reduced 
 twent3 T -eight hundred cities and fortresses, burned or cap- 
 tured eight hundred and forty-six galleys, routed, slain, or 
 taken as prisoners two millions of enemies, and made the 
 
358 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 province of Asia, which had hitherto been the extremit}', 
 now only the centre of the Roman dominions. Yet the star 
 of the general who on this his birthday was the centre 
 of attraction to the applauding multitude, and of whom a 
 bust entirely incrusted with pearls was carried in the pro- 
 cession culminated on this very day, when every kind of 
 incense was offered to his vanity. It was but a short time 
 afterward when, at a public show of gladiators, of which 
 he himself was the exhibitor, he was hissed by the whole 
 assembly. "I could not refrain from tears," says Cicero 
 in a letter to Atticus, " when, on the eighth day before the 
 kalends of August, I observed him haranguing the people 
 concerning the edicts of Bibulus. . . . He, who was now- 
 compelled to descend from the starry height of his ambition, 
 instead of gently falling, appeared to have been violently 
 hurled from the firmament. As for myself, if Apelles had 
 beheld his Venus, or Protogones his famous Jalysus, denied 
 with mud, his feelings could not have been more acute than 
 mine on seeing one on whom I had formerly lavished the 
 most glowing colors and the most artful touches of my 
 eloquence, thus suddenly disfigured." 
 
 It is said that Alexander VI., Pope of Rome, on entering 
 a town which he had captured, saw a number of the citizens 
 engaged in pulling down from a gibbet a figure designed to 
 represent himself, while others were knocking down a neigh- 
 boring statue of one of the Orsini famil}*, with whom he 
 was at war, in order to put his own effigy, when taken 
 down, in its place. Instead of expressing surprise or con- 
 tempt at the adulation of these barefaced flatterers, Alex- 
 ander turned to Cesare Borgia, his son, and said with a 
 smile: "You see, my son, how small is the difference 
 between a gibbet and a statue ! " 
 
THE VALUE OF FAME. 359 
 
 When Opie, the painter, first came to London, after hav- 
 ing lived in obscurity in Cornwall, he became speedily the 
 idol of the fashionable world. The novelty and originality 
 of manner in his pictures, added to his great abilities, drew 
 universal attention from the connoisseurs, and he was at 
 once surrounded and employed by all the principal nobility 
 of England. Even Sir Joshua Reynolds was for a time 
 eclipsed ; and the street where Opie lived was so crowded 
 with coaches of noble lords and ladies that the obstruction 
 was a real nuisance to the neighborhood. To his friend 
 Northcote he jestingly observed that "he thought he must 
 plant cannon at the door to keep the multitude off from it." 
 But alas for human caprice! As soon as "the Cornish 
 wonder," as he was called, ceased to be a novelty, his 
 house was blockaded no longer. The wealthy and titled 
 hordes, professing taste and virt'tl^ who had come swarming 
 out to behold the new phenomenon of art, now deserted 
 him ; and his drawing-room, which had been filled with 
 noble lords and ladies waiting patiently their turns to be 
 painted, contained hardly a sitter. Finally, he found him- 
 self so entirely forsaken that he said to a friend: "My 
 studio is as carefully shunned as if I had small-pox patients 
 there." Conscious of his defects as an artist, he strove 
 assiduously to improve himself, and made extraordinary 
 progress; but the improvement was not visible to the 
 leaders of taste and fashion. When his works were crude 
 and unstudied, their applause was deafening ; when his 
 paintings really merited a place in public galleries, the 
 world, resolved not to be infatuated twice with the same 
 object, paid him a cold attention. 
 
 The most discriminating public of which history tells, 
 accepted cordially only ten or twelve out of a hundred of 
 
360 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 the works of JEschylus, and forsook him wholly for a new 
 writer. Equally fickle in its admirations was the public of 
 Moliere's time, which waited for the nod of le grand mo- 
 narque before it saw merit in a play. Louis XIV., on the 
 first hearing of one of Moliere's best comedies, said noth- 
 ing ; hence the public concluded that he was displeased, 
 and all the next morning nothing was to be heard but 
 bandied criticism of the play as poor stuff, and such inanity 
 that really, if Monsieur Moliere did not make a great 
 change in his manner, he would never hold his ground with 
 men of taste. At dinner the king held out his hand to the 
 poet, and said that he had enjoj'ed his comedy beyond 
 expression. In the afternoon every soul was charmed with 
 the wit of the new plaj*. 
 
 When John Adams was about retiring from the Pres- 
 idenc} r of the United States, after a life spent in toils and 
 sacrifices for the nation, he was humiliated by an unpop- 
 ularity which he did not deserve. Hated and reviled by 
 thousands of his fellow-citizens, he felt and declared him- 
 self a disgraced man. " I am left alone," he wrote to 
 Rufus King. "... Can there be any deeper damnation in 
 this universe than to be condemned to a long life in dan- 
 ger, toil, and anxiety ; to be rewarded only with abuse, 
 insult, and slander ; and to die at sevent}", leaving an ami- 
 able wife and nine small children nothing for an inheritance 
 but the contempt, hatred, and malice of the world?" It 
 was not the open and violent attacks of his political ene- 
 mies that were the most galling ; he was constantly pricked, 
 says his latest biographer, by many small arrows of malice, 
 none carrying mortal wounds, but all keeping up a constant 
 irritation of the moral system. 
 
 It has been said that " it is a small thing to be popular, 
 
THE VALUE OF FAME. 361 
 
 but a great thing to be famous. The advantages of pop- 
 ularity are that a man has it while he lives, and that it puts 
 money in his pocket ; the disadvantages of fame are that it 
 is for the most part posthumous, and consequently paj's 
 no baker's, no butcher's, no tailor's bill, and may give no 
 crust of bread to that man living, to whom after death it 
 ma}' give a very considerable stone with a magniloquent 
 inscription on it. Popularity is the fashion of the hour, but 
 fame is for all time." The "all time" for which fame 
 endures shrinks, in the case of most famous men, into a 
 century or two, sometimes into a few decades. New names 
 are continually clamoring for the world's attention, and the 
 great and the good men of the past, whose memories might 
 otherwise be kept green, are overshadowed by the great 
 and good men of to-da\-. When Napoleon asked a portrait- 
 painter who was engaged upon a canvas that was to hand 
 down his features to future ages, how long the canvas 
 would last, he was told that with care it might last five 
 hundred years. " Five hundred years !" exclaimed the em- 
 peror, with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders. "And 
 people call that immortalit}* ! " Yet five hundred 3*ears, in 
 a world whose great men are continually multiplying, is a 
 prodigious^ long period for a man's name to remain visible 
 on the page of histo^. How many persons who fill a large 
 space in the e}'es of their contemporaries are utterly for- 
 gotten in half a century ! How many more strut their brief 
 hour on the stage of life, fanc\~ing that the e3'e of the world 
 is upon them, over whose names and deeds the veil of 
 oblivion is drawn in fifty weeks, or even as many da}*s ! 
 
 When the memory of a great man is perpetuated b}^ the 
 chisel instead of by the brush, the chances of its being pre- 
 served for centuries are fewer still. War, fire, earthquake, 
 
362 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 a hundred things, may cause the destruction of the finest 
 productions of the sculptor's art. When the tidings of 
 Pompey's defeat at Pharsalia reached Rome, all his statues 
 were thrown down and mutilated. When the Rhodians de- 
 creed a statue to a general, he was desired to choose any 
 one he liked among the existing votive statues, and the 
 dedication was altered by inserting his name. It is as- 
 serted by a Roman historian that Caesar cut off the head of 
 an equestrian statue of Alexander, and replaced it by a 
 gilded effigy of himself. Tiberius, in like manner, decapi- 
 tated a statue of Augustus to make room for his own head. 
 There are statues which, after passing for centuries as the 
 " counterfeit presentments " of certain great men of an- 
 tiquit}', are now labelled with the names of others. In the 
 museum at Naples there is a statue of JEschines which till 
 recently was exhibited as that of Aristides. 
 
 The kings of Egypt, to secure an earthly immortalit}*, 
 had their embalmed bodies preserved in vast Pyramids. 
 Yet in the seventeenth centurj* these bodies were sold 
 for quack medicines, and to-da3 r they are used as fuel. 
 "Mummy," sa}*s Sir Thomas Browne, "is become mer- 
 chandise. Misraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for 
 balsams. . . . Oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and 
 deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit 
 of perpetuit3\ Who can but pity the founder of the p}'ra- 
 mids? Herostratus lives, that burnt the temple of Diana; 
 he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the epi- 
 taph of Adrian's horse ; confounded that of himself. In 
 vain we compute our felicities b}' the advantage of our good 
 names, since bad have equal durations ; and Thersites is 
 likelj* to live as long as Agamemnon without the favor of the 
 Everlasting Register. The Canaanitish woman lives more 
 
THE VALUE OF FAME. 363 
 
 happily without a name than Herod i as with one ; and who 
 had rather not have been the good thief than Pilate ? " 
 
 Even those who have basked longest in the sunshine of 
 popularity have found little pleasure in it. On the other 
 hand, the toils and the watchfulness which the maintenance 
 of a great reputation exacts are often found intolerable. 
 " O ye Athenians ! " exclaimed Alexander the Great as in 
 a heavy thunder-storm he was fording the flooded Hydas- 
 pes to attack King Porus on the opposite bank, " what 
 toils do I undergo to obtain your praise ! " Prince Eugene, 
 after gaining a useless victory, acknowledged that "on 
 travaille trop pour la Gazette." The appetite for fame 
 " grows b} r what it feeds on ; " and where " Alps on Alps 
 arise" in the pathway of the ambitious man, he is no more 
 content to pause on the tenth elevation than on the first. 
 The view from the first hill-top is often the most exhilarat- 
 ing. One of the marshals of France, old in years and 
 honors, said on a review of his life : "I entered the Pol}'- 
 technic School at sixteen, and I left it to enter the Engi- 
 neers. The grade which gave me the greatest pleasure was 
 that of corporal at the Polytechnic School." The greed for 
 fame becomes in some eminent men so strong that the}' are 
 unhappy, however loudly extolled, if the}' do not monopolize 
 the exclusive attention of the public. All qualified praise 
 is regarded by them as a kind of censure ; and if in a gallon 
 of laudation there is a drop of criticism, only the latter in- 
 gredient will be tasted. Voltaire was even jealous of a roue 
 who was the talk of the town. Napoleon, with his world- 
 wide renown, hated any allusion to Caesar in official bulletins, 
 and was even angry at the reputation of the sarcastic 
 Geoffry. The " great Boileau " confessed to Freret that he 
 had always sought for glory, and that he had never heard 
 
364 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 any one praised, not even a shoemaker, without feeling a 
 touch of jealousy. The fame of Linnaeus cost Buffon many 
 a sleepless night. Ityron found the fame he won so un- 
 satisfying that he declared that the praise of the greatest 
 of the race could not take the sting from the censure 
 of the meanest. At the end of a conclave in the Vati- 
 can, a poor creature who had just been elected Pope was 
 thus addressed in a whisper by a cardinal who had voted 
 for him: " Your Holiness knows that you are ignorant, 
 weak, and profligate. Don't be alarmed ! 'T is the last 
 time you will hear the truth, even from me. Adieu! Je 
 vais vous adorer ! " 
 
 Cowley, in one of his admirable essaj's, shows a just ap- 
 preciation of the value of notoriety. " If we engage into a 
 large acquaintance and various familiarities," he sa}'s, " we 
 set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time ; we 
 expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinences 
 which should make a wise man tremble to think of. Now, 
 as for being known much by sight, and pointed at, I cannot 
 comprehend the honor that lies in that ; whatsoever it be, 
 eveiy mountebank has it more than the best doctor, and 
 the hangman more than the lord chief-justice of a city. 
 Every creature has it, both of nature and art, if it be any- 
 ways extraordinary. It was as often said ' This is that 
 Bucephalus ' or ' This is that Incitatus,' when they were led 
 prancing through the streets, as 'This is that Alexander ' 
 or * This is that Domitian ; ' and truly, for the latter, I take 
 Incitatus to have been a much more honorable beast than 
 his master, and more deserving the consulship than he the 
 empire." 
 
 The hollowness of fame, the heavy tax it .imposes on 
 its votaries, and the little lasting pleasure it gives, have 
 
THE VALUE OF FAME. 365 
 
 been felt most keenly by those who have drunk most deeply 
 of its intoxicating draught. Caesar, when he had reached the 
 highest summit of greatness that even his ambition coveted, 
 was filled with sadness, apparently at the hollowness of all 
 earthly glory. He became melanchol}*, regardless of his 
 personal safety, and expressed a preference of death to life. 
 " I have considered it well," said the English Hippocrates, 
 u and find celebrity to be lighter than a feather or a 
 bubble." "I intend," said Newton, when his wonderful 
 discoveries began to excite the hostilities of rivals, "to 
 have done with matters of philosophy. I blame my own 
 imprudence for parting with so substantial a blessing as my 
 quiet to run after a shadow." " You see what fame is," 
 wrote Lord Byron to a friend. u I don't know what others 
 feel, but I am always lighter when I have got rid of mine ; 
 it sits on me like the armor on the Lord Mayor's cham- 
 pion." Yet thousands labor to forge for themselves the 
 chains so dazzling to the observer and so burdensome to 
 the wearer, because they see the glitter, and know nothing 
 of the weight. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HANDWRITING. 
 
 "\ T 7HENCE sprang the idea, so prevalent among young 
 * * writers, that 4 ' a shocking bad hand " is an indica- 
 tion of genius? Did it originate with Alexandre Dumas, 
 who calls a good handwriting li the brevet of incapacitj- " ? 
 Or did it come from some disciple of Talleyrand, who be- 
 lieved that penmanship, like language, was given to man to 
 enable him to conceal his thoughts ? The notion is ridicu- 
 lous enough in this age of the schoolmaster, however suited 
 to darker times, when communications were more frequently 
 answered b}' sword or cudgel than by pen or post. Emi- 
 nent writers, who make it their business to instruct their 
 fellow-men, have less excuse than business men for a bad 
 chirograph}^. They should know how to form their " pot- 
 hooks and hangers," even if the}' do not mind their " p's 
 and q's." It is no doubt true that a writer, when his facul- 
 ties and feelings are stimulated to the highest pitch, and 
 " all the god comes rushing upon his soul," will hardly 
 pause, in dashing off his thoughts upon paper, to be 
 squeamishly nice in his handwriting; but no degree of 
 exaltation or fine frenzy should excuse him from putting 
 his thoughts in a plain hand. Vexatious enough is it for 
 editor and printer to puzzle out the abbreviations, clippings 
 of final letters, and other peculiarities of passable penmen ; 
 but when these usual perplexities are heightened by that 
 mischievous invention of modern times, a running hand, by 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HANDWRITING. 367 
 
 which all the smaller letters are blended together into an 
 undistinguishable mass of " pot-hooks and trammels," in 
 which long words, after a few letters have been written, are 
 whizzed off with a horizontal snake-line and a final ram's- 
 horu, the whole forming a confused jumble of letters, as 
 though blown into a heap b}' a wrathful explosion, who 
 can blame the editor who, instead of crucifying his eyes 
 over such a manuscript, consigns it, unread, to " Balaam's 
 box"? 
 
 Doubtless there are persons who cannot by any amount 
 of painstaking write a legible hand. Chesterfield, indeed, 
 declared that any man who has the use of his eyes and his 
 right hand can write whatever hand he pleases. But the 
 facts do not sustain this assertion. Were it true, is it 
 probable that Byron would have put his burning verse into 
 such a miserable schoolboy scrawl ? Would Emerson have 
 written so sprawling a hand? Or would Napoleon have 
 written the worst hand on record, so bad that his letters 
 to Josephine from Germany were sometimes mistaken for 
 maps of the seat of war? When he first became eminent 
 his signature was of full length ; but gradually it shrank to 
 the three first letters (Nap.), and finally it degenerated into 
 a clash or scrawl intended for an N. No doubt the vileness 
 of his " pot-hooks " was aggravated by the speed with which 
 he wrote. It is said that he could dash off several pages a 
 minute, not a remarkable feat when each page consisted 
 of eight blots and a spatter. Scores of other eminent men 
 men, too, man}- of them, of exquisite taste have writ- 
 ten hands so execrable that we must believe they were 
 prevented from writing well by some plrysical infirmity. 
 Jacob Bryant said of Archdeacon Coxe's hieroglyphics that 
 they could be called neither a hand nor a fist, but a foot, 
 
368 MEN, PLACES, AND 1 KINGS. 
 
 and that a club one. SN'dney Smith once wrote to 
 that lie had tried to read a letter of the great reviewer from 
 left to right, and Mrs. Sydney from right to left ; but neither 
 of them could decipher a single word. Of Sj'dney's own 
 hand it has been said that, with the exception of Jeffrey's, 
 it was the worst that Constable's printers had to puzzle out 
 for the " Edinburgh Review." He himself compared it to 
 the hieroglyphics of a swarm of ants escaping from an ink- 
 bottle, and walking over a sheet of paper without wiping 
 their legs. When his wife inclosed to him an illegible pas- 
 sage from one of his letters from London, containing direc- 
 tions about the management of his farm, and asked for an 
 explanation, he simply returned it with the remark that he 
 must decline ever reading his own handwriting four and 
 twenty hours after he had written it ! 
 
 The handwriting of Dr. Chalmers was still more per- 
 plexing than that of Sydney Smith. It literally defied all 
 attempts to read it. It is said that when his father received 
 a weekly or fortnightly letter from his eminent son, he care- 
 fully locked it up. After a store had accumulated, the son 
 would come and pa}' him a visit, upon which he would 
 break all the seals and ask the writer of the letters to read 
 them. 
 
 The celebrated actor and manager, Macready, wrote a 
 puzzling hand, and his orders for admission to the theatre, 
 it is said, were extraordinary productions. Of this the fol- 
 lowing anecdote is a striking illustration. He had one day 
 given an order to a friend for a third part}*. On the latter 
 receiving it he remarked: " If I had not known what it 
 was, I should have taken it for a doctor's recipe." "You 
 are right," resumed his friend, u it looks exactly like it ; let 
 us try our luck with it." " Be it so ; let us get the draught 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HANDWRITING. 369 
 
 made up." The}' go to the nearest apothecary's and hand 
 the paper to the assistant. He throws a quick glance over 
 it, and fills a phial from various bottles ; another glance, 
 another ingredient, and the phial is half full. Then a dubi- 
 ous pause ensues ; the assistant is obviousl}' puzzled, and 
 scratches his head. Finally he disappears through a parti- 
 tion, behind which the proprietor is seated. The latter, a 
 profoundly learned-looking man, appears at the counter. 
 A short, low dialogue takes place, in consequence of which 
 the chief peruses the document. He shakes his head, evi- 
 dently at the ignorance of the assistant, fetches another 
 bottle down, and finally fills the phial with an apocryphal 
 liquid, corks and labels it in proper form. Thereupon he 
 hands it to the expectant gentlemen with a friendly smile : 
 44 Here is the cough-mixture, which is apparently very good. 
 Fifteenpence, if you please." 
 
 It has been said of Rufus Choate's handwriting that it 
 could not be deciphered without the help of a pair of com- 
 passes and a quadrant. The best specimens look like the 
 hieroglyphics on a Chinese tea-chest, while the rest seem 
 like crayon-sketches done in the dark with a three-pronged 
 fork. A Massachusetts paper once expressed a fear that 
 he would not be able to stand the writing test, should it be 
 incorporated, as proposed, into the Constitution of that 
 State. Having been invited on a certain occasion to ad- 
 dress a public meeting in New Hampshire, he replied by 
 letter ; but the committee, after puzzling for hours over the 
 scrawl, despaired of deciphering it, and were obliged to 
 send a special messenger to learn his answer. In a country 
 law-office in Maine two attorneys and the writer of this essay 
 spent an entire forenoon in trying to read some written 
 questions sent by Mr. Choate to be put in a deposition, 
 
 24 
 
370 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 and only succeeded in spelling out the preposition o-f. Of 
 Horace Greeley, an ex-" Tribune" proof-reader is reported 
 as having said that if he had written the inscription on the 
 wall in Babylon, Belshazzar would have been a good deal 
 more scared ! 
 
 A college student who found more pleasure in using his 
 hand in base-ball than in writing, excused himself to his 
 guardian by saying : " If I were to write better, people 
 would find out how I spell." An anecdote told of the cel- 
 ebrated Ben Hardin shows that lawyers may have even 
 weightier reasons for writing badly. Ben, who was some 
 years ago a talented and eccentric member of the Kentucky 
 Bar, as well as a member of Congress, had been crippled in 
 his right hand by the falling of a tree. The two main forks 
 chanced to strike on each side of him, sparing his life as if 
 by miracle ; but his hand became singular!}' injured and de- 
 formed. Two stumps of fingers remained, and those were 
 divided for about an inch and a half only. When, there- 
 fore, he wished to write, he thrust a pen between the 
 stumps, as one would crowd a quill under a splinter on a 
 rail ; and as the fingers were stiff, all movement was com- 
 municated by the arm. An JEdipns who could guess out 
 Ben's pen-scratches could have beaten Champoliion in de- 
 ciphering the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and would have been 
 in no danger of being devoured by the Sphinx. When be- 
 fore the court, Ben was lynx-eyed in detecting the blunders 
 of his opponent; but as with a bald man pulling hair 
 no such vexations could be retorted on him. If a plea or 
 declaration seemed to be open to technical objections, and 
 his opponent thereupon demurred, Ben was alwa\'s read}' : 
 " My brother merely mistakes my handwriting, that's 
 all ; I have it here just as he thinks it ought to be." As 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HANDWRITING. 371 
 
 nobody but himself could pronounce with the slightest de- 
 gree of certainty upon the old fellow's crow-tracks, he had 
 it all his own way, and the demurring attorney was obliged 
 " to give it up." 
 
 The great classical scholar Dr. Parr, who himself wrote a 
 beautiful, clerkly hand, thus satirizes the chirography of 
 one of his acquaintances : 
 
 " His letters put me in mind of tumult and anarchy ; there is 
 sedition in every sentence ; syllable has no longer any confidence 
 in syllable, but dissolves its connection, as preferring an alliance 
 with the succeeding word. A page of his epistle looks like the 
 floor of a garden-house, covered with old crooked nails which have 
 just been released from a century's durance in a brick wall. I 
 cannot cast my eyes on his character without being religious. 
 This is the only good effect I have derived from his writings : he 
 brings into my mind the resurrection, and paints the tumultuous 
 resuscitation of awakened men with a pencil of masterly confusion. 
 I am fully convinced of one thing, either that he or his pen is in- 
 toxicated when he writes to me ; for his letters seem to have bor- 
 rowed the reel of wine, and stagger from one corner of the sheet 
 to the other. They remind me of Lord Chatham's Administration, 
 lying together heads and points in one truckle-bed." 
 
 It is doubtful whether as much attention is given to chi- 
 rography in these days as in the olden time. Few persons 
 now try " to write like an angel," that is, as the phrase 
 means, like the learned Angelo Vergecio, in imitation of 
 whose remarkable calligraph}' Francis I. of France caused a 
 fount of Greek type to be modelled. We have no longer 
 Iliads written in a hand so infinitesimally microscopic 
 that the entire poem may be squeezed into a nutshell, nor 
 do royal personages wear minute manuscripts in the form 
 of finger-rings. In the autographs of a century ago the 
 chirography will be found better than the orthography, while 
 
372 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 to-day men spell better than they write. Voltaire and 
 Rousseau wrote excellent hands ; and in the round-robin 
 addressed to Dr. Johnson on the subject of Goldsmith's 
 epitaph, the names of the most eminent men, Burke, 
 Gibbon, Sheridan, Reynolds, Colman, and Warton, 
 though written at the dinner-table, betray no slovenliness. 
 What our forefathers thought of that easy writing which is 
 such hard reading, is evident from their practice. What 
 equal number of signatures can be found to anj r document 
 more legible and beautiful than those appended to the Dec- 
 laration of Independence? Round, upright, bold, and com- 
 pact, their hands were as much superior to the sprawling, 
 shuffling hands of to-day as the men themselves were 
 superior to the tricky politicians, their successors. 
 
 Within a few years a startling discovery has been made 
 in regard to handwriting. We allude to the alleged art of 
 detecting a man's character by his pot-hooks. The experts 
 have carried this art to such a pitch of perfection that it 
 is positively dangerous to touch a pen, unless }'ou wish " to 
 wear your heart on your sleeve, for daws to peck at." A 
 man signs his name to a note, and lo ! his most secret mo- 
 tives of action are revealed to the public gaze as effectually 
 as if he were turned inside out. Professors of this art will 
 just glance at } r our handwriting, and, with all the confi- 
 dence of a Velpeau making a diagnosis, will exclaim : 
 ''There is an I which denotes intense egotism; this #, 
 much greatness of soul ; this upstroke comes from a soar- 
 ing mind ; that downstroke betrays a proclivity to baseness ; 
 this z shows a zigzag, flighty disposition ; the tail of that 
 y argues a little avarice in the writer." Mr. "Punch," 
 who thus explains handwriting, has posted himself fully 
 in the new art, and reveals the following for the benefit 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HANDWRITING. 373 
 
 of those who would like to know the sort of persons they 
 are corresponding with: 4 ' A running hand to an accep- 
 tance ma}' indicate a disposition on the part of the acceptor 
 to run away from his liability. A cramped hand from a 
 creditor demanding payment of a debt, shows that he will 
 require very stiff interest if he grants time ; and a smeared 
 signature shows that the writer has no objection to a blot on 
 his name ; while if a man asking to borrow money fails to 
 unite his O, it is certain he is not likely to bring matters 
 round very easily." 
 
 The philosophers who contend that the curves and angles 
 of a man's handwriting give a key to his character, do not 
 lack shrewd arguments for their faith. Into every habitual 
 act which is performed unconsciously, earnestly, or natu- 
 rally, they contend, the mind unavoidably passes. The 
 play of the features, the motion of the limbs, the paces, the 
 tones, the very folds of the drapery (especially if it have 
 long been worn), says Hartley Coleridge, are all significant. 
 " A mild, considerate man hangs up his hat in a very dif- 
 ferent style from a hasty, resolute one ; a Dissenter does 
 not shake hands like a High Churchman. But there is no 
 act into which the character enters more fully than into 
 that of writing ; for it is generally performed alone or un- 
 observed, seldom, in adults, is an object of conscious atten- 
 tion, f and takes place while the thoughts and the natural 
 current of feeling are in full operation." Shelley, if we 
 ma}' judge from the following passage in one of his letters, 
 in which he gives his opinion of two celebrated poets, held 
 a similar view. "The handwriting of Ariosto is a small, 
 firm, and pointed character, expressing, as I should say, a 
 strong and keen, but circumscribed, energy of mind ; that 
 of Tasso is large, free, and flowing, except that there is a 
 
374 MEN, PLACES, AND THINGS. 
 
 checked expression in the midst of its flow which brings 
 the letters into a smaller compass than one expected from 
 the beginning of the word. It is the symbol of an intense 
 and earnest mind, exceeding at times its own depths, and 
 admonished to return by the chillness of the waters of 
 oblivion striking upon its adventurous feet." 
 
 No doubt there are more open windows than we dream 
 of, through which keen, scrutinizing eyes may look in upon 
 the hidden points of our character ; yet we doubt whether 
 the knowledge of men derived from handwriting can be of 
 any practical value. Not only does the general turn of the 
 handwriting vary in different ages, but mam* hands are ac- 
 quired by imitation, and so all individuality is lost. There 
 are modes of writing which, like modes of dress, become 
 the rage for a season, and therefore throw no more light 
 on character than the singing of a fashionable song or the 
 dancing of a popular " polka." Again, there are business 
 hands which have so much general resemblance that the pecu- 
 liarities of the writers are almost completely hidden. Then 
 there are hands which are never full}' developed, but, for 
 lack of care or of instruction, remain always in an abortive 
 state. Finally, men write large or small, in hands boldly or 
 weakly formed, according to the schools in which the}' have 
 been taught, and according to the humor of the moment. 
 Brave, decided men may write a timid, hesitating scrawl ; 
 noble, high-minded men may perpetrate a mean hand ; and 
 cowards produce a script that is bold and flowing. The 
 profound, clear-headed Pascal wrote an almost illegible 
 hand, while Porson, the most untidy of scholars, wrote 
 elegantly. The chirography of the crooked- minded Charles 
 I. is clear and striking, and that of the trick}', tortuous 
 Bolingbroke is bold and flowing. The handwriting of Pro- 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HANDWRITING. 375 
 
 fessor Huxlej*, whose style is the ideal of lucidit}', is almost 
 undecipherable ; the " pot-hooks" of Darwin are so utterly 
 without form and void that there was evidently no process 
 of "natural selection" in their choice. In the big, flashy 
 hand of Disraeli there is no trace of the statesman or the 
 litterateur; nor from the cryptographic penmanship of 
 Swinburne would one ever guess at the voluptuous beauty 
 and the exquisite music of his verse. Dean Stanley was one 
 of the clearest of authors ; yet of a letter of his in our pos- 
 session, even the signature is almost illegible. The manu- 
 script of Edgar A. Poe is beautiful, and without an erasure ; 
 that of Charles Dickens is rugged, and full of interlineations 
 and alterations. Of Rosa Bonheur's chirography it has 
 been said that, though artistic and picturesque, "it is not 
 handwriting. That the capital B [of her signature] was 
 represented by those ammonite-horned hangers, or that bon- 
 heur was symbolized by the tout ensemble of its curves and 
 curls, could only be guessed by a Chabot or a ChampoHion." 
 On the other hand, the stiffness and slowness of Boileau's 
 handwriting were in keeping with his severe and caustic 
 disposition ; and the extremely delicate hand of Count de 
 Montalembert, one of whose notes we have, is indicative of 
 his almost feminine grace and refinement, but not of his 
 strength and impetuosity. Again, there is a remarkable 
 affinity between Moore's diamond lines and the sparkling 
 thoughts and images that lie in them ; and the small, con- 
 densed writing of Thomas Gray is admirably suited for 
 shutting up essences in. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 ADAMS, John, President, his unpopu- 
 larity in old age, 360. 
 Addison, Joseph, his intemperance, 
 
 104 ; his anecdote of a barrister, 
 
 118. 
 
 ^Eschylus, 359, 360. 
 ^Esop* the fabulist, 239. 
 Akenside, Mark, 88. 
 Alexander the Great, sayings of, 102, 
 
 363. 
 Alexander VI., Pope, anecdote of, 
 
 358. 
 Alfieri, the poet, his passion for horses, 
 
 111; when his ideas flowed most 
 
 freely, 117. 
 
 Alfonso the Wise, saying of, 87. 
 Angelo, Michael, his reply to Paul 
 
 IV., 331. 
 
 Anne of Austria, 108. 
 Archimedes, 112. 
 Aristotle, 94. 
 Augustine, Saint, his indebtedness to 
 
 Varro, 76. 
 
 B. 
 
 BACON, Francis, saying of, 102; his 
 love of pomp, 122; his acts of mean- 
 ness, 132; on deformity, 239. 
 
 Balzac, Honore de, 95; his fondness 
 for coffee, 106-7. 
 
 Balzac, Jean-Louis de, his vanity, 87; 
 saying of his, 88. 
 
 Barttelot, Sir Walter, M.P., his par- 
 liamentary speeches, 196. 
 
 Battles, when lost, 254-5. 
 
 Beattie, James, 249. 
 
 Beauty, its disadvantages, 238, 243. 
 
 Beethoven, the composer, anecdotes 
 of, 99; his whims regarding food, 
 109; anecdotes of his eccentricity 
 and absence of mind, 113-15. 
 
 Bentham, Jeremy, 23, 102. 
 
 Bent ley, Richard, D.D., his praise of 
 oysters, 272. 
 
 Berryer, Pierre-Nicolas, anecdote of, 
 131. 
 
 Biography, its fascination, etc., 20; 
 when most useful, 20-1; value of 
 its personal details, 82-6. 
 
 Bismarck, Prince, his superstitions, 137. 
 
 Boccharis, king of Egypt, his defor- 
 mity, 239. 
 
 Boileau, his vanity, 88; confession of, 
 363-4. 
 
 Books, the multitude of new ones, 
 335-6; epitomes of them, 338; "ele- 
 gant extracts" from them, 339; 
 skimming them, 339; consulting 
 them, 340; advantages and disad- 
 vantages of reading a few, 341 ; 
 evils of reading only those of our 
 own age, 342; indispensable to cul- 
 ture, 342; generally mediocre, and 
 new only in style, 342-4. 
 
 Boots, their importance in dress, 291- 
 4; an index of character and stand- 
 ing, 292; their effect on man's 
 physical comfort, 293; Abraham 
 Lincoln's story about them, 293-4; 
 Dr. Holmes's lines on, 294. 
 
 Borrowers, some celebrated literary, 
 75-8. 
 
 Boswell, James, his Life of Johnson, 
 234. 
 
 Bremer, Frederica, saying of, 237. 
 
378 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Bright, John, M.P., his physiognomy, 
 198; his oratory described, 198-201; 
 his felicitous phrases, 200-1; his 
 bearing toward opponents, 201; a 
 champion of the oppressed, 202; 
 declination of his oratory, 202. 
 
 Brillat-Savarin, M., his anecdote of 
 an epicure, 267. 
 
 Brooke, Kev. Stopford A., 179-88; 
 his chapel, 179 ; his personal appear- 
 ance, 179, 180, 182-3; qualities of 
 his pulpit eloquence, 180-1; his 
 birthplace and education, 181-2; 
 sonnet by, 182; his Life of Rev. 
 F. W. Robertson, and other works, 
 182; character of his preaching, 183, 
 184; his defence of Broad Church- 
 men, 183-4; extracts from his ser- 
 mons, 185-7; his separation from 
 the English Church, 187. 
 
 Brougham, Lord, O'Connell on his 
 ugliness, 242. 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, extract from, 362. 
 
 Buchanan, Robert, on literary sin- 
 cerity, 328-9. 
 
 Buddaeus, Johannes Franciscus, 113. 
 
 Buffon, his vanity, 92; his literary 
 habits, 95, 249, 364. 
 
 Bulwer (Baron Lytton), 53-66; not a 
 genius, 53; his versatility, 53; a 
 tireless worker, 53-4. 65-6*; bis first 
 publications, 55; his "Falkland" 
 and "Pelham," 55-6; his "Paul 
 Clifford," 56; his "Eugene Aram," 
 and the objections to it, 56-7; his 
 " My Novel " and " The Caxtons " 
 characterized, 58-9 ; his qualities as 
 a novelist, 59-60; his poems, 60; 
 his merits and defects as a drama- 
 tist, 60-1; anecdote of his "Lady 
 of Lyons," 61; his oratory, 62-3; 
 his histories, 63; aristocratic in his 
 opinions and tastes, 64 ; his novels, 
 " The Coming Race " and " The 
 Parisians," 64; described by N. P. 
 Willis, 64; his mistakes concerning 
 his own works, 65 ; the great lesson 
 of his life, 65-6; his vanity, 93; his 
 indebtedness to other writers, 77. 
 
 Burton, John Hill, anecdote by, 303. 
 Byron, Lord, 85, 102, 106," 122-3, 
 364-5. 
 
 C. 
 
 CAESAR, Augustus, his superstition, 
 137. 
 
 Caesar, Julius, his physiognomy, pe- 
 culiarities, and habits, 81, 249; his 
 superstition, 136; his sadness, 365. 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, anecdote of. 93 ; 
 Rogers on, 105. 
 
 Carlyle, his biography by Froude, 235. 
 
 Cato, contradictions in his character, 
 123. 
 
 Chamberlain, Joseph, M.P., 198. 
 
 Charles I. of England, why regarded 
 as a martyr, 314. 
 
 Charles II. of England, a cynic, 286. 
 
 Charles V., emperor, his lucky days, 
 137; his habits at the monastery of 
 St. Juste, 248; his intrepidity, 253; 
 saying of, 253. 
 
 Charles XII. of Sweden, anecdote of, 
 257. 
 
 Chasles, Philarete, quoted, 234. 
 
 Chateaubriand, his refusal to serve 
 Napoleon, 10. 
 
 Chatham, Lord, his lack of simplicity, 
 122. 
 
 Chesterfield, Lord, on pedigree and 
 heralds, 100; his ugliness, 242. 
 
 Choate, Rufus, saying of his, 238. 
 
 Churchill, Lord Randolph, M.P., his 
 personal appearance, 193; his par- 
 liamentary speeches, 194-5. 
 
 Cicero, his vanity, 87; on Pompey, 
 358. 
 
 Clarke, Samuel, D.D., anecdotes of, 
 111. 
 
 Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, 82, 124; 
 her bills and billets-doux, 234; an 
 incident in her life, 235; her feat of 
 epicureanism, 279, 280. 
 
 Cobbett, William, his early reading, 
 23. 
 
 Coleridge, Hartley N., on handwrit- 
 ing, 373. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 379 
 
 Coleridge, Rev. John, his eccentrici- 
 ties, 115-16. 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., a literan" borrower, 
 76; anecdote of, 99; his moral de- 
 linquencies and prejudices, 130; on 
 the French character, 130; anecdote 
 of him, Wordsworth, and Cottle, 
 134-5. 
 
 Colton, C. C., author of " Lacon," 126. 
 
 Conde, saying of, 253. 
 
 Corwin, Hon. Thomas, anecdote of 
 him and Wirt, 44-5. 
 
 Coulaincourt, on the murder of the 
 Due d'Enghien, 10. 
 
 Courage, 253-63; when meritorious, 
 253; that of Charles XII. and Lord 
 Nelson, 257 ; when most admirable, 
 258-9; of Henry IV. and Frederic 
 the Great, 258; "of the Irish, 259; 
 tested only by crises, 259 ; a moral 
 quality, 259; 'of "Captain Death," 
 260-1; of many kinds, 260; of the 
 apostle Peter, 260-1 ; of Sir T. More, 
 261; superiority of moral to physi- 
 cal in war, 261; often desperation, 
 262; of Wolfe at Quebec, and Nel- 
 son at Trafalgar, 262 ; of Murat and 
 Ney compared, 263. 
 
 Cowen, Joseph, M.P., his parliamen- 
 tary speeches, .190; his political 
 views, 190. 
 
 Cowley, Abraham, on notoriety, 364. 
 
 Cowper, William, his letters, 234. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 101, 111. 
 
 Cubitatis, Uladislaus, king of Poland, 
 240. 
 
 Culture, encyclopedic, now impossible, 
 337. 
 
 Cynics, and cynicism, 283-8; their 
 characteristics, 283-4. 
 
 D. 
 
 DARWIN, Erasmus, 244. 
 
 Da Vinci, Leonardo, his lack of thrift, 
 
 etc., 124. 
 " Death, Captain," his courage, 259, 
 
 260. 
 
 Defoe, Daniel, declared a liar, 128. 
 
 Deformity, Bacon on, 239. 
 
 Del mas, General, on the policy of Na- 
 poleon T., 4, 5. 
 
 Descartes, 95. 
 
 Des Jardins, Marie Catherine, 241. 
 
 Diaries, 233-6; objections to them, 
 231-2, 235 ; some famous ones, 233-5. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, his vanity, 92; sel- 
 dom quotes, 348. 
 
 Dilke, Sir Charles W., M.P., 196. 
 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, his youthful fop- 
 pery, 97. 
 
 Divorce, its causes, 305-12; statistics 
 of, 305 ; when it should be granted, 
 307-8 ; for incompatibility of temper, 
 310; in ancient Rome, 310-11; in 
 England, 311 ; American laws on it, 
 311, 312. 
 
 Dress, its extremes, 289-94; fondness 
 of great men for, 94-8. 
 
 Dumas, Alexandra, 67-79 ; his good 
 fortune, 67; his Oriental constitu- 
 tion, 67; his love of physical dis- 
 play, 67-8; physical and martial 
 feats of his father, 68-9; his liter- 
 ary fecundity, 70-3; his romances 
 characterized, 72; his powers of 
 mental assimilation, 73; his tours 
 deforce, 72-4; how far aided in his 
 works by Maquet, 74-5; his pla- 
 giarisms, 78-9. 
 
 Dumoulin, Charles, 87. 
 
 E. 
 
 EDWARDS, Jonathan, D.D., his absent- 
 mindedness, 116. 
 
 Electioneering, in England, 318. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen of England, her 
 vanity, etc., 89; her manners and 
 amusements, 316; the mansions, 
 roads, and coaches of her age, 317. 
 
 Emmons, Nathaniel, D.D., on the 
 vices of his time, 324. 
 
 England, its vices in the eighteenth 
 century, 317, 318; "the good old 
 times " in it, 319-21. 
 
380 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Epaminondas, 81. 
 
 Epicurus, his vanity, 87. 
 
 Erskine, Lord, his vanity, 92; hi 
 
 dress, 95. 
 
 Eugene, Prince, saying of, 363. 
 Evelyn, John, his diary, 233. 
 
 F. 
 
 FAME, its value, 355-65; its disad 
 vantages, 361, 365-6; its fleeting 
 nature, 361, 363-4; greed of em 
 inent men for it, 363. 
 
 Faraday, Michael, 23. 
 
 Farrar, Archdeacon, 150-160; his 
 works, 150; his "Life of Christ, 
 151; his personal appearance, 151, 
 his excellences and faults as a 
 preacher, 151-2; his discourse on 
 parochial schools, 153; on "fail 
 ure " and "success," 153-4 ; his pop- 
 ularity, 154; criticisms on his ser- 
 mons and books, 155-6 ; his charity, 
 158; sketch of his life, 159-160; on 
 the imperfection of language, 184. 
 
 Fawcett, Henry, M.P., 197. 
 
 Feudalism, hardships inflicted by it 
 319. 
 
 Fontenelle, 109. 
 
 Foster, John, 95. 
 
 Fox, Charles James, anecdotes of, 96, 
 104. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, his early reading, 
 23. 
 
 Frederic the Great, contrasted with 
 Napoleon I., 3, 4; his wardrobe, 
 98; his courage, 258. 
 
 Fuller, Andrew, D.D., his peculiari- 
 ties, 118. 
 
 G. 
 
 GAMBLING in the eighteenth century, 
 
 317, 318. 
 George I. of England, his fondness 
 
 for stale oysters, 271. 
 Gibbon, the historian, Soame Jenvns 
 
 on, 242. 
 
 Gibson, Edward, M.P., his oratory 
 described, 192-3; his speech on the 
 Irish Laud Bill, 193. 
 Gladstone, William Ewart, M.P., his 
 qualities as a parliamentary leader, 
 202-3, 205-7; his personal appear- 
 ance and voice, 203- 4 ; his oratory, 
 204-5, 208-10; his physical con- 
 stitution, 205, 210-13; Buusen on, 
 205; a practical statesman, 206; his 
 repudiation of Conservatism, 207; 
 his labors and speeches on the 
 budget, 207; his definition of ora- 
 tory, 208; faults of his speeches, 
 208-10 ; his industry, 210, 211 ; his 
 health, 211; his pedestrian habits, 
 212; a lover of peace, 214; his 
 ardent temperament, 214, 215; his 
 reply to Disraeli, 215 ; his notice of 
 pygmy opponents, 216 ; excuses for 
 his overwork, 216; his felicity in 
 quotation, 352. 
 Goethe, his fondness for wine, 103; 
 
 his appetite, 109. 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, his dandyism, 95- 
 
 6; his ugliness, 240. 
 Goschen, George Joachim, M.P., 
 197. 
 
 ray, Thomas, his love of novel-read- 
 ing, 111. 
 
 Great Men, their weaknesses, 80-139; 
 why these interest us, 83-4; too 
 often egotistic, 87; their love of 
 dress, 94-8; their slovenliness, 99- 
 100; their love of titles, etc., 100; 
 their excesses in eating and drink- 
 ing, 103-10; their oddities, eccentri- 
 cities, and absence of mind, 112-17; 
 disturbed by trifles, 117-20; their 
 inconsistencies, 123-7 ; their lack 
 of truthfulness and principle, 127- 
 32; their meanness, avarice, and 
 penuriousness, 132-4; their want 
 of practical talent, 134-6; their 
 superstitions, 136-8; their insan- 
 ity, 138-9. 
 
 Griffith Gaunt," Charles Reade's 
 novel, objections to it, 329, 330. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 381 
 
 H. 
 
 HAMILTON, Lady Emma, and Lord 
 Nelson, 243. 
 
 Hamilton, Dr. Robert, anecdotes of, 
 113. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir William, anecdote of, 
 101. 
 
 Handel, the composer, anecdotes of, 
 89, 109; his penuriousness, 133-4. 
 
 Handwriting, its philosophy, 366-75; 
 bad, inexcusable, 367; Chesterfield 
 on, 367; of many eminent men 
 characterized, 367-75; how far an 
 index to character, 372-5; H. N. 
 Coleridge and Shelley on, 373. 
 
 Harcourt, Sir WillianTVernon, M.P., 
 192. 
 
 Hartington, Lord, his style of speak- 
 ing, 191. 
 
 Hat, the, its importance in dress, 289- 
 91; an index of character, 289, 290- 
 1; symbolic of different epochs, 289, 
 290; George Fox's, 290; Chateau- 
 briand on Napoleon's, 290; Dr. O. 
 W. Holmes on, 291. 
 
 Haydn, the composer, 94-5. 
 
 Hazlitt, William, 92; his tea-drinking 
 habits; 107-8; his shyness and ec- 
 centricity, 119. 
 
 Henry II. of England, rudeness of 
 manners, etc., in his reign, 315, 316. 
 
 Henry IV. of France, 137; his ac- 
 quired courage, 258. 
 
 Henry VIII., his character, 314. 
 
 Henry, Patrick, his Life by Wirt, 43-4. 
 
 Hervev, Lord John, and Mary Lepell, 
 244." 
 
 Hill, Rev. Rowland, anecdote of, 118- 
 9. 
 
 History, value of its personal details, 
 82-3. 
 
 Homburg, Germany, as a watering- 
 place, 218-30; its climate, 219; 
 qualities of its mineral springs, 219- 
 22; effects of its various baths, 223; 
 its regimen, 224; its "Fest" nights, 
 225; its Kurhaus, 225; its " Saal- 
 burg" antiquities, 225; charms of 
 
 its Park, 225-7 ; its suppressed gam- 
 ing-house, 227-8; the number of 
 its former visitors, 227; its Kur- 
 taxe, 228; its orchestra, and their 
 concerts, 229 ; its situation, 229. 
 
 Horace, his advice to epicures, 269. 
 
 Homer, Francis, 242. 
 
 House of Commons, the, 189-217; 
 character of its speeches, 189; in- 
 crease in the length of its sessions, 
 214. 
 
 Humboldt, Baron von, the diploma- 
 tist, on his own looks, 243. 
 
 Hunt, Rev. James, 22. 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, anecdotes of, 110, 135; 
 misprint of one of his lines, 303. 
 
 1. 
 
 ILLUSIONS about the Past, 313-26. 
 Insanity of great men, 138-9. 
 Inventions, modern, lengthen life, 322. 
 
 J. 
 
 JENNINGS, Frances, 243. 
 
 Jenyns, Soame, his phj'siognomy, 243. 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, careless in his 
 dress, 98-9; his fondness for tea, 
 107; and for mutton, etc., 109, 110; 
 his rudeness, 124-5; his advice to 
 Mrs. Sheridan, 328. 
 
 Jonson, Ben, his visit (o Hawthornden, 
 90 ; his egotism, 91; a hard drinker, 
 103-4; his physiognomy, 241. 
 
 Junot, Andoche, Due d'Abrantes, 100. 
 
 K. 
 
 KANT, Immanuel, his peculiarities, 
 
 249. 
 Keats, John, the poet, his dissipation, 
 
 106; Haydon on his faults, 135. 
 Keble, Rev. John, his advice to Dr. 
 
 Arnold, 131. 
 Kincaid. Captain J., on courage on the 
 
 battlefield, 256. 
 Kneller, Sir Godfrey, anecdote of, 90. 
 
382 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 L. 
 
 LANFREY on Napoleon I., 11, 13. 
 
 La Place, Napoleon on, 134. 
 
 Lassay, M. f a mot of, 287. 
 
 Lawson, Sir Wilfrid, M.P., 197. 
 
 Lecourbe, M., insulted by Napoleon, 
 18. 
 
 Leibnitz, his quotation from Virgil, 348. 
 
 Lekain, Henri Louis, his looks, 241-2. 
 
 Lely, Sir Peter, his vanity, 90. 
 
 Liddon, Canon, 160-9; his popularity 
 as a preacher, 161 ; his personal ap- 
 pearance, 162; his pulpit oratory, 
 162-8; qualities of his sermons, 
 163-5; his faults of manner, 165; 
 his sermon on "The Lord's Day," 
 166-7; his style, 168; a Catholic- 
 Anglican, 169; his views of "The 
 Lord's Supper," 169; abreast with 
 the time, 169. 
 
 Locke, John, his scheme of govern- 
 ment for the Carolinas, 136. 
 
 London, its greatness, 140-9; its pop- 
 ulation, 140-1; its rapid growth, 
 142; prehistoric, 141-2; statistics of 
 its policemen, cabmen, etc., 143 ; its 
 omnibuses, 143; its paupers and 
 charitable societies, 143-4; its pawn- 
 brokers, 144; its consumption of 
 coal, gas, milk, and ale, 144; per- 
 sons killed or injured in its streets, 
 145; its criminals, etc., 145; its 
 docks, 146-7; its loneliness, 147-8; 
 its want of unity, 148; its smoke 
 and fog, 149 ; its healthiness, 149 ; 
 its parks, 149; its consumption of 
 oysters, 281. 
 
 Louis XIII., his predilection for Friday, 
 137. 
 
 Louis XVIII., his fondness for oysters, 
 271. 
 
 M. 
 
 MACAULAY, T. B., his moods of ab- 
 straction, 116; on Byron, 123; his 
 propensity for quotation, 347-8; apt 
 quotation by, 348. 
 
 Macdonald, Marshal, his passage of 
 the Spliigen, 12, 13. 
 
 Macready, VV. C., his handwriting, 
 368-9. 
 
 Magliabecchi, Anthony, 111. 
 
 Maistre, Count Joseph de, his charac- 
 ter, 85-6; on Bacon, 86; on fear, 
 254. 
 
 Malherbe, anecdote of. 296. 
 
 Marat, Jean-Paul, 240. 
 
 Marl borough, the Duke of, his av- 
 arice and penuriousness, 133; con- 
 fidence of his soldiers in him, 
 256-7. 
 
 Marriage, mistakes concerning it, 
 306-7; the true motives for it, 
 307; cases of hardship and "in- 
 compatibility" in it, 308; Heine 
 on, 309; a school of self-sacrifice, 
 309; how its happiness is secured, 
 309. 
 
 Marshall, John, his legal arguments, 
 35. 
 
 Martineau, Harriet, on the vanity of 
 some men in high places, 93. 
 
 Mathews, Charles, his shyness and 
 whimsicality, 119-20. 
 
 Matrimonial quarrels, their causes, 
 308-9. 
 
 Maximilian, the Emperor, 100. 
 
 McLaurin, Rev. , anecdote of, 
 
 115. 
 
 Metternich, Napoleon's interview with 
 him, 17. 
 
 Milton, John, 89. 
 
 Mirabeau, his ugliness and magnetism, 
 245. 
 
 Mitchell, Colonel J., on Napoleon's 
 victories, 11. 
 
 Moliere, the popular judgment of his 
 plays, 360. 
 
 Montaigne, his story of a scholar at 
 Padua, 117-8. 
 
 Montmorenci, Francois-Henri de, Due 
 de Luxembourg, his deformity, 
 240. 
 
 Moore, Thomas, his vanity, 93-4. 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, his " Utopia," 136; 
 his courage, 261. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 383 
 
 N. 
 
 NAPIER, Sir C. J., 257. 
 
 Napoleon I., his character, 1-19; 
 Ropes's lectures on, 2, 7, 9; a foe 
 to liberty, 3; his dislike of wit, 3; 
 contrasted with Frederic the Great, 
 
 3, 4; M. Taine on his political sys- 
 tem, 4 ; General Delinas on his policy, 
 
 4, 5; defects of his Code, 5; his 
 treatment of the Italian peasants, 6 ; 
 his proclamation to the people of the 
 Vosges, 6; his treatment of Venice, 
 7-8; his spoliations of Prussia and 
 Holland, 8; his responsibility for 
 the murder of D'Enghien, 9, 10; his 
 military genius, 10-12; Thiers on, 
 10; Lanfrey on his rapidity of in- 
 tuition, 11; compared with Hanni- 
 bal, 12; a moral pygmy, 13; his 
 treatment of Villeneuve, 13; his 
 view of war, 13, 14; on the govern- 
 ment of men, 14; his lack of self- 
 knowledge, 14; his treachery and 
 hypocrisy, 14, 15; his duplicity, 
 14-16; his treatment of Comte de 
 Frotte", 16 ; his lack of veracity, 16 ; 
 his vulgarity and insults to eminent 
 men, 14-18; his avowal to Metter- 
 nich, 17; his treatment of Josephine, 
 18; his ruling purpose, 18, 19; his 
 chief crime, 19 ; at Fontainebleau, 
 81-2, 96; his cheating at whist, 85; 
 his vanity, 92; on La Place, 134; 
 his favorite day, 137; his courage, 
 261; sayings of, 261, 361; his fond- 
 ness for oysters, 271-2; on human 
 applause, 357. 
 
 Nelson, Lord, anecdote of, 92; his 
 Unison with Lady Hamilton, 129; 
 his courage inborn, 257 : his bravery, 
 262. 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 99; his absence of 
 mind, 112; saying of, 365. 
 
 Ney, Marshal, his inconsistency, 131. 
 
 Northcote, Sir Stafford, M.P. (Lord 
 Idesleigh), 191. 
 
 Novels, immoral, 327-334; Dr. John- 
 son on them, 328; the chief objec- 
 
 tion to them, 331-2; danger of de- 
 nunciatorv criticisms of them, 332- 
 4. 
 
 o. 
 
 OPIE, John, anecdotes of, 359. 
 
 Orators generally poor sleepers, 213. 
 
 Oratory, the difference between written 
 and spoken, 42; its asserted decay 
 in recent times, 189. 
 
 Originality, literar}', 75. 
 
 Oysters, 264-282; Professor Baird on 
 their culture and consumption, 264; 
 their fecundity, 264; their social 
 value, 265-281; their healthful qual- 
 ities, 266; esteemed by the Romans, 
 268; praised by eminent Romans, 
 268-9; Roman culture of them, 270; 
 monarchs who have been fond of 
 them, 270-1; Bentley on, 272; emi- 
 nent men who have been fond of 
 them, 271-2, 281; their anatomical 
 structure, 273; their enemies, 274; 
 their food, 274; their lament (from 
 "Punch"), 275; Thomas Fuller on, 
 275; Gay on their first eater, 275; 
 true mode of eating them, 276; their 
 liquor, 276 ; where cooked best, 276- 
 7; sonnet on, 277; their alleged 
 stupidity, 277; their sensibilities 
 and instincts, 278; their happiness, 
 278; " wonderfully made," 279; the 
 embryos and animalcules in their 
 liquor, 279; their influence on poli- 
 tics, 281. 
 
 P. 
 
 PALEY, William, D.D., his indebted- 
 ness to Nieuwentvt, 76 ; his fondness 
 for angling, 111; anecdotes of, 123. 
 
 Panics, in battle, 255. 
 
 Parker, Joseph, D.D., 171-9; the 
 "Temple" in which he preaches 
 described, 171; his personal appear- 
 ance, 172; his tricks of manner, 173; 
 his merits as a preacher, 174; his 
 expository sermons, 175; his fond- 
 ness for intense expressions, 175; 
 
384 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 extracts from his sermons, 175-8; 
 his published prayers, 178-9. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 94. 
 
 Parr, Samuel, D.D., his fondness for 
 tea and lobsters, 107, 110; his dis- 
 pute with Dr. Johnson, 126. 
 
 Pascal, Blaise, quoted, 117; his insan- 
 ity, 138; not a cynic, 286. 
 
 Past, the, admiration for it, 325. 
 
 Pearls, their origin and composition, 
 280-1. 
 
 Pepys, Samuel, his diary, 233, 236. 
 
 Philippe, Louis, his love of titles, 101. 
 
 Pinkney, William, described, 38; 
 Wirt's first encounter with him, 
 38-40; Wirt's opinion of him, 40; 
 his toilet, 95. 
 
 Pitt, William, his love of port wine, 
 104; his bill for preventing smug- 
 gling, 333-4. 
 
 Plagiarism, charges of, 75. 
 
 Politics, their bitterness and corruption 
 in America, 324. 
 
 Pompey, his triumph over Mithridates, 
 357-8; hissed at a gladiatorial show, 
 358. 
 
 Pope, Alexander, anecdote of, 109; a 
 "poser," 122; declared a liar, 128; 
 Hazlitt on, 242. 
 
 Popularity, 355-6 ; its cost, 363. 
 
 Person, Richard, anecdotes of, 105-6, 
 107. 
 
 Preacher, a "safe" one described, 
 170. 
 
 Printers, their peculiarities, 296-7. 
 
 Pulpit, the London, 150-188; its al- 
 leged decline, 187-8. 
 
 Punctuation, some mistakes in, 300. 
 
 Pythagoras, his character, 127. 
 
 Q. 
 
 QUINCKY, DE, Thomas, on the loneli- 
 ness of London, 147-8 ; his " Con- 
 fessions of an Opium-Eater," 334. 
 
 Quincy, Josiah, President of Harvard 
 University, his compliment to 
 
 ; Wirt, 30.' 
 
 Quotation, literary, 345-54; hack- 
 neyed, 345-47; Macaulay's propen- 
 sity for it, 347; Leibnitz's from 
 Virgil on Bayle's death, 348; Por- 
 son and Bishop Heber apt in it, 349 ; 
 invented by Sheridan, 349 ; its abuse 
 by advocates in France, 350; when 
 legitimate, 351; happy examples of, 
 352-3; Hazlitt's felicity in it, 
 353. 
 
 R. 
 
 RALEIGH, Sir Walter, his dandyism, 
 94. 
 
 Reading, promiscuous, useful to boys, 
 22 ; different systems of, 26-7 ; what 
 shall we read? 335-44. 
 
 Rembrandt, the painter, anecdotes of, 
 132-3. 
 
 Richard III., 242. 
 
 Richardson, the novelist, 95; his " Pa- 
 mela," 331. 
 
 Richelieu, Cardinal, 111; his worry 
 about trifles, 248-9. 
 
 Richter, Jean Paul, extract from, 
 250. 
 
 Robespierre, his physiognomy, 240. 
 
 Rogers, the poet, his fastidious taste, 
 251. 
 
 Ropes, J. C., his Lectures on Napo- 
 leon I., 2, 7, 9. 
 
 Rousseau, J. J., anecdotes of, 88; a 
 "poser," 122; his inconsistencies, 
 124. 
 
 s. 
 
 SAINTE-BEUVE, C. A., on the knowl- 
 edge of men, 84. 
 
 Salmasius, Claudius, saying of, 87. 
 
 Savage, Richard, 104. 
 
 Savonarola, 102. 
 
 Scaliger, Joseph J., 100, 112. 
 
 Scaliger, Julius Caesar, 100. 
 
 Schiller, his stimulants, 83, 103. 
 
 Schopenhauer, Arthur, on noise, 117; 
 on beauty, 238. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 385 
 
 Scipio, on his soldiers' bravery, 256. 
 Scott, General Winfield, his" " hasty 
 
 plate of soup," 356. 
 Seneca, his inconsistencies, 123. 
 Shakspeare, the woman that enslaved 
 
 him in his youth, 241. 
 Shelley, the poet, anecdote of, 112 ; on 
 
 Ariosto's handwriting, 373. 
 Sheridan, Thomas, anecdotes of, 105> 
 
 349. 
 Smith, Adam, his lack of practical 
 
 talent, 134 
 Smith, Rev. Sydney, on his pedigree, 
 
 100; his shyness, 121; his handwrit- 
 ing, 368. 
 
 Socrates, his ugliness, 239. 
 Southey, Robert, his inconsistencies, 
 
 126. 
 
 Spinoza, his spiders, 111. 
 Stael, Madame de, anecdote of, 130. 
 Stanley, Dean Arthur P., 116. 
 Statues, mutilation of ancient, 362. 
 Steele, Sir Richard, his inconsistencies, 
 
 128; Swift on, 128; anecdote of, 
 
 128. 
 
 Sterne, Laurence, 91. 
 Steuben, Baron F. W. A., anecdote of, 
 
 102. 
 St. Margaret's church, London, 159- 
 
 60. 
 
 Style, literary, 354. 
 Superstitions of some actresses and 
 
 composers, 137-8. 
 Swift, Dean, the contradictions in his 
 
 character, 1 24-5 ; his journals, 233 : 
 
 his pessimism, 287. 
 
 T. 
 
 TAINE, Hippolyte-Adolphe, on the 
 
 policy of Napolton I., 4. 
 Talleyrand, Napoleon's rudeness to, 
 
 17; his cynicism, 286. 
 Tasso, 103. 
 Thackeray, anecdote of, 272-3 ; saying 
 
 of, 351; not a cynic, 286. 
 Thessiger, Sir Frederic, saying of, 
 
 231. 
 
 Thiers, Louis-Adolphe, on Napoleon's 
 rapidity of thought and action, 10. 
 
 Thomson, the poet, his untidiness, 98. 
 
 Travel a century ago, 322. 
 
 Trevelyan, Sir" George Otto, M.P., 
 191." 
 
 Turenne, saying of, 253 
 
 Types, their tricks, 295-304 ; thoughts 
 improved by their errors, 296; ex- 
 amples of their errors, 297-304 ; sen- 
 sitiveness to their errors, 304. 
 
 u. 
 
 UGLINESS, its advantages, 237-46; 
 George Dawson on, 237; an intel- 
 lectual stimulus, 239; of many great 
 men, 235-49. 
 
 V. 
 
 VAUDEMONT, Princesse de, 241. 
 
 Vieta, Francois, 112. 
 
 Villeneuve, Pierre de, his treatment 
 
 by Napoleon I., 13. 
 Virgil, his literary borrowings, 75-6. 
 Voiture, Vincent, 88. 
 Voltaire, his fondness for coffee, 106. 
 
 W. 
 
 WAGXER, Richard, his vanity, etc., 
 89-90; his dress and manner, 97-8. 
 
 Wallenstein, 117, 137; his dislike of 
 noise, 249. 
 
 Walpole, Horace, his letters, 233. 
 
 Walpole, Sir Robert, cynicism in his 
 letters, 286. 
 
 Washington denounced, 324. 
 
 Watering-places, the Queen of, 218- 
 30. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, compliments Wirt, 
 30, 52. 
 
 Wellington, the Duke of, on the Pe- 
 ninsular army, 257; anecdote of, 
 258 ; his treatment by the nobility, 
 357. 
 
 25 
 
386 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Wesley, Rev. John, his superstition, 
 137. 
 
 " Westminster Review," the, on the 
 happiness of the oyster, 278-9. 
 
 Whately, Richard, D.D., his shyness 
 and eccentricities, 121. 
 
 Whittier, John G., on his correspond- 
 ence, 232. 
 
 Wilkes, John, his ugliness, 244-5. 
 
 William Rufus, saying of, 87. 
 
 Wilson, Professor John, 99. 
 
 Wirt, William, 20-52; his parentage, 
 21 ; his early reading, 22 ; chooses 
 the Bar for his profession, 24 ; mar- 
 ries Miss Gilmer, 25 ; his appearance 
 and conversation, 25; his convivial 
 habits, 26; his study of the English 
 classics, 27; elected clerk to the 
 Virginia House of Delegates, also 
 Chancellor of the E. District, 27; 
 marries Miss Gamble, 28 ; his " Let- 
 ters of the British Spy," 28-9; elect- 
 ed to the House of Delegates, 29 ; 
 his essays ("The Rainbow" and 
 " The Old Bachelor "), 29 ; ap- 
 pointed a District-Attorney of the 
 United States, 29; appointed Attor- 
 ney-General of the United States, 
 29; his first visit to Boston, Mass., 
 29, 30; nominated for the Presi- 
 dency of the United States, 30; his 
 last illness and death, 30-1; his 
 personal appearance, 31; his self- 
 criticisms, 32, 33, 49, 50; on florid 
 oratory, 33-4; his advice to F. W. 
 Gilmer, 33-4; his Address at Rut- 
 
 gers College, 34, 47; his letter to 
 H. W. Miller, 34-5; on the orato- 
 rical taste of the age, 35 ; his argu- 
 mentative ability, 36-7; his speech 
 against Burr, 36; his argument for 
 the Cherokee Indians, 37 ; his defence 
 of Judge Peck, 37 ; his first encounter 
 with Pinkney, 38-40; his oratory 
 characterized, 40-2; his "Life of 
 Patrick Hemy," 43-5; anecdote of 
 him and Hon. Thomas Corwin, 44; 
 his classic culture, 45; his retort on 
 Emmett, 45-6; his eulogy on Adariis 
 and Jefferson, 46; on decisive in- 
 tegrity, 47-9; his legal fees, 49; on 
 Chief-Justice Marshall, 50; his con- 
 versation, 50-1; his religious char- 
 acter, 51 ; characterized, 51-2: on the 
 political corruption of his time, 324. 
 
 Wolfe, General James, anecdote of, 
 91. 
 
 Wollaston, William, on posthumous 
 fame, 355. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, anecdote of, 
 91. 
 
 Worms, Baron Henry de, M.P., his 
 Parliamentary speeches, 195-6. 
 
 Worry, 247-52; when unavoidable, 
 247'; its causes, 248, 251-2; its 
 effects when habitual, 252. 
 
 Y. 
 
 YOUNG, Edward, the poet, his 
 consistencies, 125-6. 
 
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